Crime And Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Crimonology

CRIME

AND CAPITALISM

CRIME

AND CAPITALISM Readings in Marxist Criminology EXPANDED AND UPDATED EDITION

Edited by DAVID F. GREENBERG

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Philadelphia

Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122 Copyright © 1993 by Temple University. All rights reseIVed First edition published 1981 by Mayfield Publishing Co. Expanded and updated edition 1993 Printed in the United States of America

@l The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed LibraI}' Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 LibraI}' of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crime and capitalism: readings in Marxist criminology / edited by David F. Greenberg.-Expanded and updated ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56639-025-7 (cloth: alk. paper).-ISBN 1-56639-026-5 (pbkJ 1. Crime--Economic aspects. 2. Criminology. 3. Marxian school of sociology. I. Greenberg, David F. HV6030.C7 1993 364.2'56--dc20 92-34763

To the memory of Petra Kelly, Gary Rader, and Fay Stender

Our Trimmer adoreth the Goddess Truth, tho' in all Ages she hath been scurvily used, as well as those that Worshipped her; 'tis of late become such a ruining Virtue, that Mankind seemeth to be agreed to commend and avoid it; yet the want ofPractice which Repealeth the other Laws, hath no influence upon the Law of Truth, because it hath root in Heaven, and an Intrinsick value in it self, that can never be impaired; she sheweth her Greatness in this, that her Enemies even when they are successfUl are asham'd to own it; nothing but powerfUl Truth hath the prerogative of Triumphing, not only after Victories, but in spite of them, and to put Conquest her selfout ofCountenance; she may be kept under and supprest, but her Dignity still remaineth with her, even when she is in Chains; Falshood with all her Impudence hath not enough to speak ill of her before her Face, such Majesty she carrieth about her, that her most prosperous Enemies are fain to whisper their Treason; all the Power on Earth can never elCtinguish her; she hath liv'd in all Ages; and let the mistaken Zeal ofprevailing Authority christen any opposition to it with what Name they please, she maketh it not only an ugly and unmannerly, but a dangerous thing to persist; she hath lived very retired indeed, nay sometimes so buried, that only some few of the discerning part ofMankind could have a Glimpse ofher; with all that she hath Eternity in her, she knoweth not how to die, andfrom the darkest Clouds that shade and cover her, she breakethfrom time to time with Triumph for her Friends, and Terrour to her Enemies. GEORGE SAVILE

The Character ofa Trimmer (1684/5)

From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, From the laziness that is content with half-truths, From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Oh, God of Truth, deliver us. AUrHOR UNKNOWN

vii

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition Introduction

xi

1

Part 1 Marx and Engels on Crime and Punishment 1 Crime and Primitive Accumulation

37

45

KariMarx

2 The Demoralization of the English Working Class

Friedrich Engels 3 Crime in Communist Society Friedrich Engels 4 The Usefulness of Crime 52 KariMarx

5 The Labeling of Crime KariMarx

54

51

48

viii

Contents

6 On Capital Punishment Karl Marx

55

Part 2 The Causes of Crime

57

1 Karl Marx, the Theft of Wood, and Working-Class Composition Peter Linebaugh 2 Goths and Vandals: Crime in History Geo.!fr'ey Pearson

100

122

3 Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging: Common Rights and Class Relations in the Postbellum South 142 Steven Hahn 4 Organized Crime and Class Politics Frank Pearce

169

5 Urban Crime and Capitalist Accumulation, 1950-1971 Don Wallace and Drew Humphries

194

6 The Social Economy of Arson: Vandals, Gangsters, Bankers, and Officials in the Making of an Urban Problem 211 James Brady 7 Wealth, Crime, and Capital Accumulation Harold Barnett 8 Auto Theft and the Role of Big Business Harry Brill

258

265

9 The Production of Black Violence in Chicago Cyril D. Robinson

279

10 Delinquency and the Age Structure of Society David F. Greenberg

334

11 Rape, Sexual Inequality, and Levels of Violence Julia Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger 12 The Gendering of Crime in Marxist Theory David F. Greenberg

405

357

Contents

Part 3 Criminal Law and Criminal Justice

443

1 The Dialectics of Crime Control 463 Drew Humphries and David F. Greenberg 2 A Reinterpretation of Criminal Law Reform in Nineteenth-Century England 509 Michael Rustigan 3 The Walnut Street Jail: A Penal Reform to Centralize the Powers of the State 533 Paul Takagi 4 Policing a Class Society: The Expansion ofthe Urban Police in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 546 Sidney L. Harring 5 The Political Economy of Policing 568 Steven Spitzer 6 At Hard Labor: Penal Confinement and Production in NineteenthCentury America 595 Rosalind P. Petchesky 7 Convict Leasing: An Application of the Rusche-Kirchheimer Thesis to Penal Changes in Tennessee, 1830-1915 612 Randall G. Shelden 8 The Cooptation of Fixed Sentencing Reform 621 David F. Greenberg and Drew Humphries 9 The Enforcement of Anti-Monopoly Legislation Harold Barnett

641

10 The Standards of Living in Penal Institutions 649 Herman Schwendinger and Julia R. Schwendinger

Part 4 Crime and Revolution: Is Crime Progressive?

665

1 Crime, the Crisis of Capitalism, and Social Revolution Morton G. Wenger and Thomas A. Bonomo

674

ix

x

Contents

2 Gangs and Progress: The Contribution of Delinquency to Progressive Reform 689 Evan Stark

PartS Praxis and Marxian Criminology Glossary Index

757

751

737

xi

Preface to the Second Edition

No thoughtful person could prepare a book of Marxist theory at this moment in history without wondering for at least a moment whether the enterprise is quixotic. Have not political and theoretical developments of the last decade raised all kinds of questions about the viability of Marxism? One set of questions is raised by the restoration of capitalism and the still-shaky mUltiparty political democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Though this largely unanticipated revolution poses a challenge of explanation for Marxism, it is not a challenge that threatens the foundations of the theory. Marxism has encountered unanticipated developments before and has met the challenge. The threat is rather to the emotional energies that helped to sustain Marxism in the past. For many years most Western Marxists have regarded the Soviet Union as a brutal and exploitative dictatorship remote from Marxist conceptions of socialism. Yet it also represented the possibility of an alternative to capitalism. The workers and peasants may have been betrayed, but in 1917 they "durst defY the Omnipotent to arms" (Milton, Paradise Lost I.49) and founded a noncapitalist society committed to ending the exploitation of one class by another. Their success, even though later undermined by the hostility of the capitalist powers and the betrayal of

xii

Preface to Second Edition

corrupt Communist party leaders, meant that others, too, could succeed. With time, with effort, with the right strategy, capitalism could also be overthrown in the West. To many Western Marxists, the faults of the Soviet Union were so deeply rooted, so intertwined with the structure of power in that country, that they could only be remedied by a second workers' revolution, one that would establish an authentic socialism in a country that called itself socialist but was not. Instead of choosing socialism, however, the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe opted for capitalism. To the Western Marxists who hoped for an alternative to both capitalism and dictatorial state socialism, the tum to capitalism is inevitably a disappointment. Now that the introduction of market principles to the economies of the former Warsaw Pact nations, and to China, is leading to higher levels of unemployment and crime, some people are beginning to regret the hasty adoption of capitalism. Still, in the short run, the former self-styled "socialist" nations are not likely to tum to socialism. It has been too badly discredited by those who ruled in its name. Can we expect more from social democracy? In those regions of Western Europe where it has been strongest, it has managed to achieve much-greater equality of incomes and better medical care, for example. However, these important gains have now been checked by widespread opposition to high taxes and centralized governmental bureaucracies. It seems doubtful that social democracy will soon show us an electoral route to socialism. As politicians and newspaper editorialists have celebrated the fall of Communist governments and heralded the triumph of the market, Western leftists have rightly reminded us of the serious, seemingly intractable problems that continue to plague the "advanced" capitalist democracies: despoliation of the natural environment, urban decay, poverty and unemployment, crime and corruption, drug addiction, a failing education system, unaffordable medical care, racial and sexual oppression. Hard-won advances of the sixties are now threatened. Neither conservatives nor liberals offer viable solutions; even serious public discussion of these issues is rare. The left, disorganized, has not been able to capitalize on the failings of capitalism by mounting a broadly based challenge. Once upon a time, Marxists often argued that crises in the capitalist system generated discontent that could be mobilized to challenge the system. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, labor militancy grew, and American workers won genuine victories. Today we cannot count on achieving comparable gains. Though the Left's critique of capitalism has lost none of its cogency, its ability to articulate a credible alternative and to devise a workable strategy for reaching it has clearly suffered from the triumph of the market. Optimists contend that without an external military threat, greater attention will be paid to domestic issues, and that the Right will now find

