Marxism and the criminal question

Abstract

The question considered is whether it is possible to trace a theoretical strategy for a criminal policy on the basis of Marx's work. The answer offered is that Marxian political and economic analysis does not supply any “general theory” of criminality and that any attempt to formulate such a theory (as in Lenin, Pašukanis or Gramsci) necessarily leads to authoritarian and regressive conceptions of crime and punishment. Nevertheless the authors maintain that it is possible to trace three theoretical suggestions within Marxian thought which allow of a fruitful approach to the criminal question. The first suggestion relates to the economic roots of many aspects of modern criminality; the second regards the Christian and bourgeois “superstition” of moral liberty and individual culpability; the third suggestion deals with the lack of a guaranteed “social space” as the prime root of crime. These theoretical suggestions permit clarification of the social character of penal responsibility and this character points to the need for the socialization (but not deregulation) of criminal treatment.