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France reform the bourgeois police

Marxist Theory · 2020-11-21

Core Argument

The article argues that the French police cannot be reformed under capitalism because the police are not a malfunctioning institution but a structurally necessary component of the bourgeois state. The beating of Michel Zecler and the subsequent protests are not evidence of a "structural problem" within the police — they are evidence of the police functioning exactly as designed. The central claim is that reformist demands for a "democratic" or "respectful" police force are illusions that obscure the class character of the state apparatus. The only consistent position for the workers' movement is to reject the entire Global Security Law, prepare a general strike, and understand that genuine police accountability is impossible without the overthrow of capitalist relations of production.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws directly on Marx's theory of the state as developed in The Civil War in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The article invokes Marx's definition of the state as "special detachments of armed men" whose function is to defend capitalist relations of production. This places the argument firmly within the classical Marxist tradition of understanding the state as an instrument of class rule — a position that distinguishes it from liberal or social-democratic analyses that treat police violence as a deviation from democratic norms.

The article implicitly draws on Lenin's State and Revolution in its insistence that the bourgeois state cannot be reformed piecemeal but must be smashed. It also echoes Trotsky's analysis of the Bonapartist state in its treatment of Macron's government as a regime that oscillates between concessions and repression, using police violence to manage the crisis of capitalist rule. The rejection of "structural problem" language is a deliberate theoretical intervention: it refuses the sociological framing that treats the police as a flawed institution within an otherwise acceptable system, insisting instead on the irreducibly class character of the entire state apparatus.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in December 2020, at a specific conjuncture in French politics. The beating of Michel Zecler on 21 November 2020 — captured on video and widely circulated — occurred alongside the government's attempt to pass the Global Security Law, whose Article 24 would have criminalised filming police officers. The "freedom marches" that followed drew hundreds of thousands of protesters, combining anti-racist anger with broader opposition to Macron's authoritarian turn.

The article situates this moment within the longer arc of the Yellow Vests movement (2018-19), which was the most sustained challenge to the French capitalist state in decades. The police repression of the Yellow Vests — including hundreds of serious injuries and the use of banned weapons — is presented not as an aberration but as the normal functioning of the state under conditions of crisis. The article notes that Macron's government is "paddling as hard as possible to move on" from the scandal, while Interior Minister Darmanin's concession that there "might be" structural problems is read as a tactical evasion, not genuine reflection.

The conjuncture is defined by the intersection of three factors: the accumulated anger from the Yellow Vests repression, the specific brutality of the Zecler beating, and the government's attempt to criminalise the documentation of police violence. The article argues that this creates an opening for the workers' movement to escalate beyond defensive protests toward a general strike.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a relatively short intervention and leaves several questions open. It does not develop a detailed strategy for how a general strike would be organised or what demands beyond the abandonment of the Global Security Law should be raised. The relationship between anti-racist mobilisations and the labour movement is asserted rather than theorised — the article calls for the workers' movement to "develop a bigger and better-organised mobilisation" but does not address the specific organisational forms this would require.

The argument continues in several directions within the IDOM corpus. The broader analysis of the French state under Macron is developed in articles on the Yellow Vests and the pension strikes of 2019-20. The theoretical question of the state and its relationship to reformism is treated more fully in IDOM's series on State and Revolution and in articles responding to reformist currents within the French left. The question of police violence and racism is taken up in articles on the BLM movement in the United States and its European echoes, which draw the same conclusion about the impossibility of reforming bourgeois police forces.

Connections

This article should be read alongside Marx's The Civil War in France, particularly the passages on the Paris Commune's abolition of the police and army. Lenin's State and Revolution provides the theoretical elaboration of the argument that the bourgeois state must be smashed, not reformed. Within the IDOM corpus, the article connects to the broader analysis of the French state in crisis, including the pieces on the Yellow Vests and the pension strikes. The argument also resonates with the Marxist tradition's critique of "police abolitionism" as a reformist position — the article insists that the police cannot be abolished under capitalism because the state requires them, but that the working class must build its own organs of self-defence and order.

Key Quotes

  1. "The police are itself a well-defined 'structure', or rather a well-defined institution, which is part of the bourgeois state apparatus. As Marx explained, the bourgeois state consists, in the final analysis, of 'special detachments of armed men' who defend capitalist relations of production."

  2. "By brutally repressing the yellow vests, the police did not show evidence of a 'structural problem', on the contrary, they were carrying out their most fundamental mission, in accordance with their place in the bourgeois state apparatus."

  3. "To claim that there could be, under capitalism, a 'good', 'democratic' and 'respectful' police is to completely ignore the fundamental role of the police and their class character."

  4. "As long as the bourgeoisie is in power, as long as a small minority of the population exploits the vast majority, the exploiting minority will need a state – that is to say, 'special detachments of armed men' – to defend this power against the struggles and revolts of the exploited, oppressed and impoverished masses."

  5. "The left and the trade union movement should not 'calm things down', as we sometimes hear, but instead, strive to develop a bigger and better-organised mobilisation."

  6. "By forcing the government to abandon this anti-democratic law, the labour movement would deal it a severe blow. This would strengthen our class's confidence in its own power."