Crime to Due to Conditions

[Servia]

Would Marx and others agree that the crime we see is mostly due to the conditions and mindset that capitalism creates? Even high profile law enforcement issues we see in America?

[Slavic]

Following a materialist approach, we can not help by succumb to our material conditions. Violence can also be approached in this manner, certain material conditions can bring about more violence and anti-social behavior.

The material conditions of a capitalist society has been shown to produce a variety of violence, but violence has also been found in pre-capitalist societies. Socialism I beleive will dramatically reduce the amount of violence found within society by eliminating stressors such as lack of housing, food, medical treatment, as well as the fight against bigotry.

I do think that some forms of violence may still appear in a socialist society albeit in rare circumstances. You will find others on here though that think a socialist society will be a love fest where violence can't even be found in the dictionary.

[Palmares]

The OP used the word "crime" here, so technically so long as there is law, and thus law enforcement, it is basically inevitable there will be some deviation from it. And undoubtedly we question (or greater or lesser degrees) the existence of these laws, especially since their foundations are built on our oppression.

If we look at it anthropologically, as Slavic was to a degree, in societies without what we know as laws (in the contemporary sense), even their social contracts would not always be perfectly adhered to.

This is really no surprise. We are not robots, who are emotionless and simply require the computation of commands to dictate our actions. However, the point really is, in a society/community/whatever of our own making, where the laws/social contracts/whatever don't oppress us and infact reflect our desires and passions, then perhaps we shall have something more harmonious than the misery of the spectacle that is today.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Would Marx and others agree that the crime we see is mostly due to the conditions and mindset that capitalism creates? Even high profile law enforcement issues we see in America?marx hasn't posted here in a while, but I would say that, yes, social and economic conditions sort of create the plying field in which "crime" plays out. However, i wouldn't argue that "mindsets" are the primary factor that play into any of this.

First there's the question of "what is a crime"? In this context, the needs of whatever ruling class dominates society determine what is legitimate and illegitimate behavior and violence. Although it can seem like it, this determination isn't just the whims of the powerful (though it can be). So rulers in feudalism punished people for offenses against caste position, for example, not just for the benifit of some aristocrat's ego, but because that kind of society needed obedience to that organization. In capitalism, this is not the case, but capitalists need to punish people for vagrancy or petty theft because it needs to maintain a certain level of "order" in society that makes people need to keep working and protects property rights like feudal societies protected the rights of the nobility. So if you try and look at "crime" in the abstract or from a moral perspective, it makes no sense since, for example, a bank sending armed men into your home to force you out is not a "crime" whereas armed home invasions (even if you owed debts to some gangsters) is considered crime.

Capitalism does create "unique" problems, but the way they respond to it is based on keeping a state monopoly on "legitimate" violence and maintaining control of the population. So capitalism needs precarious large urban population for a workforce but this causes all kinds of other dysfunction. Rather than create better living space to reduce overcrowding, rather than give people a basic income so they have more security and don't end up trying to make ends meet on the black market (because this then threatens their ability to pay people shit for shit working conditions), capitalism opts for police in cities that are trained both to manage people on the street but also take on larger groups of strikers, protesters, or rioters.

These are the broad strokes. More specifically for modern policing, there is also an ideological need to bolster police forces, militarize them, and in the U.s. This has been built on a post jim-crow racist ideology of "law and order". Like countries going to war need to dehumanize the people of the country being fought, poor people, black, native American, and Latino people have been demonized in the U.s. as a justification for their own increased policing and increased political marginalization.

[cyu]

The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T2HU4SfiEIY/UGqZQFG06RI/AAAAAAAAHcA/RphC4amtc7k/s1600/9.30.2012+Dhaka+Bangladesh+Police+attack+protester s+during+a+protest+against+the+government.jpg

The set of things that the working class considers to be justice is not the same as the set of things that the ruling class claims to be justice. However, because the ruling class is in charge, they are able to attach the two sets together, and condition the population into believing that the combined system is what really constitutes justice.

The more reckless parts of the ruling class, in their arrogance and triumphalism, will attempt to squeeze out any semblance of working class desires, to replace the justice system with something entirely of their own making. If the rest of the ruling class is dumb enough to let them succeed, then revolution becomes inevitable, and the ruling class ends up with their heads impaled on sticks.

What is a successful sociopath to do in such a situation? They must strike a balance between taking as much for themselves as they can, while staying just barely out of pushing the working class into revolution. If they stay too far away from revolution, then they are not maximizing the amount of exploitation they can get out of the system. If they get too close to the edge without going over, their class will still tend to be safe as a whole, but occasionally a few of their members will be picked off by petty crime.

[Alexander11]

I would imagine that a large amount of the 'crime' committed, at least in the USA, is a result of a lack of matiral reasorces, or a desire to 'get ahead' in the world. Since these concerns would be ultamentlly meaningless is a classless, socialist society, it stands to reason that the capitalist mentality is responsible for at least the motivations behind much of the crime we see.