Outline and Assess the Marxist approach to understanding the cause of crime.

Imran Miah

People who study crime are known as criminologists and would define crime as being acitities that break the law of the state and should be punished for it.The general belief is that crime is a path which is not expected of most social groups and the law is there to prosecute criminals for It and to protect the public in general from becoming victims of it.Marxists believe that the law is not in favour of all in society but for the powerful.

Traditional Marxists such as Snider would argue that the whole basis of laws are for the benefit of the bourgeoisie or the ruling class and the laws reflects their interests. For example there is an excessive prominence given to protection of property and it was one of the first laws to be passed, this is because majority of the ruling classes have a lot of property. The whole basis of capitalism is in the protection of private property and therefore criminal law reflects the views and interests of them. They are very unlikely to pass laws which will affect their profitability for example laws passed against monopolies as the state is unwilling to alienate large corporations. Traditional Marxists also give an explanation to why violence occurs, they state that capitalism is economically self interested rather than public duty motivates behaviour, it is a competitive system where common aid and cooperation for the betterment of all are discouraged in favour of individual achievement at the expense of others. Competition breeds aggression. Chamblis argues that aggression motivates crimes at all levels members of society use whatever means they can to commit crime, thieves prostitutes and pimps use what they have got to get what they can. Whereas the politicians and lawyers have more effective means in order to get a bigger cut of the cake. Gordon argues that crime is a rational reaction to the competitiveness and inequality of

Capitalist society.

The way in which this is done is by imposing ruling class values on the proletariat. This is done through various agencies such as the education system and mass media. The values form the basis in which laws are passed. These values are forced on to people as they are agreeing to it as a result of their own beliefs, which are in reality the interests of ruling elite.

The ruling class constantly strives to divert attention from the true causes of the situation; people don’t get rational explanations of why people commit crimes, most of the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Capitalist society.

The ruling class constantly strives to divert attention from the true causes of the situation; people don’t get rational explanations of why people commit crimes, most of the time they are blamed for it rather than the state or capitalists. This takes the attention away from the exploitation that we go through and justifies more control on us by allowing more policing to in mainly working class areas.

Marxist has come through a lot of criticism s over their statements. Feminists state that Marxists ignore the role patriarchy has on the way criminal justice system operates. Furthermore they ignore the importance of racism that operates in the enforcement of laws. They emphasise class inequality more rather than the victims of crimes. They don’t take into account the fact that there is a wide value consensus in society that there is a need for policing in order to protect people, they are protected as there are many situations where police prosecute real criminals and therefore their explanation is one dimensional. Jones argues that capitalism does always create high crime rates, for example in Switzerland crime rates are low. Marxists explanation of crimes gives reasons but doesn’t give solutions to overcome crime this is seen as one sided by Left Realists. Marxists do not emphasise the victims of crimes rather they talk more about the cooperate crimes; the victims of crimes are mostly working class.

Neo Marxists such as Taylor Walter and Young believe that power is unequally distributed in society but also states that crime is the result of the interaction of the deviant the police and the media etc.

But even if this is the case Marxist theory are still influential in criminology. Snider and Chambliss argues that cooperate crimes are scarcely policed and are rarely herd of in the media and are hardly ever punished severely. Corporate crimes do more harm than petty street crimes but they are portrayed as the more serious crimes. Their punishment is prison which is away of putting aside the unattractive part of capitalism.

Outline and Assess the Marxist approach to understanding the cause of crime.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Document Details

Related Essays

Outline and assess Marxist explanations of crime and deviance.

Assess the usefulness of Marxist approaches to an understanding of crime an...

Outline and assess the importance of victim surveys for the sociological un...

Assess the contribution of Marxist theories to an understanding of the rela...