Jean-Paul SartreWhat is ExistentialismIn his 1945 lecture on .docx

Jean-Paul Sartre
What is Existentialism?
In his 1945 lecture on existentialism and humanism, Jean-Paul
Sartre asserts: “existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to
draw all the conclusions from a coherent atheist position.” He
begins his explication of existentialist philosophy by discussing
one of its key concepts: that existence precedes essence.
Let us, he says, consider any man-made object, a book or paper
cutter, for instance. Here is an object that began as a concept or
idea in the mind of the artisan who designed and constructed it.
The concept involves the manner by which the paper cutter is
constructed and, more importantly, the specific purpose or use
to which it is put (in this case, to cut paper). “Therefore,” Sartre
concludes,
let us say that, for the paper-cutter, essence—that is, the
ensemble of both the production routines and the properties
which enable it to be both produced and defined—precedes
existence…Therefore, we have here a technical view of the
world whereby it can be said that production precedes
existence.
In other words, in the “technical view of the world,” the
“essence” of the artifact precedes the actual physical existence
of the artifact, in the sense that the blueprint or concept of the
paper-cutter already exists in the artisan’s mind before he ever
commits to its actual production in his workshop.
When we conceive God as the Creator, Sartre continues, He is
thought of as a kind of superhuman artisan: God creates the
Earth and the human species according to a deliberate and
specific plan or idea: “Thus, the concept of man in the mind of
God is comparable to the concept of paper-cutter in the mind of

the manufacturer, and, following certain techniques and a
conception, God produces man, just as the artisan, following a
definition and a technique, makes a paper-cutter.” The concept
of mankind in the divine intelligence is what we refer to as
“human nature”: it defines mankind in terms of what we are and
how we are meant to live (as we see, for example, in the natural
law teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas).
Atheistic existentialism, Sartre claims, is a more coherent
doctrine. It states: “if God does not exist, there is at least one
being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists
before he can be defined by any concept, and this being is
man…” That is, man first of all exists, “turns up, appears on the
scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.” Because there is
no God who conceives the concept “man” and then creates
mankind according to that concept, there is no such thing as
human nature. There is, in other words, no particular reason
“why” we as a species are here. We are indeterminate beings,
without any fixed essence of nature, and hence entirely free to
live our lives in whatever manner we choose. The first principle
of existentialism is that “man is nothing else but what he makes
of himself.” Sartre also refers to this principle as “subjectivity.”
Let us explore it in greater detail.
Unlike inert or non-conscious objects like stones and tables,
man has a kind of intrinsic dignity insofar as he is a being who
“is at the start a plan which is aware of itself…” “Nothing
exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be
what he will have planned to be.” The human being creates his
own essence or nature through his freely chosen acts, there
being no pre-determined human nature with which he is stamped
at conception and to which he must conform his actions. Thus if
existence precedes essence, then “man is responsible for what
he is.” And to be responsible for our own individuality
necessarily entails being “responsible for all men,” for “in
creating the man that we want to be… [we] at the same time

create an image of man as we think he ought to be.” In other
words, when we make a fundamental choice in life, we do so
according to a set of personally chosen values which projects a
certain image of ourselves as we choose to be, and by extension
we are projecting an ideal image of man as we think he ought to
be. For example,
if I want to marry, to have children; even if this marriage
depends solely on my own circumstances or passion or wish, I
am involving all humanity in monogamy and not merely myself.
Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I
am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In
choosing myself, I choose man.
Anguish, Forlornness, Despair
By anguish Sartre means that “the man who involves himself
and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be,
but also a law-maker who is, at the same time, choosing all
mankind as well as himself, cannot escape the feeling of his
total and deep responsibility.” Because man is free and at the
same time responsible, he cannot escape the feeling of immense,
deep, and total responsibility not only for his own actions but
also for other men, since by choosing himself he assumes the
responsibility of creating an image for all of humanity. His
actions, therefore, are those of a lawmaker to whom “everything
happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were
guiding itself by what he does.” Of course, many people attempt
to flee from anxiety either by renouncing freedom (through
relying on the advice of others instead of deciding on our own)
or through self-deception (by believing that our actions have no
affect on anyone else). If we are truly honest with ourselves, we
recognize the disquieting and inescapable fact that we alone
must choose what to do, without relying on any external source
of guidance, however comforting that may be. Thus, in making
a decision, one “cannot help having a certain anguish.”

“When we speak of forlornness,” writes Sartre, “we mean only
that God does not exist and that we have to face all the
consequences of this.” Sartre exposes the naivety of the casual
or fashionable atheist who believes one can maintain a secular
ethics while dispensing with the need for God altogether. The
rationale of these superficial thinkers runs as follows:
God is a useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding it, but
meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a
civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously
and that they be considered as having an a priori existence. It
must be obligatory, a priori, to be honest, not to lie, not to beat
your wife, to have children, etc., ...In other words…nothing will
be changed if God does not exist. We shall find ourselves with
the same norms of honesty, progress, and humanism, and we
shall have made of God an outdated hypothesis which will
peacefully die off by itself.
The thoughtless atheist wants to have the best of both worlds—
that is, to jettison entirely the belief in God (with all the
irksome restraints on our personal liberty such belief
necessarily entails) while at the same time preserving the
universal moral structure that makes civilization possible (but
for which there is absolutely no place in a godless universe).
The existentialist, on the other hand, “thinks it very distressing
that God does not exist,” for once God is out of the picture,
“there can be no longer an a priori Good, since there is no
infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.” If God does not
exist, then “everything is permitted” because, to invoke St.
Thomas Aquinas, there would be no natural and eternal law to
define and punish evil and injustice. This key insight “is the
very starting point of existentialism,” and as a result man is
forlorn, consumed by a feeling of abandonment, “because
neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling

to.” We are utterly alone in the universe, without any natural (or
supernatural) basis by which we can guide and assess our lives
(This should remind you of Nietzsche’s “Mad Man and the
Death of God”). Hence Sartre’s famous dictum that “man is
condemned to be free.” Condemned, because he is not self-
created, yet, in other respects free; “because, once thrown into
the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
In order to give us a better understanding of forlornness, Sartre
refers to one of his students, who sought his advice on whether
or not to join the French resistance, rather than stay with his
mother. Sartre points out that no world-view or ideology
(outside of existentialism) would be of any use to this boy
because universal values are too vague and broad for the
concrete and specific dilemmas each of us faces in life. For this
reason Sartre says: “the only thing left for us is to trust our
instincts,” by which he means that, “in the end, feeling is what
counts. I ought to choose whichever pushes me in one
direction.” His young student, embracing his freedom and
responsibility, ought therefore to reach a decision in the
following way:
If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything
else for her—my desire for vengeance, for action, for
adventure—then I’ll stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that
my love for my mother isn’t enough, I’ll leave.
But how do we determine the value of a “feeling”? For Sartre, it
is precisely through action that we determine the value of our
“instincts.” By choosing to stay with his mother, the boy’s
feeling for her acquires value; but short of an “act which
confirms and defines it,” such “feeling” is worthless. In other
words, despite what we may think of ourselves in the safety of
our imagination, we cannot possibly know how we would act in
a given situation until we actually find ourselves in that
situation, being forced by circumstances to make a choice one

way or the other: “I may say that I like so-and-so well enough
to sacrifice a certain amount of money for him, but I may say so
only if I’ve done it.”
We arrive finally at Sartre’s analysis of despair, which results
from our awareness that there are a multitude of factors in life
that lie completely beyond our control. Thus when “we want
something, we always have to reckon with probabilities.” “The
moment,” Sartre continues, “the possibilities I am considering
are not rigorously involved by my action, I ought to disengage
myself from them, because no God, no scheme, can adapt the
world and its possibilities to my will.” Thus no matter how well
thought out your plan, no matter how determined your will,
there will be contingencies you cannot influence. You may, for
example, develop a detailed, long-term plan to become, say, an
engineer. You may study hard and get into the best schools. But
then one day, as you are driving home late one night after a
graduate seminar, someone runs a red light and hits your car on
the driver’s side, causing you severe and permanent brain
damage, and thus in one stroke destroying your chances of
fulfilling your plan to become an engineer. Or perhaps you meet
the person you think is your “soul mate,” and you invest much
effort and hope in building a life-long relationship with that
person, only to find out that after ten years of marriage, your
spouse has been cheating on you all along.
The lesson here is that it is impossible to conquer chance: hence
Descartes’ famous dictum: “Conquer yourself rather than the
world,” by which he means that you should accommodate your
will to what is probable—knowing full well that circumstances
outside of your control may hinder your plans—rather than
expect the world (through belief in, for example, Divine
Providence, or destiny) to adapt itself to your will, hopes, or
desires. “Does this mean,” Sartre asks, “that I should abandon
myself to quietism? No. First, I should involve myself; then, act
on the old saying, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’” The

existentialist says to himself: “I shall have no illusions and
shall do what I can.” This is the very opposite of quietism, since
it declares that (in a most fitting end to a chapter on atheistic
existentialism)
Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent
that he fulfills himself; he is, therefore, nothing else than the
ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.
BLACK AND BROWN BODIES AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
SYSTEMS
Criminal Justice Seminar 389 (01:202:389)
Topics in Latino and Caribbean Studies 312 (01:595:312:02)
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING WEEKLY READING
SUMMARIES
(The first weekly reading summary is due via Canvas Upload by
11:59pm EST on MONDAY, SEP 9 for the Gottschalk and
Michalowski readings.)
FOR EACH READING:
Part 1:
In your own words, provide an executive summary of the
assigned reading. You might do this by succinctly covering the
main points, contributions, or overall relevance of the
reading(s). (300-500 words per reading.)
Note: Direct quotes/excerpts of the article are appropriate if
they are brief. The main priority is to summarize the article
using your own original perspective and reception.
Part 2:

