Fwd: Why POLICE work is inherently corrupting

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ron Ruggieri <radicalron72647@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 at 14:14
Subject: Why POLICE work is inherently corrupting
To: Letters <letters@latimes.com>

Under capitalism the very JOB of cop can corrupt . Police work does attract not a few incorrigible sadists, psychopaths , and sociopaths . And not a few just plain everyday opportunist crooks. On the job cops are fawned upon. I smile when I see them getting free cups of coffee and free newspapers. Even the better cops have an incurable SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT after a few years on the job.

Long ago Marxism explained what THE POLICE were all about in capitalist society: they are the pitbull guardians of corporate PRIVATE PROPERTY. Modestly , I guess, they just want their fair share of Robber Baron looting .

Of course ,it is impossible to defund the police as long as there is " hard earned " PRIVATE PROPERTY to protect. The American working class -and now the American middle class- can never hold on to or accumulate much private property- even after a life- time of really hard work. Lose a job and soon you lose your house, your car , your bank account - YOUR SELF-RESPECT . It is risky for the lower middle class to play the Stock Market where MONEY magically ( see Marx's DAS KAPITAL about that ) multiplies itself .

Prosperous " socialists " making a modest fortune in Stock Market investment prefer not to think much about Marx's LABOR THEORY OF VALUE . But even the greatest discovery of 19th century physical science - the Conservation of Energy - tells even the bourgeois economics professor : YOU CAN NOT GET SOMETHING FROM NOTHING !

How to measure HARD WORK -physical or intellectual ? SCIENCE has only one objective measure for WORK : UNITS OF ENERGY - " ergs " or calories . If you want to know exactly how hard a corporate executive , a scientist, a factory worker is working , you take his average body ( which includes THE BRAIN ) temperature and other data and determine the BASAL METABOLIC RATE . That is the essence of what Marx termed " labor power " . Did any corporate executive ever die of spontaneous combustion ? [ According to Marx the capitalists buy this LABOR POWER which alone ADDS a SURPLUS value to THEIR capital. When the market place accepts this value ( the product is sold ) the " trick " is performed ] . Is this labor theory of value that abstruse - or just scary and threatening to the " ideas of the ruling class " ?

Ron Ruggieri, 75 Mathewson St., Cranston, Rhode Island ( 401-580-7432 )