Preface to Second Edition

xiii

it harder to smear the Left as unpatriotic agents or dupes of an "evil empire." However, the government's ability to demonize uncooperative Third World countries may continue to keep attention away from divisive domestic issues. Moreover, the internationalization of capital, which is proceeding through the establishment of the European Economic Community and the signing of "free trade" pacts, will make effective opposition more difficult. Rosy-eyed dialecticians may argue that as capital increasingly operates on a global scale, it will forge an internationally minded working class, forced by necessity to overcome barriers of language and national prejudice. Perhaps it will-this was the hope of the First Internationalbut the likelihood is small. Unions and parties that found it difficult to mobilize effectively on a national scale will find even greater obstacles when organizing internationally. Moreover, the fragmentation of personal identities in the capitalist democracies leads to cleavages, conflicts, and social movements organized along diverse and crosscutting lines: race and ethnicity, class, sex, and sexual orientation among them. Building a cohesive opposition from these disparate, cross-cutting identities and social movements will not be easy. Optimism that the ongoing development of the means of production will bring about the consciousness that transforms a "class in itself' into a "class for itself' is not warranted. Difficult questions of priorities, strategies, and tactics are not settled just because so many of us are oppressed by capitalism and have a common interest in opposing it. Opponents of Marxism have openly expressed the hope that these setbacks and obstacles will prove fatal. They are headed for disappointment. Though academic Marxism has lost ground in the last decade to feminism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism, it is not going to disappear. The new perspectives usefully remind us that Marxism does not hold all the answers. Marxism disposes of a limited number of concepts designed to answer specific questions. Inevitably, other perspectives, asking different questions and utilizing new concepts, spring up. This theoretical florescence does not invalidate older theories and methods. It may enrich them. Marxism is so fundamental to the social sciences that it need not fear being displaced by the latest fads. In fact, it continues to lead to powerful sociological insights. Though weakened numerically by the academic repression noted in the introduction to the first edition of Crime and Capitalism, Marxist criminology retains much vigor. The English-language journals Contemporary Crises (recently renamed Crime, Law and Social Policy) and Crime and Social Justice (now Social Justice), the Italian periodical II questione criminale, and the German Kritische Justiz continue to publish the work of an international community of scholars, while the recently founded Critical Criminology Newsletter publishes short contributions written from a variety of left-wing theoretical stances. The establishment of a "critical criminology" section of the American Society of Criminology

xiv

Preface to Second Edition

shows that this tendency within criminology has an appreciable following, with younger scholars building on the work done in the sixties and seventies. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Marxist criminology is still marginal to the mainstream. Textbook treatments are somewhat more extensive than they were ten years ago, but they remain far from adequate. Much criminological research, theory, and teaching ignores the radical contributions. More than ten years ago the first edition of Crime and Capitalism was put together to make available some of the new and exciting criminological work inspired by Marxism that was being done by the emerging school of radical criminology. This second edition preseIVes all the essays of the first edition, while adding several new essays representing work done in the past decade. New contributions deal with arson for profit, auto theft, rape, gender, and race. The focus remains on crime in the United States, England, and Europe. Although it would have been desirable to include material on crime in the Third World, conditions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are so variable that one or two articles could not do justice to the subject.

1

Introduction

In the 1970s a new school of criminological thought, known variously as "new," "critical," "radical," or Marxist, came on the scene.l It challenged the paradigms that then dominated criminology, and drew on the insights of New Left social criticism in developing a host of new and controversial ideas about crime. Ours, of course, is not the first generation to have drawn on radical critiques of existing social arrangements in writing about crime. Nineteenth-century utopian socialists, anarchists, and Marxists all discussed crime and punishment in terms that foreshadow some of today's discussions. Radical Jacksonians in the early nineteenth century campaigned against prison construction, arguing that public education and the redistribution of income would eliminate most crime and make new prisons unnecessary. Some late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century criminologists on both sides of the Atlantic were socialists or anarchists, or were influenced in their thinking by these social movements. They wrote about the role of capitalism in causing crime, and the repressive activities of the state. From the mid-1920s on, however, radical perspectives virtually disappeared from the criminology literature, at least in the English language.2 After the First World War, radical scholarship in all the social sciences was repressed. Many radical scholars lost university positions, and research funding went primarily to work that posed no intellectual threat to the government or the capitalist economy. In addition, the orthodoxy that the

2

Introduction

international communist movement imposed on its members was not conducive to creative scholarship. This orthodoxy did not entirely sweep the field in Western Europe, where a tradition of independent Marxist scholarship survived; but with two world wars and the rise of fascism, European Marxists had more pressing problems on their minds than explaining conventional crime. It has become conventional to describe the sort of criminology that has been carried on in universities and research institutes ever since the voices of radicalism were stilled as "positivist." Positivist criminology is usually traced to the research on the biological causes of crime carried out by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician. Although he and his disciples soon broadened the focus of their work to include psychological and social variables, they continued to explain crime in terms of the individual attributes of criminal-law violators. Today the term "positivist" is bandied about quite loosely, usually in a derogatory tone. It generally refers to criminology characterized by one or more of the following assumptions: (1) The causes of crime are deterministic (i.e., accurately predictable from its initial causes) and pathological. (2) Criminal behavior can be explained without reference to the meaning that the behavior has for the criminal actor. (3) Crime and criminals exist as phenomena independently of whether the behavior and the persons in question are regarded as criminal by the government or the public at large. (4) Crime can be studied through the same methods (quantitative statistical techniques) and with the same goals (the formulation of historically invariant laws) as the natural sciences. (5) The government can and should take steps to eliminate the causes of crime, drawing on scientific knowledge provided by criminologists. Since many criminologists have abandoned at least some of these assumptions in recent decades, the term "positivist" has lost a good deal of its usefulness. It is fair to say, though, that most criminologists have seen crime as something that was not inherent in the organization of a capitalist society. Either it was seen as intrinsic to all societies, so that nothing could be done about it; or it was seen as contingent on arrangements that a benign and enlightened government could eliminate without fundamental social change. Only in the last decade has this view come under sustained attack from the Left. In fact, virtually every tenet of positivist criminology has been criticized by radicals.

THE ORIGINS OF RADICAL CRIMINOLOGY Several developments in mainstream criminology, though not radical in themselves, helped to prepare the way for radical criminology by casting doubt on some taken-for-granted ideas. For example, to avoid using the long-suspect official statistics on crime and criminals, some criminologists in the 1960s carried out studies in which subjects (usually school children)

Introduction . 3

were asked to report on the crimes or delinquent acts they had committed. A number of these studies found a weak or vanishing relationship between involvement in crime or delinquency on the one hand, and race or socioeconomic status on the other. Crime seemed to be spread much more evenly through the class structure than official statistics suggested. These findings cast doubt on the belief (shared up to then by most sociologically oriented criminologists) that crime was mainly a lower-class phenomenon, causally linked with position in the class structure. Taking the self-reporting studies at face value, many researchers interpreted the over-representation of blacks and persons from impoverished family backgrounds in arrest and conviction statistics to the discriminatory practices of the enforcement agencies. It was not that the poor stole more, but rather that when they did, the police were more likely to arrest them, the prosecutors to press charges, and the judges to convict and sentence them.3 By inference, official crime and criminal justice statistics told us more about the practices of law enforcement agencies than about crime or criminals. This line of reasoning turned research energies from the study of criminals to the study of law enforcement agencies. Researchers typically brought a skeptical attitude toward agency claims, and made the discrepancy between what the agencies did and what they said they did a major theme in their work. Drawing on older American social psychology, sociologists known as labeling theorists argued that efforts to punish or treat those involved in crime and delinquency were more likely to increase than to decrease subsequent illegal conduct by stigmatizing them as "delinquents," or "criminals" and by altering their self-concepts. This view, along with publicity given to criticisms of treatment programs, did much to discredit the view-common until then among criminologists-that the solution to the crime problem lay mainly in rehabilitating individual criminals. The thrust of the message that labeling theory directed to social workers, probation officers, and juvenile court judges was: the less you do, the better off we all will be (Schur, 1973). This policy recommendation meshed perfectly with the rejection on the part of labeling theorists and phenomenologists of the notion that crime was in itself pathological or morally wrong.4 Instead, it was to be considered no less meaningful or authentic than any other form of human activity. Matza (1969) called on us to "appreciate" deviance as a form of human diversity, rather than view it as something to be eradicated. This was a radical departure. The familiar disagreements about policy up to that time had largely centered around whether it was better to punish criminals because they were wicked and immoral, or to treat them because they were sick. Now criminologists were saying that criminals were just as good as anyone else, and even added a little local color. This radical cultural relativism had instantaneous appeal for students and professors who were active in the civil rights and antiwar movements or were sympathetic to a hedonistic counter-culture that approved drug use

4

Introduction

and less restrictive sexual mores. They certainly did not consider themselves pathological. Preoccupied with college deans who meddled in students' private lives, and police detectives trying to stop marijuana use, students found the labeling theorists' portrait of deviants as the victims of moralistic busybodies or repressive bureaucracies especially congenial. As cultural radicalization proceeded, students and their teachers began to reject conventional ways of earning a living. As they saw it, conventional jobs offered few opportunities for self-expression and required one to accept a "system" of racial discrimination and militarism. The suburban nuclear family masked boredom, hypocrisy, and intra-familial hostility. The deviant, rejecting the seductive material rewards of a morally corrupt society, became a cultural hero, and deviance theory a form of cultural criticism (Pearson, 1975). Once illegal life-styles are regarded as no less legitimate than any other, their prohibition inevitably comes to be seen as arbitary and repressive. Labeling theorists who took this view pointed to deep social disagreements about the appropriateness of treating some forms of behavior-especially those they considered "victimless"-as criminal.5 The processes by which these behaviors had become criminalized became a subject for investigation. The theme that dominated much of the work in this area was the contention that criminal legislation was determined not by moral consensus or the common interests of the entire society, but by the relative power of groups determined to use the criminal law to advance their own special interests or to impose their moral preferences on others. At a time when the decriminalization of marijuana and abortion were being debated, and the arrests of civil rights workers made the daily headlines, this position made a good deal of sense. Austin Turk (1969: vii) must have been speaking for many when he introduced his analysis of crime, power and social conflict by saying Embarrassment provided much of the initial push that led to the writing of this book. I was embarrassed at my lack of good answers when confronted by perceptive students who wondered, somewhat irreverently, why criminology is "such a confused mishmash," and who found their texts vague and sometimes contradictory, ... stuffed with anecdotes and data from sources which were shot through with defects according to those same texts. Some of these students were especially bothered by the "unreality" of criminological studies, by which they meant the lack of sustained attention to connections between the theories and statistics on crime and what they heard every day about relations among social conflicts, political maneuvers, and law violation and enforcement.

