Chapter 6
Critical Theories: Marxist, Conflict & Feminist
Chapter Summary
 Chapter Six is an overview of the critical theories of
crime. The Chapter begins with an evaluation and
analysis of Karl Marx.
 From neo-Marxism came the more popular conflict
theory of crime. The Chapter then discusses post
modernism and peacemaking criminology, and explains
why these theories are recognized in the critical
framework.
 After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
 Explain critical criminology.
 Chapter Six then explains feminism, & the gendered
problem of crime.
Chapter Summary
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The chapter concludes with an analysis and evaluation
of each of the critical theories, as well as the policy
implications that arise from the critical theories.
Understand Marxism and neo-Marxism
Explain the conflict perspective of crime
Understand postmodernist & peacemaking criminology.
Discuss feminist criminology.
Analyze and critique the critical theories.
Discuss policy implications.
The Conflict Perspective of Society
 Critical theorists see society riddled with
dissension, inequality, and conflict.
 Any apparent consensus in society is maintained
by overt and covert coercion.
 Critical criminology: An umbrella term
chosen for variety of theories united only the
above assumption that conflict and power
relations between various classes of people best
characterize the nature of society.
Karl Marx & Revolution
 The core of Marxist is the concept of class
struggle.
 In Marx’s time the oppressors were the wealth
owners of the means of production (the
bourgeoisie) and the oppressed were the
working class (the proletariat).
 The ruling class always develops ideologies to
justify and legitimize their exploitation.
 Marx called the workers’ acceptance of
ideologies that ran counter to their interests
false consciousness.
Karl Marx & Revolution
 In time, false consciousness would be replaced by
class consciousness; that is, the recognition of a
common class condition and the development of
a common unity in opposition to capitalist
exploitation.
 This would set the stage for revolution.
Karl Marx & Revolution
 According to Marx and Engels, criminals came
from a third class in society—the
lumpenproletariat—who would play no decisive
role in the expected revolution.
 Crime was the product of an unjust, alienating,
and demoralizing social condition that denied
productive labor to the masses of unemployed.
Karl Marx & Revolution
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The origin of crime has come to be known as the
primitive rebellion.
Capitalist societies pass laws that criminalize any
action that jeopardizes private property and tend to
overlook many socially injurious activities viewed as
economically beneficial for the ruling class.
Willem Bonger: The 1st Marxist Criminologist
 Willem Bonger: Criminality and Economic Conditions
(1969) supported the view that the roots of crime lay
in the exploitative and alienating conditions of
capitalism.
 The social sentiments that concerned him were
altruism—an active concern for the well-being of
others—and its opposite, egoism, a concern only for
one’s own selfish interests.
Willem Bonger: The 1st Marxist Criminologist
 According to Bonger, all individuals in capitalist
societies are infected by egoism because they are
alienated from authentic social relationships with
their fellow human beings, and all are thus prone
to crime.
Willem Bonger: The 1st Marxist Criminologist
The root cause of crime is the capitalist mode of
production.
Poverty was the major cause of crime, but the effects of
poverty can be traced to the family structure and on
parental inability to properly supervise their children.
Modern Marxist Criminology
 Neo-Marxist criminology is little more than maudlin
sentimentality for criminals.
 Many neo-Marxist criminologists appear to view the
class struggle is the only source of all crime and to
view real crime as violations of human rights, such
as racism, sexism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Modern Marxist Criminology
 Other neo-Marxists are faithful to Marx’s view
and are critical of common street crime as an
activity preventing the formation of proletarian
class consciousness.
Left Realism—Taking Crime Seriously
Left realist criminologists believe that the path of
least resistance is to work within the system.
People make choices for which they must be held
accountable, but there are a variety of conditions that
make some choices more probable and
understandable than others.
Conflict Theory: Max Weber, Power & Conflict
 Max Weber had an interest in the social change
wrought by the industrial revolution and in social
conflict.
 Weber viewed the various class divisions in society as
normal, inevitable, and acceptable.
 Criminality exists in all societies and is the result of
the political struggle among different groups
attempting to promote or enhance their life chances.
From Individual Violators to Group Struggles
George Vold moved conflict away from an exclusive
emphasis of value and normative conflicts to include conflicts
of interest.
Social life is a continual struggle to maintain or improve
one’s own group’s interest in a constant clash of
antagonistic actions.
