Security/Capital ─ A General Theory of Pacification

A radical social theory of the security-industrial complex, showing how pacification underpins the global economic system

What is security, and what is its relationship to capitalism? George S. Rigakos' explosive sociological treatise charts the rise of the security-industrial complex. Starting from a critical appraisal of 'productive labour' in the works of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, Rigakos builds a conceptual model of pacification based on practices of dispossession, exploitation and the fetish of security commodities.

Rigakos argues that a defining characteristic of the global economic system is its ability to productively sell (in)security to those it makes insecure. Materially and ideologically, the security-industrial complex is the blast furnace of global capitalism, fuelling the perpetuation of the system while feeding relentlessly on the surpluses it has exacted.

George S. Rigakos is Professor of the Political Economy of Policing at Carleton University. He has researched and published on policing and security for over a dozen years. Rigakos is also the Editor of Red Quill Books and is one of the founding members of the Anti-security Studies Group. Most recently he has acted as a policy consultant with Syriza and Transform Europe.