2a: In 1-2 sentences, provide one substantive compliment,
reflection, or brief analysis of the assigned reading(s).
2b: In 1-2 sentences, provide one substantive critique, area of
improvement, or general assessment of the reading.
Note: Stating “it was too long” or “I just hated it in
general” does not qualify.
Part 3:
Based on your reception of the reading(s), list two substantive
questions for the instructor to consider. If there is more than
one reading assigned, provide at least one question per reading.
You may submit these questions in bullet-point format.
“Democracy and the Carceral State in America”. Gottschalk,
2014
PART ONE
Gottschalk defines the “carceral state” as the prison and jail
system as well as any punishments that are imposed for state
defined crimes. The author describes the desire to reach the
American Dream as the glue that binds society together and says
that the United States’ status as a “carceral state” inherently
inhibits a large number of individuals (~7 million people,
disproportionately affecting racial minorities) from reaching
this dream, causing complete disenfranchisement. This
disenfranchisement not only includes the individuals with
criminal histories, but their children who have had their lives
negatively impacted by this negative environment. The 2007

Great Recession caused budget cuts to the penal system that has
created an optimism about the end of this carceral state, but
Gottschalk says this optimism is largely unwarranted. The hope
was that due to these budget cuts, the same number of
individuals being incarcerated was no longer fiscally feasible,
but there has been no clear indication that an end of the carceral
state is near. The issue of a carceral state is not based on any
fiscal details, but the political implications that surround it.
Framing the issue of mass incarceration as a fiscal problem
won’t cause any change, in fact, Gottschalk says that there’s no
single factor that could dismantle the system because this isn’t a
fiscal problem isn’t great enough for it to become a focus in the
political system. Political issues such as the War on Drugs have
gotten a greater spotlight than the mass incarceration, and this
“war” has led to higher incarceration rates among commonly
underfunded/underrepresented minorities. Gottschalk goes on to
say that The United States will always view crime as a political
issue because laws are essentially determined by what’s in the
best interest of the state and of the society. To enact real
change, the author looks at Finland as a case study. Finland
focused their efforts on penal reform, especially on sentencing
reform and successfully brought down their also very high
incarceration rates. Gottschalk believes that if the goal is to end
mass incarceration, then policymakers should stop focusing so
heavily on the causes of crime and structural problems within
the penal system and start focusing on the punishments for
crimes that require jail/prison time.
PART TWO
I appreciate that Gottschalk used another country as an example
when talking about how to lower incarceration rates because it
shows what’s been effective for others. However, I think it
would have been more effective to delve deeper into how
exactly Finland enacted sentencing reform that brought down
incarceration rates, especially when the author was trying to
convince the reader that the focus of policymakers should be on

sentencing.
PART THREE
1. Should the US focus on reworking what constitutes a crime or
what the punishment for already defined crimes should be?
“What is Crime?”. Michalowski, 2016
PART ONE
Michalowski begins this reading with discussing his critiques of
orthodox criminology. The first, he explains is that there’s a
disconnect between harm and crime within the study of
criminology. He later goes on to elaborate that just because an
act is harmful does not mean that the same act is criminal
(legalist constraint). The next critique is that because of anti-
communism and the prominence of functionalism within
society, there is less of a sociological analysis of laws. Third,
he says there’s too great of a focus on the definitions of crime
and it’s keeping the victims of these crimes from getting the
necessary attention. Fourth, “anti criminology” (Cohen, 1988)
emergencies lead to issues balancing the study of crime with
other issues that emerge in society that may lead to crime. Last,
the study of analogous social injury allows criminologists to
learn that while some crimes are especially harmful, some
social injustices that aren’t against the law are still more
destructive. Michalowski presents two definitions of crime: 1.
An act that a state has determined to be wrongful and requires
punishment, and 2. An act that is not illegal but is shameful.
Crime is usually determined by which acts in human behavior
are considered devious. The powers of the state determine
which of these acts should receive punishment and what those
punishments should be. However, much of the time, these
punishments are influenced by the socioeconomic status that

most of the offenders of this crime hold. There is discussion
about the constraints that hold back the study of criminology.
The legalist constraint, as mentioned previously, corporate
constraints, and professional constraints. The corporate
constraint focuses on the social injuries resulting from corrupt
(but not illegal) profits made by corporations, which, since not
criminal, are not studied. Michalowski says that criminological
analysis requires class analysis and uses white collar crime as
an example of this. Violent crimes, such as rape or murder, and
property crimes, such as arson or burglary, receive the bulk of
the attention by criminologists, both because it’s the crimes that
people most fear will happen to them and that they’re easier to
spot. White collar crimes, like money laundering and
embezzlement, can take years to be found and (usually) receive
little to no attention. Michalowski sees the irony: white collar
crimes are especially devious in that there is typically no
personal connection with any of the victims of that crime and
the crime was committed solely for malevolent purposes.
Coincidentally, many of the individuals committing these less
visible crimes are the ones controlling the system. The
professional constraint discusses the hardships facing
criminologists trying to hold a job: in order to stay mainstream
in their studies, they have to study mainstream crimes and
prisons which are disproportionately filled with lower income,
underrepresented individuals. There is no criminology without
crime and in order to define crime, an understanding of
criminology is needed. Michalowski says the purpose of
criminology is to analyze the forms of social injury that are
monitored closely by the state with only some having
punishments.
PART TWO
I agreed with the two definitions of crime presented in the
reading. My issue came with the statement that in order to
define crime, an understanding of the purpose of criminology is
needed. Ethical crimes, such as lynching (as discussed in the

reading), are merely misconduct in the eyes of the law but in my
opinion, should still be included in the discussion of crime
despite criminologists not studying it.
PART THREE
1. Should it be the role of policymakers or criminologists to
delve deeper into the effects of ethical crimes?
[Name] 1
[Name]
Professor León
Black and Brown Bodies in CJS
September 9, 2019
Weekly Reading Summary 1
Raymond J. Michalowski’s work called What is Crime?
tackles the question of what would be considered to be a crime
throughout history. With the definition of crime being set it also
could change the way the definition of criminology could be
altered. Michalowski starts the article off by explaining why he
started to dissect the question of what could be considered a
crime. With this question in his mind, he started to think about
the concept of orthodox criminology and goes on to use this
concept within the rest of the article. Using the term towards
finding a clear definition, even if it sounds impossible, for
solutions for “crime problems” as he mentions. Where these
crimes fall under either being a concern for the public or a
crime defined by the state.
Michalowski goes into the history of criminology and some
concepts that were not dared to be explored by sociologists such
as the concept of lynching. Michalowski explains this to be the
concept of ‘constrained criminology’ basically placing the study
of crime into three forms of constraints. The overly controlled
subject of criminology was placed into the categories of legalist
constraint, corporate constraint, and professional constraint,
each giving a point on why they were categorized this way.

Each constraint gives a point to why criminologist strays away
from certain topics involving the law. Legalist constraint going
back to the topic mentioned early such as lynching. This
constraint on criminology explains the difficulty of examining
extreme conditions if they are not going against the law.
Corporate constraints go into the field of corporations and
social class, for example, the case of Big Tobacco companies
having a hand in law-making practices to benefit the companies
and those who invest in these companies. Lastly, Michalowski
talks about professional constraints in studying certain subjects
in criminology. He explained this concept as a danger to one’s
career if they dared to go beyond taboo fields of study in
criminology.
In conclusion with these definitions of constraints and the
history of criminology in the article, Michalowski focuses on
the critiques of furthering the study of certain criminological
themes. Michalowski introduces intriguing points into why
criminology is so limited, especially in the past. Michalowski
wants to embed the idea of changing the way we understand
crime and not just defining it as the usual view of laws being
broken. Since in this case defining crime will ultimately define
criminology as well. Michalowski wants to bring different
factors into defining both crime and criminology and not just
limiting it to the definition of laws and the penal system.
This article kept me on my toes with the concepts it tackled.
Rather than focusing on one topic, it made sure to bring in
different topics and theories to understand the point of the paper
better. Although despite that I found myself stopping to either
re-read a section because it was not clear enough or I just did
not understand it in general. I also had to stop multiple times to
figure out what some words meant but that could also be a
positive since it could help me expand my vocabulary.
· Is it possible for more constraints to be foreseen in the future?
If yes, would the whole idea of how criminology is taught, be
changed?
In Marie Gottschalk’s work labeled Democracy and the Carceral

