Radical and Marxist Theories of Crime

Paul B. Stretesky, Michael J. Lynch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351906975
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The essays selected for this volume show how radical and Marxist criminology has established itself as an influential critique since it emerged in the late 1960s. Unlike orthodox criminology which emphasizes individual level explanations of criminal behavior, radical and Marxist criminology emphasizes power inequality and structures, especially those related to class, as key factors in crime, law and justice. This collection of essays draws attention to the way in which structural forces shape and influence both individual and institutional (for example, governmental) behavior; highlights neglected crime (corporate, governmental, state-corporate and environmental) which causes more extensive damage than the street crimes examined by orthodox criminology; and discusses the ways in which law and criminal justice processes reinforce power structures and contribute to class control.

Part I
Definitions and Background

[1]
Social Class and the Definition of Crime

Herman Schwendinger and Julia Schwendinger*

In this issue of Crime and Social Justice, James Petras (1977) analyzes bourgeois crimes that destabilized and then destroyed the democratic Chilean government.¹ He notes that these crimes were essentially class crimes and hence that "no single group or groups acted [alone] to bring Allende down." By distinguishing the "three step flow" of organizations, events and criminal engagements, preparing the way for the fascist seizure of power, Petras performs a service for radical criminology.² His article also affirms certain historical generalizations. First, the struggle for socialism is confronted inevitably with counterrevolutionary bourgeois violence. Second, in light of the Chilean experience, reliance on bourgeois legality to defend socialist achievements is suicidal.

Petras' observations, about the judiciary and the police, support these generalizations. The criminal justice agencies, during Allende's presidency, did not vigorously prosecute or sanction the waves of crimes by bourgeois organizations against persons, property, and the state. Thus, while Allende called for the rule of law, the very agencies that were responsible for upholding this rule encouraged further crimes by their inaction.

Such observations remind us that the class composition and class functions of the state apparatus are not automatically transformed whenever a rising class and its allies are successful politically. The class struggle continues within the apparatus as well as outside of it. Consequently, whether the resources commanded by the state can be utilized effectively in favor of an ascendent class, depends upon the outcome of the struggle for power within the state. In that struggle socialists may control one part of the government but not another. In Allende's case, socialists controlled the executive office; nevertheless, the police, judiciary and armed forces were still commanded by bourgeois functionaries. As a result, the class loyalties of police, judges and military commanders restricted Allende's ability to stabilize the country in the face of massive political crimes.

Therefore, when Allende called upon the nation to respect the rule of law in order to defend the democratic government, his words were ineffective. Legality, which is not always voluntaristic, is not backed by mystical forces; it is secured by the criminal justice system and the military. These vital centers of organized political violence embody dictatorial powers, and ultimately are predicated upon the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Under stable political conditions, such powers are signified by criminal laws and sanctions. Under unstable conditions, they include the full panopoly of "emergency powers" directly exerted by the armed forces as well as by the criminal justice system.

But Allende's emergency powers, which would have introduced martial law, preventive detention, and other measures, could not be exercised without the cooperation of the criminal justice system and the military. Allende, moreover, could not invoke emergency powers without risking civil war with substantial segments of the bourgeoisie, including elements in the military. Under these conditions, the requisite power to administer the government might have been maintained by reconstituting the social basis on which organized political violence is founded. Such a reconstitution would have involved the mobilization of popular justice movements, of progressive elements in the military and police, and of armed detachments of workers and their allies. This mobilization might then have provided the armed forces necessary for maintaining the integrity of his democratically elected government. But the refusal at the height of his powers to decisively mobilize such armed forces, sealed off any possibility of successfully maintaining the government. In order to avoid civil war, Allende appears to have done little more than affirm the virtue of bourgeois legality.

Additional lessons, based on the realities rather than the myths of legality, are revealed by the Chilean developments. The rule of law, under varying circumstances, can serve different aims. For example, it is often regarded as a bulwark of democratic rights. On the other hand, as long as bourgeois property rights reign supreme, the rule of law is also a means for defending bourgeois property, the liberties based on this form of property, and the principles of state sovereignty that secure the political preconditions for the capitalist mode of production. Consequently, the rule of law is a means to "higher" ends; and full dictatorial powers are invoked whenever bourgeois legality is considered inadequate for maintaining the foundations of bourgeois order.

Furthermore, whenever the defense of bourgeois property, liberties, etc., cannot be conducted legally, because of the balance of class forces within the state, then the robust, bourgeois "civil society"—the realm of "private interests"—which normally stands behind the state (Gramsci, 1971), moves vigorously to rectify this situation. The Chilean terrorists who defended bourgeois property, liberties, and political sovereignty, were part of such a civil society. Their acts were justified and reinterpreted in the name of Fatherland and Liberty. Therefore, such terrorist groups, for all their reactionary violence, are also ideological entities. Their political crimes repeatedly demonstrate the existence of a class morality that places certain economic and political rights and duties above democratic ideals.

The Chilean counter-revolutionaries regarded their violations of law to be morally justified by higher ends. By what standards can we then consider them criminals? Petras' article offers two criteria. The first is legalistic: the bourgeois terrorists are criminals because they violated the laws of a democratic government. The second criterion involves the relations between social harms and class interests: the bourgeois political acts are crimes because they are harmful to the interests of the working class.

