Social Inequality as a Context for Crime and Criminalisation in the Work of Marxist and Left - Essay Example

Social inequality as a context for crime and criminalisation in the work of Marxist and left Realist criminologists The 'Realism' criminology hasno doubt changed the new generation views on crime, today the crime is considered as a social dilemma with different socialist views laid down on the grounds of Marx and other political and neo political approaches. If we analyse the theories 'left realism' and 'Marxism', it is clear that all the approaches possess the same roots of political consequences generated from social inequality and class system. Both considers 'social inequality' to be the main bone of contention behind increasing crime rates and this is no doubt true on a global context as well as in Britain. Over the years, increasing rate of crime has proven many theoretical forms and philosophies to which the present-day society has given birth to 'aggression' between the individual man and everyone else, thereby producing a social war in which everyone is taking part irrespective of social structure of class and economic system. Particularly the man is confronted to a social war being fought against all, which inevitably in individual cases, notably among uneducated people, assumes a brutal, barbarously violent form called 'crime'. Now, in order to protect itself against crime or any direct acts of violence, the onus comes on the shoulders of society to adopt an extensive, complicated system of administrative and judicial bodies, which requires an immense labour force. In communist society this would likewise be vastly simplified precisely because strange though it may sound the administrative body in this society would have to manage not merely individual aspects of social life, but the whole of social life, in all its various activities, in all its aspects. Carrabine et al suggests that it is best to eliminate the contradiction between the individual man and all others, we counter-pose social peace to social war, we put the axe to the root of crime and thereby render the greatest, by far the greatest part of the present activity of the administrative and judicial bodies superfluous. (Carrabine et al, 2004, p. 49) Marxist Theory of Crime According to theories presented by Marx, 'social order and societies' are the origin of criminal activities where early social models of crime often assumed a certain harmony or fit between the parts of a society and its overall working. (Carrabine et al, p. 57, 2004) Societies functioned; and the various social institutions in them ranging from work to social gatherings performed certain functions to keep a society balanced, but they lacked in one aspect. This aspect was responsible for crime deviation and that was the "class system". The Marxist theory of crime suggests that crime is bound up with conflict of a class-based nature in which crimes of the powerful are much less noticed than crimes of the weak. (Carrabine, p. 64, 2004) That means social influence of class system is depicted and is varied according to the standards of crime. Marx upholds the opinion that in order to eradicate crime, social inequality must be eradicated at the ground root level. Marxist theory under the impact of conservatism suggests that existence of different social systems is the main causes of creation of 'class'. Any social theory upholds two kinds of societies, positively influenced societies and negatively influenced societies. But in order to understand the impact of class system one must be aware of negatively influenced societies that presents the working of evil societies. Marxist theory indicates a class struggle, which is for centuries cultivated in UK, so it is difficult to cope with that problem. Luther et al suggests that the Marxist theory of social development is inconsistent and does not go well with the social structure of class system particularly when it considers class struggle, the extreme form of social conflict, as the main source of progress, while at the same time it is unable to offer any reasonable theoretical explanation for the outbreak of other various conflicts and moreover to appreciate them as a source of modern social progress. (Luther et al, 1995, p. 77) According to Wood, Marxist hold an opinion close to the nature that individuals form a class because they have 'common interests'. They have common interests because they share a 'common situation'. In view of this, it may be natural to suppose that 'class interests' for Marx are simply the interests of a class's individual members, which happen to coincide because of the similarity of their life-situations. But this is an oversimplification. For one thing, the interests of the members of a given class do not coincide in every respect. This is clear from the fact that members of the same class are often in economic competition with one another. And a turn of events which affects the interests of most members of a class in one way may accidentally have just the opposite effect on the interests of some of its members. (Wood, 2004, p. 92) But there is a still deeper problem with any attempt to understand Marxian class interests simply as a function of the interests of the class's individual members. People are united only by shared interests based on a common situation; they do not yet properly constitute a 'class' in Marx's