A-Infos (en) Poland, FA: Security and Inequality, or an Essay on the Police (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The police are often perceived as guarantors of public safety. We are 
frightened by crime stories about criminals whose unbridled thirst for 
destruction can only be curbed by more violence, albeit "pure" violence 
because it's legal, state-sponsored. Therefore, we accept enormous 
expenditures on law enforcement agencies, which are ultimately supposed 
to "ensure security" and protect against disintegration. The repressive 
apparatus grows with each passing year, from investments in the 
military, police, and border guards.

No amount of state law enforcement can guarantee our safety. No matter 
how many police cars, water cannons, and blue-uniformed personnel are 
purchased, the problem of crime will remain unsolved. Errico Malatesta 
pointed out this paradox long ago: "where the police have no crimes to 
detect or criminals to arrest, they will either create or invent crime 
and criminals, or they will cease to exist."1 The police as an 
institution do not work to eliminate the sources of crime from society: 
poverty and domination. From the police perspective, eliminating crime 
through the redistribution of goods and meeting basic needs is not an 
option. Malatesta's comment brilliantly anticipates the war on drugs and 
other brutal, systemic, and often seemingly absurd contemporary aspects 
of police action. It is important to realize that uniformed services do 
not defend the wronged, but defend vacant buildings, forests on the 
border, or park benches from those who would like to fall asleep on 
them. When the police intervene, in many cases no one is harmed   a 
victimless crime occurs.

Law enforcement plays a key role in enclosing resources, creating 
scarcity, and controlling "conduct." The mainstream view of the police 
as a force fighting crime is misleading. This is a false perception. 
Modern disciplinary institutions create crime. There is no criminal 
without criminology. There is no misdemeanor without law. The simplest 
way to increase the labor supply is to directly or indirectly 
criminalize all forms of refusal to work. The police, along with the 
prison system, are also a potential tool for maintaining all forms of 
domination, for example, political, racial, or class.

In extreme cases, as in the United States, the prison system can grow to 
absurd proportions (in 2020, the US prison population exceeded 1.6 
million, or 505 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants; for comparison, in 
Finland, in the same year, the prison population was 2,800, or 51 
prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants2), become a new incarnation of 
slavery3, and at the same time another "attractive investment 
opportunity for private enterprise," i.e., an area of privatization. Law 
and the broadly understood political system are intertwined with the 
social division of labor   "each new economic form corresponds to a 
quite specific form of legal and political relations.[...]Serfdom and 
absolutism have always gone hand in hand throughout history. One was the 
condition for the other. The rule of capitalism also created its own, 
specific political form"4.

Everything will become clear when we see that the police   and the law 
associated with them   are not meant to ensure our safety, but to uphold 
the class order. The classics of both Marxism and anarchism agreed that 
"The state[...]is usually the state of the strongest, economically 
dominant class, which, through its help, also becomes the politically 
dominant class and thus acquires new means for[...]exploiting the
oppressed classes."5 "The state[...]is the product of a long and bitter 
struggle in which the class occupying what is at a given time a key 
position in the production process gains advantage over its rivals and 
shapes a state that imposes by force a system of property relations that 
suits the interests of that class.[...]Every state is the child of a 
social class or classes that benefit from this particular system of 
property relations, the forcible maintenance of which is the state's 
task."6 This perspective allows us to understand the role of uniformed 
services. The police are an extremely effective tool for maintaining the 
status quo, useful both to politicians and to the owners of the means of 
production. In other words, when there is a solidarity protest for 
Palestine, a vacant building is occupied, or a strike disrupts the 
existing order, police cars appear.

Due to their hierarchical structure and the violence they inflicted, 
many anarchists criticized participation in security services. Instead 
of attempting to reform these institutions, Henry David Thoreau and Leo 
Tolstoy proposed refusal: "anyone may not voluntarily enter military, 
police, judicial, or tax service."7 Tolstoy particularly emphasized that 
government forces were primarily intended to round up draft dodgers and 
secure private property. Thoreau, in the context of slavery in the 
United States, argued how law can perpetuate domination; in the poet's 
thought, challenging the legal order through civil disobedience was 
crucial. Both thinkers demonstrated how functioning within
institutions based on top-down management and receiving orders has a 
destructive impact on individual autonomy. When subordination, quick 
response to commands, and discipline are considered fundamental virtues, 
people are reduced to "lowly, automatic instruments of scum in the hands 
of their superiors."8 The anarchists' critique remains relevant today. 
Unbounded trust in law and superiors is a recurring theme in the 
greatest tragedies of the 20th century; suffice it to mention Eichmann. 
In his famous essay "On Civil Disobedience," Thoreau wrote: "Should a 
citizen[...]submit his conscience to the legislator? Why, then, does 
every man have a conscience?[...]Respect for justice, not for the law, 
must be cultivated.[...]Law has never in the slightest degree influenced 
men to become more just. On the contrary, the respect which men have for 
it causes even the just to become unjust on a daily basis. The direct 
and natural result of an excessive respect for law is the situation of 
soldiers[...]. Many citizens, therefore, by offering their bodies to the 
state, serve it primarily as machines, not as human beings. I mean the 
standing army, the militia, prison guards, constables, posse comitatus, 
and the like."9

