Firefighters are still serviced for the Bourgeoisie, of any bourgeois state. I’m confident I could find firefighter racism in Europe, against refugees Africans and MEsterners as well as Romani people.
Settlers states in the Americas all have this problem.
Remember that for Gramsci the “state” includes the civil society, firefighters are included. Their “misbehavior” towards racialized people is actually systemic racism being upheld.
This is an anarchist position, the idea that everything must be abolished (or opportunistically called something else), because we myopically only look at their misuse under capitalism / capitalist states.
All these institutions have a class character, which is why there’s a difference between capitalist vs socialist rule of law, police, firefighters, medicine, etc. The communist line isn’t to abolish all these things, its to make sure they are controlled by the people, and serve our interests, rather than capitalism.
Well we are talking about firefighters in the current state of affairs, not hypotheticals. OP didn’t ask what we think of firefighters in China or Cuba.
You should be giving me the benefit of the doubt that I’m speaking about a real issue of people naively throwing trust at firefighters in states where they are used for oppression. It’s not “anarchist” to point this shit out. Like no shit soldiers and cops are bad in a DotB, when we talk shit about cops, police in DotPs are not included in the discussion.
OP’s question was just “thoughts on firefighters?” Police, firefighters, etc under DotP should always be included in the discussion, as there are many AES states with firefighters, who would probably disagree with your characterization of all of them. I recommend prefacing it with “capitalist cops”, “capitalist firefighters” to be more precise.
You responded to a comment that specifically did include the qualifier ‘bourgeois’. People regularly post about ACAB here and elsewhere in communist spaces without any prefacing and it’s practically never taken the wrong way. If anything, your critique would be better applied to the original post than Kaffe’s comment.
Yeah I doubt AES firefighters give a shit that I’m criticizing firefighters in bougie states, and they would understand that many of these criticism wouldn’t land on them, because shit like eviction and water gunning racialized people is not part of their job description. AES firefighters aren’t gonna “not all firefighters” this conversation, that would be weird for them to do in the first place.
What’s the point to talk about “thoughts on firefighters” in AES states? Is it not a fair assumption that OP would only bring this up if firefighters in non-AES states, which almost all of us on this site live, were not controversial?
The most populous country on earth is a socialist state. It wasn’t clear to me that you weren’t referring to them as well, which is probably why your first comment got downvoted.
Yeah idk, I’d think that saying “ACAB” in this website would not invoke replies saying “not all cops” because of AES states. To me there is a level of context built into this space that should allow us to shorthand conversations. Because I mean like, the role of a worker who’s job it is to handle emergencies like fires, what other criticisms would we have for that role of worker? We cannot simply look at their ideal purpose, but their allegiance to the state. I think it’s a waste of time to just write down that their ideal job purpose is a good and necessary division of labor. We should criticize their relationship to class society. So IDK, the reactions to my first comment stink the same way as people saying “you need cops tho”, “who’s gonna solve crimes” in response to ACAB. It’s the same Liberalism plastered all over reddit.
If an anarchist says ACAB and means all cops, and a communist says ACAB, but really only means specifically capitalist cops, how do ppl (3rd parties especially) know the difference?
I’m not disagreeing with the criticisms of capitalist firefighters being used by the state to fuck ppl over, just the imprecise language that makes our position indistinguishable from the anarchists. Even ACAB should probably be seen as a radlib / anarchist phrase, considering proletarian security forces are what keep capitalists under the thumb of the socialist state.
The 3rd parties are either in AES, which in that case Anarchist opinions mean nothing and they know the Communist position on cops, or in non-AES states where Anarchist and Communist positions on what to do with existing cops are equivalent. This also a discussion on if we as proles and colonized peoples in non-AES states should be trusting cops and firefighters and giving them the benefit of the doubt? The quote I posted elsewhere in this thread points to a resounding no. You should not rely on firefighters to help you when a bougie is seeking to harm you.