State in America it starts by talking about Tocqueville and the
history that their work brought. Tocqueville’s work eases the
article into the topic of democracy in America as it gives notes
of his study of the new republic. This article focuses on the
collision the correctional system or ‘Carceral State’ as
Gottschalk claims have born upon American society. Gottschalk
goes into the topic of how the penal system has affected people
along with the floating question of how fair the current, at least
when this article was written, the penal system is. The article
notes on how complicated one’s life could get in they ever find
themselves within the penal system, it can reshape the way their
life would become. For example, people could be denied loans,
housing, and even public service from the government.
Gottschalk also adds the effects it could have towards the
family members of the people who enter the carceral state.
Gottschalk even adds statistics on how children of parents in the
correctional system are affected.
Gottschalk talks about the potential decrease in mass
incarcerations starting at the time of the Great Recession.
During the Great Recession, there were not enough funds to
keep people incarcerated, especially for a long period. This has
started the question of how to control the number of people that
the U.S. places into jail. Even going as far as researching
different countries and how they were able to lower their
incarceration rates. Gottschalk touches upon the topic of the
aspects of lower crime would be by directing the focus on
poverty, unemployment, school systems or even other social
focuses such as race. There is still a sense of urgency to lower
incarceration rates but Gottschalk seems doubtful about it since
it is so embedded into U.S. society.
The article was a great overview recap of the incarceration state
especially with how my former classes last year barely touched
upon the effects it has to be incarcerated. It also gave a great
overview of the ideas of a new policy and how other policies
are being enacted to frame the carceral state better. However,
like the other article, I found myself stopping to go back to

either grasp the concept better or to look up words that I was
unsure about. Not sure if I missed it but also the topic of capital
punishment being noted in the construction on the carceral
state.
· If money was not the problem, would the carceral state even
be considered a problem to be questioned and solved?
[Name]
Professor León
Criminal Justice Seminar 389
September 9th, 2019
Democracy and the Carceral State in America
1. In this article the author makes a clear distinction that the
American penal system has bones in it’s closet, both from the
past and present. It seems that whenever observations are made
about the Carceral State, the findings seem to get swept under
the rug by higher political and economic powers. The Carceral
State here in America seems to have been expanding since the
time of Tocqueville, but appears to have exponentially
expanded since the 1970s. The penal system created by
politicians and other authority figures has led to mass
incarceration of disportionately black and latino communities.
The U.S. penal system enthusiastically locks up minorities
without even considering the negative effects on community,
family, and future of the imprisoned individual. The author
states that there are “nearly 2.3 million people sitting in jail or
prison today in the United States”(Gottschalk 289). This goes to
point out that the United States is leading other nations with the
most amount of its own citizens behind bars. This mass
incarceration of American citizens, predominantly of color, has
led to the American Dream being lost within these communities.
Furthermore, this lost dream is predominantly replaced with
hopelessness, broken families, lost privileges and rights, and an
inability to access things such as public housing and loans. The
author makes the distinction that people who are negatively
affected by the Carceral State are not limited to those locked in

prison or jail, but extends to the many citizens who have a
connection to the criminal justice system, whether it be through
probation, parole, or a family member intertwined within the
system. The author clearly defines the penal system as broken
and in need of fixing. Gottschalk then goes on to show that the
Carceral State is now being treated as a money issue by
politicians, instead of a social justice issue. It is made clear that
the focus should not be on the costs of the carceral system, but
on the fact that it is a broken system, which is currently
destroying the lives of disproportionate members of society.
Because of the high costs of the penal system, it does give
activists the opportunity to help bring down the Carceral State.
However, the single factor of costs alone will never be able to
dismantle such a powerful agency within the United States
government. In conclusion, this article shows that the penal
system in America has been set up in such a way that it targets
demographics of lower minorities, so as long as it does not
affect the pockets of wealthy politicians and those of the upper
class.
2. The author does a good job of providing numbers and
statistics to show precisely how many people are negatively
affected by this unjust system. However, when the author talks
about how many black individuals could be locked up on a
certain day, he does not cross reference it to white individuals,
which most likely would have painted a much more vivid
reality. Furthermore, it did not mention any numbers or facts in
regards to women of color and white women in regards to the
Carceral State.
3. Should we keep individuals in bondage because of their past?
This is in reference to an inmate who has fully served their
sentence, but continues to be discriminated against by being
denied federal benefits, voting rights, and the ability to receive
occupational licenses.
What is Crime?

1. In this article author Raymond J. Michalowski dives into
the meaning of crime, and the practice of criminology and how
it has evolved over the years. He made the realization that crime
is not necessarily about body count, but that it is how certain
groups treat the action which is labeled as a crime. He learned
from studying vehicular homicides, that political power and
economic interests play a crucial role in determining what gets
the attention for something to become a crime and what does
not. Michalowski points out that in society it is most often the
state that determines what is an acceptable action and what is
not, what will be a punishable offense and what will be ignored.
Though the state is the body that makes the final decision on
crime and law, it is often the dominant class in society that gets
its voice heard on what they want legal and what they want
illegal. In most societies, the voice of the lower class and
individuals who are disenfranchised often have no say in the
social ordering of what is crime and what is legal. Therefore,
these lower classes of society are usually negatively affected by
laws which criminalize actions which pertain to people of lower
class status, whereas the rich and elite go unchecked because
they do not back laws that would disproportionately affect their
well-being. When examining this concept through orthodox
criminology, the author pointed to the laws of Jim Crow which
negatively affected people of color, but helped white
supremisitcs retain their control and power in the Deep South.
In this article Michalowski points out the flaws and errors in
regards to orthodox criminology and urges that criminology
should be about social injury and that it is not just about penal
codes. When looking at criminology through a lense of social
injury, it opens the door for criminologists to consider issues
that orthodox criminologists never would have considered such
as social injury through climate change, wrongs committed by
political states, women’s rights, and LGBTQ discrimination. In
conclusion, the author points to the quintessential fact that
crime is not a constant across the board and therefore should be
carefully considered when determining penal code.

2. This article connected brilliantly with “Democracy and the
Carceral State in America” because it shows that the reason why
there is so much ambiguity in regards to the prison system is
because lawmakers do not always consider the interests of the
lower classes, therefore creating laws that result in people of
color being disproportionately incarcerated.
I did feel that the title was somewhat misleading, because it
talked more about understanding the concept of criminology and
studying crime, than it did explaining what is crime.
3. Are there any absolutes when dealing with what is crime? For
instance the U.S believes murder to be wrong and illegal, but
some tribal people would believe that it is okay to murder. Is
there one thing that would be considered a crime everywhere
and always?
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816818815246
Capital & Class
1 –20
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0309816818815246
journals.sagepub.com/home/cnc
Race, class and persistent

coloniality: US policing
as liberal pacification
Markus Kienscherf
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract
This article argues that US policing ends up maintaining and
reinforcing
substantive intersecting racial and class divisions, precisely
because of its
avowed formal neutrality. The article is divided into two main
sections. The
first section sets up a theoretical apparatus for conceptualising
the seeming
contradiction between general and specific social control. This
section argues
that US policing has a colonial genealogy but now serves to
reproduce a neo-
colonial order characterised by both formal legal equality and
substantive racial
and class inequalities. Moreover, this section shows that the
transition from a
colonial to a neo-colonial order has been effected by a change
in policing’s
strategic focus from classical colonial pacification to liberal
pacification, which
combines coercion with developmentalism. Through a
genealogy of US policing,
the second section will demonstrate empirically how US
policing’s shift towards
a strategy of liberal pacification has enabled and continues to
facilitate the (re)
production of a neo-colonial social order. Since this
genealogical section covers
quite a long historical period, it will primarily draw on

secondary sources. By
developing a more nuanced and finely grained policing-as-
pacification model
that highlights both the colonial genealogy and the
contemporary neo-colonial
ontology of US policing, this article helps us better understand
how and why
formally neutral law enforcement ends up producing and
reproducing racial
and class divisions.
Keywords
class struggle, colonialism, liberalism, pacification, police, race
Corresponding author:
Markus Kienscherf, Freie Universität Berlin, Lansstr. 7-9,
14195 Berlin, Germany.
Email: [email protected]
815246 CNC0010.1177/0309816818815246Capital &
ClassKienscherf
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2 Capital & Class 00(0)
Introduction
In liberal capitalist social formations, policing – ‘the set of
activities aimed at preserving
the security of a particular social order, or social order in

general’ – is characterised by a
fundamental contradiction (Reiner 2010: 5). On the one hand,
state police forces – the
primary institution (albeit not the only one) tasked with
policing – are viewed as largely
neutral, though imperfect, enforcers of existing laws, thus
protecting and serving every-
body irrespective of their race, ethnicity, class, gender or
sexuality. On the other hand,
the police frequently single out particular populations, most
notably the racialised poor,
for much more coercive or even brutal treatment than others. So
policing purports to
ensure the regularity, predictability and security of a general
social order that is said to
serve the common interest and that is predicated on the formal
equality of the rule of
law. At the same time, policing more often than not aims to
secure a specific social order
marked by substantive inequalities along the lines of class, race,
ethnicity, gender and
sexuality (Marenin 1982: 258–259; see also Loader & Walker
2006: 172–175). In
short, policing in advanced capitalist liberal social formations is
torn between general
social control and specific social control, which often amounts
to class and/or racial
control (Reiner 2010: 95).
Whereas liberal police scholarship has traditionally focussed
primarily on the largely
consensual and legitimate aspect of policing (see, for example,
Waddington 1991), a
more radical tradition has pointed out its inherently coercive
and violent character (see
Seigel 2018; Vitale 2017). Yet, any meaningful radical critique

