ABSTRACT
Classes are constituted by the relationship of groupings of individuals to the ownership of private property in the means of production. This yields a model of class relations which is basically dichotomous: all class societies are built around a primary line of division between two antagonistic classes, one dominant and the other subordinate. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling idea such as the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The contradictions at the heart of capitalism would have resulted in either the rising up of the working class to destroy it or it collapsing as a consequence of economic shocks. Instrumentalist criminological accounts are those that emphasize the use of these means by the state as tools for more or less directly serving the interests of particular capitalist elements, if not the whole capitalist class.
