Submitted by ________deleted in Socialism
I've been looking into left wing politics more and more lately, and while I agree with most of it there is one thing that seems to come up in many very left wing circles and that is that police forces, rather than being reformed, could and should be done away with completely.
Now I am no Blue Lives Matter person looking to debate; I know there are plenty of problems with the police force in the US and elsewhere; but, surely even in a world of fully automated luxury gay space communism there will still be murderers, rapists, drunk drivers or even just folks parking illegally?
Just wondering if anyone would have some links for me I could read up on the subject?
EdgyIndividualistBuffoon wrote
May as well copy/paste my response from the other thread:
What isn't talked about a lot today is that so much of what we consider crime is really related to the particular institutions of capitalism, like private property, wage labor, high finance, etc. Ensure a broad and guaranteed standard of living for people with collective property rights and even by definition a lot of today's crimes will cease to exist. But certainly there will be violent psychopaths, crimes of passion, etc in any society that need to be dealt with in a way that protects the rest of the community. Perhaps the latter can be settled with some sort of collective justice and reconciliation process, as it was in many other societies, but the first?
Personally I favor the broad communalist (Murray Bookchin) idea that people who are uncontrollably violent need to be put in institutions that aren't focused on punishment but fulfill the dual role of a) ensuring public safety while b) allowing that person to be as comfortable as possible.
Here are some other resources (that I have not entirely read through, mind you!) that may or may not be of interest.