Firefighters are still serviced for the Bourgeoisie, of any bourgeois state. I’m confident I could find firefighter racism in Europe, against refugees Africans and MEsterners as well as Romani people.
Settlers states in the Americas all have this problem.
Remember that for Gramsci the “state” includes the civil society, firefighters are included. Their “misbehavior” towards racialized people is actually systemic racism being upheld.
This is an anarchist position, the idea that everything must be abolished (or opportunistically called something else), because we myopically only look at their misuse under capitalism / capitalist states.
All these institutions have a class character, which is why there’s a difference between capitalist vs socialist rule of law, police, firefighters, medicine, etc. The communist line isn’t to abolish all these things, its to make sure they are controlled by the people, and serve our interests, rather than capitalism.
Well we are talking about firefighters in the current state of affairs, not hypotheticals. OP didn’t ask what we think of firefighters in China or Cuba.
You should be giving me the benefit of the doubt that I’m speaking about a real issue of people naively throwing trust at firefighters in states where they are used for oppression. It’s not “anarchist” to point this shit out. Like no shit soldiers and cops are bad in a DotB, when we talk shit about cops, police in DotPs are not included in the discussion.
OP’s question was just “thoughts on firefighters?” Police, firefighters, etc under DotP should always be included in the discussion, as there are many AES states with firefighters, who would probably disagree with your characterization of all of them. I recommend prefacing it with “capitalist cops”, “capitalist firefighters” to be more precise.
You responded to a comment that specifically did include the qualifier ‘bourgeois’. People regularly post about ACAB here and elsewhere in communist spaces without any prefacing and it’s practically never taken the wrong way. If anything, your critique would be better applied to the original post than Kaffe’s comment.
Yeah I doubt AES firefighters give a shit that I’m criticizing firefighters in bougie states, and they would understand that many of these criticism wouldn’t land on them, because shit like eviction and water gunning racialized people is not part of their job description. AES firefighters aren’t gonna “not all firefighters” this conversation, that would be weird for them to do in the first place.
What’s the point to talk about “thoughts on firefighters” in AES states? Is it not a fair assumption that OP would only bring this up if firefighters in non-AES states, which almost all of us on this site live, were not controversial?
The most populous country on earth is a socialist state. It wasn’t clear to me that you weren’t referring to them as well, which is probably why your first comment got downvoted.
Yeah idk, I’d think that saying “ACAB” in this website would not invoke replies saying “not all cops” because of AES states. To me there is a level of context built into this space that should allow us to shorthand conversations. Because I mean like, the role of a worker who’s job it is to handle emergencies like fires, what other criticisms would we have for that role of worker? We cannot simply look at their ideal purpose, but their allegiance to the state. I think it’s a waste of time to just write down that their ideal job purpose is a good and necessary division of labor. We should criticize their relationship to class society. So IDK, the reactions to my first comment stink the same way as people saying “you need cops tho”, “who’s gonna solve crimes” in response to ACAB. It’s the same Liberalism plastered all over reddit.
If an anarchist says ACAB and means all cops, and a communist says ACAB, but really only means specifically capitalist cops, how do ppl (3rd parties especially) know the difference?
I’m not disagreeing with the criticisms of capitalist firefighters being used by the state to fuck ppl over, just the imprecise language that makes our position indistinguishable from the anarchists. Even ACAB should probably be seen as a radlib / anarchist phrase, considering proletarian security forces are what keep capitalists under the thumb of the socialist state.
The 3rd parties are either in AES, which in that case Anarchist opinions mean nothing and they know the Communist position on cops, or in non-AES states where Anarchist and Communist positions on what to do with existing cops are equivalent. This also a discussion on if we as proles and colonized peoples in non-AES states should be trusting cops and firefighters and giving them the benefit of the doubt? The quote I posted elsewhere in this thread points to a resounding no. You should not rely on firefighters to help you when a bougie is seeking to harm you.
I see. Interesting thought