of liberal policing also
needs to tackle policing’s efforts to produce its own legitimacy
and thus also the legiti-
macy of the overall socio-political order through the expansion
of a rationality of neutral
law enforcement that also extends, at least some, police
protection and services to the
racialised poor. In brief, effective radical critique must not just
point out the repressive
aspects of liberal policing but must also engage with its
productive aspects.
This article argues that US policing in particular ends up
maintaining and reinforcing
substantive intersecting racial and class divisions, precisely
because of its avowed formal
neutrality. The article is divided into two main sections. The
first section sets up a theo-
retical apparatus for conceptualising the seeming contradiction
between general and spe-
cific social control. Drawing on the literature on contemporary
coloniality and internal
colonialism, this section argues that US policing has a colonial
genealogy but now serves
to reproduce a neo-colonial order characterised by both formal
legal equality and sub-
stantive racial and class inequalities. Moreover, this section
shows that the transition
from a colonial to a neo-colonial order has been effected by a
change in policing’s strate-
gic focus from classical colonial pacification to liberal
pacification, which combines coer-
cion with developmentalism. The second section will map how
policing in the US
shifted towards a strategy of liberal pacification and how ever
more formally class- and

race-neutral forms of policing have ended up producing and
reinforcing a neo-colonial
social order. Since this genealogical section covers quite a long
historical period, it will
primarily draw on secondary sources.
By developing a more nuanced and finely grained policing-as-
pacification model that
highlights both the colonial genealogy and the contemporary
neo-colonial ontology of
Kienscherf 3
US policing, the article will help us better understand how and
why formally neutral law
enforcement ends up producing and reproducing racial and class
divisions.
Capitalism, (neo-)colonialism and liberal
pacification
Race and class
Policing is the product of conflicting public and private
demands placed on state
police organisations. These conflicting demands are conditioned
by societal conflicts.
In capitalist social formations, class divisions are a key source
of societal conflicts.
Capitalist social formations are societies where the capitalist
mode of production is
the predominant form of economic activity. The capitalist mode
of production is
characterised by private ownership of the means of production
and ‘the generalisation

of the commodity form of labour’ which means that labour
power can be bought and
sold (almost) like any other commodity (Jessop 2002: 12).
Private ownership of the
means of production and the commodification of labour gives
rise to class divisions:
a binary division between the capitalist classes who own the
means of production and
the working classes who must sell their labour power, as well as
more finely grained
class differences that derive from domestic and global divisions
of labour. There are,
however, other sources of societal conflicts besides class
struggles. In capitalist social
formations, conflicts along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality and so on,
become entangled with class struggles even if they cannot be
reduced to them. This
article focuses primarily on how US policing has responded to
and also shaped racial
and class struggles, not because conflicts around gender and
sexuality are less impor-
tant but because race and to a lesser extent class are the main
sticking points in cur-
rent debates about US criminal justice.
The ideology of ‘race’ developed as a direct consequence of the
colonial conquest of
the Americas, where, as Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano
(2000) puts it, ‘[t]he
conquistadors assumed this idea [of race] as the constitutive,
founding element of the
relations of domination that the conquest imposed’ (p. 533). In
the United States, the
ideology of ‘race’ developed through the codification of
differences between free and

enslaved people in order to justify and reproduce slavery ‘in a
republic founded on
radical doctrines of liberty and natural rights, and, more
important a republic in which
those doctrines seemed to represent accurately the world in
which all but a minority
lived’ (Fields & Fields 2014: 141). From the foundation of the
American Republic,
racism and class oppression have been inextricably intertwined.
African Americans
became a ‘race’ because of their oppression, subordination and
exploitation – in short,
because of their violently imposed class position as enslaved
people (Fields & Fields
2014: 266–267). Yet, the ideology of ‘race’ persisted even after
the peculiar class posi-
tion from which it originally derived was abolished. The
ideology of ‘race’ has undoubt-
edly undergone profound historical changes but it still serves to
justify various forms of
racism – that is to say, forms of differential treatment alleged to
result from supposed
and ultimately fictitious innate differences of the individuals
and/or groups who are
the victims of discrimination. This is what Karen E Fields and
Barbara J Fields (2014)
call ‘the social alchemy of racecraft [which] transforms racism
into race’ so that ‘[d]
isguised as race, racism becomes something Afro-Americans
are, rather than something
racists do’ (pp. 261, 297). Particular populations are thus

‘racialised’ because they are
the targets of racism and not the other way around. Even though
racism is no longer
directly tied to the class position of enslaved people, in
capitalist social formations in
general and in the United States in particular, racism still serves
to reproduce an easily
exploitable labour force, to segment labour markets and even
‘to exclude populations
from the labor market’ (Grosfoguel 2003: 210).
Contemporary coloniality
Drawing on Aimé Césaire’s (1972: 5) idea of a ‘boomerang
effect of colonization’, schol-
ars have pointed out that attempts to secure social order in the
metropoles have long
been informed by colonial techniques of control (see Arendt
1968; Foucault 2003: 103;
Graham 2010). A number of scholars have noted the cross-
fertilisation of rationalities
and practices of policing between metropole and colony (see,
for example, Brogden
1987; Hönke & Müller 2012; McCoy 2009; Müller 2015). What
has, however, not been
given equal consideration is the idea that contemporary
metropolitan policing may still
serve the largely colonial purpose of producing populations
acquiescent to existing socio-
economic inequities through a targeted application of both
coercion and consent along
the intersecting lines of class and race (McMichael 2017;
Neocleous 2011; 2013; 2014;
Steinmetz et al. 2017; Williams 2011 are notable exceptions).
In their article on ‘American Policing and Colonialism’, Kevin
F Steinmetz et al.

(2017) suggest that ‘contemporary policing in the United States
continues to perpetuate
systems of inequality and domination that, in many ways, mirror
colonial forms of con-
trol’ (p. 9). But does US policing merely ‘mirror colonial forms
of control’? Or is it a
colonial form of control? Is the coloniality of US policing
genealogical or ontological? In
order to answer these questions, we have to briefly consider
what colonialism actually is.
Colonialism is both a form of warfare and rule. The term is
mostly used to describe both
the processes through which an external invader violently
conquers a distant territory
and subdues the local population and the resultant systems of
rule that allow for the
exploitation of geography and people (Blauner 1969; Fanon
2004; Glenn 2015;
Pinderhughes 2011; Steinmetz et al. 2017). Colonial violence
and exploitation were
pivotal for the eventual take-off of the capitalist mode of
production. In Marxian terms,
colonialism was a form of primitive accumulation, a term that
describes the expansion
and concentration of private property in the means of
production. Primitive accumula-
tion did not only provide a large influx of capital into Europe,
which paved the way for
industrialisation, but also violently divested numerous people
from their means of pro-
duction (primarily the land) (Marx 1887: 506–547). Primitive
accumulation occurred
both in the colonies and in Europe, but with a key difference:
whereas in Europe, the
large-scale dispossession of people mostly forced them into
wage labour, the colonised

were frequently forced into forms of unpaid labour. However,
through the global expan-
sion of the capitalist mode of production, colonial forms of
unpaid labour were articu-
lated ‘around the capitalist wage-labor relation’ (Quijano 2000):
Kienscherf 5
This articulation was constitutively colonial, based first on the
assignments of all forms of
unpaid labor to colonial races […]. Second, labor was
controlled through the assignment of
salaried labor to the colonizing whites. (p. 539)
The adjective ‘primitive’ (from the German ursprünglich)
implies that the violent
dispossession of people was merely capitalism’s original sin.
What is more, colonialism is
widely held to have ended with the independence of most
former colonies. Yet, a number
of scholars argue that coloniality persists despite the abolition
of colonial forms of labour
control and the independence of former colonies (Grosfoguel
2003; Pinderhughes 2011;
Quijano 2000). A hierarchical division of labour along the lines
of race and ethnicity
established through colonialism ‘continues to be an integral part
of the contemporary
global division of labour even after independence and the global
expansion of the capital-
ist wage-labour relation’ (Grosfoguel 2003: 146). In fact, ‘the
entanglement of capitalist
accumulation processes with a racial/ethnic hierarchy and its
derivative classifications of

superior/inferior, developed/undeveloped, and
civilized/barbarian people’ constitutes a
global coloniality even in the absence of any formal colonial
system of rule (Grosfoguel
2003: 17; see also Quijano 2000).
This ‘entanglement of capitalist accumulation processes with a
racial/ethnic hierar-
chy’ also marks the domestic situation in the United States as
profoundly colonial. US
scholars and activists developed the concept of internal
colonialism to explain the persis-
tence of racial oppression after the end of settler colonisation
and the abolition of chattel
slavery (Allen 1969, 2005; Blauner 1969; Pinderhughes 2011).
The concept came into
its own during the civil rights struggle and rising Black
militancy in the 1960s but lost
importance after the more radical wings of the civil rights
movement either fizzled out or
were destroyed by the state. In 2005, Robert L Allen, one of the
most prominent propo-
nents of the internal colonialism theory, revisited the arguments
he made in his seminal
1969 book Black Awakening in Capitalist America. In this
article, he argues that the
political successes of the civil rights movement gave rise to a
neo-colonial logic of indirect
rule where a small assimilated Black professional class
increasingly governs African
Americans in the interests of the White capitalist power
structure (Allen 2005: 5–6; see
also Pinderhughes 2011: 249). However, as we will see in the
next section, a neo-colonial
logic of indirect rule evolved well before the onset of mass
urban rebellion in the 1960s.

