Crime, Justice, and Socialist Construction - Crime and Criminal Justice Under Capitalism and Socialism - Towards a Marxist Perspective

• NCJ Number: 103235
• Journal: Crime and Social Justice Issue: 25 Dated: (1986) Pages: 115-135
• Author(s): J Horton; T Platt
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 21 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Sociology Association in Detroit, 1983.

Annotation

This article assesses current theories derived from comparisons of crime patterns in socialist and capitalist societies and presents a Marxist world-system analysis as the recommended alternative for explaining crime and criminal justice in capitalist and socialist states.

Abstract

Mainstream criminologists assume the universality of crime as a byproduct of modernization and attribute the reduction of crime under socialism to totalitarian social control methods. This perspective fails to appreciate diverse patterns of socioeconomic progress and the beneficial nontotalitarian effects of socialism. Radical criminologists, on the other hand, have neglected the empirical study of socialist societies, idealistically measuring the successes of socialism by a utopian blueprint for national development that inevitably yields disillusionment. A Marxist and dialectical interpretation of contradictions within the capitalist world system provides the tools for an alternative analysis of the accomplishments and limitations of socialism in a world system dominated by capitalism. This perspective indicates that the seeds of social justice which can significantly reduce crime in socialist nations will only grow to maturity when the capitalist world economy is supplanted by the emerging socialist world economy. 54 references.