Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to episode four of Crime and Deviants
Speaker 1: for the Sociology Show podcast. In this episode, we'll be
Speaker 1: looking at Marxism and neo Marxism. We will consider how
Speaker 1: do the laws benefit the ruling class, Is crime a
Speaker 1: rational response to capitalism? Is law enforcements selective? And how
Speaker 1: do the working class subcultures resist capitalism? As structuralists, Marxists
Speaker 1: take a macro view that structures of society influence our behavior.
Speaker 1: Unlike functionists who suggest that the structure is good for us,
Speaker 1: Marxist suggests that the structure of capitalism is a problem
Speaker 1: because the bourgeoisie impose their values onto the working class.
Speaker 1: Marxists argue all the crime has its origins in the
Speaker 1: capitalist system and the unequal relation between these two social
Speaker 1: classes where the bourgeoisie control the law and the police.
Speaker 1: The first sociologist we're consider is Snyder, and she says
Speaker 1: that the dominant ideology favors the powerful. Snyder believes that
Speaker 1: criminology focuses on street crime whilst ignoring middle class crime.
Speaker 1: Snyder suggests this is a distortion purposely set up by
Speaker 1: the bourgeoisie to distract away from the types of crimes
Speaker 1: that the bourgeoisie commit, such as white collar and corporate crime.
Speaker 1: She suggests that the ruling class use the agents of
Speaker 1: social control to construct the laws to control and punish
Speaker 1: the working classes, while they apply an exceedingly light touch
Speaker 1: when it comes to the misdemeanors of the powerful. White
Speaker 1: Collar crime consists of crime committed by professionals in the
Speaker 1: course of their employment. There are two types of white
Speaker 1: collar crime. One is occupational crime, and this happens when
Speaker 1: a person in employment commits crime against their employers for
Speaker 1: their own individual benefit. For example, this could be something minor,
Speaker 1: such as stealing paper clips or paper from work, or
Speaker 1: it might include an employee defrauding their employer by making
Speaker 1: false expenses claims. In two thousand and eight, it was
Speaker 1: disclosed that many britishs had claimed for expenses that they
Speaker 1: were not entitle to. A public outcry over the abuse
Speaker 1: of taxpayers money led to revelations that these powerful, wealthy
Speaker 1: people had claimed money back for items which they were
Speaker 1: not entitled to and not essential to their jobs. For example,
Speaker 1: one MP claimed sixteen hundred pounds for a duckhouse for
Speaker 1: its pond. Other MPs had claimed for wallpaper costing one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds a roll, and one had claimed for pawn
Speaker 1: films they'd watched on a pay per view channel in
Speaker 1: a hotel. MPs were found to have faked receipts, use
Speaker 1: false accounting, and paid relatives for jobs they didn't actually
Speaker 1: carry out. These are examples of crimes which Snyder suggests
Speaker 1: are common amongst the rich and powerful, Yet it took
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist four years to get the story taken
Speaker 1: seriously by the police. Most MPs simply paid back the
Speaker 1: sum they had falsely claimed for, rather than being charged
Speaker 1: with the criminal offense. Snyder points out that this is
Speaker 1: different to the way benefit sheets or shoplifters are treated,
Speaker 1: with criminal prosecutions much more common for these crimes. Snyder
Speaker 1: is also interested in corporate crime, the second type of
Speaker 1: white collar crime, which is defined as crime carried out
Speaker 1: by business motivated by a desire to increase profits eye
Speaker 1: crimes that benefit the company. For example, Volkswagen omitted manufacturing
Speaker 1: cars that cheated emissions tests so that eleven million cars
Speaker 1: were sold worldwide that produced pollution that is above the
Speaker 1: legal levels. Though the company were fined, no one has
Speaker 1: gone to prison, despite estimates that the extra pollution worldwide
Speaker 1: will have led to thousands of death Enron and American
Speaker 1: Energy Company carried out false accounting or reported high profit
Speaker 1: which allowed their president can have laid to borrow seventy
Speaker 1: four million dollars from a company before it was made bankrupt.
