ORGANISED CRIME AS THE HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALISM
By Jean-Michel Blais - IPA Canada

This is another of the award winning articles from the IPA Short Article Competition.

Crime is defined as the intentional commission of an act usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined, prohibited, and punishable under criminal law'. By extension, organised crime is the manifestation of a complex structure of criminal acts having the ultimate goal of generating a constant revenue stream. The 'organised' part of crime is based on the express intention of developing constancy of cash flow and revenue; like any enterprise functioning in the democratic, read capitalist, world today, revenues minus expenditures equals profit. The major benefit that organised crime enterprises have over legitimate ones is that since their profits are not legally ascertainable, they are untaxed which results in a much higher net return for any given criminal activity.

Karl Marx stated in his treatise, Imperialism - The Highest Form of Capitalism, that the development of capitalism, that is to say the expansive reproduction of capital created by capitalist nations of the late nineteenth century, was fueled by an insatiable need of primary resources which led to the domination of non-capitalist nations by capitalist ones. This 'race for riches', in turn, led to an international opera, the actors of which read from a profit- driven script. It was the height of colonial imperialism because there were markets, lands and natural resources still to be had. A century of war has all but ended the 'Lebensraum2' that so scarred the world in the twentieth century. Since there remains little land to be colonially conquered by nation-states, all that remains is the economic conquest of the consumer.

If colonial imperialism, with the possible exception of anomalous localised conflicts, is indeed dead, what then has replaced it at the apex of capitalistic cupidity? What has replaced imperialism as the evil finality of capitalism as Marx would have envisioned it? Arguably, some would see in that answer the large multinational enterprises that encourage globalisation and supposedly stifle democracy. However loathsome the large multinationals may seem to anti- globalisation protestors, their tentacular development must nonetheless be within the guidelines set forth by those nations that sponsor it and welcome it through legislative instruments, judicial controls, corporate and sales taxes and even dichotomous, if not dubious, 'business ethics'.

However, the answer to such a question may lie in the global presence of organised crime, whose very objective is the creation of an economic enterprise dedicated to the amoral and unchecked search for profit. The only laws that the authors of organised crime respect are that of the market economy, be it in a capitalist or non-capitalist setting, be it official or officious. When organised crime introduces itself into a market economy, the traditional mechanisms of free markets and the price system are exploited and subverted. The subversion of a market economy occurs when organised crime wields appreciable power not through innovative marketing techniques, but through the physical and financial control of the single, most important element of a given market: the consumer.

Who are those consumers who must be controlled by organised crime, thereby providing the necessary lubricant for supply and demand? They are those individuals who, through their desire to obtain and possess illicit products and services, participate in consensual, or victimless, crimes3. These consumers seek out those products and services offered by and through organised crime: contraband of all sorts (e.g. weapons, alcohol, diamonds, endangered species, radioactive material, industrial and state secrets), illicit drugs, prostitution, gambling . and the traffic of human cargo, to name but a few. In order to finance the purchase of these products and services, these consumers commit ancillary crimes such as drug trafficking, thefts and robberies, thereby fueling crime rates. The activity of money laundering also abounds, aided by these consumers, as an essential means of converting the proceeds of crime from the illegal economy into tangible, legal benefits for the members of criminal organisations.

The options available in democratic societies to deal with organised crime are limited. The question begets itself as to how best does a society go about combating organised crime, both in terms of the primary illicit activities undertaken by groups and individuals as well as the residual effects of money laundering. As much as a market economy is the arena in which organised crime can flourish, the

answer cannot be easily obtained through changing the market and its function without changing the basis of most, if not all, market economies and political structures on the planet.

Part of the solution appears to lie in the perception that the average citizen has of the effect of organised crime in their life. Most people feel that unless they are innocently caught in the crossfire of a shoot-out between rival gangs or unless their neighbourhood is importuned by prostitutes or threatened through a rash of home invasions that they are not victims of organised crime. They fail to see the rising personal costs related to organised crime: increased car and homeowner insurance rates because of automobile theft and home invasions elsewhere in their country; the loss of jobs and profit as illicit money pumped into laundering storefront businesses tilt the level playing field towards the money launderer; as well as the increase in personal income and sales taxes used to fuel the governmental machinery meant to combat crime through regulation, detection, prevention and law enforcement. A common thread of all these direct, 'citizen-unperceived' effects is the monetary cost to the average person. There are also other, non- monetary losses associated to organised fcrime: loss of freedom to walk the streets in safety; and loss of freedom to conduct business without coercion or corruption.

Since organised crime already costs dearly to the average law-abiding person, it remains to be seen what price the citizens of a particular country or region are willing to pay before they decide to empower themselves against the pernicious economic oppression caused by organised crime.

In any society where the rule of law is a fundamental pillar, such a resistance to organised crime must be directed by the state, actively supported and encouraged by its citizenry. The most direct approach would lie in the integrated and systematic attack on those structures already established or manipulated by organised crime: open affiliation-based groups that publicly flaunt their membership such as outlaw motorcycle gangs; the overt and tangible proceeds of crime such as luxury homes, cars, boats and personal goods obtained by individuals who have no legitimate means of income generation; and the collective ignorance of the presence of local organised crime that permeates many neighbourhoods. The state has the added responsibility of informing the citizenry of the dangers posed by organised crime and to advance for social debate those proposals intended to reduce or eliminate those dangers.

Such an approach could target and even restrict certain individual rights. For the past few decades, debate has raged in liberal democracies about the imperative of individual rights over collective rights. Unfortunately, what tends to be forgotten is that collective rights encompass a tightly-woven pattern of individual rights. Consequently, when collective rights are denied at the expense of a particular individual's rights, the ultimate cost is that other individuals' rights are not respected in turn. Any society that truly desires to eradicate or attenuate the effects of organised crime must first decide upon the primacy of collective rights over individual rights, or at the very feast, a balance of the two. If after such a debate is held, the status quo is maintained, then that society must accept the consequences of organised crime as being an unfortunate and noxious by-product of modem capitalism. As a form. of economic, societal imperialism, organised crime will remain a permanent fixture of capitalist democracies until such time that the citizenry of a nation decides to challenge those structures that allow organised crime to operate.

© IPA  National Reporter, 2^nd & 3^rd Quarter 2003; IPA U.S. Section