ABSTRACT
Karl Marx's famous discussion of the criminalization, by the Rhineland parliament, of popular wood-gathering rights, deconstructs crime as a class struggle between the aspirant Rhineland bourgeoisie seeking extension of capitalist relations to the forests and a peasantry defending customary rights to gather fallen wood. It is more accurate to speak of Marxist criminologies rather than a single criminology – a 'criminologically sensitive Marxism' in which specific types of criminalization in particular historical situations are to be related to the overall development of capitalism as a system of exploitation. The first, long pre-capitalist period of 'primitive accumulation' is the context for Marx's brief mention of medieval criminalization of the poor. A second period begins with the early stages of industrial capitalism. The next period (in Europe) – from the later nineteenth century culminating in the welfare state, and including two world – is one of capitalist stabilization.