Although labeling theorists themselves did little to clarify the sources of power and thus to identify just which interests and moral preferences were embodied in the law, they laid the groundwork for such an inquiry by intro-

Introduction

5

ducing the concept of power as relevant to an understanding of criminallaw. These developments, both within criminology and in the larger society, were one important source of ideas for radical criminology. The other major source, at least in the United States, was the New Left. The civil rights movement in the 1960s had begun the process of radicalizing students, and a protracted war in Southeast Asia, widely seen as imperialist, together with the legal and illegal government repression of protest, led to disaffection on an unprecedented scale. By the early 1970s, radicalized graduate students and college faculty began to draw on the world view they had developed in the New Left to criticize accepted ideas in the social sciences. Marxist ideas helped to shape this world view, but other strains of thought, including anarchism and populism, were also important.6 Opposition to racism, war, and imperialism were central issues. The early radical criminologists drew eclectically on labeling theory, phenomenology, power elite analysis, and New Left ideology generally to develop a distinctively new approach to criminology? They generated a great deal of excitement, revitalizing a moribund discipline by exposing serious weaknesses in mainstream criminology, developing new insights, and stimulating empirical research. The diversity of views taken by radical criminologists and the subtlety of some of their analyses make it hard to summarize their work. Nevertheless, several themes stand out as significant, even though not all radical criminologists were or are in agreement about them. Generally speaking, these themes are the definition of crime (and, by extension, of criminology), the theoretical weaknesses of mainstream criminology, the relation of power to law, the inadequacy of liberal reform, the distinction between crime and politics, ideologies of crime, and radical action. In their treatment of every one of these issues, radical criminologists diverged from their mainstream counterparts. We now tum to an exploration of those divergences. What is crime?

Radical criminologists called the legal definition of crime into question and thereby opened to doubt the very scope of the field of criminology. Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1970), for example, argued that to restrict research to violations of state-made law is to accept the definitions of harm and wrongfulness that the state asserts, and they urged their co-workers to redefine crime as a violation of human rights.8 These definitions are based on the conceptions of harm held by those who have the power to make the law, and consequently tend to exclude from scrutiny harms caused by the actions of the upper class. The following passage written by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Working Party captures the spirit with which radical crimi nolo-

6

Introduction

gists rejected official definitions of criminality: Actions that clearly ought to be labeled "criminal," because they bring the greatest harm to the greatest number, are in fact accomplished officially by agencies of the government. The oveIWhelming number of murders in this century has been committed by governments in wartime. Hundreds of unlawful killings by police go unprosecuted each year. The largest forceful acquisitions of property in the United States have been the theft of lands guaranteed by treaty to Indian tribes, thefts sponsored by the government. The largest number of dislocations, tantamount to kidnapping-the evacuation and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II-was carried out by the government with the approval of the courts. Civil-rights demonstrators, struggling to exercise their constitutional rights, have been repeatedly beaten and harassed by police ahd sheriffs. And in the Vietnam war, America has violated its Constitution and international law. (1971:10-11)

Others wrote of environmental pollution, hazardous work conditions, extortionate profiteering, and the marketing of unsafe products by capitalists. To ignore imperialism, racism, sexism, and capitalism as threats to human welfare, the radical criminologists charged, was to acquiesce in them. In calling on other criminologists to redefine crime as a violation of fundamental human rights, radicals summoned them to join the struggle to end the abridgement of these rights.9 A critique of mainstream criminology

Radical criminologists subjected the major theoretical perspectives of mainstream criminology to far-reaching criticism. Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973) dissected a number of the leading theories of crime causation. They demanded of theory that it provide a fully social account of action, respecting its authenticity and purposefulness and avoiding value-laden concepts of individual pathology. To this extent, the influence of phenomenology is clear. But they went beyond this to demand also that criminologists take account of the socially structured inequalities of wealth and power that shape human action. Finally, they called on theorists to show how society might be transformed so that it did not need to criminalize diversity. Holding up the theories they examined, they found them deficient in explaining the social origins of crime, and inadequate politically for implicitly denying the possibility of fundamentally egalitarian social change. Richard Quinney went beyond the critique of specific theories to attack the underlying epistemological and causal assumptions of positivist criminology. Positivists assumed that an external world with objective properties exists, and that the categories of theory or observation correspond to those of the external world. In opposition to this, Quinney asserted a radical subjectivity (1970a:4-5):

Introduction

7

The mind is unable to frame a concept that corresponds to an objective reality. We cannot be certain of an objective reality beyond man's conception of it. Thus, we have no reason to believe in the objective existence of anything. We must, instead, formulate theories that give meaning to our experiences .... Thus, our concern is not with any correspondence between "objective reality" and observation, but between observation and the utility of such observations in understanding our own subjective, multiple social worlds.

Positivist explanations of crime framed in terms of mechanical cause and effect Quinney similarly rejected in favor of a conception of causality that took subjective definitions of situations into account. In this approach, conduct is explained in terms of the actor's goals and perceptions. This is a more voluntaristic conception of human behavior (Quinney, 1970a:5-7). He went on to outline several modes of criminological thought-positivist, social constructionist (i.e., concerned with the social origins of categories like "criminal"), and phenomenological-and analyzed their political ramifications. He found none of them capable of transcending the existing social order, and therefore turned toward critical philosophy as a vehicle for human liberation (Quinney, 1970b, 1973). Focusing more directly on policy-related research and analysis, Tony Platt (1974) criticized the cynicism, defeatism, and pragmatism of liberal criminology, and argued that as an academic discipline, Criminology has strengthened the state and supported the extension of welfare capitalism. With the weakening of liberalism and the rise of the New Right, Platt and Takagi (1977) exposed the viciousness and anti-working-class politics of the "new realists" who called for more punitive crime control policies. Power and the law Radical criminologists built on the labeling theorists' observation that power is critical in shaping the content of the law to analyze specific structures of power. Thus, Bany Krisberg (1975) analyzed the consequences of differentials in power and privilege associated with race, class, and sex for patterns of crime, victimization, and treatment of offenders at the hands of law enforcement agencies. Quinney (1970a) and Chambliss and Seidman (1971) documented the many ways that the criminal law and patterns of law enforcement serve powerful interests and dominant classes. Radical research collectives and individuals analyzed the origins and development of police forces in the United States, paying particular attention to police involvement in the suppression of black and working-class militancy, and left-wing political opposition (NARMIC, 1971; Takagi, 1974; Center for Research on Criminal Justice, 1975). Others exposed the nightmarish conditions and totalitarian regimen of the prison system, and revealed the brutal repression directed toward militant prisoners who challenged the system (AFSC Working Party, 1971; Wright, 1973).

8

Introduction

Although racial and class discrimination had by no means been ignored by liberal criminologists, the radicals gave it much more attention. Unequal treatment of blacks, the poor, and political and cultural minorities resulting from institutionally structured disadvantage and the discretion of individual officials became a major theme of literature on police-citizen encounters, the prosecutorial and judicial processing of defendants, and the paroling of prisoners (AFSC Working Party, 1971; Chambliss and Seidman, 1971). This emphasis clearly reflected the grievances of a civil rights movement that sought formal, legal equality without (at least at first) calling the ideal of equality itself into question. A critique of liberal reform

Radical criminologists developed a powerful critique of liberal reform. Tony Platt's (1969) influential study of the juvenile court movement argued that the Protestant, upper-class Republican women who led the movement sought to advance the interests of their sex and class, rather than those of the Catholic and Jewish working-class immigrant children they said they wanted to help. The consequences of establishing the juvenile court, Platt maintained, were not beneficial to juveniles. Before the creation of the court, much juvenile mischief was ignored or handled informally. By creating a court with jurisdiction over juveniles who had broken no criminal law, the reformers increased young people's vulnerability to deprivation of liberty through commitment to reformatories. Another component of the critique of liberal reform was an attack on correctionalism. If crime is not viewed as the product of individual pathology, then it makes no sense to deal with crime by rehabilitating individuals. But the radical critique went farther than arguing that rehabilitation was irrelevant. Now the argument was being made that the individualized treatment model which liberals had promoted had become an instrument of oppression. It provided the rationale for expanding the administrative powers of the state, powers that were used in practice to control inmates. Discretionary power to individualize disposition, to "treat the criminal, not the crime," resulted in arbitrariness and biased decision making (AFSC Working Party, 1971; Wright, 1973; Mitford, 1974; Smith and Fried, 1974). Crime and politics