sense. Individuals who share a common situation and common interests are at most a class potentially, unconsciously or 'in itself'; they are not considered as a class because simply sharing or having common aims and goals does not constitute a class system. However such issues are decided, there seems to be no good reason for thinking of illogical explanations as necessarily 'unscientific' or at odds with Marx's generally 'materialistic' view of the world. Marx in certain issues reflects thorny and materialistic thinking, which also serve as the secondary basis for creation of class system. If there are causal explanations for the existence of organised systems and their persistent tendencies, these systems and tendencies are not the less objective features of the world for that. (Wood, 2004, p. 107-08) Karl Marx observed and mentioned all the reasons regarding workings of a capitalistic system, which focussed that system that generated high levels of crime. It is through this crime that according to Marx, human beings lead unconscious and meaningless lives. In this context Marx believes in the development and exercise of their essential human powers, whose focus is labour or production. Because these powers are historical in character, varying from society to society and expanding in the course of history, the degree to which crime is a systematic social phenomenon also varies, as a function both of what society's productive capacities are and of the extent to which the human potentialities they represent have been incorporated into the lives of actual men and women. Generally speaking, the degree of systematic, socially caused alienation in a society will be proportional to the gap, which exists in that society between the human potentialities contained virtually in society's productive powers and the actualisation of these potentialities by the society's members. Thus the possibilities for alienation increase along with the productive powers of society. For as these powers expand, there is more and more room for a discrepancy between what human life is and what it might be. There is more and more pressure on social arrangements to allow for the lives of individual human beings to share in the wealth of human capacities, which belong to social labour. (Wood, 2004, p. 45) For many of the early social disorganisation theorists, the solution to the social problems that resulted from rapid social change could be found in purposive efforts by ordinary people to reorganise their communities. (Sasson, 1995, p. 55) Marx distinguishes between the social division of labour or system of work relations, and the 'form of intercourse', the system of social or economic relations (such as those between capitalist and labourer, landlord and tenant, guild master and journeyman). (Wood, 2004, p. 82) Because crime is a dominant issue on the public agenda, the frames that are used to interpret it are user friendly for use in interpreting other issues that can be construed as related. To the extent this is so, variations on 'Social Breakdown' can be used to interpret the problems highlighted by Marx in context with crime as an outcome of poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, health care, infant mortality, and so on. This tendency is already occasionally evident in the rhetoric of conservative intellectuals. Because of the continuing salience of crime, the problems of social inequality and justice require law and order regarding proper jurisdiction. (Sasson, 1995, p. 168) Left Realism Influence on Criminology Left Realism often termed, as 'left Idealism' possess the deep root of 'Marxist' criminological perspectives, which emphasizes upon the key factors that are responsible for the cause of crime. Emerged in the UK in 1984, it stresses on the political and social conditions of a capitalist society the onus, which it puts on the shoulder of 'class system'. So far it has adopted various perceptions from socialist, feminist and post modernist theories. Thus left idealism analyses the crime from the perspective of social norms and class system and believes that in order to control crime from the society, the Government must improve working and economic conditions of the society. Like opportunities must be provided to the society in order to alleviate unemployment, however left realism can be best understood in the context of 'inequality', so it focuses on the causes of crime, thereby conducting crime surveys. Left realism defines crime as truly sociological concept. It does not exist as some autonomous entity but is socially constructed. While there is much agreement, what is regarded as crime also varies across time, place and people recognition of social and economic divisions, like a person's labour, wealth and income play a key role in crime; gender and sexuality divisions (Carrabine et al, 2004, p. 5) Left realism constructs crime on the basis of collective group of individuals, who are not concerned about the consequences to be built after committing a crime. Left Realism upholds the main reason for why such group is not bothered about penalty, for such individuals belong to middle or lower class society who is deprived of necessities of life. Left realism wants to lift those causes that are responsible for the creation of such groups that eventually are not concerned about the consequences of committing crime. However, it is an odd irony that