From Individual Violators to Group Struggles
Vold’s conflict theory concentrates entirely on the clash of
individuals loyally upholding their differing group interests,
and has no interest in explaining crime unrelated to group
conflict.
Conflict is a way of assuring social change, a way of
generating group solidarity, and a way of assuring social
stability.
The Social Reality of Crime
 The ultimate cause of crime is the law.
 Conflict criminologists differ from neo-Marxist
criminology in that it concentrates on the processes
of value conflict and lawmaking rather than on the
social structural elements underlying them.
The Social Reality of Crime
 Conflict theorists make no value judgment about
whether crime is socially harmful, the actions of
revolutionaries, or violations of human rights.
 Conflict theorists tend to share neo-Marxism’s fondness
for research illustrating some principle of their
perspectives rather than formulating hypotheses from it
and putting them to the test.
Table 6.1
Comparing Marxist and Conflict Theory on Major Concepts
Concept
Marxist
Conflict
The powerful oppressing the
powerless (e.g., the bourgeoisie
oppressing the proletariat under
capitalism).
It is generated by many factors
regardless of the political and
economic system.
Nature of conflict
It is socially bad and must and will be
eliminated in a socialist system.
It is socially useful and necessary
and cannot be eliminated.
Major participants
in conflict
The owners of the means of
production and the workers are
engaged in the only conflict that
matters.
Conflict takes place everywhere
between all sorts of interest
groups.
Social class
Only two classes defined by their
relationship to the means of
production, the bourgeoisie and
proletariat. The aristocracy and the
lumpenproletariat are parasite classes
that will be eliminated.
There are number of different
classes in society defined by their
relative wealth, status, and power.
Origin of conflict
Table 6.1
Comparing Marxist and Conflict Theory on Major Concepts
Concept
Marxist
Conflict
Concept of the law
It is the tool of the ruling class that
criminalizes the activities of the workers
harmful to its interests and ignores its
own socially harmful behavior.
The law favors the powerful, but not
any one particular group. The greater
the wealth, power, and prestige a group
has, the more likely the law will favor
it.
Concept of crime
Some view crime as the revolutionary
actions of the downtrodden, others view
it as the socially harmful acts of “class
traitors,” and others see it as violations
of human rights.
Conflict theorists refuse to pass moral
judgment because they view criminal
conduct as morally neutral with no
intrinsic properties that distinguish it
from conforming behavior. Crime
doesn’t exist until a powerful interest
group is able to criminalize the
activities of another less powerful
group.
Cause of crime
The dehumanizing conditions of
capitalism. Capitalism generates egoism
and alienates people from themselves and
from others.
The distribution of political power that
leads to some interest groups being
able to criminalize the acts of other
interest groups.
Cure for crime
With the overthrow of the capitalist
mode of production, the natural goodness
of humanity will emerge, and there will be
no more criminal behavior.
As long as people have different
interests and as long as some groups
have more power than others, crime
will exist. Since interest and power
differentials are part of the human
condition, crime will always be with us.
Postmodernist Theory
 Postmodernist criminology is firmly in the
critical/radical tradition in that it views the law as an
oppressive instrument of the rich and powerful, but it
rejects the modernist view of the world.
 All knowledge is socially constructed and has no
independent reality apart from the minds of those who
create it.
Postmodernist Theory
 All worldviews are mediated by
language.
 The dominant language of
society is the language of the rich
and powerful, and by virtue of
owning the dominant language
their point of view is privileged.
Peacemaking Criminology
 Peacemaking criminology has the philosophy of “peace
on crime.”
 Punishing criminals escalates violence.
 In place of imprisoning offenders, peacemaking
criminologists advocate restorative justice, which is
basically a system of mediation and conflict resolution.
Feminist Criminology
 Feminism is a set of theories & strategies for social
change that take gender as their central focus in
attempting to understand social institutions, processes,
and relationships.
 Mainstream feminism holds the view that women suffer
oppression & discrimination in a society run for men by
men who have passed laws and created customs to
perpetuate their privileged position.
 Gender & power rather than class & power.
Feminist Criminology
 Female crime has been virtually ignored by
mainstream criminology.
 Generalizability problem: Do traditional malecentered theories of crime apply to women?
 Gender ratio problem: What explains the universal
fact that women are far less likely than men to involve
themselves in criminal activity?
The Generalizability Problem
 Anomie theory: This theory cannot be applied to women
because women are socialized to be successful in
relationships, to get married, and to raise families, not for
financial success.
