Comment by FeedEmSteelToeBoots on 29/05/2020 at 02:10 UTC*

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View submission: ACAB Compilation/Mega-Archive/Collection: A helpful and regularly updated resource on why EVERY cop is bad.

Another historical example of the state breaking the efforts of organized labor is the use of police forces in union breaking in the U.S. during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Sidney L. Herring, taking Marx’s observation that the police exist to protect the interests of the ruling capitalist class, describes how the police forces in the United States were transformed during this time period by the class struggles between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The police acted to break up the numerous strikes of the time period, to provide protection to companies under strikes, and to control and gather intelligence on working-class communitiesHarring, S. (1993). Policing a class society: the expansion of the urban police in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In GREENBERG D. (Ed.), *Crime And Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Crimonology* (pp. 546-567). Temple University Press. Retrieved May, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14btbrw.29

A quote from that reading."Thousands of strikes occurred [during 1870-1915]: hundreds of them reaching major proportions. Whole cities were involved in these struggles. Thousands were injured, mostly beaten by the police; hundreds were shot, and perhaps a hundred were killed, again mostly by the municipal police."Another interesting part of this reading is how it points to how police forces were often increased and given more power during the late 19th century in response to strikes and growth in immigrant labor forces.

There's a lot more to this article, talking about the history of urban police forces during the late 19th and early 20th century, and how they were involved in protecting bourgeois interests against labor movements. I hope this is of some interest.

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