 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. This is the second episode of Signs of Our Time with Professor Ajaz Ahmed. Professor Ajaz Ahmed is one of the world's most important Marxist intellectuals and we're happy to have this series with him. Welcome to NewsClick, Ajaz. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Well, the world seems to be on fire after the terrible death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There have been protests not only within the United States but around the world as people are really outraged by what they're seeing. Could you reflect a little bit on the death of Mr. George Floyd and the level of unrest about the role of the police in American society? One thing that occurs to me is of course it has been boiling. American police is in the habit of killing one that person per week on an average. Typically a man but they also killed many and that has been just building up. Ferguson was the earlier episode where again there was a very large uprising and all that which gave rise to the organization the Black Lives Matter. So one of the things is that it has been building more recently. Secondly, these are cyclical things that happened in America. When I was living here in the 70s, the same sort of thing of extreme police brutality. Sometimes covertly it would be staged as a non-police person. And great protests around that and so on. So part of it is that cyclical. The third thing that seems to me is that and that is where the difficulty I think is in comprehending that the you know everyone talks about white supremacy as if it was something pathological out there from which X number of people suffer. Joe Biden just said 13 to 15 percent of Americans are bad people whatever that means. But you know as if it's out there. Now white supremacy is second skin through in racial societies and a lot of these police are white supremacists running around with guns. Thirdly or whatever in order for them to do the kind of controlling of populations that they're required to do. They're also given a great deal of protection that they can get away with anything. And they expect that this is their right. One of the very significant events in my just happened is there's a video. There is an older man who's an old activist which must have been known a white man who must have been known to the police because he's an old man and he has been doing this in Buffalo for some 30 40 years. He must be well known. On video the two policemen pushed him. He falls down hits his head somewhere. After much reluctance the police department takes action against those two and 57 of his colleagues resigned from duty in solidarity with those two men who have been seen on video doing this. So this is a kind of a privilege that the police has and has been given which is just part of the routines of American life. And those policemen are now very surprised why something is happening to them now. You know I have a picture I just from Long Beach not very far away from where I'm sitting where there's a black man standing his little daughter is sitting on his shoulders. She's that small she's sitting on her shoulders and there's a white policeman with a gun aimed at that child hardly a foot away and it's open it's an innovative demonstration and by now they know that someone or the other would take a picture or a video or whatever. So there's a kind of an impunity granted to the police force in this country and in most countries which itself needs to be scrutinized as part of how capitalist societies actually function. In America now you're at a particularly delicate moment because you have a president who is whose work is incitement, incitement of violence, incitement of you know these good men who took over you know these white supremacists and so on and so forth who is deploying the army in the capital in Washington DC to against peaceful demonstrations with head of the American with the joint chief of joint staff is with him. So you know I have seen the United States in the early 70s during the Vietnam War movement they were immensely larger gatherings but this kind of display of military power that he's staging this kind of incitement open incitement to white supremacists to white militias and so on. So it's also a particular moment in the United States which is making it much worse and the more he inflames this situation the more people are upset. People are also very upset because they have no way now left in America at this moment to register their protests or they can't look to the Democratic Party to represent them. So these are the unrepresented, unrepresented in the belly of this so-called democratic society who are not represented by anyone and so on. So here there's all of this boiling over in this country. I want to pick up on the point you made earlier which is about the role of the police in a capitalist society. You had mentioned that you know there is a specific charge that the police has in in a society where private property is you know one of the most inviolable laws is the defense of private property and so on. The United States is a very particular kind of capitalist society because it ends up incarcerating you know the highest percentage of people on the planet is incarcerated in the United States. Frankly I can't tell the difference between a regular police officer and a military fellow. They all seem to look the same now and so on. I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the perhaps the role of the police in a capitalist society. You see there are capitalist I'll come to to capitalist societies in general but about the United States let me just say this that in the United States there is a very particular kind of ideology of always being at the frontier the conquest of the frontier the masculinity tied up to your gun the possession of the gun. So it's a society in it is not only incarceration the number of homicides there are in this country it's transit to thousands I don't remember the exact figure every year as compared to 5 10 12 let's say in Canada next door something like that. So use of the gun to settle disputes even of a very particular you know private nature is fairly common in the United States so that gets even more exaggerated when you have a police force which as I was saying is given that impunity because they need to get a certain work of law and order done. Now why did democratic society one is that I'm not I'm not quite sure what we mean by a democratic society. You know