Radical criminologists sought to abolish the distinction between crime and politics that crippled earlier criminology. In relation to law enforcement, this meant shattering the myth that crime prevention was a socially neutral function and that questions of policy were no more than issues of technical, administrative expertise. Thus Smith and Fried (1974:140) obseIVe, when we say that all inmates are political prisoners, we are not asserting that all criminal acts are deliberate, self-conscious acts of rebellion against an unjust authority. In fact, the overwhelming majority of inmates we saw are

Introduction

9

doing time for narrow, selfish acts such as stealing, breaking and entering, and fighting. Nevertheless, their incarceration is political since it is the end-product of decisions to treat some social harms as deseIVing of penal sanctions and others as not-with little regard to the actual extent of social damage. !Emphasis in original.l Crime itself was invested with political meaning. Some saw crime as a form of protest against oppressive social conditions, a refusal to play the game by the established rules (rules that favored some social groups and disadvantaged others), or even a rejection of the existing game in favor of another one altogether (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973). Here the meaning of crime is subjective: it is the intentions of the criminal that make crime political. Prisoners' writings on crime and criminal justice were given prominence as points of view to be incorporated into the newly developing perspective (Krisberg, 1975).10 These developments cannot be fully understood except in a social context: in the late 1960s and early 1970s, conventional distinctions between crime and politics were breaking down in the society at large. Prison inmates were becoming radicalized and were initiating strikes and prison takeovers in support of demands that reflected a new political understanding of their predicament; at the same time, civil disobedience was an important tactic in the civil rights and antiwar movements. Some elements of the New Left and the black power movement were turning toward sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and even larger sections of both groups were being treated by the government as criminals. Substantial numbers of political dissenters were being arrested, tried, and in some cases imprisoned for their involvement in opposition to government policy. Ideologies of crime

Radical criminologists began to investigate the content and the social sources of beliefs about crime, law, and criminal justice in the mass media, in government propaganda, and even in the writings of criminologists. The radicals argued that many of these beliefs were false, and that they tended to reinforce capitalist domination. Believing that crime is largely a workingclass phenomenon, for example, may blind people to the crimes of capitalists. Identifying legal crime with social harm distracts public attention from the many social-systemic harms that are not prohibited under the criminal law. To the extent that opinion sUIveys showed a consensus about crime, then, radical criminologists argued that it was a manufactured consensus (Quinney, 1970; Michalowski and Bohlander, 1976; Reiman, 1979: 162-168). From research to radical action

Radical criminologists attempted to move criminology out of the ivoI)' tower and the police department by wedding research to radical action.

10

Introduction

Criminologists worked in community campaigns to curb police brutality, raise bail for indigent defendants, end the death penalty, stop the repression of political militants and support prisoners. These activities are discussed in Part 5. Some criminologists articulated the goal of radical action to be the creation of a society that did not criminalize diversity and that would make use of informal, community-controlled methods of social control, such as arbitration and negotiation of conflict (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973; Mathiesen, 1974; Quinney, 1974; Pepin sky, 1976).n Others expected such institutions as the prison to survive the transition to socialism, but with a restricted class of prisoners and a more humane system of administration (Wright, 1973: Smith and Fried, 1974). The American New Left suffered some serious setbacks just at the transition between the 1960s and 1970s. Many militant black leaders were in jail, in prison, or in exile, and leading black organizations fell apart. Other black leaders pursued careers in government that the civil rights movement had opened up. At the end ofthe 1960s, SDS, a major component of the New Left, splintered into rival factions. One faction, the Weathermen, turned to guerrilla warfare and subsequently went underground. As the draft ended and American troops withdrew from Vietnam, the campuses lapsed into a state of political passivity that reminded many of the 1950s. Only the women's movement, and to a more limited extent, the gay movement, remained capable of energizing and mobilizing large numbers of people on behalf of left causes the way the antiwar and civil rights/black power movements had done. The conservative presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and the rise of opposition to gay rights, reproductive freedom, and affirmative action to achieve employment equality for minorities, all demonstrated the limitations of the social movements of the 1960s. These movements, based on specific constituencies (students, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, prisoners, gays, etc., together with the support of unions and the white, liberal middle class on specific issues) were not large enough or cohesive enough to carry through an ongoing program of left-liberal reform. With the movement of the sixties at least temporarily blunted, leftists who retained their political commitments dug in for the long haul. Some turned to community or work-place organizing. Old Left parties picked up members, and new groups formed, some of them disciplined Leninist organizations and others democratic-socialist in character. As it became apparent that a revolution could not be made by the central constituencies of the 1960s alone, without massive participation from the white working class, many turned to Marxism in the hope of deepening their understanding of social processes. Radicals in the universities, most of them graduate students or junior faculty, began to draw on Marxist ideas in their own disciplines. By the mid 1970s, a specifically Marxian criminology began to take shape.

Introduction

11

Marxism in criminological thought

What specifically does Marxism have to offer criminologists? The answer to this question is by no means obvious-and indeed is hotly debated. Marx and Engels wrote from time to time about crime, law, and criminal justice (see Part 1 of this collection), but gave them no systematic treatment. Their scattered observations show great insight at times, less insight at other times, but in any event they do not add up to a criminology. After examining Marx's statements on crime, Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973:219) conclude: "If Marxism offers us anything of value in understanding the way in which social conflict is generated, sustained, and helps to shape the kind and amount of criminal and deviant activity at large, we are more likely to find it in Marx's general theory than we are in the more specific statements." Most early Marxist thinkers did not give crime serious attention. Some, perhaps, were influenced by Marx's contempt for the [umpenpro[etariatthe beggars, pimps, and criminals found in all capitalist societies. But a few late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholars who wrote about crime were influenced to some extent by Marxist ideas. K. G. Rakowsky, Filippo Turati, Bruno Battaglia, Napoleone Colejanni, Achille Loria, Alfredo Niceforo, August Bebel, Paul Lafargue, Joseph Van Kan, and Willem Adriaan Bonger all wrote about the ways that economic conditions in capitalist society produce crime. Bonger (1916), the most well-known of this group (and often cited mistakenly as the only Marxist criminologist), argued that competitive capitalism gave rise to selfish individualism, which manifested itself in egoistic acts, including crimes.12 Since much of Marx's work had not been published at the tum of the century, these authors derived their understanding of Marxism from a limited portion of his writings, and from expositions written by leaders of the Second InternationaL a loose federation of national socialist organizations founded in 1889. These expositions tended to vulgarize Marxism by depicting it as a form of economic or technological determinism. Although it is clear, when one takes Marx's work in its entirety, that this is a misinterpretation, this reading of Marx made possible the synthesis of Marxism and positivism. The early Marxist criminologists differed from their positivist counterparts only in paying greater attention to economic causes of crime. They carried out numerous studies of the relationship between crime rates and various economic indicators, such as unemployment and food prices.13 By comparison with the Lombrosian literature on crime, which gave great play to supposed biological causes, this literature holds up quite well. One can find in it insights that remain provocative and suggestive today.14 Yet, as they had little first-hand knowledge of crime, they were prone to accept many conventional stereotypes of criminals unquestioningly. To them, crime was an exclusively lower-class phenomenon, invariably hamlful to society. They described criminals as being driven to crime by poverty or

12

Introduction

pernicious social conditions, but not as seeking it out for personal gain. The possibility that some forms of crime might be acceptable in working-class communities, or represent a form of rebellion against class oppression, was not even considered. No conception of the criminal as a subjective agent appears in this literature. And no attention was given to the criminal and the criminal jut'tice system as objects of study. Some of the radical criminology literature written early in the 1970s also suffers from weaknesses, including oversimplification, excessively broad and insufficiently qualified generalizations, and utopianism. Empirical research to verify claims being made about crime and criminal justice was sometimes neglected. When it was performed, it did not always confirm the radicals' claims. From the point of view of Marxian theo!)" a good deal of this literature is unsatisfacto!),. As mentioned above, early radical criminology was a theoretically incoherent amalgam-a pastiche of Marxism and other political philosophies and sociological perspectives. (Piers Beirne has recently observed that researchers who cite empirical findings that supposedly confirm or refute "Marxist criminology" have sometimes assumed too casually that the propositions tested have any real connection with Marxist theo!),.) Some of the weaknesses stemmed from the cultural milieu of the late sixties and early seventies. The romanticizing of crime was obviously related to the hippie counterculture and black rebellion. The solipsism of Richard Quinney's writings surely grew out of a New Left culture that emphasized the importance of subjective experience and of changing consciousness as a way of changing the world. It is symptomatic that when the British radical criminologists Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973) turned to Marx, it was primarily to the philosophical anthropology of the early writings, not to the political economy of his later years. Another weakness had to do with the way Marx was used. Unlike the British or the Europeans, some American scholars had a limited knowledge of Marxism, and so their reliance on Marx for theoretical grounding was at times crude and mechanical. At its worst, this "Marxist" literature described law and its enforcement as only a weapon used by the powerful, the elite, the ruling (capitalist) class to preserve its domination of the proletariat and of racial minorities. It dismissed fear of crime and popular support for law enforcement as "false consciousness," the product of government propaganda designed to distract people from the real sources of their problems, capitalism itself. Criminals were depicted as proto-revolutionaries, motivated by a refusal to abide the constraints imposed by a capitalist society. With the disappearance of the state, this literature prophesied, crime would disappear, the state would wither away, and neither law nor criminal justice would be needed to order human affairs (Greenberg and Stender, 1972; Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973; Quinney, 1974; Michalowski and Bohlander, 1976; Hepburn, 1977; Reiman, 1979). Though there is some truth to some of these propositions, they are also oversimplified and derive from a shallow and highly selective reading of Marx. Though not all radical

Introduction

13

criminology suffered from these deficiencies, they marred a good deal of the early work. The time has come to build on these fledgling efforts in a way that preserves what is of permanent value in them, while transcending the weaknesses. Marxist criminologists are now making that attempt. \Vhere the early writings often tended to be programmatic, sketching what a Marxian criminology would look like if it were to be created, now Marxist criminologists are grappling with the hard task of actually creating a new criminology on Marxian foundations. Marx's own project was to create a science of society. This is the goal that Marxist criminologists have set for themselves vis-a-vis crime. To understand these attempts, it is essential to have at least some familiarity with the outlines of Marxian social theory. It is to a review of some of the essentials of Marxism that we now turn.