Designating a special group authorized to brutally treat everyone else 
the police is a recipe for abuse. As Bakunin predicted,10 under the 
influence of systemic power, even the most diligent worker can become a 
tyrant. Anarchists were exceptionally quick to diagnose many of the 
problems plaguing modern disciplinary institutions. Marxists, in the 
economic dimension, demonstrated that regardless of self-perception, 
capitalists must appropriate surplus value to remain capitalists "It is 
not the consciousness of men that determines the forms of their 
existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines the 
forms of consciousness."11 Similarly, anarchists recognized that within 
state institutions, the very manner of organization determines 
individual behavior. In the case of gangs trained in an authoritarian 
spirit and possessing a "monopoly on violence," abuse ceases to be the 
exception and becomes the rule. The very hierarchical social structure 
enables the escalation of violence. Moreover, domination is a tempting 
career option for losers in capitalist reality. "Before the 1933 
revolution, Hitlerism primarily organized unemployed youth with no hope 
of finding any employment.[...]They were young men who were fed up with 
the excuses they heard at home, that they were a burden, and who had 
lost hope that it would be worth trying to find work. The assault unit 
offered these young men special attractions. First, a warm place in a 
separate room near the tavern, almost daily refreshments[...]. Finally 
and above all   in addition to several dozen pfennigs of "pay" from the 
organization, there was the feeling of being a participant in important 
matters, an atmosphere of collective self-praise, boasting about the 
advantages achieved over the "communists" and[...]the excitement of 
anticipating a collective "action""12.

To ensure genuine social security, we must focus on structural 
solutions. Reducing inequality, expanding the pool of common goods, and 
networks of mutual aid are essential to reducing violence. From time to 
time, we hear about police officers abusing their authority. Similar 
cases of violence, harassment, and other forms of abuse are regularly 
exposed in the film industry, large corporations, and so on. We will 
understand these cases only by analyzing them not individually, like bad 
apples, but by considering structural power relations and the economic 
context. Abuse is enabled by inequality. Disciplinary dismissals of 
individual lecturers, principals, or police officers are ineffective 
unless the conditions that enabled them to commit violence against the 
vulnerable in the first place are changed. Silvia Federici described 
this brilliantly: "We see a similar dynamic in the #metoo movement many 
women fail to recognize that sexual violence is a structural 
problem[...]. To say it is a structural problem implies that women are 
vulnerable to sexual harassment because of the economic conditions in 
which most of them live. If women earned more, if waitresses didn't have 
to rely on tips, if directors and producers didn't decide the future of 
young women who turned to them for work, if women could leave an abusive 
partner or leave a job where they are harassed   change would indeed 
occur."13

Guy Standing, in his book "Precariat: The New Dangerous Class," also 
noted that meeting basic needs and economic stability positively impact 
a sense of security. If our livelihood depends entirely on a superior, 
we are completely subordinate. In most cases, employment is linked to 
access to numerous benefits, including healthcare. This is a recipe for 
dependence on employers. "Migration policies" are also exploited in a 
similar manner. Immigrants living in fear of deportation (by disguised 
agencies like ICE) often accept worse working conditions. Mikhail 
Bakunin was right when he wrote that "political equality is impossible 
without economic equality."14

Ultimately, one crucial aspect of security is being ignored: who should 
a person turn to when the threat comes from the officers themselves? 
Deadly pushbacks at the border and distrust of doctors in the context of 
the (lack of) availability of abortion reveal the crux of the problem 
and the importance of mutual aid. It's not the police, nor the border 
guard, nor "strong law" that guarantee our safety, but the fight often 
in defiance of them to reduce inequality and hierarchy.

Jan Szyszkowski

A-YES No. 20

Footnotes:

1 Errico Malatesta, Anarchy.

2 Prison Studies Statistics.
https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All,
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/finland and
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america[accessed: 
04.01.2026]

3 See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the 
Age of Colorblindness, New York
2020.
4 Peter Kropotkin, Modern Science and Anarchism, Lviv 1920, p. 77.
5 Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the 
State, Warsaw 1979, p. 223.

6 Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of 
Marxist Political Economy, Warsaw 1965, p.
376.

7 Leo Tolstoy, Slavery in Our Time, London 1903, 39.

8 Leo Tolstoy, Slavery in Our Time, London 1903, 33.

9 Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

https://pl.anarchistlibraries.net/library/henry-david-thoreau-obywatelskie-nieposluszenstwo
[accessed: 11/12/2025].

10 Mikhail Bakunin, Power Corrupts the Best.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1867/power-corrupts.htm[accessed: 
29/10/2025].

11 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political 
Economy[in:]Minor Writings, Paris 1907, p. 5.

12 Stefan Czarnowski, People unnecessary in the service of violence.
https://crispa.uw.edu.pl/object/files/621646/display/Default[accessed: 
04.01.2026]

13 Silvia Federici, Beyond the Limits of the Skin, Warsaw 2022, pp. 57-58.

14 Mikhail Bakunin, Revolutionary Catechism.

https://federacja-anarchistyczna.pl/2026/04/22/bezpieczenstwo-a-nierownosci-czyli-szkic-o-policji/
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