Marxism

Question 1

What is this theory??

Answer 1

Social structure

Question 2

Who is the main theorist??

Answer 2

Karl Max

Question 3

What is the Marxism theory??

Answer 3

• Looks at society as a whole and tends to ignore individuals differences and is most concerned with social class division
• society is in conflict as the ruling class dominate and working class is oppressed and exploited
• believe that capitalism is the main reason of crime
• according to the theory society can generally be split into two social classes , the bourgeois and the proletariat
• according to Marxists we live in a capitalist country which is where people gain and keep their own wealth where we have two classes - rich and poor
• also have a free market where businesses compete for consumers by being the bests and cheapest. Big businesses tend to gain biggest and keep all the wealth and power
• theory says that capitalism is bad and that we should abolish it
  And course revolution.
• think we should rid of mine and status and
  Everyone works for goals of society which is called communism

Question 4

What are examples of capitalist and communism??

Answer 4

• property privately owned, class distinctions, wealth distribution unevenly and individualistic
• communism - property owned by state, wealth distribution evenly and collectivist and classes
• capitalist values - need freedom, when people compete they achieve greater due to better use of abilities
• communist values - people need one another and need to work to gather as equals to achieve greater and no one should have more than others

Question 5

How does Marxism explain criminal behaviour??

Answer 5

• capitalism is criminogenic
• according to theory capitalism encourages individuals to pursuer self interest before anyone else and encourages us to want things we don’t need
• also argue that the law is selective and that the poor is heavily policed and features regularly in the news
• creates public perception of false conscious that society is threatened by crimes of the poor not off the powerful
  Snider (1997) state is unwilling to enforce laws against businesses interest such pollution , workers health or tax avoidance

Question 6

What are the strengths of Marxism??

Answer 6

• supported by other theories and real world cases - strain theory and perspective of left realism agree that capitalism causes inequality and that leads to crime and explain London riots and lower class crimes
• wide range of evidence that demonstrates concept of selective law enforcement- Gordon found that police more likely to focus on proletariat and their crimes

Question 7

What are the weaknesses of Marxism??

Answer 7

• only focuses on effect of social class inequality and be seen as reductionist - focused influencing social class on criminality and ignoring other aspects like age, ethnicity and gender, also does not consider biological factors
• considered deterministic - theory assumes all members of proletariat will commit crimes as theft due to economic issues but fails to explain people have free will
• encourages adoption of communism which can be considered problematic and ineffective - countries that become communist still have crime and like Cuba the homicide rate is 5 per 100,000 compared to englands where it is 1 per 100,000