Like all other things that are not questioned, you might think that the police have always existed. It's almost as difficult as imagining a world without pay, without police. This is how it works and it is. But now working like that doesn't mean that it's always been that way, of course, or that it's.

However, among the movements on the left there has been a general rejection of the police in the Basque Country, which has inevitably been fuelled by the political conflict. The police have been the instrument of repression used by the French and Spanish states to oppress the liberation movements.

ACAB and its adaptation – 1312, AZAB, etc. –, Tout le monde detla Police, and the widespread use of other choruses, demonstrate this concern. Beyond that denial, but what is the political reading of the police? What are the proposals?

In recent years the Police model has been publicly debated over and over again. Denial is often viewed as disgusting. In other words, it would be essential today to make a proposal that would transform it from the current police model, following, if you will, the idea of political realism. This has an obvious consequence, which has gradually emerged, and that is police normalisation and the risks involved.

With the idea that the police can be reformed there is talk of the most democratic police, the nearest police, the Basque police, among other things. But the question is not whether the police are good or bad, in the abstract, or whether the police can be better – surely, and can be observed from different perspectives – but what the origin and role of the social function the police plays, why the police exist in our society and hence the debate.

Mark Neocleous, in his book A Critical Theory of Police Power, talks about “police power” rather than dedicated exclusively to the police. Maderos, chusma and social order. A critical theory of police power has recently been published by the editorial Katakrak, translated into Spanish. In the police debates, for Neocleous, some premises about the police function, fundamental in the liberal ideology of the police, are accepted. Consequently, the approaches taken from this point of departure fall into sterile discussions about the organisational structure of the police, the correction of processes, accountability, transparency, justice and “civil liberties” and the police “reform” that are lost in the specifications of the rule of law. It goes like this. “The ‘police function’ is broader than the ‘police’ and the police power is, first and foremost, a weapon of the state.”

The issue must therefore go beyond the quality of the police, according to Neocleous. In order for the “democratic control” of the police not to be at risk of leaving the police as such, it is more important, in Neocleous’s view, to clarify what police power is than to ask frequent questions as if the police should or should not use tear gas.

ORDER HAS THOUSANDS OF FACES

The extensive notion of police refers to an action that historically existed. In fact, centuries ago police action referred to the task of the general management state of society. In emerging capitalist states, the “police” label contained institutions that affected many areas.

The Police dealt with medical care, welfare, public health, construction and lighting, among others. In fact, the role of police power has been, from its very beginning, to ensure order. Police power, for Neocleous, retains the essence of the State itself and therefore studies it as an activity or a process rather than as an institution or organ.

The concept of police power, therefore, serves to understand the custody of order beyond the professional forces of the police. In fact, the fact that the Police is acting only by force would result in a blurring of that indispensable power in the functioning of capitalist States and a mere attention to some of the issue.

The police began to “professionalize” themselves in the early nineteenth century. It was a long process, but the multiple tasks of the order began to be divided into differentiated organs and developed. For example, what was medical police became “social health” and then “health service”. The management of the drainage system and street lighting became health and public safety issues. Poverty surveillance first became “welfare” and then “social security”, etc. There, he differed and professionalized from the other functions of the Crime Prevention and Law Enforcement Police.

We may think that this new police organization that supposedly assumes custody of law and order performs a number of specific and defined functions, but Neocleous believes that the police continue to intervene in situations of ill-defined “disorder”, regardless of whether a crime has been committed or a law has been infringed.

Indeed, all institutions dealing with issues of good order and the behaviour of citizens continue to maintain a close relationship with the professional police forces. Police institutions continue to maintain contacts with other agencies, from vehicle licensing bodies to schools and housing departments to social security agencies. Therefore, as Neocleous says, the development of modern forms of police power is equal to the development and expansion of political administrative institutions.

It includes the example of Greece in an interview with Neocleous, in which the generalization of the police presence on university campuses is not casual. In Euskal Herria we have also repeatedly seen police interventions on campus. Indeed, despite the alleged reduction of the police mandate in the progressive professionalization of police forces, the police continues to claim the widest possible powers.

For Neocleous, the Police is the organization in charge of creating the order rather than enforcing the law. This is the basis of the special character of the police power, understood by all the first Police theorists. To do this, the theory of police power is essential, not just that of the police.

