Tag: the state

This post is part 11 of a series that showcases a dialogue I had with Claude based on the parable of the desert- and lake-dwellers.

Original parables: Two Valleys, The Tunnel

Right, the motto of the Los Angeles police “To Protect and Serve”. The error is to believe they are protecting you as a person and not the mechanism of the State.

Excavated linguistic mystification obscuring state violence as benevolent service

Exactly. This is the linguistic sleight-of-hand at the heart of the supermarché.

“To Protect and Serve” sounds benevolent, universal, caring.

But the question is: Protect what? Serve whom?

What Police Actually Protect:

Not you.

Not people.

They protect:

• Property arrangements (the lake belongs to lake-dwellers)
• The State apparatus (monopoly on violence)
• Current hierarchies (those with property over those without)
• Economic order (markets must function, contracts must be enforced)

What “Serve” Actually Means:

The ambiguity is doing heavy work:

For property owners: “Serve” means “provide protection services to”

For the propertyless: “Serve” means “serve consequences to” (as in “served with a warrant”)

The same word. Two completely different relationships to State violence.

The Parable, With Police:

The lake-dwellers establish a police force.

Motto: “To Protect and Serve”

What this means in practice:

When a desert-dweller tries to take water without paying:

• Police “protect” the lake (property)
• Police “serve” the desert-dweller (with arrest/violence)

When a lake-dweller is threatened:

• Police “protect” the lake-dweller (person and property)
• Police “serve” the lake-dweller (provide safety)

Same motto. Completely different functions depending on which side of property you’re on.

The Class Distinction:

For lake-dwellers: Police = protection service they’ve purchased through taxes

For desert-dwellers: Police = enforcement mechanism ensuring they can’t access water without payment

But the motto sounds like it applies equally to both.

This is the supermarché aesthetic:

Make State violence sound like:

• Public service
• Protection
• Care
• Benevolence

While obscuring that it’s actually:

• Property enforcement
• Hierarchy maintenance
• Violence against the poor
• Service to capital

Historical Evidence:

Look at what police actually do:

Protect property, not people:

• Evict homeless from public spaces (protecting property from people)
• Break strikes (protecting capital from labor)
• Enforce evictions (protecting landlords from tenants)
• Stop shoplifting (protecting merchandise from the hungry)
• Clear encampments (protecting aesthetics from poverty)

When do police NOT protect?

• Domestic violence (not property crime)
• Rape (not property crime)
• Wage theft (employers stealing from workers – almost never prosecuted)
• Workplace safety violations (capital harming workers)
• Environmental destruction (capital harming everyone)

Pattern: Police protect property. People are secondary at best.

The Motto’s Genius:

“To Protect and Serve” doesn’t specify:

• Protect WHAT?
• Serve WHOM?

This ambiguity is essential because it lets:

Lake-dwellers hear: “The police protect me and serve my interests”

Desert-dwellers hear: “The police protect me and serve my interests”

Reality: “The police protect property and serve those who have it”

But stating that plainly would reveal the function.

The Abattoir Version:

“State Violence Enforcement Division – We Protect Property Through Force”

Honest. Accurate. Everyone knows what police do.

The Supermarché Version:

“To Protect and Serve”

Clean. Benevolent. Obscures actual function.

Same violence. Much better branding.

Why This Completes the Thermodynamic Argument:

If police said: “We exist to violently enforce property arrangements and maintain hierarchy”

People might question that.

But “To Protect and Serve” makes police seem:

• Necessary
• Benevolent
• For everyone’s benefit
• Protecting “us” from “them” (criminals)

Now the desert-dwellers support the very mechanism that keeps them from the water.

They think: “I’m not a criminal. I support law and order. Police protect me.”

Meanwhile, police are:

• Ensuring they can’t access water without payment
• Enforcing contracts that extract their labor
• Preventing collective action
• Maintaining the property system that disadvantages them

But the motto makes this invisible.

