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The book “Critique of security, capitalist accumulation and imposition of social stability”, published in 2017, defended, from a Marxist perspective, the assumption that “security” is among the fundamental pillars of capitalism. According to this hypothesis, “security” is not a mere ideological need of the ruling classes, nor a translation of the vision of a sector of the security services that the latter have managed to impose on the rest of society. In fact, security capitalism is a new stage on the path of this system, which no longer allows the existence of any obstacle that hinders the functioning of its mechanisms. The structural logic of the capitalist system tends towards oppressive options of liberation from the controls and risks that hinder the proper functioning of these mechanisms. An important part of the contributions of the French sociologist and writer Matteo Regost occupies that central function of security in ensuring the conditions for the reproduction of capitalism.
According to Regost, “the neoliberal structural adjustment of capitalism has generated a permanent crisis. It consumes resources at tremendous speed, destroys the planet, increasingly oppresses and exploits the popular classes, and faces increasing uprisings and revolts. Security capitalism is the political economy of this internal war ”. The flourishing of the surveillance, repression and detention industries is linked to the need to repress the spread of the phenomenon of popular uprisings. But it is, at the same time, a very important economic and political market. The doctrine of police warfare, called “counterinsurgency,” has become a benchmark for governments with enormous resources, fostering the growth of massive markets for security industries.
We are faced with two related patterns of domination, the aim of which is to deepen socio-ethnic divisions
The doctrine of “counterinsurgency” has dictated the strategies and tactics of the Western imperialists during their interventions abroad since the 1950s. “This doctrine, and the policing and militarization practices it contains, became indicative models, especially when Initially colonized peoples, and the general population at a later stage, were seen as the hostile environment in which the global threat grows. The dynamics of the counterinsurgency aimed at waging war “in and against” the population, and restructuring society under the supervision of a military-police authority, constituted an important period in the history of the security system. However, the claim inherent in this doctrine, to maintain stability and security, in order to legitimize it and commercialize the goods of the industries based on it, “did not prevent the propagation of low-tension but long-standing conflicts due to of her ”, according to the French sociologist.
The history of prisons, as well as police and war, is closely related to the development of capitalism and colonialism. Prisons have become a major market in security capitalism. In Regost’s opinion, “the new phase of capitalism reproduces the socio-ethnic discrimination on which the social, economic and political hierarchy rests.” Security restructuring saves ethnic capitalism by investing in perpetual low-tension war markets.
Capitalism, in all its phases, has defined systems of “extended exclusion”, but Matthew Regoust points out a special feature of its current phase of security. “We have often witnessed a shift in experience and control techniques between external and internal colonial styles. However, in this new stage in the history of capitalism, we note a growing recourse to the colonial way of dealing with the white sectors of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie by the governments of the imperialist centers. However, adjustments were made to this pattern to avoid excessive killing. We also observe the perpetuation of double standards during identity audits, surveillance and law enforcement. Levels of oppressive ferocity correlate with the ethnic origins of the targets. In popular neighborhoods inhabited by majorities of immigrant origin, as well as in prisons and on the foreign borders, police ferocity is daily, deep-rooted and intimate. As for social movements that include ethnically and socially diverse segments of the impoverished classes and the petty bourgeoisie, this ferocity is expressed through the use of localized violence with the aim of inflicting damage, and sometimes serious injury, on protesters. especially if they adopt offensive and escalated forms of protest. We are faced with two related but different modes of domination, whose objective is to deepen socio-ethnic divisions. What is needed is the consolidation of social apartheid and the crushing of any alliance and coordination efforts between the struggles of immigrants and residents of the popular neighborhoods and those waged by the rest of the social movements.
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