NCJ Number
80977
Journal
Contemporary Crises Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: (January 1982) Pages: 59-73
Date Published
1982
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Criminal justice, particularly as it is viewed from within a capitalist structure, is critiqued from a Marxist perspective.
Abstract
Retributivism sanctions the punishment of individuals within the specifications of law. Objections to this theory are that it assumes people are rational actors free to choose a course of action, a questionable assumption, and that a moral reciprocity between persons and society is mediated by law. This latter assumption cannot be true of capitalist societies, since persons are divided by class and benefits are not divided equally. Moral reciprocity is therefore essentially lacking in socioeconomic transactions, such that the law and its application mirrors this injustice. Thus, there can be no moral justification for punishment in such a society. Justice within a capitalist system has no moral frame of reference outside of the capitalist system, since even religion and morality receive their content from the essential character of material exchanges. The dichotomy between criminal and social justice is a necessary feature of capitalist society. Retributive criminal justice requires that criminal justice be the outgrowth of a socioeconomic order that asks from each according to his/her ability while giving to each according to his/her needs. The aim of Marxism is to produce criminal justice that reflects and maintains justice characteristic of basic socioeconomic structures. Thirty-six footnotes are listed.