Marxism on law

• Appear to be a largely working-class phenomenon
• Unlike functionalists, Marxists see law making and law enforcement as


  Serving the interests of the capitalist class
• Laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy
• William Chambliss (1975)


  • Argues that laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy
• Introduction of English law into Britain's East African colonies was to serve the economic interests of the capitalist plantation owners
• The ruling class has the power to prevent the introduction of laws that would threaten their interests
• Laureen Snider (1993)


  • Argues that the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability
• Laws, crime, and criminals perform an ideological function for capitalism
• Frank Pearce (1976)


  • Argues that laws such as workplace health and safety laws often benefit the ruling class too by keeping workers fit for work
• Such laws create false consciousness among the workers
• New law against corporate homicide passed in 2007 had only one successful prosecution of a UK company in its first eight years
• Despite large numbers of deaths at work estimated to be caused by employers' negligence
• Crime appears to be largely a working-class phenomenon
• Crime divides the working class by

  Encouraging workers to blame the criminals in their midst for their problems, rather than capitalism
• The media and some criminologists contribute by portraying criminals as disturbed individuals, thereby concealing the fact that it is the nature of capitalism that makes people criminals
• Marxism offers a useful explanation of the relationship between crime and capitalist society. It shows the link between law making and enforcement and the interests of the capitalist class. By doing so, it puts into a wider structural context the insights of labelling theory regarding the selective enforcement of the law
• The Marxist approach is criticised for largely ignoring the relationship between crime and non-class inequalities such as ethnicity and gender
• The Marxist approach is criticised for being too deterministic and over-predicting the amount of crime in the working class: not all poor people commit crime, despite the pressures of poverty
• Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates; for example, the homicide rate in Japan and Switzerland is only about a fifth of that in the United States
• Societies with little or no state welfare provision, such as the USA, tend to have higher crime rates
• The criminal justice system does sometimes act against the interests of the capitalist class. For example, prosecutions for corporate crime do occur
• Occasional prosecutions for corporate crime perform an ideological function in making the system seem impartial
• Marxism ignores intra-class crimes (where both the criminals and victims are working-class) such as burglary and 'mugging', which cause great harm to victims
• Marxism sees crime as a necessity
• Marxism argues that occasional prosecutions for corporate crime perform an ideological function in making the system seem impartial
• Left realists argue that Marxism ignores intra-class crimes such as burglary and 'mugging', which cause great harm to victims