conflict analyses concerned about class and power differences for so long neglected the importance of gender despite their focus on social inequality. If, as conflict theory suggests, economic disadvantage is a primary cause of crime, why do women whose economic position is, on average, much worse than that of men commit far fewer crimes than men do (Fennell et al, 1995, p. 94) The main loophole 'Left Realism' contains is that it does not blame the criminals for committing crime; rather it blames the UK society for creating such conditions, which exacerbate crime. The main target for it is the middle class people or those who walk in streets, as such people are deprived of economic benefits. According to Fennell et al, (1995) "The United Kingdom today faces a problem of crime, which could not possibly have been forecast at the end of the Second World War. Since then there has been a large increase in the number of crimes reported to the police. In 1950 approximately 500,000 crimes were reported. In 1950 approximately 500,000 crimes were reported. This figure rose to 1.6 million in 1970, 2.5 million in 1980 and 5.4 million in 1991". (Fennell et al, 1995, p. 21) The increasing rate of crime therefore caused UK younger criminologists to take initiatives regarding crime policies and so the crime perspectives started to be viewed from angles of offender. Partial theories of criminology were rejected; a new approach was adopted which focused on the impact, which a crime upholds on its victim. This involved mainly working class, as the main aim was to explore the social cause of crime. (Social, 2006a) The view that poverty causes crime should be considered in the light of those facts and claims that fly in the face of people's personal knowledge of individuals who have lifted themselves out of poverty without breaking the law. Moreover, as many people interpret it, it also implies the unacceptable notions that individual efforts to be good do not matter, and that poor people are morally inferior (this is ironic insofar as the supposition of moral inferiority is made tenable only through the rejection of Blocked Opportunities). The claim that poverty causes crime, so natural on the political left, thus strikes many people as itself immoral. (Sasson, 1995, p. 171) With endangering offences, criminal law was reshaped and merged into very complex subsystems of society such as the economic system and the natural environment. With all of this, investigative activities moved away from repression and toward prevention. The traditional role of criminal investigation was discarded as it was realised with the growing rate of crime that traditional method never remained successful in dealing with UK crime. Therefore, the impact that 'left' realism left on criminal explanations was triggered by changes in the larger society as well as in basic criminal law and crime policies. With the advent of the new investigative methods and policies, trial procedures adjusted accordingly. However, the traditional structure of the criminal procedure, the concept of defendants' rights, and the customary balance of power as expressed in the relationship between police, public prosecutor, defence counsel, and the judiciary has been deeply affected during this process. (Barak, 2000, p. 44) The future of criminal policy seems to be influenced heavily by the rhetoric on organised crime. The concept of organised crime, indeed, is very influential in crime policy as it refers to the rational offender, to the homo economics, to whom economic theories of punishment may be applied. While during the 1960s and 1970s criminal policy was based on the concept of the maladapted or unsocialised offender, the 1990s presented the rational cost-calculating offender who behaves like any other businessman weighing the benefits and costs of different options of behaviour. Most probably, this model of the criminal offender has not only affected criminal law and sentencing decisions, but it has added significant effect on prison regimes. The model of the rational offender has also contributed to putting more weight on the efficiency model of criminal law as opposed to the justice model or to proportionality. This fits with arguments in policy debates stressing the need for amendments and reform in order to make criminal law more efficient. (2000, p. 44) Based on this concept of crime, the approach to punishment is either to exorcise the devil or exile or execute the wrongdoer. Punishment is inflicted in order to remove the stain of impurity from society, and this must be done in order to alleviate crime at all levels from the society, irrespective of the class system. References & Bibliography Barak Gregg, (2000) Crime and Crime Control: A Global View: Greenwood Press: Westport, CT. Carrabine Eamonn, Iganski Paul, Lee Maggy, Plummer Ken & South Nigel, (2004) Criminology: A Sociological Introduction: Routledge: New York. Fennell Phil, Harding Christopher, Jorg Nico & Swart Bert, (1995) Criminal Justice in Europe: A Comparative Study: Clarendon Press: Oxford. Luther F. Sara, Neumaier J. John & Parsons L. Howard, (1995) Diverse Perspectives on Marxist Philosophy: East and West: Greenwood Press: Westport, CT. Sasson Theodore, (1995) Crime Talk: How Citizens Construct a Social Problem: Aldine De Gruyter: New York. Social 2006a, Accessed from Wood W. Allen, (2004) Karl Marx: Routledge: New York. Read More