 Subculture theories: This theory cannot explain why
women who have achieved their relationship goals
commit crimes.
 Differential association: This theory is better for
explaining why females commit less crime than men.
The Generalizability Problem
 Labeling: The labeling perspective is not an
explanation as to why people engage in deviance in the
first place, and it lacks an analysis of the structures of
power and oppression impinging on women
 Marxism: This theory neglects gender issues, plus,
working-class women experience the same capitalist
exploitation as men, but they still commit far less crime
The Gender Ratio Problem
-Mainstream feminists have asserted that if females were
socialized in the same way as males & had similar roles and
experiences, their rates of criminal offending would be
roughly the same.
-This assertion is denied by the biological sciences, as well
as by radical feminists, who view gender difference in
behavior as a function of “differentially wired brains.”
Masculinization & Emancipation Hypothesis:
Adler & Simon
 Freda Adler attributed the rise in female crime rates in
the 1960s and 1970s to an increasing number of females
adopting “male” roles, and by doing so increasingly
masculinizing their attitudes and behavior (The
Masculinization Hypothesis).
 Rita Simon claimed that increased participation in the
workforce affords women greater opportunities to
commit crime
(The Emancipation Hypothesis).
Masculinization & Emancipation Hypothesis:
Adler & Simon
More recently, it has been proposed that the gender ratio
exists
1. because gender differs in exposure to delinquent peers
& that males are more influenced by delinquent peers
than females
2. because of female greater inhibitory morality.
Female-Centered Theory:
Criminalizing Girl’s Survival & Victim Precipitated
Homicide
Rather than developing general theories of female crime,
feminist theories have developed a series of models
cataloging the responses of girls and women to situations
more or less specific to their gender that result in the
committing specific criminal acts.
Female-Centered Theory:
Criminalizing Girl’s Survival & Victim Precipitated
Homicide
Chesney-Lind: Girls’ victimization & their response to
it are shaped by their status in a patriarchal society in
which males dominate the family & define their
daughters & stepdaughters as sexual property.
Female-Centered Theory:
Criminalizing Girl’s Survival & Victim Precipitated
Homicide
 Victim-precipitated homicide, which is a homicide in
which the murder victim initiates the sequence of events
that leads to his or her death.
Radical Feminist Explanation
 Radical feminists argue that because the magnitude of
the gender gap varies across time and space and yet
remains constantly wide at all ties and in all places that
biological factors must play a large part.
 The root of gender ratio lies in the fundamental
differences between the genders.
Radical Feminist Explanation
Anne Campbell: Staying alive
hypothesis—evolutionary logic is all
about passing on genes that proved
useful in the struggle for survival and
reproductive success to future
generations over the eons of time in
which our most human
characteristics were being formed.
Radical Feminist Explanation
 Because offspring survival is so important to their
reproductive success, females evolved a propensity to
avoid engaging in behaviors that pose survival risks.
 When females engage in crime they almost always do
so for instrumental reasons, and their crimes rarely
involve risk of physical injury.
Evaluation of Critical Theories
 It is often said that Marxist theory has very little that is
unique to add to criminology theory.
 Much of Marxist criminology appears to be in a time
warp in that it assumes that the conditions prevailing in
Marx’s time still exist in the same form today in advanced
capitalist societies.
 Conflict theory does not attempt to explain crime; it
simply identifies social conflict as a basic fact of life and
a source of discriminatory treatment.
Evaluation of Critical Theories
 Postmodernism offers no viable alternative except to
advance the notion that crime can be abated by
changing the way people think and talk about it.
 Peacemaking criminologists never offer any notion as to
how crime rates can be reduced beyond counseling that
we appreciate criminals’ point of view and not be so
punitive.
Evaluation of Critical Theories
 According to feminist theory, maleness is without
doubt the best single predictor of criminal behavior.
 This leaves feminist theorists without much left to
explain in specific female terms about female
offending.
Policy Prevention: Implications of Critical Theories
 The policy implications of Marxism are to overthrow
the capitalist system and crime will be reduced.
 Policy recommendations by left realists include
community activities, neighborhood watches,
community policing, dispute resolution centers, and
target hardening.
Policy Prevention: Implications of Critical Theories
 Conflict theorists favor programs such as minimum
wage laws, sharply progressive taxation, a government
controlled comprehensive health care system, maternal
leave, and national policy of family support as a way of
reducing crime.
 Feminists argue to reform our patriarchal society as well
as push the plight of victims into the light of day.