Since at least the 1920s, this has been the position of northern
urban liberals (Miller
2015). This position manifested itself in efforts to manage
social conflict without
addressing its underlying political-economic causes, but thus
also entailed an extension
of rights and limited self-governance to African Americans. In
short, this was a domestic
variant of developmentalism – developing a capacity for self-
governance in at least a
small group of the colonised so that they can govern their own
populations while repro-
ducing the overall ‘entanglement of capitalist accumulation
processes with a racial/ethnic
hierarchy’ (Grosfoguel 2003: 17); in brief, social peace without
social justice.
So, although African Americans (as well as other racialised
groups who are considered
citizens) now have formally equal rights, although there now is
a sizable Black profes-
sional class and although the United States elected its first
Black president, a racial and
ethnic hierarchy that intersects with and is exacerbated by
massive class divisions remains
firmly in place. In the United States, the racialised poor thus
still find themselves in a
colonial situation. Yet, this situation should be termed neo-
colonial in order to highlight
both the ruptures (abolition of colonial labour control, granting
of formally equal rights,

some forms of self-rule etc.) and the continuities (racial/ethnic
division of labour, persis-
tence of racism) between classical colonialism and its
contemporary liberal variant. I
thus have to disagree with Viviane Saleh-Hanna’s (2008: 17–18)
and (Steinmetz et al.
2017, 11n) rejection of the term neo-colonial. Even if the
techniques of control used
for (re-)producing a neo-colonial situation are not new and
clearly derive from classical
colonialism, they are still deployed under conditions that have
undoubtedly changed
partly due to the large-scale global contestations of the
colonised in the latter half of
the 20th century. This is why it is important to distinguish
between a colonial geneal-
ogy and a neo-colonial ontology when it comes to US policing.
Western liberal polic-
ing in general has a clear colonial genealogy because many of
the techniques used for
securing the domestic social order derive from colonial
experience. Yet, contemporary
US policing in particular – and this may well also hold for
policing in other national
territories as well as for international forms of policing (see
Ryan 2013) – deploys these
techniques under new ontological conditions, primarily formal
legal equality and the
absence of colonial forms of labour control.
In short, classical colonialism was primarily about the
expropriation, subordination
and exploitation of racialised populations, whereas with today’s
liberal neo-colonialism,
the idea of development has become more important. Ironically,
through attempts at

development oppression, subordination and exploitation have
become less visible but
perhaps also more entrenched. Globally, the rise of liberal
developmentalism happened
in the context of decolonisation struggles and Cold War rivalry.
Within the United
States, neo-colonial developmentalism arose in response to the
civil rights struggle and
geopolitical concerns about the international image of the
United States. The next sec-
tion will show that liberal pacification became the key strategy
for developing and inte-
grating racialised populations while reproducing a colonial
racial and class hierarchy.
Liberal pacification
Liberalism emerged as a critique of the logic of police along the
lines of political econ-
omy and the rule of law. Police or police science, which arose
across Europe with the
breakdown of feudalism, covered a much broader field than
what we now understand by
the term police. The central concerns of police were to ensure
that resources were allo-
cated in such a way as to increase prosperity and hence also the
strength of the state as
well as to promote the general happiness of the population
(Neocleous 2000: 11–21; see
also Foucault 2007: 311–332). First of all, through the
‘discovery’ of political economy
in the 18th century, prosperity came to be seen as the product of
the generalised pursuit
of private interest rather than as the effect of state regulation.
Second, the 18th century
also saw a major shift in ideas about general happiness.
Philosophers, such as Immanuel

Kant, asked whether a sovereign should (or even could) promote
general happiness as he
(or, perhaps more unlikely, she) saw fit. Ultimately, this gave
rise to the liberal principle
of the rule of law and the argument that sovereignty should be
limited to protecting
security and freedom so that everyone could freely pursue their
own happiness (Neocleous
2000: 22–30). However, the supposed neutrality and formal
equality of the rule of law
Kienscherf 7
also generalised and legitimated the substantively unequal
distribution of private prop-
erty in the means of production which was brought about by
primitive accumulation.
Liberalism thus sought to demarcate a socio-economic sphere of
autonomous human
activity (civil society and the market) from the political sphere
which came itself to be
seen as the product of the convergence of the political interests
of individual autonomous
subjects. At the same time, liberal political thought constantly
problematised the human
capacity for autonomy, for not everybody was considered
equally capable of responsible
self-governance. Women, children, colonial subjects and the
domestic undeserving poor
were frequently seen as either incapable of self-governance or
as not yet able to exercise
their autonomy in a responsible manner (Dean 2000; Rasmussen
2011). Liberal govern-

ment through freedom has thus always depended on a
specifically liberal form of polic-
ing. Liberal policing has sought to control those subjects who
were deemed incapable of
doing so themselves and to (often coercively) promote the
capacity for responsible self-
governance of those who were held to not yet possess it. In fact,
liberal policing rests on
a binary distinction, between safely autonomous subjects and
subjects whose excess of
autonomy is viewed as a threat as well as a hierarchy of liberal
development. Liberal
policing thus hinges both on a temporal scale of development,
of becoming liberal, and
on a spatial distinction between safe and dangerous subjects.
The combination of a rigid binary with a developmental
hierarchy also indicates the
coloniality of liberal policing. For, according to Quijano (2000:
552–553), the articulation
of a rigid binary between primitive and civilised upon a
developmental hierarchy that
ranges from the state of nature to European modernity is also
one of the hallmarks of colo-
nial Eurocentrism. Indeed, liberal policing was profoundly
shaped by colonial experiences.
Not only did the denial of colonised subjects’ capacity for self-
governance provide a con-
venient legitimation for their expropriation, oppression and
exploitation but the actual
experience of producing and ruling colonised subjects also
helped develop and perfect
techniques for coercively regulating the behaviour of domestic
‘problem’ populations.
Indeed, classical liberal political thinkers frequently justified

colonial domination by
referring to what they saw as irreducible racial differences
preventing the colonised from
governing themselves in a responsible manner (the domestic
poor were also often por-
trayed in racialised terms). But with the expansion of the
capitalist mode of production
and its need for ‘free’ labour, essentialist conceptions of
autonomy began to shift towards
more relational markers of autonomy (without ever being fully
replaced by them). The
level of capacity for self-governance has come to be decided by
one’s relation to the mar-
ket, by one’s market utility, by one’s ability and willingness to
freely sell one’s labour
power. Yet, these market-based ascriptions of autonomy still
reproduce the legacy of
racial domination and also produce new forms of inequality. It
is no coincidence that
populations whose autonomy has traditionally been put into
question are now widely
seen as failing the test of the market. The economic plight of
African Americans, their
supposed reliance on welfare and their overrepresentation in the
prison population thus
give a new purportedly colour-blind inflection to traditional
forms of racism that denied
them their capacity for responsible self-governance on purely
racial grounds. It is
precisely around the perceived (in)capacity for self-governance,
now primarily structured
by notions of market competitiveness, that class and race
intersect and mutually rein-
force one another. The political economy that took shape
against the background of the

protracted crisis of the 1970s, which came to known as
neoliberalism, prompted a down-
wards pressure on wages, a decreasing demand for unskilled and
semiskilled labour and
a retrenchment of welfare. This had a disproportionate effect on
African Americans.
Neoliberalism has, thus, produced a criminalised sub-
proletarian surplus population
whose irresponsible autonomy is viewed as an obstacle to
capital accumulation.
Consequently, contemporary US policing serves to incapacitate
those members of this
sub-proletarian surplus population whose excessive autonomy is
seen as dangerous, while
– as somewhat of an afterthought – trying to coercively
integrate those members of this
population who are still considered worthy of showing their
responsible autonomy
through participation in the lowest rungs of the labour market.
So, the decline of essentialised ideas about autonomy, which
was brought about both
by changes in capital accumulation and through political
contestations of the oppressed,
also necessitated the need for more developmentalist
interventions in order to develop
autonomy while still reproducing both the overall capitalist
mode of production and its
racial and class hierarchies.
And this is where liberal policing comes in. Liberal policing
aims to develop auton-

