this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
16 points (76.7% liked)

Ask Lemmygrad

805 readers
37 users here now

A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Personally, I believe that A CAB. Yes, all cops are bastards, no exceptions. Yet I have met people who think that cops in socialist countries aren't bastards.

My reasoning is that it is a position of power over your fellow citizens/countrymen/people and only bastards would be attracted to such positions. While a person may go in with "good intentions", invariably they will be at some point in their career be expected to do something "not good": cover up for a colleague, arrest someone for law they don't agree with, beat somebody up, and so on. If they do it and remain a cop, well they are a bastard, no matter how many old ladies they help cross the street or whatever.

Let's also not pretend that a full communist utopia where every single law/regulation/rule is fair is possible in our lifetimes (or at all likely), there'll always be people who will want to abuse their power and take control, cops are an easily bought section of society that makes it possible for them. Historically, cops have always sided with the aristocracy/bourgeoisie/land-owners/those with money.

Your thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What countries with billionS of people? China and India have about 1.5 billion each, and they’re exceptions.

Im being hyperbolic, consider my framing of 'billions' to just mean 'a country with aprox a billion+ people'

ACAB represents that “all cops are bastards”, I don’t think anything is implied about what should replace them.

Its an anarchist strain of thought and it has a whole connation behind it with the term, usually tied to just burning down the police force as it stands.

Someone should have told Lenin that.

No need, he surely recongised the need to have a police force to defend the citizens of the revolution from bad actors and yeeted the police of the monarchy/tsar into the shadow realm.

They’re not “micro-examples”. Iceland has 176 cops per 100.000 inhabitants, while the European Union average is around 333. China has some 142. Does that mean Iceland is close to being socialist? Or is Iceland more socialist than the EU?

What seperates the two is ideology, obviously.

That’s not how it works. Just because “most people” think something that doesn’t make it true. An island nation is a country that comprises a whole island, or several islands. Iceland is an island nation, for example.

Point taken, its half a island nation.

[–] multitotal@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 5 months ago

Im being hyperbolic, consider my framing of ‘billions’ to just mean ‘a country with aprox a billion+ people’

But that's only 2 countries out of ~190. They are exceptions.

Its an anarchist strain of thought and it has a whole connation behind it with the term,

Lenin the anarchist.

he surely recongised the need to have a police force to defend the citizens of the revolution from bad actors

That's two different things. "Police" and "a force to defend the citizens of the revolution" are two different things. That's my whole point. In the Soviet Union you had the local militia

and then you had the NKVD.

So a "police" is a force than combines the two: "local policing" (stopping bar fights, getting drunk people off the street, investigating domestic violence) and then "state polcing" (fighting the enemies of the state). If you have one police with those wide powers, then that's a recipe for disaster.