Marxism

1. Karl Marx, Conflict Theory, and Critical Criminology

Most people would probably not identify Karl Marx as a criminologist, though he is often seen as a political economist, a critical historian of economics, and a sociologist. Marx’s writings were concerned with the rise of social institutions during industrialization, which included the following:

• The development of criminal law
• The power of police and prisons
• The processes of criminalization

At the core of his work, Marx rejected the idea that societies operate based on a consensus, which we learned about in one of the first lessons of this course. Instead, he suggests that societies are full of conflict, which is often reflected in and stems from their relations to production.

Marx (2004) examines the mode of production of capitalism and explores the social formation that occurs alongside it. He argues there is nothing natural about

• The creation of private property (e.g., owning land or factories),
• The extraction of resources from the land (e.g., cutting trees or drilling oil), or
• The extraction of value from those resources (e.g., paying for gas or profiting from selling it).

Marx stated that our capitalist order is a political and economic one formed through attempts at social control of these processes of private property, extraction, and value. He claimed that the process of so-called primitive accumulation, or separating the producer from production, and the extraction of value from the resources found in the land is only possible through the development of a state apparatus (e.g., government) that supports capitalist exploitation. Part of that state apparatus, perhaps the main part, is social control agents such as police and prisons.

Marx (2004) argued that, instead of land being collectively governed and people benefiting in a collective way from the value of resources and land, the capitalist mode of production requires the expropriation of people from their land, their territory, and the resources found there. To achieve control of resources and land, social control agents of the state apparatus forcibly seize populations from the land to privatize it and its resources (such as lumber, oil, and minerals) for capitalist landowners.

Marx (2004) also wrote about bloody legislation, a swath of laws passed by the state apparatus in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Commonwealth countries that do two things:

1. They enable the creation of private property, thus enabling the privatization of wealth, value, resources, and land, creating a powerful capitalist class.
2. They are used against the working class and against the lumpenproletariat (underclass) who cannot work or choose not to work.

These laws force people to work in the capitalist mode of production in factories. If people choose not to work, bloody legislation is applied to them to criminalize and punish them. If persons are unhoused and move from region to region or from the country into the city because their land has been stolen from them by the capitalist class, they too have bloody legislation applied to them, specifically vagabondage laws. Laws are also passed to discourage labor organizing and resistance (Kuriakose & Iyer, 2021).

These laws were created to control the working class and the lumpenproletariat and to enforce the capitalist mode of production. Although Marx is usually not identified as a criminologist per se, his work offers a rich history and analysis of how the state apparatus was formed to support the capitalist mode of production and how criminal law emerged as a tool of control for elites. From a Marxist perspective, criminal law, police, and prisons exist to control the population; force people to work; and prevent people from equally sharing land, resources, and wealth. These ideas form the basis of conflict theory, which asserts that interpersonal conflicts influence human behavior and that crime arises from such conflicts.

It was not until the social and political upheaval of the 1960s, marked by events like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the women’s movement, that criminologists began scrutinizing the social conditions in the United States conducive to class conflict and crime. This period gave rise to early critical criminology, which is discussed in the section below.

terms to know

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Primitive Accumulation

The historical process of separating the producer from the means of production.

Bloody Legislation

Legislation that uses state power for its own ends, against workers and against the old, landed aristocracy.

Lumpenproletariat

The underclass of society.

Vagabondage Laws

Laws condemning people who refuse to work.

Conflict Theory

A theory suggesting that interpersonal conflicts influence human behavior and that crime arises from such conflicts.

---

2. Other Marxists and Early Critical Criminologists

A significant figure in early critical criminology, William Chambliss (1964), drew on Marx’s ideas to analyze the origin of vagrancy laws and concluded that these laws were created to force people to work in factories and other places by criminalizing those who did not. These laws were pivotal in capital expansion, and Chambliss (1964) notes how different categories of “the criminal” were created as capitalism expanded. These included the following:

• Individuals who made and sold goods in traveling shows
• Those who organized gambling events
• Those who took goods that were in transit from one factory to another

Chambliss (1964) defined crime as “conduct that is defined and controlled by agents of the dominant economic class in a politically organized society, to benefit capitalism.” To enforce these laws, the police, courts, and prisons are obviously necessary.

Another Marxist, Louis Althusser (1971), named this set of policing agencies “repressive state apparatuses” and defined them as bodies granted the legal right to use physical force to control the masses. These include the military, the police, the judiciary, and the prison system. It is argued that these bodies are used to enforce laws and to demand obedience to laws based on unfair expropriation. Generally, the presence of these institutions is enough to gain compliance, but when the unfairness of capitalism is questioned, these bodies engage in explicit legalized violence.