omy in those who are deemed incapable of responsible self-
governance, to remove obsta-
cles to responsible self-governance and to eradicate forms of
autonomy that are considered
dangerous.
Liberal policing is thus engaged in what I call liberal
pacification – a strategy for pro-
ducing and reproducing populations capable of responsible self-
governance through the
selective and differentially targeted application of a
combination of coercion, support
and consent. It is perhaps no coincidence that the term
pacification as well as the set of
practices it denotes emerged in the same context as the ideology
of ‘race’, namely, during
the Spanish colonial conquest of America in the late 16th
century (Neocleous 2011:
198). The coercive ordering of unruly, risky, dangerous and,
more often than not, racial-
ised populations through techniques of pacification has ever
since been one of the key
concerns of colonial policing/warfighting and continues to be a
major concern for
Western counterinsurgents (see, for example, US Department of
the Army 2014). In
brief, as Mark Neocleous has pointed out, pacification has been
one of the central tech-
nologies of colonialism and continues to be a key strategy for
reproducing ‘wage labour
as the grounds for accumulation’ (Neocleous 2013: 25).
However, the transition from classical colonialism based on
‘mere’ expropriation and
oppression to a neo-colonial global and domestic order that
combines formal legal equal-

ity with substantive class/racial inequalities calls for a more
nuanced conception of paci-
fication. Indeed, the principle of liberal legal equality, which is
after all based on notions
of autonomy, figures prominently in contemporary liberal
pacification, because liberal
pacification also seeks to develop its targets’ capacities for
responsible liberal self-govern-
ance. Liberal pacification rose to prominence during post-WWII
struggles for national
liberation. The strategy of liberal pacification, which became a
central component of
Western counterinsurgency doctrines from the 1960s, seemed to
offer a solution to the
problem of developing the colonies’ capacities for self-
governance in such a way as to
secure their continuous availability for capitalist exploitation
and geo-strategic domina-
tion in the absence of direct rule. Liberal pacification ought to
be understood as a fusion
of security and development – to secure Western geo-strategic
and geo-economic inter-
ests while developing indigenous capacities for responsible self-
governance in order to
Kienscherf 9
unevenly integrate colonial populations into the global circuits
of capital accumulation
(Duffield 2010; Kienscherf 2013; Shafer 1988). However,
although liberal pacification
came into its own at the cusp of decolonisation after WWII, it
has a much deeper geneal-
ogy based in classic colonialism and domestic class struggle.

Attempts to civilise or mod-
ernise colonies was also a key goal of Western colonial powers,
above all France and
Britain, during the 19th century. And so were strategies of
indirect rule through local
strongmen in the all-too-frequent case that grand civilising
missions failed in the face of
stiff local resistance (see Porch 2013). What is more,
throughout the 19th century, rising
working-class militancy across Western metropoles also
prompted the need for political
strategies that combined the integration of the working classes
into the social order
through development (granting rights, welfare etc.) with efforts
to secure the existing
capitalist class structure (Owens 2015).
What is important to note is that in liberal pacification, the
actual on-the-ground
blend of security and development ultimately depends on the
level and organisation of
local resistance and on the specific politico-economic interests
of the dominant classes.
In short, liberal pacification is a technology of ordering that can
be summarised as social
peace without social justice because it addresses only those
grievances that do not ques-
tion any fundamental structural inequities.
Pacification deploys reasonable and/or minimum necessary
force as one of its key tac-
tics. Ryan (2013) suggests that reasonable force, which is ‘a
mode of persuasion where
force stands as a defensive line behind the progress of
reasonable argument’ is ontological
to police power (p. 435). He further argues that ‘police power

ultimately aims to produce
coherent, self-governing rational actors who perform
productively in […] a globalized
raison d’etat’ (p. 456). Since the use of force by anybody who
does not wield police power
is thus always construed as illegitimate and unreasonable, it
becomes ‘the more reasonable
[…] for police to move up the scale of violence in its reaction’
(p. 456). So, ‘what is reason-
able has become what is necessary’ (p. 443). In fact, minimum
necessary force is one of
the central principles governing the liberal use of violence
(Kienscherf 2016: 1185).
Minimum necessary force is the exact amount of force that is
seen as reasonable in a par-
ticular situation. The more unreasonable the targets of liberal
force appear, for example
because of their militant or even armed resistance against an
oppressive and exploitative
neo-colonial situation, the more force can be used against them.
Minimum necessary
force is what ultimately enables liberal pacification’s other
forms of reasonable force that
seek to produce more pliable subjects without any actual use of
force.
The next section will use the analytic of liberal pacification to
highlight how in the
United States ever more formally class- and race-neutral forms
of policing have ended up
producing and reinforcing a neo-colonial social order marked by
substantive inequalities
along the intersecting lines of race and class.
US policing as liberal pacification

Patrolling racial lines
From its beginnings as a White settler colony, the United States
has been riven by drastic
racial and class divisions. The contours of this racialised and
class-based social order have
undoubtedly changed (both on the basis of shifts in capital
accumulation and through
contestation from below), but the institution of chattel slavery
has left indelible marks
on the US social order and thus also on the institution of the
police. Chattel slavery
constituted a classical colonial order defined by the brutal
subordination and oppression
of enslaved people for the purpose of coercively extracting their
labour power. Slavery,
moreover, was entangled with international systems of banking,
insurance and credit and
also contributed to the rise of industrialisation, first in Britain
and later in the American
north (Baptist 2014; Oakes 2016). The size of the slave
population was considered a
massive social control problem. The threat of slave insurrection
and the constant risk of
slave flight led to the emergence of ever more formalised slave
patrols. The first slave
patrols were formed in the 17th century and were informal
bands of volunteers tasked
with recapturing runaway slaves. In the course of the 18th
century, slave patrols became
more organised and were also charged with preventing
insurrection. The Fugitive Slave

Act of 1850 gave state governments wide-ranging authority to
recruit individuals – espe-
cially poor Whites – into slave patrols that now had almost
unlimited coercive powers
over the slave population. Slave patrols were tasked with the
routine surveillance of the
slave population in order to regulate and manage their
movement according to the polit-
ico-economic imperatives of chattel slavery (Bass 2001: 159;
Brucato 2014: 38–39). In
fact, slave patrols were a significant strand in the genealogy of
the US police (Bass 2001;
Brucato 2014; Hadden 2001).
Brutal efforts to control the movement and hence also the
labour power of the Black
population continued after the abolition of slavery. There was,
however, a brief interlude
during which the federal government tried to turn freed people
into citizens and autono-
mous wage labourers through the establishment of the Bureau of
Refugees, Freedmen
and Abandoned Lands, better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
was set up towards the end of the Civil War in March 1865 to
provide immediate relief
to freed people as well as to poor Whites uprooted by the war,
but its mission quickly
expanded to a large-scale and often contradictory effort to
protect freed people’s civil and
political rights, to revive agricultural production in the South
and to turn former slaves
into free wage labourers (often on the same plantations they
used to work on as slaves)
(Goldberg 2007: 31–75). The Freedmen’s Bureau can be
understood as an early, albeit

ultimately failed, attempt at liberal pacification which sought to
develop African
Americans’ capacity for self-governance in order to integrate
them into a Northern capi-
talist order as both citizens and self-dependent but docile wage
labourers. Despite its
chequered track record, the Freedmen’s Bureau started from the
assumption that African
Americans were at least potentially capable of responsible self-
governance. This is per-
haps why W.E.B. Du Bois (2007: 179) praised the Bureau as
‘the most extraordinary and
far-reaching institution of social uplift that America has ever
attempted’, despite the fact
that it also frequently served as an instrument for disciplining
Black labour (Goldberg
2007: 40–42). The Bureau’s efforts to develop African
Americans while also protecting
them from continuing White violence did not go down well with
Southern Whites who
ultimately succeeded in swaying Congress to terminate the
Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872.
Immediately after the end of the Civil War, most Southern
states replaced their Slave
Codes with the so-called Black Codes which were aimed to
severely restrict the freedom
of former slaves and maintain them in a state of quasi-slavery
through extremely low
wages, debt peonage as well as numerous sweeping vagrancy
statutes. After mounting
Kienscherf 11

criticism from Northern States, increasing legal pressure from
the Congress and 11 years
of direct military administration of the Southern States, the
Black Codes were replaced
by Jim Crow in 1877. The Jim Crow laws contained many
provisions that were fre-
quently as, if not more, sweeping than the original Black Codes.
As Sandra Bass (2001)
puts it, ‘Essentially, African Americans lived in a police state in
which every aspect of
shared public life was proscribed. Formal police organizations
under this system were
responsible for upholding the formal and informal social order’
(p. 161). Besides man-
dating strict racial segregation and brutally punishing any
infraction against Whites, Jim
Crow laws also ensured African Americans continuing
availability as docile and easily
exploitable agricultural labour through debt peonage and
convict leasing. What is more,
this brutal colonial regime of racist oppression and exploitation
was ultimately backed
up by both legal and extra-legal violence in the forms of
lynchings (Marable 1983:
108–121).
Pacifying class struggle
The first urban police force in the United States was founded in
New York in 1845 and
was closely modelled on the famous London Metropolitan
Police (Miller 1999;
Monkkonen 1981). The idea of a uniformed urban police force
was also a product of
colonialism. When British Home Secretary Robert Peel set up
the Metropolitan Police of
London in 1829, he drew heavily on his earlier experiences as

