Privatizing international conflict: war as corporate crime.

• Date: 22 September 2007
• Author: Ruggiero, Vincenzo
• Published date: 22 September 2007
• Author: Ruggiero, Vincenzo

WITH RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, WAR IS INCREASINGLY becoming a form of state and corporate criminality; therefore, it requires criminological analytical efforts. This article analyzes "war as crime," focusing on the illegality perpetrated by invading states and the criminality of the private enterprises these states involve in their military ventures. After an introductory discussion of corporate crime, some empirical material is provided regarding the direct involvement of private companies in wars: in the form of private "security" services, armies, and in the hazy area of "conflict consultancy." The shared traits of war and corporate crime are highlighted, and the definition of "war as corporate crime" is situated within the analytical framework of the study of the crimes of the powerful.

Harm and Benefit

Since Edwin Sutherland's (1983) original formulation, the concepts of white-collar and corporate crime have been the subjects of debate focusing on a number of controversial and crucial aspects. Why did Sutherland include under the rubric of white-collar crime conducts that are not intentional violations of the criminal law? Why did he place such emphasis on the social status and respectability of offenders? Why did he not consider that there are crimes committed by corporations and crimes committed against them? Responses to the first question highlight that, though often dealt with within the administrative and civil adjudication sphere, the harm produced by white-collar and corporate crime could find its natural treatment within the criminal justice system. These responses allude to labeling processes and imply that criminologists should face this type of crime irrespective of its official definition as crime. In answering the second question, students stressed that Sutherland's crucial task was to suggest that crime is not the preserve of marginalized individuals or disadvantaged groups, but can be the result of learning processes that occur between individuals and within groups that enjoy privileged access to resources and power. As for crimes against corporations and those that favor them, some scholars would claim that the choice to focus on the former or the latter is the result of political sensitivity. How criminologically relevant is it if employees, say, steal pens and stationary from the corporation employing them while that corporation is causing horrendous damage to people and the environment?

It is not the task of this article to rehearse such debates, since they are well recorded in a wealth of widely known publications (Croall, 1992; Nelken, 1994; Ruggiero, 1996; Punch, 1996; Slapper and Tombs, 1999). The focus of the following pages is, rather, a related issue whose discussion appears to be far from exhausted. This is the divergence between social, political, and legal definitions of white-collar and corporate crime. Such divergence brings back, though from a different angle, the questions posed above, suggesting that perceptions of crime as harmful behavior are inspired by the position one occupies in the social system and along the political spectrum. Hence, the alleged difference between definitions of white-collar crime is formulated within distinct contexts. More precisely, social definitions of white-collar and corporate crime may be the result of collective sensitivity on the part of groups that benefit from that crime and simultaneously those who are victimized by it. Political definitions, in turn, may be the outcome of contested formulations and appreciations of "harm" among, respectively, beneficiaries and victims. Finally, legal definitions may be regarded as the jurisprudential seal laid upon the formulations that manage to be victorious in such a definitional contest. Let us analyze how the social, political, and legal spheres display increasing interconnections in the current situation.

If we consider the social sphere as a public space in which meaning is constituted, we identify such space with the arena where discussion is conducted outside the official hubs and networks of power. In other words, we may regard the social sphere as an extra-political space that exercises control and supervision over groups wielding power and their institutional representatives. The notion implied here is one of supervision from below. It is from below, one assumes, that the identification of corporate conduct as criminal is more likely to take shape. Therefore, when students posit the existence of a social, rather than political and legal, definition of corporate crime, they also imply that the respective definitions are inherently antagonistic. However, both powerless and powerful actors operate in the public sphere, and at times a symbolic civil war is fought between them in pursuit of consensus--a war that combines coercive and dialectical means. The struggle for consensus has "potentially divisive and destructive consequences," because it takes place outside legislation and aims to forge a prevailing, unassailable definition of the common good (Taylor, 2004:91). Those who manage to prove, or persuade others, that their good is also the common good will transcend the social sphere, permeate other spheres, and bring with them their new perceptions and definitions.

Powerful groups manage to "de-territorialize" their social existence because, to use Deleuze's (2005) terms, they take advantage of the vectors allowing them to exit their own social territory. In this sense, corporate actors are constantly lying in ambush, experimenting, and innovating; their existence is never tranquil, since they are keen to transfer the definitions they have forged of their conduct into the legal and political spheres. I will return to this point below. My argument is that the distinctions between social, political, and legal definitions of corporate crime may be becoming more blurred than we are prepared to accept. Let us see this process in more detail.

In Taylor's (2004) analysis, two vital extra-political, secular spaces have played a crucial role in the development of society in the modern West. First, the space of the market economy, and second, the public sphere. The latter, however, brings together groups of people who have already carved out a private space for themselves as economic agents. The market economy comes to constitute a sphere in which people are interconnected both objectively and in their mutual understanding. In this sphere, entrepreneurs are seen as benefactors. In narratives about them, "their rise from rags to riches" is "recounted again and again, offering example and inspiration" (Ibid.: 151). They gain respect and admiration because, presumably, they create wealth and contribute to the public well-being. Contrary to Taylor's opinion that the economic sphere retains its independence from the public one, the two spheres tend in reality to overlap as entrepreneurs strive to prove that their activity, their freedom, and their individualism possess an inherent capacity to benefit the collectivity and contribute to the freedom of all.

Economic activity is constituted by a succession of breakthroughs that, initially condemned, slowly gain acceptance within the prevailing sensibility. It seems that entrepreneurs bear an original sin that, according to the specific devices offered by different contexts, is either "purged," removed, or displaced. The history of the enterprise itself coincides with the history of this removal or displacement. The risks and uncertainty connoting economic activity put entrepreneurs in a moral limbo: there can be no judgment in relation to the ethical values expressed by enterprise, because risk and uncertainty in themselves suffice to allow the ethical stretching of values.

In a different perspective, the criterion "who benefits?" offers another possibility to entrepreneurs to stretch values and make their conduct acceptable. Using this criterion, four types of enterprise can be distinguished according to the prime beneficiaries of their conduct, respectively: its workers, its owners, its clients, and the public at large (Blau and Scott, 1963). In deviant entrepreneurial behavior, an attempt is constantly made to confound the identification of "who benefits." The act of deviating may be justified when it appears to benefit perpetrators less than the clients or the public at large.

We can now identify some common traits shared by corporate crime and contemporary war. Corporate criminals mobilize the variable risk when justifying their violations: the risk of losing their investments, that of succumbing to competitors, and even the risk of breaching regulations that are too complex or whose existence they just ignore. Risk, in brief, puts values and violations in a different ethical framework. The variable of "who benefits," in its turn, can provide rationalizations to entrepreneurial crime: illegally generated profits will be invested and eventually create new jobs. War, similarly, supposedly staves off the risk of being victimized by rogue states and groups, while the benefits of invading an inimical country will be shared by entrepreneurs, who will consequently gain access to new markets, and labor, thanks to the trickle-down principle, will enjoy part of the wealth thus generated.

The crimes of the powerful are said to occur in contexts in which the growth of corporate actors causes a structural...