Thompson (strange bedfellows!) that law has a substance of its own, and as such can provide a degree of defence to working-class interests.
Another way of linking Marxism and crime is through the analysis of law, and I agree with Paul Hirst and E. I then turn to the idea that crime might be part of the reproduction conditions of capitalism, and basically conclude that it is a contingent possibility rather than a necessary feature. It would be possible to make some use of Marx’s theory of alienation in the analysis of crime, but I consider that the theory is too vague to be seriously helpful. Marx and Engels themselves associated crime with the lumpenproletariat, but I argue that the definition of the lumpenproletariat is foggy, and the concept is dubious for the same reasons that Charles Murray’s conception of the underclass is dubious. In this chapter my intention is to draw on some themes analysed by the above authors and my own reading of Marx in order to give an overview of some areas where Marxism has been, or could be, used to analyse crime. Notable figures have been Willem Bonger (1916), Rusch and Kircheimer (1939), in the United States Richard Quinney in the 1970s (1970 1970a 1974 1977 2002), Frank Pearce (1978) writing on the USA from Britain and Canada, William Chambliss (1975), Chambliss and Mankoff (1976), Chambliss (1978), Chambliss and Seidman (1982), Chambliss (2001), Ray Michaelowski (1985) Jeffrey Reiman (1998 2004) Christian Parenti (1999) and, in Britain, Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973a 1973b 1975), the authors of Policing the Crisis (1978), Ian Taylor (1999) and John Lea (2002). There has been quite a substantial tradition of criminological theory that makes some use of Marxism. PDF Versions: Reply by Kristian Lasslett.
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