A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details THE CRIMINAL IS POLITICAL Real existing liberalism and the construction of the criminal Koshka Duff Submitted for the degree of PhD in Philosophy University of Sussex December 2017 2 ABSTRACT The familiar irony of ‘real existing socialism’ is that it never was. Socialist ideals were used to legitimise regimes that fell far short of realising those ideals – indeed, that violently repressed anyone who tried to realise them. This thesis investigates how the derogatory and depoliticizing concept of the criminal has historically allowed, and continues to allow, liberal ideals to operate in a worryingly similar manner. Across the political spectrum, ‘criminal’ is used as a slur. That which is criminal is assumed to be bad, and what is more, to be bad in a way that is not politically interesting. I show how this serves to prevent deep dissent from the status quo, and particularly from the existing, unjust order of property, from registering as dissent at all. Feminists have long argued that the exclusion of what is deemed ‘personal’ from the sphere of the political is itself a (conservative) political move. I propose that the construction of ‘the criminal’ as a category opposed to the political constitutes a similar barrier to emancipatory social transformation. I suggest, further, that under conditions of ‘real existing liberalism’, some kinds of conflict with the law have the potential not only to manifest but also to forge ‘resistant subjectivities’. I conclude that political philosophy, insofar as its purpose is emancipatory, should be more interested in the perspectives of criminals than it hitherto has been. 3 CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 2 Contents ......................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 5 Owners versus Outlaws Locke’s gated community of the consenting .................................................................... 13 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 14 1. Locke’s criminal .................................................................................................. 16 2. The un-mixing of labour and land ........................................................................ 20 3. Colonial slavery and Locke’s ‘just war’ on crime ............................................... 22 4. Making (and) money ............................................................................................ 30 5. Common criminals ............................................................................................... 33 6. Owner-occupiers .................................................................................................. 36 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 39 The Criminal is Political Policing politics in real existing liberalism ....................................................................... 42 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 43 1. The Liberal State - An offer you can’t refuse? ..................................................... 49 The Liberal Premise ................................................................................................... 49 1.2. The Realist Premise ................................................................................................... 52 1.3. The presumption of quasi-legitimacy ........................................................................ 54 2. Property Wrongs – And why we can’t just be civil about them. .......................... 56 3. Policing the Political ............................................................................................ 60 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 62 Theory of the Criminal (1939-1942) Max Horkheimer ................................................................................................................ 64 Archival sources & notes on the text ............................................................................... 65 Theory of the Criminal, trans. Koshka Duff .................................................................... 67 From Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott ............................................. 74 Criminality and Class Consciousness A Criminal’s Theory of Horkheimer ................................................................................ 82 Premeditation ................................................................................................................. 83 1. Pathologies of policing......................................................................................... 86 The royal ‘we’ ............................................................................................ 86 False levellers ............................................................................................. 90 Living dolls ................................................................................................. 94 4 Two ideologies of rules .............................................................................. 97 2. Resistant subjectivities ......................................................................................... 98 Cultures of non-compliance ........................................................................ 99 The commodity form and its practical critique ......................................... 101 Work does not work.................................................................................. 105 Revelation ................................................................................................. 108 3. Enlightenment reverts to myth ........................................................................... 114 Weak selves .............................................................................................. 114 Reaction .................................................................................................... 115 Horkheimer’s Foole .................................................................................. 117 First they came for the criminals .............................................................. 119 Conviction ................................................................................................................... 124 Feminism Against Crime Control On sexual subordination and state apologism ............................................................... 127 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 128 1. Subordination ........................................................................................................... 132 The con in consent ................................................................................................... 132 If the state is male how come you love it so much? ................................................ 134 The McCarthy in MacKinnon .................................................................................. 136 Our deformed state .................................................................................................. 139 2. Insubordination ........................................................................................................ 141 2.1. Institutionally rapist .................................................................................................... 141 2.2. Property is rape ........................................................................................................... 145 2.3. Free as a bird ............................................................................................................... 147 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 149 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 151 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 154 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... 172 INTRODUCTION 6 Across the political spectrum, ‘criminal’ is used as a slur. That which is criminal is assumed to be bad, and what is more, to be bad in a way that is not politically interesting. The criminal’s disobedience does not count as political