Chief Secretary of Ireland
(1812–1818). During his time in Ireland, Peel realised that an
external military force was
ill-suited to pacifying a poor and rebellious colonial population.
This led to experimenta-
tion with ‘a new kind of bureaucracy, located in a social space
midway between an out-
side military force and the group of people to be controlled’ –
the Irish Constabulary
(Monkkonen 1981: 39). A bureaucracy that was modelled on the
military but not (quite)
a military force itself and whose frontline troops were recruited
from the population to
be controlled also offered a more legitimate and thus ultimately
more effective way of
pacifying metropolitan working-class militancy.
Indeed, one of the key tasks of early US urban police forces was
to pacify class strug-
gles as well as intra-class ethnic conflicts brought about by
rapid industrialisation, urban-
isation and immigration in many Northern and Midwestern
cities (Harring 2017; Vitale
2017; Williams 2015). Early municipal police forces also
provided important services to
the communities they controlled. In fact, many urban police
forces ran soup kitchens,
gave shelter to the homeless and searched for lost children
(Monkkonen 1981: 86–128).
As Sidney L Harring (2017) notes, ‘the police institution gains
legitimacy when it makes
some accommodation to the communities being policed’ (p. 16).
In short, through a
combination of coercion and support 19th century urban
policing helped produce, rein-
force and ultimately legitimate a capitalist social formation

based on class subordination
and exploitation.
Early urban police forces were rather decentralised, poorly
trained and engaged in
many off-the-books activities. In fact, throughout the 19th
century, cops frequently
acted as enforcers for corrupt ward bosses and political
machines (Chriss 2011: 28–32).
As many police scholars have it, the progressive era, starting in
the 1890s, marked the
end of the so-called political spoils era of American policing
(Chriss 2011; Kelling &
Moore 1988). Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
police departments
came to be organised along more bureaucratic lines, adopted
more militarised command
and control structures, introduced new technologies and
professionalised police training.
The progressive era also saw increasing police specialisation.
Police began to fashion
themselves as professional law enforcers. Progressive-era police
reform also had a clear
colonial pedigree. Historian Alfred McCoy (2009) shows how
the colonial occupation of
the Philippines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
prompted numerous innova-
tions in the fields of policing, intelligence, counterintelligence
and surveillance, many of
which were reimported into US domestic policing, eventually
giving rise to what he calls

‘the surveillance state’. McCoy argues that the police apparatus
created by the American
army in the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century
‘was far more advanced’
than contemporaneous US domestic police forces (p. 61). Many
of the policing practices
honed in the colonial Philippines were brought back into the
United States by colonial
veterans whose racial frame of reference often made them view
America’s ‘ethnic com-
munities not as fellow citizens but as internal colonies requiring
coercive controls’
(McCoy 2009: 294).
According to Harring (2017), the sweeping reforms of US
municipal police depart-
ments towards the beginning of the 20th century occurred
primarily in response to a
growing need to pacify escalating class struggles. At the end of
the 19th century and the
beginning of 20th century, an increasing number of large-scale
strikes led to calls for an
expansion and centralisation of police departments. On the other
hand, there were also
heightened concerns over police corruption as well as a more
general trend towards the
rationalisation and bureaucratisation of urban governance.
Surely, the focus on depoliti-
cised, bureaucratic, centralised and purportedly neutral law
enforcement also served to
make police departments more legitimate in the eyes of the
working classes (Harring
2017: 232). At the same time, law enforcement afforded an
opportunity extensively to
intervene in the lives of working-class people, patrolling the
line between independent

workers and the dependent, criminalised poor. More often than
not this occurred
through the enforcement of sweeping vagrancy statutes that
were modelled on or even
directly taken over from what Marx (1887: 522) called ‘a
bloody legislation against vaga-
bondage’ that was enacted throughout Western Europe form the
15th century in order
to crack down on people who were forcibly dispossessed
through primitive accumulation
(see also Adler 1989; Chambliss 1964). Until the Supreme Court
declared them uncon-
stitutional at the beginning of the 1970s, vagrancy laws
afforded the police a lot of legal
leeway to come down hard on undesirables:
Armed with a roving license to arrest, officials employed
vagrancy laws for a breath-taking array
of purposes: to force the local poor to work or suffer for their
support; to keep out poor or
suspicious strangers, to suppress differences that might be
dangerous; to stop crimes before they
were committed; to keep racial minorities, political
troublemakers, and nonconforming rebels
at bay. (Goluboff 2016: 2–3)
Police reform thus served to generalise and legitimate class
control through an exten-
sion of rationalities and practices of enforcing formally neutral
laws which in practice
only particular groups of people happened to be in violation of.
Even though laws
Kienscherf 13

directed against status-type offences such vagrancy have been
declared unconstitutional,
they have now increasingly been replaced by civility codes that
target behaviours rather
than status. But more often than not these happen to be types of
behaviour, such as
sleeping outdoors, drinking and urinating in public, the
racialised poor are more likely
to engage in than members of the middle classes. Katherine
Beckett and Steve Herbert
(2009) document how new urban social control tools, such as
off-limit orders, park
exclusion laws and new trespass laws ultimately criminalise
complex social problems,
wash up even more people in the criminal justice system and
create a new legal status –
excluded – which is predominantly assigned to the racialised
non-working poor.
Pacifying racial conflict
Although there were much fewer overly segregationist laws in
Northern and Midwestern
cities, there was still a racialised social order based on informal
spatial segregation as well as
the exclusion of African Americans from most well-paying jobs
(Miller 2015: 7–9).
Following growing Black migration from the early 20th century
onwards – due to a crisis
of agricultural production in the South and heightened demand
for unskilled and semi-
skilled labour in the industrial North and Midwest – the Black
population of Northern and
Midwestern cities grew significantly. And, so did the animosity
of local politicians, real
estate agents and White homeowners, who used a variety of

tactics to maintain a racialised
social order through residential segregation. Blacks were
confined to inner-city ghettoes
that served the twin function of excluding them from White
society while including their
exploitable labour power in the industrial economy. All the
while, urban police depart-
ments played an important role in producing and maintaining
this racialised order (Bass
2001; Wacquant 2001). In the context of growing Black urban
populations targeted by
various forms of racism, the ideology of Northern racial
liberalism took shape. According
to Karen Miller (2015), ‘racial liberalism married the same two
components that color-
blind racism does today: an extension of racial inequality
alongside a commitment to the
language of interracial understanding and race neutrality’ (p. 7).
Faced with growing Black
demands for more socio-economic equality, on the one hand,
and the vested interests of
many Whites to maintain racial hierarchies especially in terms
of residential and labour
patterns, on the other, many liberal urban governments thus
sought ‘to regulate race rela-
tions and avoid racial conflicts in the name of urban peace’
(Miller 2015: 9). This amounted
to a strategy of liberal pacification: social peace without social
justice – addressing only
those Black grievances that did not question the overall
racialised capitalist order. In fact,
‘[m]aintaining capitalism thus meant, in part, maintaining racial
inequalities’ (Miller 2015:
145). Indeed, the increasing political significance of Northern
racial liberalism marked the
beginning of a transition from a colonial to a neo-colonial

order.
The ideology of racial liberalism also informed a second wave
of police reform that
slowly took shape against the background of rising Black
liberation struggles starting in
the 1940s. Growing efforts to modernise the criminal justice
system in general and police
in particular were prompted by a liberal desire to pacify racial
conflict. Here, according
to Naomi Murakawa (2014), lies a significant and often
overlooked factor for the emer-
gence of the contemporary US carceral state. From the 1940s,
liberal policymakers
increasingly problematised racial tensions – above all White
racist violence in the South
– in terms of law and order. White racist violence in the South
frequently occurred with
the tacit support of or even in direct collusion with local police
or sheriffs’ departments.
But, liberal policymakers viewed racial violence as primarily a
problem of illegitimate,
unlawful and ultimately unreasonable violence and considered
the modernisation and
professionalisation of the organs of state-sanctioned, reasonable
force as an adequate
solution. The articulation of law and order upon race gave rise
to a liberal political
agenda based on ‘tightening hardware’ and ‘healing hearts’; that
is to say, efforts to mod-
ernise and professionalise criminal justice agencies as well as

attempts to bolster state
legitimacy in the eyes of African Americans (Murakawa 2014:
44–53). However, the
liberal law and order agenda proved to be vulnerable to being
hijacked by Southern race
conservatives, who re-framed the supposed link between crime
and race not as a problem
of White racist violence but as a problem of Black criminality –
an astonishing feat of
‘racecraft’ that would have a lasting impact (see Fields & Fields
2014). Hence, there
emerged a strong bipartisan consensus on the need for criminal
justice reform, even
though the ultimate objectives of these reform efforts differed
along partisan lines: creat-
ing more racial fairness was the prime goal of race liberals,
whereas repressing Black
criminality and shoring up the racist colonial order were the
aims of race conservatives
(Murakawa 2014: 74). As President Johnson’s Safe Streets Act
bill went through Congress
in 1967, a number of key changes were introduced by
conservatives. The provisions for
the federal funding of local police contained in the original bill
stipulated for federal-to-
local categorical grants. This would have given the federal
government a lot more say in
how local police and sheriffs’ department would ultimately use
the monies. Yet, through
several amendments in the House and the Senate, this was
changed to federal-to-state
block grants. So, the monies went directly to the states that
could then distribute them
to local law enforcement agencies as they saw fit. The final
piece of legislation – the
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 –

