A presentation I made for my class on criminology.

1. The Marxist Theory of
Criminology
Phil Vollman

2. Who?

3. Who was Karl Marx?
● Eric Fromm writes in the foreword to Karl Marx: Early Writings that "Marx
was a humanist...[who]...believed in the unity of all men, and in man's
capacity to find a new harmony with man and with nature."
● Oxford Reference's entry for Karl Marx is:
○ "(1818–83) German political philosopher and economist, resident in
England from 1849. The founder of modern communism, he
collaborated with Engels in the writing of the Communist Manifesto
(1848). Thereafter Marx spent much of his time enlarging the theory of
this pamphlet into a series of books, the most important being the
three-volume Das Kapital. The first volume of this appeared in 1867
and the remainder was completed by Engels and published after
Marx's death (1885; 1894)."

4. Who Propagated the Marxist Theory of Criminology?
● Richard Quinney
○ Quinney's contribution to the Marxist Theory of Criminology is the idea that the studies done by
"traditional" criminologists are done to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie are invalid. I felt that
much of what he posited reflected the overall ideology of the Marxist Theory of Criminology,
which suggests that he played a major role in shaping its tenets and bringing Marxian analysis to
criminology.
● Steven Spitzer
○ Wrote about the idea of a "Marxian theory of deviance," which became the model explanation for
criminal behavior among Marxist criminologists.Spitzer's papers did not focus on the origins of
crime in the trouble populations of revolutionaries, youth gangs, and the unemployed, but instead
chose to talk about what he felt were the hypocritical aspects of capitalism that cause criminality.
Spitzer posits that the existence of capitalism causes crime, while failing to address how each
group of criminal comes to be involved in their crimes
● David Greenburg
○ Posited a theory of juvenile delinquency that, although now seen as lacking empirical data to back
it up, helped to establish the Marxist Theory of Criminology as less of a Marxist means of
influencing criminal justice policy, and more of an approach to looking at crime influenced by the
works of Marx. Greenburg is not a vanguard of the Marxist Theory of Criminology, but rather
someone who, by virtue of his liminality, allows for ideas from "traditional" criminology and Marxist
criminology to coalesce.

5. Who was affected by the Marxist Theory of
Criminology?
● Academics who support the Marxist Theory of Criminology believe
that it needs to be applied in every instance it can be, so as to
further the destruction of capitalism.
● Based on prior knowledge and some searches of academic
articles, I can posit that there is a causal relationship of some sort
between the Marxist Theory of Criminology and
reparative/restorative justice, which is a system of criminal justice in
which both the needs of the victim and the offender are considered
when passing judgement, and there is often an emphasis on
mediation between people and a focus on forgiveness and fair
sentencing.
● Reading the article, I felt like there were similarities between the
idea of the unemployment-prison relationship and the school-to-
prison pipeline, although I feel that the latter is much more based in
reality.

6. What?

7. What is the Marxist Theory of Criminology?
● I have not seen a good definition of the Marxist Theory of Criminology,
so I am adding my own:
○ The Marxist Theory of Criminology is an academic understanding
of the origins of, classifications for, punishment of, and
ramifications of crime; crime that is caused by the struggle
between two groups of people. One group currently has the power
and owns the means of labor. The other group is comprised of the
workers, and they have no power in a system where the elite
create laws and patterns of justice that are used to oppress the
workers. It is the hope of the elite that, by oppressing the workers,
they will not be able to rise up and overthrow the elite. In the event
that such a revolution takes place, a new system would be put in
place wherein government would be needless and there would be
no crime, because there would be only one class, the workers, and
there would be no oppression.

8. What is the Conflict Theory of Criminology?
● The Sage Dictionary of Criminology declares that
○ "Conflict theory is usually contrasted with positivism or those
theories that assume that a basic consensus exists in society. It has
taken three major forms. Culture conflict theory focuses on clashes
between conduct norms. Group conflict theory relates such clashes
directly to the position of elites and the wielding of political power.
Class conflict theory views power differentials in the context of the
systematic generation of structured inequalities in capitalist societies.
All stress that to understand crime we must also understand the
interests served by criminal law and the way in which those in
authority use their power."
● In my own words, I would say that the conflict theory of criminology is an
academic understanding of crime in which crime is caused by either the
disenfranchisement of a class of people by a class in power (which then
causes anger and strife), the inability of people to reconcile ideological
differences or cultural norms in an already charged society, and a system
in place that pits people and groups against one another.

9. What are the tenets of the Marxist Theory of
Criminology?
● The proletariat must rise up against the bourgeoisie, either violently
overthrowing them to create a utopian society ruled by all people,
yet with no laws and protections for individuals. Alternatively, as
some academics posited, the proletariat must otherthrow the
bourgeoisie and institute a government that is a true socialist
democracy.
● Either the bourgeoisie is actively working to set laws in place that
oppress the proletariat (instrumentalist), or the structure of society
created to keep the bourgeoisie in power rarely allows for equal
justice to be meted out (structuralist), even if laws are made to
counteract the status quo of the criminal justice system.
● The bourgeoisie will create crimes that target the proletariat, or put
in place systems, such as the unemployment-prison relationship,
that work economic injustice on the proletariat.

