The Contemporary Crises of Marxist Criminology

Bibliographic Data

ID9681407
AuthorsCarl B Klockars (University of Delaware, corresponding author)
Year1979
Volume16
Issue4
Pages477-515
Publication date1979-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCriminology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-1384 • E-ISSN: 1745-9125
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1745-9125.1979.tb01389.x
OpenAlexW2046501947
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited43

Marxist theory gains its critical capacity by presenting itself as in the process of being realized through class conflict. By locating its critical and empirical reality in a ideal, unrepressive, unoppressive, relatively crime free future, it renders itself irresponsible for its own history and immune from empirical criticism. In order to sustain this vision in the absence of historical evidence. the chief promoters of a Marxist perspective in American criminology have found it necessary to invent untestable and irrefutable concepts whose principal function is to maintain a suspension of the relationship between history, social reality, and theory. Because such work is more akin to religious phophesy than criminology. it presently appears to be irreconcilable with all heretofore accepted standards of academic scholarship

Class conflict · Criminology · Critical theory · Criticism · Economics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Marxist philosophy · Order (exchange · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Philosophy · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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