A Marxist criminologist named Richard Quinney (1978) argued that there are instrumental and structuralist Marxist positions:

• An instrumental Marxist position continues Marx’s understanding that the state apparatus and criminal law exist as a direct result of capitalism to uphold capitalism and the capitalist mode of production.
• A structuralist Marxist position argues that governments are somewhat autonomous and are not simply installed by the owning class. Leo Panitch (1977) and Nico Poulantzas (1975) argue that the state acts on behalf of capital, not at its request. Theorists such as these suggest that although governments might pass laws that appear to help protect the population (e.g., minimum wage and labor law) and reduce the power of the owning class, overall, police and corrections operate to maintain the capitalist economy.

Structural Marxists agree that the law works to ensure capitalist accumulation and to maintain conditions where the generation of wealth is possible. Therefore, structural Marxists focus less on the coercive nature of law alone and more on the ideological function of law. Quinney and others examine how ideas of crime and criminals are shared in the general population.

Contemporary Marxists argue that ideologies are necessary to support and legitimize the actions of the state to enforce definitions of crime in law, policing, and corrections. These ideologies are often detached from the broader social system, and individuals are thought to be responsible for their behavior. Althusser (1971) called these institutions the ideological state apparatus. These concepts about crime include the following ideas:

• “Criminals are bad.”
• “Punishment is good and helpful.”
• “Law is equal.”

However, according to Marxist theory, laws are created to ensure capitalism continues to thrive and control the conduct of individuals who might threaten it. This is also known as hegemony, or when the ideas of the dominant class become the ideas of everyone (Gramsci, 1971).

Structuralists offer a compelling set of arguments about the law–society relationship. This includes how ideas of human rights and democracy are used to justify and legitimize oppressive law. Anatole France, a French novelist, captured this ideology of equality in his quote:

This quote speaks to the ideological dimension of law, which often clouds the exploitive relations of law itself. This ideology of capitalism and crime is the illusion that capitalism is noncoercive; therefore, the law itself is an ideological form (Reiman, 2013).

Another dimension of Marxism we find in critical criminology is the study of corporate crime or crimes of the powerful. Criminologist Sutherland (1949) distinguished between working-class crime and crimes of the elite or “white-collar crime.” The criminalization of both categories of acts is related to the act of becoming wealthy through investments and profits or capital accumulation:

• Working-class crimes, such as theft, uphold private property relations.
• Assault upholds the need for a healthy body to work.
• Crimes of the elite, such as fraud or insider trading, uphold “proper” relations of capital accumulation.

However, it is more difficult to criminalize the wrongdoings of the powerful.

EXAMPLE

Bittle and Snider (2015) found that police rarely enforce legislation that outlines the criminal liability of corporations.

Bittle (2012) contends that this type of legislation is rarely enforced for several reasons, including the idea that criminalizing the actions of capitalists is dangerous and could harm capital accumulation, thereby affecting jobs and profits.

terms to know

Vagrancy Laws

Laws preventing people from begging.

Instrumental Marxist

A theorist who views the state as the tool for the capitalist.

Structural Marxist

A theorist who believes the law is not an exclusive domain of the rich but is used to maintain the interests of the capitalists’ system and control members of any class threatening its existence.

Ideological State Apparatus

An institution that spreads bourgeois ideology and ensures that the proletariat is in a state of false class consciousness.

Hegemony

The political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states.

Capital Accumulation

The growth in wealth through investments or profits.

REFERENCES

Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Monthly Review Press.

Bittle, S. (2012). Disciplining capital: Corporate crime and the neo-liberal state. In K. Gorkoff & R. Jochelson (Eds.), Thinking about justice: A book of readings (pp. 122–140). Fernwood.

Bittle, S., & Snider, L. (2015). Law, regulation, and safety crime: Exploring the boundaries of criminalizing powerful corporate actors. Canadian Journal of Law & Society, 30(3), 445–464. doi.org/10.1017/cls.2015.16

Chambliss, W. J. (1964). A sociological analysis of the law of vagrancy. Social Problems, 12(1), 67–77. doi.org/10.2307/798699

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from prison notebooks. International Publishers.

Kuriakose, F., & Iyer, D. K. (2021). Digital workers, urban vectors, and new economies: Examining labor response, resistance, and reorganization under platform capitalism. South Atlantic Quarterly, 120(4), 749–762. doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9443308

Marx, K. (2004). Capital: Volume I: A critique of political economy. Penguin.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1947). The German ideology, parts 1 and 3. International Publishers.

Panitch, L. (1977). The development of corporatism in liberal democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 10(1), 61–90.

Poulantzas, N. (1975). Classes in contemporary capitalism. New Left Books.

Quinney, R. (1978). The production of a Marxist criminology. Crime, Law and Social Change, 2(3), 277–292.

Reiman, J. (2013). Appendix 1 – The Marxian critique of criminal justice. In J. Reiman, & P. Leighton (Eds.), The rich get richer and the poor get prison: Ideology, class, and criminal justice (10th ed., pp. 225–243). Pearson Press.

Sutherland, E. (1949). White collar crime. Dryden Press.