Marxist Perspective on Crime and Deviance

Question 1

How is capitalism criminogenic?

Answer 1

Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class for a profit and can lead to crime due to

• Poverty may mean crime is the only way the working class can survive
• Crime may be the only way to gain consumer goods encouraged by capitalistic advertising causing a rise in utilitarian crime - Commodity fetishism
• Alienation may lead to frustration giving rise to non-utilitarian crimes such as assault
• Also encourages success at all costs leading the middle class to commit white collar crimes for their businesses to survive

Question 2

How does the state cause crime through legislation?

Answer 2

• Law making and enforcement only serves the interests of the bourgeoisie
• Chambliss, the introduction of English law into East African colonies. Forcing money into the economy and forcing tax on people to force them to work for the colonisers and therefore they created crimes for their own interests and control of Africa’s natural resources
• Also, the ruling class have the ability to stop the passing of laws that threaten their status or wealth though lobbyists such as Bin Afolami

Question 3

What is selective enforcement?

Answer 3

• Where some groups such as ethnic minorities or the working class are criminalised and the crimes of the powerful are ignored in the process
• Chambliss

Question 4

What ideological functions does the enforcement of the law serve?

Answer 4

• Can benefit the working class on the surface such as workplace requirements and public health
• However, benefits the ruling class as now their workers are fit to work for them
• Even when these laws are created they are not enforced, for example, the law of corporate homicide was only successful once after 8 years despite many deaths caused by corporate ignorance
• Because of selective enforcement the working class think its only the poor who cause trouble and not capitalism dividing the working class aided by the media making criminals seem ‘sick’ and not caused by capitalism

Question 5

What are the strengths of Marxism?

Answer 5

• Offers a useful explanation of the relationship between crime and a capitalistic society
• Shows the link between law making, the enforcement of them and the interests of the capitalist class
• By doing this it puts the insights of labelling theory into a wider structural theory of selective enforcement

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of Marxist theory?

Answer 6

• Ignores relationship between crime and non-class related inequalities such as race and gender
• Deterministic by overestimating the amount of working class crime, not all of the poor turn to crime
• Not all capitalistic societies have high crime rates such as Japan and Switzerland’s homicide rates being only a 5th of the USA’s
• The CJS sometimes prosecutes against capitalism such as convicting corporate criminals
• It ignores Intra class crime where the criminals and the victim are working class where the victim is greatly affected

Question 7

What is Neo-Marxism?

Answer 7

• People that have been influenced by Karl Marx but combine ideas from other approaches such as labelling theory

Question 8

How do Neo-Marxists agree with traditional Marxists?

Answer 8

• Capitalistic society is based on exploitation and class conflict through extreme inequalities of wealth and power
• The state enforces laws in the interests of the ruling class and criminalises the working class
• Capitalism should be replaced by a classless society greatly reducing the rate of crime

Question 9

What is anti-determinism?

Answer 9

• Neo marxism says that the statement ‘ workers are driven to commit crime out of economic necessity is deterministic
• Neo Marxism is more voluntarism believing people have free will. Crime is a conscious often political choice to redistribute wealth to the poor. People are not puppets shaped by the ruling class

Question 10

What is Taylor et al’s fully social theory of deviance based on?

Answer 10

Neo-Marxist

Based on two main sources

• Caused by the unequal distribution of wealth
• Ideas about the meaning of the crime for the person committing it, society’s reaction to it and the effects of the deviant label

Question 11

What aspects did critical criminologist Taylor et al’s fully social theory of deviance unit?

Answer 11

• The origins of the deviant act such as unequal distribution of wealth in a capitalistic society
• The immediate origins of the deviant act such as the deviant needing to eat and they steal food
• The act itself such as a rebellion against capitalism or an act of desperation
• Immediate origins of the social reaction such as the family discovering that a member has committed a serious crime
• The wider origins of social reaction such as who has the power to define punishment and why is some harsher than others?
• The effects of labelling, why does deviance amplification happen in some cases and not others?

Question 12

What are some left realist criticisms of marxist explanations of crime?

Answer 12

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