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Cops, Crime and Capitalism: The Law and Order Agenda in Canada
This analysis explores law-and-order policing as a central point of capitalist state power, arguing that crime-fighting is not the principle aim of contemporary law and order policing—rather, the aim is the production of a new, neoliberal capitalist order based on the restructuring of social relations. Two case studies provide a close-up look at the impact of such policing as a means of social control.
- GenresCanada
171 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2006
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January 21, 2015An important thesis, and a good introduction to the topic. I don't think anyone deeply skeptical of the Marxist reading of policing will be convinced to change their mind, though: the many good points that are made are sometimes buried in stilted prose, and some of the more interesting arguments' sources are either weak or only hinted at (as in the case of an anonymous conversation the author had with an unknown person, used to prove the important idea that persons of colour are often stopped by police on the street and asked to prove their status as immigrants). The chapter on the War on Drugs is perhaps the best-written of all of them; it's concise and the flow of prose is stronger. To be fair, this is a book that was "translated" for the general public from the author's PhD thesis; perhaps the sources are stronger in the original. Certainly the language needs a radical overhaul for a general readership.
The argument is clear enough: Police are not involved, day to day, in the solving of serious crime, but in low-level harassment, in the name of "law and order", of people of colour, particularly immigrants, particularly young, able-bodied unemployed. The necessities of the neoliberal project, that is, to enforce a particular type of relationship between capital and labour (in the favour of capital) requires a forceful, sometimes violent, suppression of any alternative to low-paying, degrading, profit-enhancing wage labour. Any deviation from a totally subservient, obedient, passive workforce (anything from squeegeeing to panhandling to drug selling to hawking wares on the street) is suppressed, with tactics ranging from the Safe Streets Act (an upgrade of nineteenth-century vagrancy laws) to the War on Drugs, to racial profiling. Hence, policing. The author points out that, given Canada's demographics, with an ageing population and a low birth rate, the need for cheap, exploited immigrant labour will be with us for some time. The xenophobic fear of the Global Southern Other, on the other hand, will necessitate the panoptic surveillance and brutal "managing" of these populations, lest the white, Anglo-Saxon nature of the dominant culture be threatened or challenged. Although the book was published before the notorious breach of civil rights at the G20 conference in Toronto, nothing could be a more clear demonstration of the author's thesis.
Gordon does a good job of making connections between the history of Canada as a colonial, White Supremacist state and the use of policing to enforce imperialist agendas since the beginning. He also draws lines between the actions of Canadian interests overseas, in the interests of neoliberal capitalism, and the policing of immigrants displaced by the predatory policies of the IMF and World Bank, once they flee to the Global North to try to make a living, only to be exploited, discriminated against, and stigmatised once here.
It's worth a read, if you're interested in the topic -- but don't expect lyrical prose or exhaustive sourcing. It has whetted my appetite for further investigation into the subject, though, so that's good. Gordon's other book, on the subject of Canadian Imperialism, I found better organised and better written, though still very stilted in its expression.
The argument is clear enough: Police are not involved, day to day, in the solving of serious crime, but in low-level harassment, in the name of "law and order", of people of colour, particularly immigrants, particularly young, able-bodied unemployed. The necessities of the neoliberal project, that is, to enforce a particular type of relationship between capital and labour (in the favour of capital) requires a forceful, sometimes violent, suppression of any alternative to low-paying, degrading, profit-enhancing wage labour. Any deviation from a totally subservient, obedient, passive workforce (anything from squeegeeing to panhandling to drug selling to hawking wares on the street) is suppressed, with tactics ranging from the Safe Streets Act (an upgrade of nineteenth-century vagrancy laws) to the War on Drugs, to racial profiling. Hence, policing. The author points out that, given Canada's demographics, with an ageing population and a low birth rate, the need for cheap, exploited immigrant labour will be with us for some time. The xenophobic fear of the Global Southern Other, on the other hand, will necessitate the panoptic surveillance and brutal "managing" of these populations, lest the white, Anglo-Saxon nature of the dominant culture be threatened or challenged. Although the book was published before the notorious breach of civil rights at the G20 conference in Toronto, nothing could be a more clear demonstration of the author's thesis.
Gordon does a good job of making connections between the history of Canada as a colonial, White Supremacist state and the use of policing to enforce imperialist agendas since the beginning. He also draws lines between the actions of Canadian interests overseas, in the interests of neoliberal capitalism, and the policing of immigrants displaced by the predatory policies of the IMF and World Bank, once they flee to the Global North to try to make a living, only to be exploited, discriminated against, and stigmatised once here.
It's worth a read, if you're interested in the topic -- but don't expect lyrical prose or exhaustive sourcing. It has whetted my appetite for further investigation into the subject, though, so that's good. Gordon's other book, on the subject of Canadian Imperialism, I found better organised and better written, though still very stilted in its expression.
Displaying 1 of 1 review