10. What are criticisms of the Marxist Theory of
Criminology?
● Comparing an existing nation's society or government to a utopian
dream for the future will always make the former look corrupt and
awful.
● Marxist revisionist analysis of history often overlooks the successes
of Western society.
● There is a divide between academic Marxist theory and the actual
structure of the criminal justice systems of countries that are or
have been Communist such as China, Cuba, North Korea, or
Russia.

11. Where?

12. Where was the academic discourse about the Marxist
Theory of Criminology taking place?

13. When?

14. When was the Marxist Theory of Criminology first
posited?
● In 1916, Willem Bonger wrote that he felt the cause of
crime was a society that organized itself around
capitalism. Such a society encouraged greed and
selfishness in both the haves and the have-nots.
However, it is the have-nots, the proletariat, that are
punished for their actions. The breakdown of society
results in those who are the least powerful bearing the
brunt of both the decay of society and the subsequent
rise in crime that results.
● Bonger's explanation for crime was not accepted in it's
time and only became popular in the 1970s.

15. What is the Relationship between the Cold War Era and
the Marxist Theory of Criminology?
This was not expanded upon in the article. However, I see by glancing at the faculty
pages, CV, and obituaries for the 21 academics in the article that the authors of the
articles written in the 1990s are baby boomers. They would have lived in the Cold
War era, and probably would have read A People's History Of The United States
(Zinn) in the 1980s. I saw that some of these academics were members of
progressive groups like the Green Party or Democracy Now!
Having seen little evidence of academic discourse in regards to Communist
criminology on either American or Russian shores, I feel that these academics are
not so much drawing from the modern applications of Marxism, but rather
eschewing the violent nature of Communism in favor of a more academic but no
less urgent discourse.
So, I see that these academics have been influence by the Cold War; they have
lived through and experienced the US response to the USSR, and they at some
point rejected the idea that any form of governance associated with a communist
state is invalid and evil. Those academics most vehemently in support of the Marxist
Theory of Criminology are revisionists, and members of an academic
counterculture.

16. Is the Marxist Theory of Criminology Active Today?
● In academic circles, there will always be discussions about the Marxist
Theory of Criminology. And search results on Google Scholar for the
phrase "Marxist Criminology" returned 154 results for the 1990s, 176 for
the 2000s, and 28 results for articles written between 2011 and 2012.
● Since 2004, Google Trends reports that most searches for "marxist
criminology" have come from the United Kingdom. A great deal of
searches for "criminology" are actually searches for criminal justice classes
and online degrees.
● There have been only two trending results for "marxist theory" in Google
News since 2008, and one has to do with Barack Obama, the other with
China. This, to me, suggests that implementation of policies based on the
Marxist Theory of Criminology has been low to non-existent in the United
States.

17. Why?

18. Why did the Marxist Theory of Criminology supplant
the Conflict Theory of Criminology in the 1970s?
● The Marxist Theory of Criminology filled a void that was created when
academics such as Ian Taylor found "traditional" ways of looking at crime to be
an inadequate means for studying crime in the modern era.
● I feel that the theories of crime that existed before the Marxist Theory of
Criminology always put some sort of blame on the criminal. Even a theory of
crime that posits that overwhelming external forces cause people to crime are
at fault, these academics may have felt that even those theories did not
account for what they felt was the systematic oppression of the lower classes.
Combined with the inability of some of these theories to explain white collar
crime, the Marxist Theory of Criminology seemed like a reasonable theory to
study and follow because it placed blame on a system that some of these
academics were already at odds with.
● The Marxist Theory of Criminology had to be retooled by academic such as
Michael Lynch and David Greenberg to make it less simplistic and violent and
more compatible and amenable to the society and government of the United
States. These changes allowed for the Marxist Theory of Criminology to at least
be an option when discussions of criminal justice policy took place, as opposed
to an anathema.

19. Why is learning about Marxist Criminology important?
● It in the context of this survey class, I believe we can take
away an understanding of the gulf between academic
discourse about a subject and the actual policies put in
place that supposedly reflect said discourse can be very
wide. Surely there were Russian academics prior to the
Russian Revolution whose ideas were used by Lenin and
Stalin as evidence that the gulags and executions in
Soviet Russia were necessary and beneficial to the
formation of the utopian Soviet state that never was.
● Learning about a minority viewpoint can tell us much about
the majority viewpoint, especially if we look at the
instances and circumstances in which a once minority idea
was taken in by a ruling ideology.

20. Works Cited
Akers, Ronald L., and Christine Sharon. Sellers. "Marxist and Critical Theories."
Criminological Theories: Introduction, Evaluation, and Application. New York:
Oxford UP, 2009. 217-44. Print.
Marx, Karl, and T. B. Bottomore. Karl Marx: Early Writings. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1964. Print.
McLaughlin, Eugene, and John Muncie. The Sage Dictionary of Criminology.
London: Sage, 2006. Print.
Wright, Edmund. "Karl Marx." A Dictionary of World History. 2006. Print.