ABSTRACT
The problem anyone faced with the task of summarizing Marxist criminology is that Marx himself wrote very little on crime. The general lack of attention Marx paid to crime has led to a somewhat uneven development within Marxist criminology, and has also led to many disagreements among Marxists.1 For example, because the bulk of Marx’s writings are concerned with linking economic development to political, social, and historical change, some have argued that the term Marxist criminology is somewhat of a misnomer, and that “crime and deviance vanish into the general theoretical concerns [of Marxism] and the specific scientific object of Marxism” (Hirst, 1975:204). Further complicating matters are the beliefs that people have about Marxism-that it is inherently nondemocratic, that the former Soviet Union was the “pinnacle” of Marxist development, and that quite simply the project of Marxism has “lost” to capitalism. In short, most people do not understand that there are many forms of Marxism, and that many Marxists disagree with one another.
