The All-Seeing (Private) Eye: When it comes to protecting private property the trick lies in learning how to undermine the legal protections guaranteed to those attempting to modify property relations, while taking full advantage of the protections guaranteed to property owners. The ideal mechanism for giving effect to these contradictory objectives is the private detective agency.
THE POLITICAL SCANDAL swirling around the private detective
agency Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd (TCIL) lays bare capitalism’s
rawest nerves.
The core function of the modern state is the facilitation of
private wealth-creation. The so-called “rule of law” is critical to this
function. In the absence of a reliable legal system the protection of private
property reduces swiftly to the application of brute force – a most unreliable
servant and an even worse master.
Making the rule of law one of capitalism’s central
talismans, however, means extending the law’s equal protection to the system’s
enemies as well as its friends. When it comes to protecting private property,
therefore, the trick lies in learning how to undermine the legal protections
guaranteed to those attempting to modify property relations, while taking full
advantage of the protections guaranteed to property owners.
The private detective agency is the ideal mechanism for
giving effect to these contradictory objectives. It is no accident that the
first and most famous of these, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, was
founded in the United States in 1855. The big industrial capitalists of the era
were only just becoming aware of their need to be protected from their own employees,
who were, similarly, just becoming aware of the need to protect themselves in
trade unions.
Allan Pinkerton, a Scotsman, offered his services to these
captains of industry. His spies would provide them with intelligence about who
their employees were listening to and what was being planned. If worse came to
worst and a strike broke out, Pinkerton also offered to organise strike-breakers
and provide them with armed protection.
As the Pinkerton agency grew in size and strength it found
itself providing intelligence and muscle not just to private industry, but also
to the federal government of the United States. In 1860 the “Pinks” as they
were called, foiled a plot to assassinate the President-Elect Abraham Lincoln
and were immediately hired as his bodyguards for the duration of the Civil War.
For the next 50 years, the Pinkertons would occupy that
shadowy territory between the lawful and the unlawful. Their principal value
lay in their ability to do what was necessary in such a fashion that their
actions could not be attributed directly to either big business or the state.
In carrying out their employers’ dirty-work, however, the Pinkertons were
forced to descend deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld. It was in no
one’s interests to ask too closely how the trade union organiser fell into the ravine,
or who was responsible for beating the muck-raking journalist senseless.
As the federal government expanded, the work formerly
contracted out to the Pinkertons was taken in-house. The “Pinks” were replaced
by the “G-men” of the FBI, the Secret Service and the CIA. The need for “the work”,
however, never ceased. Keeping left-wing dissidents and activists under
surveillance; intercepting and reading their mail; sowing suspicion and discord
in their organisations – such services were always in high demand.
As the rapidly emerging picture of TCIL’s activities in New
Zealand makes clear, when the official organs of law enforcement and national
security find themselves lacking the human and material resources (not to
mention the legal authority) required to carry out “the work”, being able to
contract the private sector to assist the public sector in fulfilling its core
function of keeping the country safe for private wealth-creators is extraordinarily
helpful.
Like the Pinkertons of old, TCIL has parlayed its ability to
move with confidence in the shadowy territory between what is lawful and
unlawful; ethical and the unethical; into a highly lucrative business. There
has always been, and will always be, a lot of money to be made out of letting capitalism’s
friends know, in some detail, what their enemies are up to.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 21 June 2018.
