David F. Greenberg (ed.) (1993): Crime and Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Criminology. Introduction
"Radical Jacksonians in the early nineteenth century campaigned against prison construction, arguing that public education and the redistribution of income would eliminate most crime and make new prisons unnecessary." p.1
"Positivist criminology is usually traced to the research on the biological causes of crime carried out by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician. Although he and his disciples soon broadened the focus of their work to include psychological and social variables, they continued to explain crime in terms of the individual attributes of criminal-law violators." p.2
"It was not that the poor stole more, but rather that when they did, the police were more likely to arrest them, the prosecutors to press charges, and the judges to convict and sentence them." p.4
"Matza (1969) called on us to "appreciate" deviance as a form of human diversity, rather than view it as something to be eradicated." p.4
"Once illegal life-styles are regarded as no less legitimate than any other, their prohibition inevitable comes to be seen as arbitrary and repressive." p.5
"criminal legislation was determined not by moral consensus or the common interests of the entire society, but by the relative power of groups determined to use the criminal law to advance their own special interests or to impose their moral preferences on others." p.5
What is crime? - A violation of humans rights, not what the state decides is wrong.
"If crime is not viewed as the product of individual pathology, then it makes no sense to deal with crime by rehabilitating individuals." p.8
In order to disentangle crime and politics, "the myth that crime prevention was a socially neutral function and that questions of policy were no more than issues of technical administrative expertise" had to be shattered. p.8
"Believing that crime is largely a working-class phenomenon, for example, may blind people to the crimes of capitalists. Identifying legal crime with social harm distracts public attention from the many social-systemic harms that are not prohibited under the criminal law." p.9
Great name: Willem Adriaan Bonger p.11
Some elements of Marxian social theory
Marx "argued that an analysis of human action properly begins instead with existing social relations, with people as they actually live in society" p.14
"The forces of production refers to tools, techinical knowledge, human labour, raw materials... The social relations of production refers to the distribution or possession of the means of production (i.e. the land, the machinery...) and the form in which surplus labour is appropriated. Together, the forces and the relations of production comprise a mode of production." p.14
"For Marx, classes are constituted by the social relations of production described earlier. If some possess the means of production but others use the means of production without possessing them, the economic relationships between these two groups defines two classes. Thus one find such paired classes as capitalise (who owns capital) and worker or proletariat (who does not)" p.16
"If the social structure is an important constraint on the behaviour of individuals and institutions, then there are limits to the change that is possible to induce in training for prisoners, for instance, will not eradicate unemployment or do away with low-wage industries." p.18
"Marx himself repudiated moralism time and time again. Although he was angered by the indignities that workers suffered under capitalism (indignities that were objectively unnecessary because the development of industry was making deprivation and hardship unnecessary), he did not blame individual capitalists for their actions. They, no less than workers, were constrained by the logic of the capitalist system." p.22
"Schachtman (1962) characterises the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic collectivist society, since the major means of production are owned collectively but controlled by the bureaucracy rather than the working class." p.23
"Radical Jacksonians in the early nineteenth century campaigned against prison construction, arguing that public education and the redistribution of income would eliminate most crime and make new prisons unnecessary." p.1
"Positivist criminology is usually traced to the research on the biological causes of crime carried out by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician. Although he and his disciples soon broadened the focus of their work to include psychological and social variables, they continued to explain crime in terms of the individual attributes of criminal-law violators." p.2
"It was not that the poor stole more, but rather that when they did, the police were more likely to arrest them, the prosecutors to press charges, and the judges to convict and sentence them." p.4
"Matza (1969) called on us to "appreciate" deviance as a form of human diversity, rather than view it as something to be eradicated." p.4
"Once illegal life-styles are regarded as no less legitimate than any other, their prohibition inevitable comes to be seen as arbitrary and repressive." p.5
"criminal legislation was determined not by moral consensus or the common interests of the entire society, but by the relative power of groups determined to use the criminal law to advance their own special interests or to impose their moral preferences on others." p.5
What is crime? - A violation of humans rights, not what the state decides is wrong.
"If crime is not viewed as the product of individual pathology, then it makes no sense to deal with crime by rehabilitating individuals." p.8
In order to disentangle crime and politics, "the myth that crime prevention was a socially neutral function and that questions of policy were no more than issues of technical administrative expertise" had to be shattered. p.8
"Believing that crime is largely a working-class phenomenon, for example, may blind people to the crimes of capitalists. Identifying legal crime with social harm distracts public attention from the many social-systemic harms that are not prohibited under the criminal law." p.9
Great name: Willem Adriaan Bonger p.11
Some elements of Marxian social theory
Marx "argued that an analysis of human action properly begins instead with existing social relations, with people as they actually live in society" p.14
"The forces of production refers to tools, techinical knowledge, human labour, raw materials... The social relations of production refers to the distribution or possession of the means of production (i.e. the land, the machinery...) and the form in which surplus labour is appropriated. Together, the forces and the relations of production comprise a mode of production." p.14
"For Marx, classes are constituted by the social relations of production described earlier. If some possess the means of production but others use the means of production without possessing them, the economic relationships between these two groups defines two classes. Thus one find such paired classes as capitalise (who owns capital) and worker or proletariat (who does not)" p.16
"If the social structure is an important constraint on the behaviour of individuals and institutions, then there are limits to the change that is possible to induce in training for prisoners, for instance, will not eradicate unemployment or do away with low-wage industries." p.18
"Marx himself repudiated moralism time and time again. Although he was angered by the indignities that workers suffered under capitalism (indignities that were objectively unnecessary because the development of industry was making deprivation and hardship unnecessary), he did not blame individual capitalists for their actions. They, no less than workers, were constrained by the logic of the capitalist system." p.22
"Schachtman (1962) characterises the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic collectivist society, since the major means of production are owned collectively but controlled by the bureaucracy rather than the working class." p.23
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