Are You Arrested? The Ambiguity of Being Detained by the Police When a police officer stops a citizen, an immigrant or a migrant worker, it may be understandably unclear whether s/he is arrested or not and what s/he can do or not do if stopped by the police. From McBarnet, page 36: Arrest-that is, the … Continue reading The Real World of the Rule of Law: Courts as Oppressive Organizations, Part Four: To Resist or Not to Resist the Police
Tag: Mark Neocleous
Working for an Employer May Be Dangerous to Your Health, Part Seven: The National Day of Mourning in Canada and the Social Causes of Injury, Disease and Death
On April 28 is the National Day of Mourning in Canada to commemorate those workers who have suffered disease, injury or death at work. However, unions rarely if ever raise the issue of how effective such a day of mourning is for addressing the health and safety problems that workers experience. Why do more or … Continue reading Working for an Employer May Be Dangerous to Your Health, Part Seven: The National Day of Mourning in Canada and the Social Causes of Injury, Disease and Death
Reform Versus Abolition of the Police, Part 8: The Police and the Political Economy of Capitalism
Introduction The following provides many quotes from Mark Neocleous's book The Fabrication of Social Order:A Critical Theory of Police Power (2000), with short comments. The author argues that there is an inherent connection between the emergence of the modern police and the emergence of a society dominated by a class of employers. The issue of … Continue reading Reform Versus Abolition of the Police, Part 8: The Police and the Political Economy of Capitalism
Reform versus Abolition of Police, Part Two
This is a continuation of an earlier post on the issue of reforming the police versus its abolition. Mr. Rosenfeld, a self-declared radical and Marxist living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in an article published in the social-democratic magazine Canadian Dimension on April 20, 2020, Reform and Transform: Police Abolitionism and Sloppy Thinking), responded to another article … Continue reading Reform versus Abolition of Police, Part Two
Working for Employers May Be Dangerous to Your Health, Part Five
In Dwyer's book, Life and Death at Work: Industrial Accidents as a Case of Socially Produced Error, in a passage quoted below, he argues that so-called accidents at work are socially caused but, historically, have been defined otherwise--as technical problems, for example, or as a result of individual mistakes.In the passage below, he notes that … Continue reading Working for Employers May Be Dangerous to Your Health, Part Five
Socialism, Police and the Government or State, Part One
Mr. Gindin, in his article We Need to Say What Socialism Will Look Like argues the following: The expectations of full or near-full abundance, added to perfect or near-perfect social consciousness, have a further consequence: they imply a dramatic waning, if not end, of substantive social conflicts and so do away with any need for an “external” … Continue reading Socialism, Police and the Government or State, Part One
The Abolitionary 