Structural Marxisim

Structural Marxism

Marxism is concerned with the domination of the working class by capitalists who own the social means of production. Structural Marxists, on the other hand, deny deliberate intention by the ruling class and, instead, focus on the social relations within which people are embedded. With regards to the theory's application to crime, Structural Marxists such as Stephan Spitzer view deviance as residing in the structure not the individual (Spitzer, cited by Williams and McShane).

Steven Spitzer asserts that a capitalist economy, by its very nature, creates a surplus population. Spitzer defined two segments of society who are not in positions to power to mark off adequate distributions of resources for themselves. One group is "social junk," describing individuals who can not secure the resources such as employment to have a good life and are, therefore, dependent on others for the provision of their basic needs. The other group is called "social dynamite," people who have also fallen through the cracks of our social system, but who have become rebellious or violent because of their perceived failure.

Social dynamite" can come from any social class and costs of individuals such as strikers, demonstrators and minorities. Unlike "social junk," "social dynamite" poses a threat to our system.

Spitzer states that the purpose of law is to maintain the capitalist system and control members of any social class who pose a threat. Perceived threats include: impeding production by resisting work, impeding distribution by stealing from the rich, impeding socialization through truancy and impeding ideology through counter-hegemony. In general, elites consider "social junk" as a costly, but relatively harmless burden to society. According to Spitzer, the elites view crimes committed by "social junk" such as street crimes as producing victims that are mostly members of an expendable class. The objective for coping with social junk" is to keep them from turning into "social dynamite." Social protest poses a far greater threat than ordinary street crime because it threatens social order and the status quo. Thus, populations are defined in terms of their threat and costs to capitalist relations of production and are criminalized as either the size of the group increases, political organization decreases or as institution control such as the family, school and the military fail.