Marxist criminology is one of the schools of criminology. It parallels the work of the structural functionalism school which focuses on what produces stability and continuity in society but, unlike the functionalists, it adopts a predefined political philosophy. As in conflict criminology, it focuses on why things change, identifying the disruptive forces in industrialized societies, and describing how society is divided by power, wealth, prestige, and the perceptions of the world. "The shape and character of the legal system in complex societies can be understood as deriving from the conflicts inherent in the structure of these societies which are stratified economically and politically" (Chambliss, 1971). It is concerned with the causal relationships between society and crime, i.e. to establish a critical understanding of how the immediate and structural social environment gives rise to crime and criminogenic conditions.
Karl Marx argued that the law is the mechanism by which one social class, usually referred to as the "ruling class", keeps all the other classes in a disadvantaged position. Thus, this school uses a Marxist lens through which, inter alia, to consider the criminalization process, and by which explain why some acts are defined as deviant whereas others are not. It is therefore interested in political crime, state crime, and state-corporate crime.
Discussion
Marxism provides a systematic theoretical basis upon which to interrogate social structural arrangements, and the hypothesis that economic power is translated into political power substantially accounts for the general disempowerment of the majority who live in the modern state and the limitations of political discourse. Hence, whether directly or indirectly, it informs much of the research into social phenomena not only in criminology, but also in semiotics and the other disciplines which explore the structural relationships of power, knowledge, meaning, and positional interests within society.
Many criminologists agree that for a society to function efficiently, social order is necessary and that conformity is induced through a socialization process. "Law" is the label given to one of the means used to enforce the interests of the state. Hence, because each state is sovereign, the law can be used for any purpose. It is also common ground that, whether the society is meritocratic, democratic or autocratic, a small group emerges to lead. The reason for this group's emergence may be their ability to use power more effectively, or simple expediency in that, as population size grows, the delegation of decision-making powers to a group representative of the majority leads to more efficiency. Marxists are critical of the ideas, values, and norms of capitalist ideology, and characterize the modern state as being under the control of the group that owns the means of production. For example, William Chambliss (1973) examined the way in which the vagrancy laws were amended to reflect the interests of the ruling elite. He also looked at how British Colonial Law was applied in East Africa, so that the capitalist "ruling class" could profit from coffee plantations, and how the law in medieval England benefited feudal landowners. Similarly, Pearce (2003) looks at evidence that corporate crime is widespread but is rarely prosecuted.
These researchers assert that political power is used to reinforce economic inequality by embedding individual property rights in the law and that the resulting poverty is one of the causes of criminal activity as a means of survival. Marxists argue that a socialist society with communal ownership of the means of production would have much less crime. Indeed, Milton Mankoff asserts that there is much less crime in Western Europe than in the United States because Europe is more ‘Socialist’ than America. The implication of such views is that the solution to the "crime problem" is to engage in a socialist revolution.