Speaker 1: Twenty thousand creditors were owed and estimated sixty seven billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Most received less than twenty cents for every dollar they
Speaker 1: were owed. Zineteen thousand people lost their jobs and savings.
Speaker 1: In addition, Snyder suggests that what is considered to be
Speaker 1: legal or illegal reflects the interest of the bourgeoisie. For example,
Speaker 1: the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, the Snowden Report, and
Speaker 1: many others all demonstrate the lengths to which the powerful
Speaker 1: and wealthy would go to protect their assets and make
Speaker 1: more money. The Paradise and Panama Papers revealed massive tax
Speaker 1: avoidance by some of the richest people in the country,
Speaker 1: including the Queen, who were hiding their money in offshore
Speaker 1: accounts and as a result, paying little or no tax.
Speaker 1: Though most of the country were outraged, this practice is
Speaker 1: not illegal. Snyder suggests this is because those who control
Speaker 1: the law, the bourgeoisie, control it in their interests, so
Speaker 1: they would never make such a practice illegal. Snyder therefore
Speaker 1: argues that the middle and upper classes are involved in
Speaker 1: equal amounts of crime as any other class. However, they
Speaker 1: occupy powerful positions which enable them to avoid detection of
Speaker 1: p prosecution. Marxist argued that the amount of money generated
Speaker 1: from white collar crimes comes into billions, yet the government
Speaker 1: seem to focus on criminalizing unemployment benefit cheats, which is
Speaker 1: much less significant financially. Owen Jones, in his book The
Speaker 1: Establishment and How to Get Away with It tells us
Speaker 1: that benefit fraud cost the taxpayers one point two billion
Speaker 1: and is treated as a despicable crime, but tax avoidance
Speaker 1: is worth an estimated twenty five billion per year, and
Speaker 1: accountancy firms will promote tax avoidance schemes because it is
Speaker 1: part of the capitalist ideology. Marxists therefore want us to
Speaker 1: redirect our focus onto white collar crime. They also want
Speaker 1: us to consider what is criminality and what determines who
Speaker 1: is seen as criminal. Onto our second Marxist and we're
Speaker 1: going to look at David Gordon, who uses the phrase
Speaker 1: selective law enforcement. The selective enforcement in the law means
Speaker 1: that despite the law applying to everyone, prosecutions of the
Speaker 1: ruling class are rare, while those against the working class
Speaker 1: are frequent. The occasional prosecution of ruling class crime perpetuates
Speaker 1: the fiction that the law operates for the benefit of
Speaker 1: society as a whole, that the state represents the public interest,
Speaker 1: and the extent of ruling class crime is small. Gordon
Speaker 1: argues that selecting members of the working class and punishing
Speaker 1: them as individuals protects the system, which is primarily responsible
Speaker 1: for their criminal deviance. Individuals are defined as social failures,
Speaker 1: and as such they are responsible for their criminal activities.
Speaker 1: In this way, blame and condemnation are directed at the
Speaker 1: individual rather than the institutions of capitalism. Defining criminals as
Speaker 1: animals and misfits and enemies of the state provides a
Speaker 1: justification for incarcerating them in prisons. This keeps them hidden
Speaker 1: from view and means that most vociferous opponents to capitalism
Speaker 1: are incarcerated. In this way, the most embarrassing extremes produced
Speaker 1: by the capitalist system and neatly swept under the carpet,
Speaker 1: and capitalism continues unquestioned. If something was done to help
Speaker 1: those who broke the law, if their problems were made public,
Speaker 1: the whole system might be questioned. For example, Rainer's study
Speaker 1: of prison population shows us that seventy four percent of
Speaker 1: people who are incarcerated were either unemployed or employed at
Speaker 1: the lowest occupational levels prior to their imprisonment. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: law was fully enforced on these groups, whereas most politicians
Speaker 1: who swindled those taxes were allowed to pay back the
Speaker 1: money or received only a small fine. Guinness, the drinks
Speaker 1: company who made false claims of success which led to
Speaker 1: high share prices in company directors making millions of pounds
Speaker 1: in illegal profits. Only one person involved received a one
Speaker 1: year sentence in Ford Prison, which is an open prison,
Speaker 1: and was released on parole after serving about six months.