there's a sort of classification you know if you have you know elections of the sort that you have in the United States or something you're somehow a democratic society I don't understand what that means India supposed to be the worst largest democracy and so on and you have millions of working class people thrown out that the cities wondering around dying on railway tracks and this that and the other the great democracy that is on there nobody's punished for any of this nothing happens to the government for any any ministers or bureaucrats or anything. So I don't know what kind but but let me simply reflect now on the question of capitalism high capitalism needs this. You know Algeria has a wonderful article wonderful long long piece which has now come out as a book on the ideological state apparatus in which he makes the point that capitalist economy could not reproduce itself even for a year if it was left purely to economic logic around that economic logic you have to have structures of force you have to have ideologies you have to have ideologies that justify those structures of force and those structures of force are built into daily life in which the state actually controls everything you do. If you drive over a certain limit the police can come and do anything to you if you are white they'll treat you one way if you are black they'll treat you the so all your life is actually regulated if you are 15 days long late in filing your taxes if you forget to file 20 dollar payment you got from somewhere 100 dollar payment etc so these societies are full of disciplinary action in order to for a capitalist society for a class society to function at all with the kind of efficiency that is required in the peaceful way in which you're supposed to be functioning your daily life itself has to be enveloped in structures of discipline punishment uncertainty just what will happen to you etc and habits of obedience class structures cannot be reproduced without beating people into habits of obedience you know the most authoritarian thing in the world is capital you know this business of democratic societies and authoritarian society and so on and so forth these are normal catches of a very different sort so the most authoritarian thing is when you have everyone can see that this virus coronavirus has led to a tremendous economic upheaval in the united states which has led to 46.2 million people applying for unemployment the government refusing to extend unemployment benefits or some 35 million have lost their health insurance or are going to to lose their health insurance in a month or so when all of this is happening and at the same time the government in fact transfers some six trillion dollars to the top 0.1 percent then how do you control popular rage how do you control complete disorder in society except through demonstration in daily life over days and weeks and months and years and lifetimes of what can happen to you right now I think Trump's rhetoric of throw them in for 10 years do this this is a you know show of the military saying if the governors and the and the city governments cannot control this I will control it through the military etc etc I think I think behind a number of other things which are personal to to to Trump I think there's a terrible fear that this great uprising on the question of race can turn into a greater pricing and a much more lasting uprising on the question of the suffering of one third of the workforce for the United States that is what the fear is it is in order to prevent that that you need to come down as hard as you can on the surprising which is on the lesser question it's just a great anger about the killing of black people in this country which is something that happens in this country so it's a particular moment of anger they're hoping that this will pass and that it will not turn into something so in all these capitalist societies it is the fear of disobedience it is the fear that the exploited may rise in and so on so you this this this terror state repression I mean police is only one part of the thing in fact they are above a dozen or so um the state apparatuses of paramilitary and military kinds agencies which are connected both with the department of justice and department of defense which are now in action and there are now lawsuits asking the government to specify which of the government agencies are now out or now deployed you have now people in uniform deployed without the any insignia of which agency they're from now there's actually by the laws of capitalist society itself it's illegal but that's what they are doing and when people ask them show me your identity which by according to the laws of this country of the united states they're allowed to do do that these people are saying no I will not tell you I just work for the work of the United States and I'm here to defend etc this display of power in judicious use violence is always there in order to preempt a moment in which you might need much more violence and there have been times when there were violence in this case as you said to make the bodies obedient make the people obedient because there is a um an objective situation I mean you said about a third of the public is unemployed I saw a study which showed that 40 percent of people resident in the United States are using food kitchens the distress is deepening and I suppose that's what you're you're referring to is that the objective conditions for disobedience is also therefore rising but what I am actually saying is that the production of the economic instance of the capitalist mode of production is not possible without constant presence of violence of either exercise of it or possibility of it and routinization of people during what I call normal times when your unemployment can be said to be three percent reports during all of those times there has to be actual presence of the possibility of violence against and this is this is a generational training of psychological and doctrinal training uh and and they have and they have been very successful the habits of obedience in 2007 2008 financial crisis some 10 millions or more I do not remember the actual statistics lost their homes there was no major significant enterprise no significant demonstration the idea that the um there was no demonstration in the financial crisis shows the habits of obedience in a way now we are seeing also developing habits of disobedience let's see where this takes us professor jaz Ahmad thank you very much thank you