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Marxist Theory and Its Relation to Criminology
Marxism, or Scientific Socialism, is the label assigned to the group of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). In their entirety, these ideas give a fully worked-out theoretical groundwork for the struggle of the plebian classes to attain a higher form of human society - known as socialism.
Scientific socialism or Marxism is comprised of three component parts: Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxist Economics.
Just as the growing bourgeoisie challenged the conservative ideas of the old feudal aristocracy in its revolution against feudal society, so the working class, in its fight for a new society, needs to challenge the dominant outlook of its own oppressor, the capitalist class. Of course, the ruling classes, through their monopolistic control of the mass media, the press, school, university and pulpit, consciously justifie its system of exploitation as the most "natural form of society." The repressive state machine, with its "armed bodies of men," is simply insufficient to maintain the capitalist system. The dominant ideas and morality of bourgeois society serve as a vital defense of the material interests of the ruling class. Without this powerful ideology, the capitalist system just would not last for any length of time.
Marxism suggests three stages or concepts of law and lawlessness:
i) an expose' of rich and powerful and their crimes - this is acceptable but purely moral;
ii) a demonstration of crime and its connections with property - e.g. showing how theft accounts for a small amount of property crime compared with fraud yet theft is policed much more strenuously;
iii) what was intended to be a major concern for the next stage - crime and law. Law is seen as ideology, as a level in capitalism, as tied to the economic relations of capitalism - in a number of unclear methods which were to be cleared up later.
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