I guess I don’t totally agree with calling everyone that exists within that weird administrative class “cops,” but it isn’t a critical disagreement. I get what you mean though, thanks for the explainer
Sorry I still don’t get it. Cops embody the violent coercion that is needed to enforce contracts and laws. Laws determine how contracts are made and what penalties for breaking them. Contracts are a legal confabulation that serve several functions, probably most relevant is they are the mechanisms that makes property ownership possible, such as land. Landlords have the personal property “rights” as outlined in property law and defined by the contract. Cops enforce the laws and contracts with violence.
Cops can only be landlords if they own property and collect rents. Landlords don’t have the ability to use violence to enforce their property rights, they have to call the cops. They both occupy this weird class middle zone that is neither bourgeoisie nor worker: collecting rents doesn’t necessarily make one a capitalist, land isn’t really strictly capital; cops aren’t proletarian workers though at one time they may have been working class with nothing to sell but their labor. Both are crucial to underwriting liberal private property relations which is the basis for capitalist exploitation and the class rule that emanates from it. But landlords have a completely different relation to production than cops, so they don’t occupy the same class position.
I’m not debating and I’ll read or watch anything recommended to me. I’m also mostly interested in specific and correct formulations of class, I study a lot and have high standards. If this is one of those things that is more agitational than strictly correct, I can live with that but if there is a critical formulation that I’m missing, or if this is a paradigm that other leftists are using to help formulate their views then I would very much like to understand