CLASS STRUGGLE

SAM MITRANI—The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—The idea among Yellow Vests that cops will switch sides could only come from those who are fundamentally conservative and thus have never attended an anti-government protest before… as is the self-professed case with many, many Yellow Vests. Six months later they still don’t believe their own eyes, mainly because the idea causes such intense cognitive dissonance due to their “glorious” view of France’s “revolutionary” history – but because they have not updated their political thought in 200+ years, they cannot be revolutionaries in the 21st century.

WT WHITNEY—Between January 2016 and March 27, 2019, 498 people were killed. They included 113 community leaders, 18 political movement leaders, 9 labor leaders, 7 environmental activists, 6 land claimants, 5 human rights defenders, 31 indigenous leaders, 28 peasant leaders, and 24 Afro—Colombian leaders. Since the signing of the peace agreement between FARC insurgents and the government in late 2016, murderers have hit more than 129 former FARC guerrillas and 431 social and community leaders (some of whom having been accounted for above).

ALAN MACLEOD—Due to the implementation of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s, inequality between the classes in Venezuela greatly increased, and poverty rose rapidly. This led to profound social dislocation, particularly after the 1989 Caracazo, when the government ordered a military crackdown on working-class protesters from the barrios, resulting in the massacre of thousands. The event, and the economic crisis of the 1990s, led to the breakdown of the traditional social order and to the election of a former military officer and political outsider, Hugo Chavez, as president in 1998.Chavez, who came from a poor family, campaigned on the promise of a new Constitution. It was implemented the next year and contained new rights for indigenous groups, the poor and women, among others.