Marxists also show that even laws that appear to be made by the people, for the people, are in reality made by capitalists so that they can maintain their power and profit. Right Wing theories say that laws reflect the collective conscience but Marxists argue that people are in a false consciousness. Haralambos’ study of the abolition of slavery supports this theory. It appeared as though people, such as Malcolm X, had helped to change the law when really it was industrialisation and the invention of machinery that caused the need for racist ideology to decline. In pre-modern society, before the invention of machinery, people were socialised through the superstructure to accept racist ideology. This meant that Black people could be seen as sub-human and so justified their use as slaves. Slavery benefits capitalists as then they do not have to pay them and so maximise their profits. In modernity, after the invention of machinery, slavery was no longer needed as machines are faster, do not require sleep or feeding and make more money. Slaves were no longer needed and so Black people were given more rights. This is similar to the British Vagrancy Act 1349 that Chambliss studied. Society disliked vagrants so this law appeared to benefit society. However, at the time, the plague had killed a large proportion of the population and there was a decline in labour. This increased the bargaining power of the proletariat as they could move to another town for higher paying work. To prevent this and keep wages low, the British Vagrancy Law was put in place telling people that they must accept work in their local town. Therefore, even laws that appear to benefit people actually benefits capitalists.
Chambliss argues that in order to see that capitalists control the law we need to look at decision making and non decision making. This refers to what behaviour is defined or not defined as criminal. It is evident that certain behaviours are not criminalised as they maintain capitalists profit and power. Cigarettes are not criminalised as the government can tax them thus making money from them even though they kill thousands every year. Chambliss also gives the example of a movie magnate who spends thousands of dollars on his daughters 18th birthday while people down the street are dying from poverty. People accept this type of behaviour because they have been socialised to believe that they have earned it due to living in a meritocratic society.
Right Wing theories see the police as being fair and just. Marxists on the other hand are critical of this as they believe that agents of social control are biased against the working class. Chambliss’ studied crime in Seattle. Syndicates owned brothels and casinos, which the working class made complaints about to the police. The police were then bribed and so ignored white-collar crime. This proves that agents of social control are unfair.
Right Wing theories also believe that official statistics are valid. Durkheim even describes them as being ‘objective facts’. In Hall’s study called ‘Policing the crisis’ the home secretary said that there had been an 129% increase in ‘mugging’ but Hall found that ‘mugging’ is not an official crime so he looked at the closest category and found that it had only increased by 14% which was a slower increase than in past years. Marxists also note that there is a dark figure of white-collar crime. Chambliss argues that white-collar crime is a dark-figure as it is not reported. There are two reasons for this: there is no clear victim and when it involves bribery neither party will report it. Therefore, official statistics are invalid.
Marxists describe capitalists as the real criminals even though official statistics make crime out to be a working class phenomenon. Sutherland created the concept of white-collar crime as ‘crime committed by persons of a higher social status’. Snider argues that white-collar crime is a much more serious crime as it causes more harm than working class crime and costs more in money. An example of this is factories that break health and safety laws that then cause thousands of people to die from pollution.
Even though Marxists believe that capitalists are the real criminals, they go on to explain why the working class commit crime. They believe that crime is inevitable in capitalist society as capitalism itself is criminogenic. D. Gordon describes capitalist society as a ‘dog eat dog world’ as people are socialised to be individualistic, selfish and materialistic whereas communist society teaches people to think of others. Therefore, the proletariat will inevitably commit crime. Marxists have similar views to the Functionalist, Merton, in that they both explain crime as due to society’s culture. However, Merton says that people define society’s success goals whereas Marxists believe that capitalists define society’s success goals as money. The competition caused by capitalist culture results in class fragmentation, thus preventing a revolution.
However, traditional Marxists have been heavily criticised. Left Realists criticise Marxists for ignoring intra-class crime. Working class crimes are not always committed against middle class people. They also believe that Marxists ignore the seriousness of working class crimes by excusing it and saying that capitalism makes people criminogenic. Marxism has also been criticised for its belief that capitalism is criminogenic as not all capitalist countries, such as Switzerland and Japan, have high crime rates.
Neo-Marxists Taylor, Walton and Young criticise traditional Marxism as well as Interactionism. They believe that Interactionism is deterministic for saying that labels lead to self fulfilling prophecies and Marxism is deterministic for suggesting that capitalism is criminogenic. Neo-Marxists believe that people are not passive and that crimes have a political motive, as crimes are conscious acts against capitalism. Neo-Marxism combines traditional Marxism with Interactionism and developed a ‘fully social theory of crime and deviance’ to explain crime. To explain crime you must look at the wider and immediate origins of the deviant act, the act itself, immediate and wider origins of societal reaction and the effects of labelling. Hall’s ‘policing the crisis’ can be applied to Taylor, Walton and Young’s fully social theory. The act itself was mugging; to understand this the wider and immediate origins of the crime were examined (capitalism suffering from a recession, high unemployment and crisis of hegemony); the wider and immediate origins of societal reaction were a moral panic and racist society. Hall argues that Black people were used as a scape-goat by capitalists so that they were blamed for social problems and cause class fragmentation. In terms of the effects of labelling, Hall’s study showed how the label of being a criminal on Black people then led to a self fulfilling prophecy as a reaction to her behaviour of the police.
In conclusion, Marxists believe that the law benefits the capitalists, is only enforced on the working class and the middle class are exempt from it, agents of social control are biased, official statistics are invalid, capitalists are the real criminals but has been criticised by Neo-Marxists for being deterministic, ignoring intra-class crime and the seriousness of working class crime.