Speaker 1: He is still a successful businessman and received a CBE
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. Another example was the BOPA disaster, an
Speaker 1: American chemical company which caused a gathek that killed ten
Speaker 1: thousand locals on one night in nineteen eighty four, Yet
Speaker 1: no one has been in prison for that crime. These
Speaker 1: are all brief examples of selective law enforcement, i e.
Speaker 1: The law is created for the benefit of capitalism and
Speaker 1: enforced selectively on some groups but not others. Onto Neo Marxism,
Speaker 1: and radical criminology. Neo means new. Therefore, neo Marxists put
Speaker 1: greater emphasis on the role of ideological superstructure, especially the
Speaker 1: media in education, than traditional Marxists do. Neo Marxists argue
Speaker 1: that while capitalism is still central to the importance cultural hegemony,
Speaker 1: this is the idea of the powerful elites is influenced
Speaker 1: and maintained through the role of ideological institutions like education
Speaker 1: and the media. Radical criminologists talk about the power of
Speaker 1: the media in creating scapegoats. Radical criminology is a form
Speaker 1: of neo Marxism which combines Marxist views with interactionism. Hall
Speaker 1: conducted a study called Policing the Crisis, and he argues
Speaker 1: there was a moral panic created about crime and in
Speaker 1: particular mugging by black news. Newspapers ran headlines which suggested
Speaker 1: that young black men were dangerous and as they were
Speaker 1: spearheading a crime wave, they should be avoided, especially when
Speaker 1: it came to mugging and street theft. This media reporting
Speaker 1: alerted the public to a new problem, and concern grew
Speaker 1: for public safety. The public demanded more police on the
Speaker 1: streets to defend them. However, Hall suggests that there is
Speaker 1: no evidence to indicate that the crime of mugging was
Speaker 1: new or increasing, rather than it served a purpose to
Speaker 1: draw attention away from the economic problems, industrial and social unrest,
Speaker 1: the strikes that were going on at the time, for example,
Speaker 1: and so powerful media organizations often try to divert the
Speaker 1: attention away of the public from what's really happening and
Speaker 1: put a blame on the smaller, less powerful, and more
Speaker 1: vulnerable groups. Next we have Shalmless and Chalmless talks about
Speaker 1: capitalist societies being criminogenic. Chalmless argues that capitalism promotes values
Speaker 1: that are likely to lead to crime. For example, values
Speaker 1: such as individualism and competition may lead people to steal
Speaker 1: from each other. Consumerous desires may lead people to shoplift.
Speaker 1: Basing status on money may lead people to commit fraud.
Speaker 1: Being oppressed and exploited may lead people to public disorder
Speaker 1: or violence. The way capitalism generates division between the workers
Speaker 1: may lead to hate crimes. Chalmbress causes set of values criminogenic,
Speaker 1: which means that regardless of a social class, we are
Speaker 1: all socialized into wanting more and more, and therefore everyone,
Speaker 1: whether we're rich or poor, is more likely to commit crime.
Speaker 1: He says, the very nature of capitalism itself leads to crime.
Speaker 1: In a valuation of Marxism, then there are many criticisms
Speaker 1: lots of Marxism, particularly traditional Marxism was written a long
Speaker 1: time ago, and many people say it's quite outdated with
Speaker 1: a postmodern society. We can also use functionism to criticize
Speaker 1: Marxism as well. Functionists of course suggested that there are
Speaker 1: some positives to crime, whereas Marxism only looks through the
Speaker 1: lens of social class. This could also be a criticism
Speaker 1: from the feminist point of view, as feminists argue that
Speaker 1: Marxists only look at social class and don't consider factors
Speaker 1: in relation to gender and why the majority of crime
Speaker 1: is committed by men. You could, also, of course look
Speaker 1: at right realism and left realism as alternative suggestions to
Speaker 1: the Marxist viewpoint, as well as the interactionist view, which
Speaker 1: takes a much more micro interpretivist look at why people
Speaker 1: commit crime. Thank you for listening to the show. If
Speaker 1: you've not yet listened to episodes one, two, and three,
Speaker 1: then please do go back and listen now. Thank you