SOME ELEMENTS OF MARXIAN SOCIAL THEORY In making use of Marxian theory today, one must come to terms with serious questions that rival schools of Marxist scholarship have raised about just what Marx and Engels' writings mean, as well as challenges that both Marxists and non-Marxists have raised regarding the logical and empirical status of their ideas.l5 One pair of Marxist theorists has highlighted some of these difficulties: Despite its apparent intellectual vigour and its current popularity among sections of the Western intelligentsia, Marxist theory is riven by problems and divisions such that it is in danger of falling into utter incoherence and methodological immobility. The current debates (however lively they may appear), on the nature of the state and the political level, on the nature of the "middle strata," on productive and unproductive labour in the definition of the working class, and on the theory of value, all reveal fundamental ambiguities and difficulties in the basic concepts of Marxist theory. (Hindess and Hirst, 1977:72)

Since most of these debates do not touch on issues of obvious relevance for criminology, they can be passed over here without comment. Yet this precautionary warning should alert us that Marxist theory in its present form leaves much room for conceptual clarification and development. There can be no question, then, of taking a fully developed theory and mechanically deducing from it a complete set of propositions about crime and crime control. Ambiguities notwithstanding, the main outlines of Marxian social theory are not in serious dispute. Only those ideas needed for our present discussion will be reviewed here. The discussion will focus on Marx's break with Hegel's idealism (a philosophical stance that gives ontological priority to ideas), his conceptualization of social formations, and the role of class

14

Introduction

conflict in generating social change. Other aspects of Marxist theory will be reviewed in the introductions to the different parts of the book, as needed. The break with philosophical idealism

The young Marx rejected Hegel's notion that human actions are to be explained as the manifestation of disembodied ideas that exist and evolve independently of the human beings who adhere to them. He argued that an analysis of human action properly begins instead with existing social relations, with people as they actually live in society: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness" (Marx, 1904:11). Marx did not deny that ideas influence human behavior or playa role in social change; in his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, he claimed that "theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses." But to understand the genesis of ideas, the reasons they are accepted or fail to gain acceptance, and their relationship to actions, we must look to the social realm. The analysis of social formations

Marx begins his analysis of the social realm with the organization of production, devising two analytical concepts-the forces of production and the social relations of production. The forces of production refers to tools, technical knowledge, human labor, raw materials, and the way all these are combined. The social relations of production refers to the distribution or possession of the means of production (i.e., the land, the machinery, and so forth required to produce goods) and the form in which surplus labor is appropriated. Together the forces and relations of production comprise a mode of production. 16 Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism are all modes of production. Surplus labor refers to labor (or its products) above and beyond what is needed to "reproduce" the laborer from day to day and from generation to generation; it can, and generally does, exist in all societies, but the form in which it is appropriated varies greatly.17 Several modes of production can co-exist in a single society, with one typically playing a leading role and thus giving its character to the entire configuration. As Marx puts it in Grundrisse, in all fonns of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others. It is a general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which detennines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it. (Marx, 1973:106 -71

Introduction

15

In his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx suggests that the relationship between the mode of production and other aspects of society can be grasped through a base-superstructure metaphor. He conceptualizes society as a building with different levels: The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society-the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. 11904:111

This passage has been criticized for economic reductionism, that is, for claiming that all aspects of society are completely determined by the economy. A careful reading, though, does not sustain this criticism. To say that the relations of production are a foundation on which legal and political structures "rise" is not to say that these structures are determined by the foundation, or base. The foundation of a building does not uniquely specify the form of the upper stories, but it does set limits. Thus, the characterization of Marxism as a form of "economic determinism" is a caricature. As Louis AIthusser, the French structuralist Marxist has stressed, the legal, political, and other institutions of a society, as well as its "forms of consciousness," have a dynamic of their own. They evolve in a manner that is related to, but not reducible to the economy. To use what has become a catch phrase, they are "partially autonomous." Taken too far, the base-structure metaphor can lead to difficulty (Thompson, 1978). Once a building is built, it doesn't change very much, and its "levels" don't intersect or interact, whereas that is hardly the case with society: PoliticaL juridical, philosophical, religious, artistic, etc. development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. IMarx and Engels, 1969:502. Emphasis in original.l

Indeed, a given mode of production may require specific political and legal arrangements if it is to survive. But the effects of politics, law, and forms of consciousness are determined by the mode of production. Marx makes this clear in his response to a criticism of his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in a German-American newspaper: in the estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times,

Introduction

16

in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme . . . . This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancients on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. IMarx, 1967:82)

Marx thus analyzes society as a set of asymmetric but reciprocal determinations.ls Its "levels" form a totality, but without losing their distinctiveness. An articulated totality of economy, state, ideology, and so on, is called a social formation (Hindess and Hirst, 1975).19 Classes and contradictions

Social formations are not necessarily stable: they can change through slow evolution or sudden, violent eruptions. Marxism views such historical change as occurring largely through contradictions that are present in a society. These contradictions are not logical inconsistencies; nor are they dysfunctional aspects of society. Rather, they are antagonisms or conflicts between different elements in the existing social arrangements that in the long run are incompatible with one another. As long as they are both pressent, they will tend to destabilize society, leading to social change. When Marxists say that change occurs dialectically, they mean that it comes about through contradiction. To take this view of change is to see change as thE' product of conditions that are internal to a society, not external. The society itself gives rise to the conditions that will change society. It is well-known that Marx paid particular attention to the role of contradictions associated with class in this regard. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels went so far as to proclaim, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." For Marx, classes are constituted by the social relations of production described earlier. If some possess the means of production but others use the means of production without possessing them, the economic relationship between these two groups defines two classes. Thus one finds such paired classes as capitalist (who owns capital20 ) and worker or proletariat (who does not); landlord (who owns land) and tenant (who does not); lender (who owns money capital) and borrower (who does not). Class is not an attribute of an individual or group; it denotes a position in a relationship. There can be no slave without a master, no serf without a lord, no worker without a capitalist. Although the distinction between classes has consequences that can be measured in quantitative terms (differences in income, longevity, chances of being arrested, etc.), the distinction itself is qualitative. This means that class is not defined by income, occupational prestige, or lifestyle, though all these things may influence one's consciousness of one's class, that is, one's subjective class identification.

Introduction

17

When one class lacks the means of production, it is in a position to be exploited by those classes who do. Serfs are permitted to cultivate land for their own use only on condition that they pay feudal rent to the lord. Workers, lacking means of production of their own, must agree to put their labor power at the disposal of the capitalist, who extracts surplus value in the form of profits. Exploitative social relations are viewed in Marxian theory as inherently unstable. Those who are exploited may attempt to reduce or eliminate their exploitation, while the exploiters are expected to resist these efforts, or even to intensity them. The existence of classes thus implies class struggle?l Ultimately, Marx thought, class struggle would intensity, leading to a socialist revolution that would abolish capitalism, putting an end to classes and to class struggle.