eventually established the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) in an effort to
cut crime rates through
the modernisation of local police. The LEAA failed in achieving
its ultimate goal of
reducing crime, but, primarily due to the amendments to the
original bill, resulted in
local police departments’ stockpiling of military-grade gear and
the proliferation of para-
military police units across the country (Murakawa 2014: 85–
90; see also Kraska &
Kappeler 1997; Parenti 1999). The LEAA was also a major step
towards generalising the
Northern model of the professional urban police, though
policing remained highly local-
ised. So, the machinery was definitely tightened. But what
about healing the hearts?
Rising Black militancy, massive ghetto uprisings and the
political successes of the civil
rights movement in the 1960s prompted the re-importation of
many techniques of colo-
nial control into the continental United States. Local police
departments acquired mili-
tary equipment, such as CN and CS gas (originally developed
for use in Vietnam),
helicopters and armoured personnel carriers as well as training
in military tactics (Parenti
1999; Pinto 1971; Quinney 1974). However, it was not just the
coercive techniques of
overseas counterinsurgency operations that were reimported into
domestic US policing
in the late 1960s. More consensual techniques of expeditionary
counterinsurgency also
boomeranged back into the continental United States. This is
exemplified by two

Kienscherf 15
developments: (1) the rise of more consensual approaches to
protest policing and (2) the
emergence of community policing.
From the early 1970s, protest policing changed from ‘escalated
force’ to ‘negotiated
management’ (McPhail et al. 1998; McPhail & McCarthy 2005;
Soule & Davenport
2009). During the 1960s, police response to protest was
overwhelmingly coercive and
included, often unprovoked, mass arrests, the indiscriminate use
of force, and showed
little patience with protesters’ First Amendment rights.
Escalated force frequently led to
property damage, injuries and even deaths, which in turn
prompted rising public criti-
cism of police on the part of both civil liberties groups and
political elites. In the late
1960s and early 1970s, various congressional commissions – the
most famous of which
was the National Commission on Civil Disorder (Kerner
Commission) – found that
violent protest was often exacerbated if not triggered by overly
aggressive policing
(McPhail & McCarthy 2005: 63). In 1967, at request of the
Justice Department, the US
Army Military Police School (USAMPS) set up a Civil
Disturbance Orientation Course
(SEADOC) for municipal police and the National Guard. The
main concern of
SEADOC I, which ran from February 1968 to April 1969, was

with the suppression of
urban riots through an escalation of force. In May 1970,
SEADOC II was launched and
continued until at least 1978. SEADOC II included many of the
recommendations
made by these congressional commissions. The focus was no
longer merely on how to
suppress riots but on how to effectively manage a variety of
different protest events.
SEADOC II centred on the strategic concept of ‘confrontation
management’, which
sought to avoid any overreaction on the part of police to
protesters’ provocations, and on
the tactical principle of ‘minimum necessary force’, which is, as
we have seen, a key com-
ponent of liberal pacification (US Army Military Police School
1972, cited in McPhail
& McCarthy 2005).
Community policing is a much-vaunted policing strategy
supposed to help police (re)
build and (re)establish legitimacy especially in the eyes of
marginalised and impoverished
communities (Herbert 2006). Although most US police
departments officially state that
they do some sort of community policing, it remains unclear
what community policing
actually means in practice (Herbert 2006: 4; Saunders 1999a,
1999b). But as Steve
Herbert (2006) writes, ‘community policing programs generally
seek to help police
departments to improve their connections with citizen groups
and to decentralize their
operations to make better use of input from those groups’ (p. 4).
Community policing
also amounts to a form of liberal pacificion. The author of a

2006 RAND report On
‘Other War’: Lessons from Five Decades of RAND
Counterinsurgency Research suggests that
‘pacification is best thought of as a massively enhanced version
of the “community polic-
ing” technique that emerged in the 1970s (encouraged in part by
RAND research)’
(Long 2006: 53). In his discussion of possible ways of fixing a
broken criminal justice
system, late legal scholar William J Stuntz (2011) suggested
that US counterinsurgency
tactics used in Iraq ‘could have been taken from a community
policing manual’ (p. 293).
And he continued as follows:
Today’s policing conventional wisdom emphasizes the same
three moves: a more public police
street presence in the most violent areas, a problem-solving
approach to local blights like
garbage on the streets or gang signs on local buildings, and,
most important of all, the building
of relationships between police officers and local neighborhood
residents. (p. 293)
Stuntz also argued that these policing strategies are not only
effective in reducing
urban crime but could also help curb ‘the state’s seemingly
insatiable desire to punish
young black men’ (p. 310). However, in practice, community
policing hardly offers any
real alternative to mass incarceration. On the contrary, concerns

over ‘urban blights’
frequently lead to massive increases in detentions, arrests and
criminal records for often
minor misdemeanours, such as loitering or drinking in public,
primarily in neglected
and underinvested minority neighbourhoods (Harcourt 2001).
This is also borne out by
an activist report on the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy
(CAPS) (We Charge
Genocide 2015). CAPS is one of the most ambitious and largest
community policing
programmes in the United States and was officially rolled out in
1993 (Chicago Police
Department 2016). The Counter-CAPS report found that ‘at
CAPS meetings, police
effectively deputise a small group of residents to engage in
surveillance. These residents
are disproportionately white property owners, especially in
gentrifying neighborhoods’
(We Charge Genocide 2015: 4). This seems to be a general
problem of community
policing. The terrain of urban communities remains marked by
substantive inequalities,
which the police are neither able nor willing to tackle; while the
police engage with com-
munities in a highly uneven fashion, and vice versa. In fact, the
police do not seek every-
body’s input equally and some (generally well-heeled)
community groups are in a much
better position to voice their grievances to the police than
others (Herbert 2006; see also
Muñiz 2015). So, despite the pleasant ring of the term and some
genuine democratising
potential inherent in attempts to seek more community input,
community policing
remains, above all, a rhetorical strategy that alongside the use

of some substantive prac-
tices seeks to persuade people of the legitimacy of the state in
general and of the police
in particular (Saunders 1999a, 1999b):
State formation involves not just the practice of state agencies,
but also the active participation
(if not the consent) of state subjects. Community policing is one
such instance, therefore, in
which the capacity for concrete oppression is wedded to
processes of legitimation. (p. 137)
As a consequence, community policing ought to be understood
as an instance of
liberal pacification which uses reasonable force to garner the
participation and consent
of the population in securing the existing social order. However,
reasonable force is still
backed up and ultimately facilitated by the actual violence to be
used against subjects
who prove to be too unreasonable to be swayed by reasonable
force (Ryan 2013).
Community policing thus ultimately reproduces and legitimates
a purportedly colour-
blind and class-neutral neo-colonial order marked by the ‘the
entanglement of capitalist
accumulation processes with a racial/ethnic hierarchy’
(Grosfoguel 2003: 17).
Conclusion
As Manning Marable (1983) wrote, ‘Blacks occupy the lowest
socioeconomic rung in
the ladder of American upward mobility precisely because they
have been integrated all

Kienscherf 17
too well into the system’ (p. 2). As has been shown, the United
States ought to be under-
stood as neo-colonial order based on both formal legal equality
and substantive racial/
class divisions. Through a strategy of liberal pacification aimed
at formally integrating
African Americans into the social order through a combination
of security and develop-
ment, US policing has been and continues to be pivotal for
producing and reinforcing a
neo-colonial order structured around formal legal equality and
substantive racial and
class inequalities. In fact, US policing operates as an instrument
of class and racial
oppression precisely because it aims to coercively integrate
marginalised populations into
a social order characterised by the generalisation of specific
racial/class divisions through
principles of formal legal equality and individual autonomy.
This generalisation of spe-
cific inequalities that are conducive to capitalist accumulation
has been brought about by
means of liberal pacification: some (more often than not
coercive) development for those
who are seen as still having some labour market utility and
incapacitation for those who
have permanently failed the test of the labour market or who are
seen as a threat to capi-
talist accumulation. This market-based ascription of autonomy
and the lack thereof is
precisely what reproduces substantive inequalities within a
system of formal equality.

As Elizabeth Jones (2018) puts it, the US criminal justice
system ‘has always operated
as a mediator between black labour and capitalist modes of
production’ (p. 42). What is
more, ‘racism works both ways: to justify the reproduction of a
cheap labor force and to
exclude populations from the labor market’ (Grosfoguel 2003:
210). Problematisations
of crime and disorder thus serve to criminalise a population
many of whose members are
now structurally condemned permanently to fail the test of the
labour market. Indeed,
racialisation through racist criminalisation is a purportedly
colour-blind mechanism for
upholding a neo-colonial racial and class hierarchy in the
context of de jure equality. But,
despite the best efforts to make it seem so, capitalism has never
been colour-blind.
ORCID iD
Markus Kienscherf https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7202-1482
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