ORDER IN CAPITALIST SOCIETIES

Neocleous analyzes the issue of police power through criticism of the political economy. Neoclaus takes as a reference the first volume of Karl Marx's Capital: In it, Marx explains what he calls the “fat secret” of the bourgeois order. In other words, for capital to exist, it is essential to separate the majority of the population from other means of life than wages.

Capital needs a “free” population, capable and willing to sell its workforce in exchange for a wage. To do so, capital addresses what Marx calls the systematic colonization of the world. For Neocleous, therefore, the secret lies in the State’s response to the demand for capital: “Have employees!” The State thus fulfills the necessary condition to have capital, creating and reproducing class of workers through police power.

Capital could not have existed without the separation of workers from productive resources. Without this distinction there would be no capitalist accumulation. The State, through law and violence and its law, creates the kind of paid work. It does so by violently removing control of the land from people, pulling it out of their homes and turning it into a beggar. At that time, the principal class sets out laws that allow the State to monitor beggars, for example, that allow beggars to return to their country of origin so that they get to work there. In short, police power is at the basis of the disciplinary process designed by the expropriated to become a salaried worker.

MAXIMUM POLICE OPERATION

For Neocleous, understanding police power is key to understanding its role in the manufacture of a social order based on expropriation, exploitation and accumulation. The anti-escalist law and the laws of early capitalist labor opposed those who sought a way of life beyond wages.

At the same time, the owners and the emerging capitalist class gave themselves the legal right to claim common land as private property. This, in turn, made it increasingly difficult to maintain the land and reinforced the development of a type of employee. For Neocleous, this has historically been the largest police operation.

The continuity of the same process would be at the heart of the police forces, which as capitalism is developing, have consolidated the form of wages. In this process, they gradually criminalized actions that were legal survival mechanisms. For example, in the United Kingdom and in Europe, from the 17th to the 18th century, employers made a concerted effort to impose new criminal penalties against the "benefit of work" earned by workers.

According to Neocleous, port workers were entitled, for example, to acquire commodities that were historically transported by boat, such as sugar, coffee and other products from the ship’s basement. Workers in the clothing industry were getting waste materials. Farm workers used to collect scattered specimens after harvest.

These practices allowed workers to free themselves a little from wage dependence. These products and items could be used directly or exchanged or sold in cash with others working in other industries. However, in a movement of enormous historical importance during the industrial revolution, which was also a key era for the development of the power of the Police, the voting class increasingly argued that this type of customary rights would impede the idea of the need to earn pay.

In addition, the workers came to believe that they were promoting these “discharges”. And so these practices were increasingly subjected to criminal punishment. In other words, completely legal customary mechanisms became illicit, and the police were threatened by new and intrusive laws. This process, which can be considered as a large-scale police operation, was fundamental to the determination of wage logic. In fact, as Neocleous emphasizes, the generalization and consolidation of the wage form provided by the expropriated by forcing them to sell their workforce and the development of police power were interrelated processes.

Legislation on homeless people is also a fundamental part of police power, according to Neocleous. This type of diffuse law and practice makes it possible to suppress generally defined conduct to force beggars and those who in their day survived without working as salaried workers to join wage work, arresting and questioning anyone who today considers himself suspicious of questioning the order. This gives full authority to the power of the police, according to Neocleous, as suspicions and accusations lie with police officers. These laws are not intended to punish crimes, but to eliminate behaviors that are considered disordered. In fact, as Neocleous points out, the law is always structured for the police to do what they want to do in the name of good order. In this sense, the police do not enforce the law, but rather the laws adapt to the needs of the police power, as seen both with the Mordaza Law and with the reforms of the Spanish Penal Code.

SECURITY AND POWER

The idea of police power is based on the idea of “ordering insecurity”. For Neocleous, security needs are built to say that only the police can provide that security. Neocleous believes that “security” is used to justify attacks on freedom: “Security is now the reason for our obedience: reassure and obey, because security is at stake.”

This genealogy that makes Neocleous comes to this day. Today, the Police, as the same wage form, shows the police power of the capitalist State, is completely naturalized. But at present, the Police continues to work to punish any expression that endangers or challenges private property or capital accumulation of the proprietary class. Because, by law, the material freedom that corresponds to the formal freedoms of the working class remains the freedom of the means of production and of selling their workforce. Because that's the order.

Read the second part of the report: The police in Euskal Herria, starting point and debate on the model