Implications for criminology

In its insistence that any social phenomenon must be looked at in the context of social totality, Marxism has methodological implications for the criminological enterprise. As crime does not exist in isolation, it must be analyzed in the context of its relationship to the character of the society as a whole. With only a handful of exceptions, non-Marxian work on criminology does not attempt to do this?2 Most of it tends, instead, to focus on the attributes of individuals (such as their psychological traits) or on their immediate social settings (the classroom, the family, the neighborhood, and the peer group). The society itself rarely appears. The possibility that its organization-its way of producing and distributing material goods, and of organizing its political and legal institutions, for example-might have major implications for the amount and kinds of crime present in a society, as well as for the character of its crime control apparatus, is not even considered. To be sure, not all Marxian work in criminology takes a holistic view. As mentioned above, much of the early twentieth-century Marxian work on crime tended to look at economic conditions alone as the critical causal factor, completely ignoring the role that state organization and ideology might play. The same limitation mars some of the early work on crime by contemporary American Marxists.23 But the most recent Marxist work on the state and on ideology calls on us to take a broader approach. To criticize mainstream criminology for its tunnel vision is not to say that its findings are wrong. Specific claims can only be evaluated case-by-case. From a Marxist point of view, much of the trouble in mainstream criminology is of a different sort. In failing to consider the possibility that findings might be valid only within the context of given social arrangements one is apt to interpret them as if they had universal validity. When Marx criticized earlier economists, it was not to say that all their work was wrong. He readily

18

Introduction

conceded that much of what they had to say accurately described how the economy worked within a capitalist mode of production, and he built on their work. At the same time, he was concerned to demonstrate that what economists postulated to be universal laws were in fact historically contingent. Because Marxists recognize this contingency, they do not seek laws of crime that remain invariant across epochs, independent of the mode of production. Instead, they expect patterns of crime and of social responses toward crime to change as society's economic and political organization change. There is a great deal of evidence to support their expectation. This is most obvious when it comes to social responses toward crime. Such institutions as the police force, the juvenile court, and the penitential)' are all fairly recent inventions. The readings in this book offer persuasive evidence that their introduction was associated with economic and political change of a fairly fundamental sort. The same is true of patterns of Criminality. At present, working-class and black families are disproportionately involved in crimes of interpersonal violence. But the historian Guido Ruggiero (1980) has shown that in early Renaissance Venice, the nobility were disproportionately represented in violence statistics. According to historians, urbanization and industrialization under capitalist auspices have radically changed patterns of crime (Gurr, 1976; Weisser, 1979). In central and eastern Europe, the structure of criminality was transformed after the abolition of capitalism (Dzekebaev, 1974:42 - 76; Swida, 1977; Vermes, 1978:73), To study crime in relation to the way societies organize their economic and political institutions is to ask different sorts of questions about crime than have typically been asked in non-Marxist criminology.24 Marxists do not deny that social-psychological processes and face-to-face interactions may have some importance for understanding crime and criminal justice, but they tl)' to see these as shaped by larger social structures. And in characterizing these structures, they give particular attention to the organization of economic activity, without neglecting the political and ideological dimensions of society. Thus the Marxist perspective directs criminological theol)' "outward" rather than "inward." This difference in perspective has practical ramifications. If the social structure is an important constraint on the behavior of individuals and institutions, then there are limits to the change that it is possible to induce in individuals or institutions without changing the social structure. Vocational training for prisoners, for instance, will not eradicate unemployment or do away with low-wage industries. Even when individuals can be helped, the larger problem remains. To deal with crime by "treating" individuals is like tl)'ing to empty the ocean with a bucket. If we are to discover the relationship between different social arrangements and crime we must be able to compare societies in which these arrangements differ. Thus we need comparative or historical data. Generally, Marxists have preferred the latter. Comparison of societies at a given point in time are frequently predicated on the implicit assumption that all

Introduction

19

societies will evolve through the same stages. Thus it is a matter of indifference whether one studies a contemporary society with feudal institutions or one that existed seven hundred years ago. Marx appeared to hold this view, but few contemporary Marxists do. We now understand that international relations have changed in ways that may preclude late industrializing nations from following the same lines of economic and political development as the early industrializing nations. To learn about process, then, requires examining the course of development over a period of time. A second reason for turning to history is implied in the following passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living" (Marx, 1913:9). The social institutions that exist at any given time, the resources available for solving problems, even the ideas that people think, are largely handed down from the past. This is very clear in the case of criminal justice. One cannot fully explain the criminal law or the nature of the criminal justice system by referring to the functions they allegedly serve today. To understand the character of law and criminal justice one must look to the time when they were created, not because they have not changed, but because they have changed in ways that are constrained and shaped by a historical heritage. Current debates over sentencing policy, for example, invoke arguments introduced by the philosophers Kant and Hegel two hundred years ago. For these reasons, a substantial number of the readings included in this book are historical studies. Although the comparative study of social formations is a major part of the Marxian project, it is also true that Marxist criminologists have been concerned with crime and criminal justice in a given social formation, usually their own. Criticism of mainstream criminology's treatment of crime in capitalist society has been a major focus of radical criminology. The results have not always been satisfactory. In response to Gouldner's (1968) accusation that Howard Becker, a leading labeling theorist, "views the underdog as someone who is being mismanaged, not as someone who suffers or fights back. Here the deviant is sly, but not defiant; he is tricky but not courageous; he sneers but he does not accuse; he 'makes out' without making a scene," it would be appropriate to ask whether Gouldner thinks Becker should have described the people he studied as fighting back when he saw them doing nothing of the sort. A similar rebuttal might be framed in answer to Taylor, Walton, and Young's criticism of criminologists for failing to show us the deviant as rebel. No doubt a good many criminological findings have been obtained by research methods so flawed that the findings cannot withstand critical methodological scrutiny. But some are sure to stand up. To deny them is to produce a criminology that is equally or even more mystifYing than the original. Jock Young (1975) was closer to the mark when he observed that criminals often look the way positivists describe them, though not necessarily for

20

Introduction

the reasons positivist criminologists have thought. When Marx revealed bourgeois economics as ideological, he was not concerned only with refuting it, but also with demonstrating how the routine functioning of capitalism gave rise to misleading appearances regarding its functioning. It is therefore in the realm of interpreting research findings that Marxists will often find grounds for disagreeing with the work of their non-Marxian colleagues (Krisberg, 1975). As Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973) emphasize, Marx makes explicit assumptions about human nature (at least in his early writings; Taylor, Walton, and Young do not distinguish the early from the mature Marx) that are not always shared by non-Marxian criminologists. Marxian conceptions of the state, and of social process generally, often differ from those held by non-Marxian social scientists. However, criticism of existing criminology on the grounds that it disagrees with Marx is always vulnerable to the rejoinder: why should we believe Marx? He could have been wrong. Long ago, Galileo pointed out that it was theory that must conform to facts, not facts to theory. Where there is disagreement between Marxian and non-Marxian theory, then, the superiority of the Marxist analysis must be demonstrated. Such demonstrations will not be easy because both Marxian and nonMarxian ideas are frequently hard to operationalize. Many of Marx's ideas are expressed in language that is metaphorical and ambiguous. Similar problems pervade non-Marxian criminology.25 Given this difficulty, we may end up evaluating theories on the basis of how congenial we find their untestable metasociological assumptions, but this circumstance is not one that should make us happy.

CAN THERE BE A MARXIST CRIMINOLOGY? The value of these and other elements of Marxist theory for criminology is presently a matter of vigorous debate. Some Marxists have asserted that there can be no such thing as a Marxian criminology, a Marxian theory of the family, a Marxian theory of the educational system, etc. (Hirst, 1972, 1975; Mugsford, 1974; Bankowski, Mungham, and Young, 1977). They argue that Marxist theory can only involve the restricted set of concepts developed by Marx, such as class, capital, value, state, ideology. Crime not being one of these privileged concepts, it cannot find a place in Marxist theory. Just how these privileged concepts are to be selected from the many concepts that figure in Marx and Engels's voluminous writings is not entirely clear. Although Marx did not have a complete theory of crime, that is also true of the concepts that Hirst and the others admit to privileged status. As the selections in Part 1 demonstrate, Marx and Engels did write about crime on a number of occasions. However, even if Marx and Engels had never said a word about crime, it would not follow that a Marxian criminology is impossible. If one starts from the proposition that Marxist theory was incomplete when Marx and

IntrDductiDn

21

Engels died, then it is surely legitimate to extend and develop the theory to deal with new phenomena. One could then use the concepts and methods of reasoning found in Marxist texts without turning them into sacred books. Marxist critics notwithstanding, some of us find that our ability to analyze and understand crime is enhanced by the ideas developed in the writings of Marx and Engels. Later Marxist thinkers, too, show themselves to be valuable resources. Some of us have even concluded that our analyses of crime will enrich and contribute to the development of Marxist theory itself.26 Other critics do not necessarily dispute that a Marxist criminology is possible, but they do dispute, the claim that it enhances our understanding of crime. In the view of one critic, Marxist criminology has reached "the point at which its capacity for contribution is exhausted, and where it must confront the reality of its own theoretical and empirical poverty or wither and die" (Klockars, 1979:478-79). A second critic characterizes radical criminology as sentimental (Toby, 1979b), and a third calls it "immoral" (Nettler, 1978). Ultimately readers will have to judge whether our capacity for contribution is exhausted, and whether our work is sentimental and immoral, or whether, as I believe, Marxist criminology is healthier than it has ever been.27 Since some of the issues raised by our critics touch on fundamental issues-whether the work is scientific, whether it is moralistic, and how it is supported or contradicted by the experience of social societies-a few words about them are in order. Is Marxian criminology scientific?

One prominent criticism of our work is that it is not scientific-that it makes unverifiable statements about value preferences (Turk, 1979). In truth, the same might be said of much conventional criminology. Over the decades, non-Marxist criminologists have devoted a great deal of energy to framing policy recommendations on the basis of their own valuessometimes liberal, sometimes conservativei sometimes making their values explicit, more often disguising them as value-neutral science. Neglect or denial of discomforting empirical evidence has long characterized mainstream criminology. Marxists seem no more prone to bias than anyone else. Marx's stance was strongly against slanting one's analysis to fit a predetermined conclusion. In Theories of Surplus Value, he was quite explicit: "But when a man seeks to accommodate science to a viewpoint which is derived not from science itself (however erToneous it may be) but from outside, from alien, external interests, then I call him 'base "' (Marx, 1968:119). Marxists have certainly made clear their political views (as have many other criminologists, including some of our critics). But this does not in itself invalidate their assertions about crime. Strategists in a military campaign have every reason for wanting accurate information about the terrain, and the same is true in political struggle.

