Can Revisiting Thomas Paine Improve our Understanding of Crimes of Empire?

• In Event: Theoretical Perspectives in Critical Criminology

Abstract

In the spirit of increasing criminology’s attention to the state-corporate crime of imperialism, the thought of Thomas Paine might be a helpful resource. Paine, the under-appreciated radical democratic “founding father” of the United States wrote little directly on crime and criminal justice. Yet his cosmopolitan and social justice stance, as well as its limitations, can help critical criminology theorize today’s crimes of imperial plunder. The optimism of an old-fashioned modern thinker may be helpful as we scrutinize our present new medievalism. On the one hand, Paine was a revolutionary democrat who advocated a peaceful universalism, disliked military interventionism, and challenged slavery and war profiteers. On the other hand, Paine believed that American commercial and cultural expansion was a peaceful route to freedom elsewhere. This belief in peaceful commercial expansion denies the reality of forceful and violent aspects of imperialism. This intellectual error is still instructive because it reminds us of the power of imperial ideology.

Author

• Josh R. Klein, Iona College