Cops, Crime and Capitalism

About this book

"Framed within a Marxist class analysis that highlights the way in which state power and capitalist social relations are racialized and gendered, Gordon's study locates law-and-order policing as a central moment of capitalist state power. He argues that, as with policing historically, crime-fighting is not the principal aim of contemporary law-and-order policing. Its aim is the production of a new social order based on the severely diminished expectations of working people. Crime fighting matters only insofar as it helps in this process. Law-and-order policing is not really a fight against rampant and escalating crime; rather it is aimed at forcefully limiting any possibilities the able-bodied poor may try to pursue to avoid the worst forms of wage labour." "Gordon says that to properly understand the law-and-order agenda, we must situate it within the broader context of the political and economic changes associated with neoliberalism. Law-and-order policing is not an isolated state policy endeavour or policing practice. It is a central feature of a state power that, far from retreating with the demise of the Keynsian welfare state, is actively facilitating the establishment of a new - neoliberal - capitalist order premised on the restructuring of social relations. Law-and-order policing is very much about the role of an aggressive state and its relationship to the class struggle lying at the heart of contemporary Canadian society. Book jacket."--Jacket.