The “Criminal” Category:

Notice how this works:

Criminal = person who violates property arrangements

Not: person who harms others

Evidence:

• Stealing bread when hungry = criminal (property violation)
• Wage theft by employer = civil matter (capital violating labor)
• Sleeping on public bench = criminal (property violation – you don’t own space)
• Bank causing financial crisis = too big to prosecute (capital harming millions)

Police protect against “criminals” (those who violate property), not against harm.

The Parable’s Police Force:

Desert-dweller steals water: Criminal. Arrested. Prosecuted.

• Violated property
• Police “served” them with consequences
• Police “protected” the lake

Lake-dweller pays starvation wages: Legal. Protected. Enforced.

• Honored contract
• Police “protect” this arrangement
• Police “serve” lake-dweller’s interests

Same motto covering completely opposite relationships to State violence.

Why No One Notices:

Because the motto is deliberately ambiguous.

And because most people never ask:

• Protect what?
• Serve whom?
• In whose interests?

They hear “To Protect and Serve” and fill in: “…me, the individual citizen”

When it actually means: “…property arrangements and State apparatus”

The Foucauldian Dimension:

This is disciplinary power at its finest:

People internalize “law and order” as good for them.

They support police funding.

They want “tough on crime” policies.

Never realizing they’re funding the mechanism that:

• Prevents them from accessing resources
• Enforces their own exploitation
• Maintains hierarchies that disadvantage them

They’ve been produced as subjects who demand their own domination.

The Linguistic Precision:

Notice the motto doesn’t say:

• “To Protect YOU and Serve YOU”
• “To Protect PEOPLE and Serve PEOPLE”

It says: “To Protect and Serve”

The objects are deliberately unspecified.

This lets everyone project their own interpretation while the actual function remains:

Protect property. Serve power.

The Supermarché Analogy, Completed:

Abattoir: “Violence Enforcement Department”

Supermarché: “To Protect and Serve”

Same function:

• Maintain hierarchy through violence
• Enforce property through force
• Suppress resistance

Different presentation:

• Sounds benevolent
• Appears universal
• Obscures class function
• Makes participants feel protected rather than policed

The Historical Irony:

Police forces originated from:

• Slave patrols (South)
• Strike-breakers (North)
• Colonial occupation forces (globally)

Their function has always been: Protect property, suppress resistance.

But “To Protect and Serve” makes it sound like: Community safety, public welfare.

Brilliant rebranding.

Why This Matters for Your Parable:

The lake-dwellers don’t just use State violence.

They brand State violence as public service.

“We’re not oppressing you! Look – we’re protecting and serving! Don’t you want law and order?”

And the desert-dwellers, internalizing this:

• Support police funding (that enforces their own exploitation)
• Demand “tough on crime” (that criminalizes their survival strategies)
• Fear “criminals” (who are just people violating property arrangements)

They’ve been convinced that the mechanism oppressing them is protecting them.

The Thermodynamic Perfection:

Now you don’t need to convince desert-dwellers that police serve lake-dwellers’ interests.

You just need the ambiguous motto: “To Protect and Serve”

Desert-dwellers hear: protection for me

Lake-dwellers hear: enforcement for me

Both are funding the same system.

But only one benefits from it.

The Final Observation:

When police kill an unarmed Black person, or brutalize protesters, or clear homeless encampments—

The motto “To Protect and Serve” hasn’t failed.

It’s working exactly as designed.

Protecting: property, order, hierarchy

Serving: those who benefit from current arrangements

The error is thinking it ever meant: protect people, serve communities

It meant: Protect the State, serve power.

The abattoir said: “We enforce through violence.”

The supermarché says: “To Protect and Serve.”

Same violence. Better motto. Cleaner uniforms. More effective mystification.

And the desert-dwellers, seeing the clean uniforms and professional demeanor, think:

“These people protect me.”

While being protected from accessing water, protected from organizing, protected from challenging property, protected from survival outside market logic.

Protected, in other words, from freedom.

Served, in other words, with consequences for resistance.

All wrapped in a motto so benevolent, so vague, so perfectly ambiguous, that questioning it sounds like you oppose safety itself.

That’s not law enforcement.

That’s advertising.

The Enlightenment didn’t end State violence.

It just gave it a better slogan.