These criteria raise a number of key questions. Is the criterion of legality generally necessary for delineating crimes—bourgeois political acts or, for that matter, any other crimes? We must not forget that under certain political circumstances the criterion of legality is ambiguous and even contradictory. There are genocidal and other social harms that are not legally classified as crimes because state power resides in the hands of a national bourgeoisie. Does this absence of a legal violation make these social harms less criminal?

In addition, there are certain bourgeois crimes, such as capitalist exploitation, that are prohibited by law in socialist societies. The designation of such acts as legal crimes certainly introduces important consideration into the analysis and control of social harms. Further, does the absence of socialist legal distinctions from bourgeois laws exclude these bourgeois harms from the roster of crimes within capitalist societies?

Answering these questions will be the central focus of this article. First, however, we must review some fundamentals about legal relations in bourgeois societies. The historical review that follows will place the definition of crime in a context that will clarify these and other issues posed by the downfall of the Allende government. This context involves such previously mentioned relationships as class control of the state or of its parts, the organized violence underlying legality, the independence of civil society from the state, the relation between individual liberties and class morality, and the role of individual rights in bourgeois society.

Legal Relations and the Bourgeoisie

Historically, the state originated because of the formation of class relations, and therefore every comprehensive system of laws is essentially determined by class factors. Legal or state definitions of crime are especially important because they maintain the interests of ruling classes by force. Such general interests are above all sustained by laws that guard the economic infrastructure of a political order. First and foremost, the infrastructure requires guarantees that a dominant set of social production relations will be reproduced.

In addition, although bourgeois production relations are generally identified with the ascending dominance of wage labor and capital, other social production relations were also secured by law in early bourgeois societies. For example, early bourgeois production relations were characterized by the exploitation of numerous and varied forms of labor including slave labor, forced labor and bonded labor as well as wage labor (Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1976:11,; Petras, 1976:22). Commodity production, which was based on slavery at that time, was introduced on a wide scale in the Caribbean and in the southern part of North America by the growth of world mercantile relations. Thereupon, colonial laws were written to guard production by slaves; moreover, later, though it was the first to recognize the universal rights of man, the American Constitution still protected slavery. In fact, slavery in the United States was guarded well into the Civil War until 1863 when the Emancipation became effective. Despite the legal status of slavery, Eugene V. Debs (1970) once remarked, "The history of the Negro in the United States is a history of crime without a parallel."

One can say that certain bourgeois laws themselves have undermined pre-existing production relations together with the customs, laws, and lives of people everywhere. For example, not only were slave relations secured by such laws but treaties were imposed on American Indian tribes legalizing the wholesale and violent theft of natural resources, and the transformation of these resources into bourgeois property. Other forced legal relations sustained the uneven terms of trade that favored the ruling classes in the United States and undermined class relations based on native industries in South America.

The reproduction of a class society guards the relations of production but it also secures another level of relationships based upon production relations. Since major institutions, such as the family and the state, are derived from and react back on production relations, they must also be protected and regulated by legal relations. Similarly, prohibitions against such acts as killing, rape, and incest are interrelated with the protection of these major institutions even though these acts appear to be based on characteristics that exist everywhere and always. Doubtless "elementary rules of social life have been known for centuries," but they are not based on natural social-laws about fundamental properties of social organizations.³ To the contrary, these rules are subordinated to social organizations (e.g., bourgeois family relations) that are created and modified by changes in modes of production as well as other relationships. Furthermore, such changes have substantially altered the contents of virtually all of these elementary rules. The greater proportion of contemporary killings take place during imperialist wars and in the course of "business" (e.g., at the workplace) and are not prohibited by law at all (e.g., Swartz, 1975).

A few final points about the intricacies of class relations and legal definitions of crime are in order. Since civil and criminal laws generally secure the conditions for reproducing class relations, they represent state authority that is imposed by ruling classes upon social classes, tribal groups and colonial nations. Yet, although laws are generally instruments of a ruling class and/or its fractionated groups, the most important class interests that are fulfilled by legal relations cannot be defined by reference to the arbitrary will of sovereign powers or the special interests of ruling class fractions. The most relevant class interests are based on the conditions that reproduce the class system as a whole. Therefore, these class interests can only be represented by the general interests of a ruling class, which transcend the particular interests of ruling individuals or groups.

Legal relations when taken as a whole also have general characteristics that transcend their particular aspects. Individual laws are part of a system of laws that has core elements, sometimes called "basic laws of the land" (e.g., constitutional laws), because they guard the economic and political foundations of the social order. Such elements correspond to general ruling class interests; consequently, they too are determined by structural necessities, by the socio-economic trends that created the foundations of society.

Lastly, legal systems are not without contradictions. When r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I DEFINITIONS AND BACKGROUND
• PART II VARIETIES OF RADICAL/MARXIST CRIMINOLOGY
• PART III EXPLAINING CRIME
• PART IV SOCIAL CONTROL: POLICING AND PUNISHMENT
• Name Index