22

Introduction

Is Marxian criminology moralistic? A second criticism is that Marxist criminology is moralistic; it blames the wealthy but not the poor for their misdeeds, and it attributes all the bad features of our present society (such as crime) to capitalism, while failing to note the many benefits that capitalism has brought (Klockars, 1979; Toby, 1979). It may well be true that some Marxist criminologists (like some of their non-Marxist colleagues) have been moralistic; whether this is a flaw is itself a value judgment that can be left aside here as uninteresting. Marx himself repudiated moralism time and time again. Although he was angered by the indignities that workers suffered under capitalism (indignities that were objectively unnecessary because the development of industry was making deprivation and hardship unnecessary), he did not blame individual capitalists for their actions. They, no less than workers, were constrained by the logic of the capitalist system: I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and classinterests. My standpoint ... can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. (Marx, 1967:10) A century later Chambliss 11969:421) echoed this sentiment: The legal process must be understood as taking the form that it does because of characteristics of the social system which are independent of, and which render relatively inconsequentiaL the motives, character, or personality of the particular people who occupy positions in the system. It is precisely because they attribute the ills of a capitalist system to the system itself that Marxists want to replace capitalism with socialism, a different social system, and not to replace "bad" capitalists with "good" ones. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels applauded the bourgeoisie for their positive accomplishments. They praised capitalism for clearing away the ruins of feudal society, doing away with a host of ancient prejudices, and developing the forces of production. Yet despite itself, they argued, capitalism created the proletariat that would eventually overthrow it. And this too, they asserted, would be progress, because the social relations that were progressive at one point in time were at later times no longer progressive. In view of the deteriorating quality of life (including rising crime rates) in so many capitalist societies around the globe, our critics' defense of contemporary capitalism is not very convincing.

Is Marxian criminology utopian? Finally, Marxian criminology has been criticized as utopian. Specifically, in blaming crime on capitalism and asserting that crime and repression will

Introduction

23

disappear in a socialist society, Marxist criminologists are accused of neglecting the persistence of crime and repression in existing socialist societies (Nettler, 1978; Akers, 1979; Klockars, 1979). This is a complex issue. There is no doubt that the historical development of capitalism transformed criminal law, patterns of crime, and methods of crime control. The various readings in this collection provide ample documentation (see also Weisser, 1979), At least in this sense, the basis for asserting that capitalism causes crime and criminal justice is empirically well grounded. If, however, one interprets the word "cause" more narrowly to mean that only in capitalist societies does one find crime or formal methods of crime control, then the assertion is clearly false. Crime was unquestionably present in precapitalist societies (Jeudwine, 1917; Given, 1977; Hanawalt, 1979). There is equally no doubt that crime and criminal justice institutions are found in societies that are considered socialist. Central and East European criminologists have made crime in their own societies a central focus of their research, and Western criminologists, both Marxist and non-Marxist, have also written about it.28 Although some Western Marxists can fairly be accused of neglecting political repression and the abuse of power in socialist countries,29 others have taken note of them (e.g., Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1970). Rather than refuting Marxism, the persistence of crime in noncapitalist countries provides the occasion for Marxian theorizing, specifically for analyzing crime in relation to the modes of production, the state and juridical systems, the ideologies, etc., in these societies. For several decades, Western Marxists have grappled with the thorny problem of how the existing socialist societies should be conceptualized in Marxian terms. As yet, no consensus has been reached. Some (Cliff, 1974; Nicolaus, 1974; Bettelheim, 1976) have held that the USSR, for example, is not socialist at all, but a state capitalist society; that is, a society in which the state has established a monopoly in most sectors of the economy, and runs it in exactly the same wayan individual capitalist runs a private enterprise. Harmon (1970) suggests that the state capitalist societies have this character because their rulers have no alternative to acting like capitalists if they are to survive competition with other ruling classes, both capitalist and state capitalist. A second position is that the societies in question are neither capitalist nor socialist, but a new social formation altogether. Thus Schachtman (1962) characterizes the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic collectivist society, since the major means of production are owned collectively but controlled by the bureaucracy rather than the working class.3o A third position is that the societies in question are in fact socialist, albeit imperfect. Marx points out in his 1875 Critique oithe Gotha Program that in the immediate aftermath of a socialist revolution one deals with a society .. as it emerges from capitalist society; and which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks

24

Introduction

of the old society from whose womb it emerges" (emphasis in original). He then goes on to note that in this phase of socialist development, law will retain its bourgeois quality, adding that "these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society." This is not a mere matter of cultural lag. With the development of the forces of production, when the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; when labour is no longer merely a means of life but has become life's principal need; when the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly-only then will it be possible completely to transcend the narrow outlook of bourgeois right. Although a full exploration of these positions and their ramifications is not possible here, they do have different implications for criminality. One possible interpretation of the third position is that crime is inherently bourgeois. Although crime may persist for a while under socialism, it does so only as a "relic" of capitalism, to be explained by the survival of capitalist elements in popular consciousness. "Relic theory" has been rejected by most non-Marxian criminologists as naive and utopian, and has also been criticized by criminologists in Central and Eastern Europe (Lemell, 1967:494-5). More than sixty years having elapsed since the October Revolution in 1917, it becomes increasingly implausible that crime in the USSR is only a survival of Czarism and has no sources in existing social arrangements. A more materialist version of relic theory might attempt to link the persistence of crime with social inequalities in socialist societies. The Polish criminologist Leszek Lemell (1978:180), for example, has argued that relative deprivation can lead to crime. This argument is comparable to that made by anomie theorists in the West. Jerzy Jasinski (1978:476), another Polish criminologist, has presented a similar analysis: The last dozen or so years have seen some increase in differences of income -there is now a bigger gap between the highest and lowest earners. All these things have happened at a time of tremendous widespread growth of economic aspirations associated with the awakening of both cultural and material needs of all strata of the population. It would not be reasonable to count on a very rapid diminution of this gap between certain demands (which are strongly felt and now even regarded as necessities) and the means of satistying them. In all likelihood this is a situation in which we can count on a long period during which people will experience some pressure to resort to not very legal means in order to acquire the wherewithal to satisty their demands. We should therefore reckon seriously with the possibility of a real increase in the number of crimes against property (particularly public property), in the number of economic offenses, and in some categories of offences committed by officials-particularly if the aforesaid gap between demands and the satisfaction of these demands were to widen, even temporarily.

Introduction

25

This discussion implies that inequality is due to the underdevelopment of the forces of production, and therefore unavoidable for now. The state capitalist and bureaucratic collectivist positions would view inequalities of income and privilege as due to social relations of domination and exploitation.3! Here limitations on the reduction of inequality are linked with antagonistic class relations, such as bureaucrats' interest in preserving their privileged status, or the contradiction between centralized planning and lack of political democracy (a position taken by Draper, 1974).32 The resulting inequalities would be expected to result in anomie-induced crime, especially when exposure to consumerism in the West elevates desires for goods, and an ideology of egalitarianism makes the legitimation of inequality difficult. Theft by employees, which is reputedly very common in the USSR (Juliver, 1976:149-50) would be a manifestation of worker alienation stemming from both economic inequality and powerlessness in the work place (as well as in political affairs). Following the reasoning that Spitzer (1975) has developed regarding capitalist societies, we might also look to the way superstructural institutions such as the school, functioning in ways established to reproduce class rule, give rise to crime, delinquency, and other forms of deviance .33 We need not decide among these three positions here; clearly, the matter is one that requires a great deal of careful study. The point is that the persistence of crime in countries conventionally called socialist is not necessarily an embarrassment, but rather a phenomenon to be understood within the framework of Marxian theory. Marxism does provide conceptual tools for addressing this issue. What must be unequivocally rejected is the seeming assumption on the part of the critics who denounce our utopianism that the only alternatives we have are to continue with capitalism (possibly with some reforms) or to opt for totalitarian repression. As Quinney and many others have noted, there is a tradition of democratic socialism that extends, rather than denies freedom. The libertarian thrust of much radical criminology literature is one of its most prominent features.

WHITHER MARXIAN CRIMINOLOGY? In the space of a few years, Marxian criminology has moved beyond the programmatic statements that gave it its first, tentative coherence, and has now begun the difficult task of developing an understanding of crime, criminallaw, and criminal justice in different social formations. There are some areas where Marxian criminology has not yet advanced very far, and where, therefore, the work remaining to be done is especially great. One is the subject we have just touched on: crime and law in socialism. For understandable reasons, Marxian criminologists in the West have analyzed their own societies first. There is, however, a growing interest in crime in socialist society. Arguably, the credibility of socialism in the

26

Introduction

West depends on the ability of Western socialists to present a credible analysis of existing socialist societies. Hampered by political constraints, social scientists in the existing socialist societies have not been able to do this. Crime and criminal justice in the Third World also require investigation. The impact of capitalism on the Third World has been quite different from its impact on England, Europe, and the United States, and one might expect this difference to be reflected in patterns of crime, as well as social responses to crime. Work along these lines is already being carried out by Third World criminologists. Another area for future work concerns the social psychology of crime. Redo (1979) has noted the inattention to the role of personality in crime causation in Western Marxist criminology; and Pearson (1975) has expressed the fear that in turning from radical criminology to a more "hard nosed" Marxism, the concern for personal liberation is being lost. He suggests that psychoanalysis is an important resource for dealing with this concern. Here, two issues are raised. First, can one draw on Freud, or Mead, to supplement the suggestions that Marx himself left for the development of a social psychology, or are these schools of thought fundamentally incompatible? Second, how important is it to understand individuals in this way? Does it make any difference whether or not we can predict which particular individuals will become involved in crime? Opinions are likely to differ. Some work is already being carried out on ideologies of crime, but this work is still in its early stages. It is important to understand lay beliefs about the causes of crime, the social backgrounds of criminals, and solutions to the crime "problem." What role do the mass media play, compared to personal experience and informal communication with friends, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. How do these beliefs vary by class? What are the sources of ideology in criminological writing? What knowledge do students take away from their criminology courses? Still another area where attention is badly needed is the relation between criminological theory and political practice. Radical criminologists have participated actively in a number of political struggles over the past ten or twenty years, but this accumulated experience has not been subjected to thorough analysis and evaluation. Possibilities for action in the future need to be assessed in light of this experience. Some suggestions are offered in Part 5, but they are only the beginning of a discussion.

NOTES 1 Many of the developments that commonly accompany the inception of a new scientific perspective have attended this one. New journals have been created to publish its writings: Crime and Social Justice: Issues in Criminology and Contemporary Crises: Crime, Law and Social Policy in the United States; II Questione Criminale in Italy; and the Alternative Criminology Journal in Australia. The British National Deviancy Conference and the European

Introduction

27

Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control have provided peliodic conferences for developing this new approach to climinology. IThe Union of Radical Criminologists in the United States proved to be less successful; the organization is now defunct.1 Mainstream climinological associations such as the Amelican Society of Climinology have organized debates at annual meetings, and clitical appraisals have appeared in a number of mainstream journals. Introductory textbooks have begun to take note of radical climinology, 1Nettler, 1978; Sykes, 1978; Gibbons, 19791, and several treatments of the field written entirely from the point of view of the new perspective have been published IQuinney, 1979; Balkan, Berger, and Schmidt, 19801. Parallel developments marked the early years of positivist climinology in late nineteenth-century Europe and early twentieth-century United States. 2 The very few exceptions, such as the work of Rusche and Kirchheimer 119391, have been influential in recent years, but made little impact at the time of publication. What little work was done along these lines reflected influences external to climinology; neither Rusche nor Kirchheimer had been trained in climinology or 'employed as a climinologist. 3 It is symptomatic of the emphasis given to face-to-face interaction in research on the climinal justice system that allegations of bias focused on the individual decision maker: the policeman, the prosecutor, or the judge. Recent research on police and sentencing shows this emphasis to have been exaggerated. On the other hand, evidence is surfacing that agency decisions about how to allocate resources may place some categolies of individuals in greater jeopardy of being apprehended than others. For example, police are allocated to black neighborhoods in numbers that exceed what would be expected on the basis of the number of climes reported in those neighborhoods ICaITOll and Jackson, n.d.l. 4 Labeling theolists are sociologists who took the labeling of deviance at societal, organizational or individual levels as a central subject fOf sociological investigation. In the 1960s labeling theolists and phenomenologists Iwho seek to capture the subjective meanings of actions and expeliencesl made important contlibutions to deviance theory and research. 5 Critics of the position that such disagreements exist have pointed to surveys suggesting that all races and classes tend to agree about the relative seliousness of offenses; but they have not given enough attention to the substantial differences of opinion that are not related to race or class, or to the discrepancy between punishments actually imposed and those thought to be appropliate by the public. Wolfgang 119801 has recently noted that whitecollar clime is punished much less seliously than the general public thinks appropliate. For consensual climes, widely considered among the least selious, the discrepancy sometimes goes the other way. Johnson 119721 reports that "Robert Apablaza, a housepainter, was sentenced to fifty years in plison with no provision for parole by a New Orleans court four years ago for selling a matchbox full of malijuana. In Odessa, Texas, in March 1971, Bentura Flores was convicted of selling $10 worth of heroin. He received a sentence of 1,800 years in plison. He will be eligible for parole when he has served a third of his term." 6 It is symptomatic that the New Left slogan called for power to "the people" rather than to the proletaliat. 7 This eclecticism can be seen for example, in the work of Barry KMsberg 119751, who draws on Marx, Weber, Mills, Blauner, Balbus, and other sources. For the argument that there is little that is new in the new climinology, see Meier 119761. I find Meier's argument strained and unpersuasive. Why do practitioners of the old climinology attack the new so vehemently Isee belowl if it is really the same old thing? 8 The Schwendingers have subsequently modified their position and now argue for a proletarian definition of clime as conduct harmful to the objective interests of the working class 11977). 9 Marx's discussion of this issue does not lend support to a "human lights" definition of clime. When the nineteenth-century French philosopher Proudhon wrote in The

28

Introduction

Philosophy of Poverty that "property is theft," implying that capitalist exploitation was a form of larceny, Marx responded in The Poverty ofPhilosophy with a denial. He pointed out that the concept of theft made sense only in relation to a juridically defined concept of property, and added that in capitalism, workers receive evel)'thing they deseIVe. On a number of occasions, he maintained that morality could be no higher than the social relations of production permitted, and that therefore immorality could be defined only in relation to a given social formation. 10 Indeed, some radical criminologists suggested that criminals, rather than the working class. might be the vanguard of the revolution IGreenberg and Stender. 1972; Mathiesen. 1974). 11 Dissenters, on the other hand, argued that some formal social controls might be needed in any large-scale industrial society, and questioned the desirability of eliminating all constraints on the measures that can be taken against offenders (Thompson, 1975; Greenberg, 1979). 12 For two recent Marxist critiques of Bonger's work. see Taylor. Walton. and Young (1973) and Mike 11976). 13 Some of Marx's own writings on crime are in this vein. In an essay on Belgium, Marx (1848) attributed rising rates of crime to the pauperization of the population that resulted first from free trade and then from protectionism. 14 In a sensitive analysis of street crime, Tony Platt brings Bonger's treatment of crime and capitalism to mind: "While the link between 'street' crime and economic conditions is clearly established, we must guard against economism. Crime is not simply a matter ofpoverty, as evidenced by the unparalleled criminality and terrorism of the ruling class. Nor is 'street' crime explained by poverty, for petty bourgeois youth in the United States are probably just as delinquent as their working class counterparts, and there are many impoverished nations in the world that do not in any way approach the high level of criminality in this country. The problem of 'street' crime should be approached not only as a product ofthe unequal distribution of wealth and chaotic labormarkt>t practices, but also as an important aspect of the demoralizing social relations and individualistic ideology that characterize the capitalist mode of production at its highest stage of development" 11978:33). 15 Some of these issues are reviewed in Hindess and Hirst 11975). Therborn (1976), Cutleret al. 11977) and Wright 11978). See also Hartmann 11970). 16 The relationship between the forces and relations of production within a given mode is a subject of great importance for Marxian theory, but since it is tangential to our discussion it cannot be explored here. 17 In feudalism, surplus labor takes the form of feudal rent, which may be paid in the form of labor seIVices, cash or in kind. In the capitalist mode of production, workers sell their labor power to capitalists in return for wages. The difference between the value that workers receive in the form of wages and the value they produce is surplus value-the specific form that surplus labor takes in the capitalist mode of production-and is appropriated by the capitalist. This is the source of profits. 18 Marx takes the same approach to the different aspects of the economy itself: "The conclusion we reach is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity. Production pre.dominates not only over itself, ... but over the other moments [aspects] as well.... A definite production thus determines a definite consumption, distribution and exchange as well as definite relations between these different moments. Admittedly, however, in its onesided form, production is itself determined by the other moments .... Mutual interaction takes place between the different moments. This is the case with every organic whole" IMarx, 1973:99. Emphasis in originaU. 19 The precise number of categories required for conceptualizing this totality is not entirely clear. Most work on social formations has posited three "levels," the economic, the political,

Introduction

29

and ideological; but one could also discuss non ideological culture. the structure of organizations that lie outside the state. and so on. 20 Capital has a dual aspect in Marxist theory. On the one hand. capital is wealth that is. or can become economically productive lusable to produce surplus value). e.g. instruments of production. or money. On the other hand. capital embodies a social relationship. Since workers do not have capital themselves. they must sell their labor power to those who do in order to survive. Thus the possession of capital bestows on the capitalist the power to command the labor of workers. Since capital can be possessed legally or illegally. this power does not always coincide exactly with legal rights of ownership. 21 Conflict is also an element in some non-Marxian social theories. For example. in Weberian theory. groups come into conflict over their "life chances." No special relationship between groups is assumed; groups are simply hypothesized to exist and to have the tendency to come into conflict with one another. In Marxian theory. however. the groups in conflict (classes) bear a relationship to one another and the conflict is rooted in that relationship. 22 The exceptions are those inspired by functionalist or Weberian theory. Functionalist social theories are those that explain the existence of social phenomena in terms of what they contribute to maintaining existing social patterns. Emile Durkheim. Talcott Parsons. and Robert K. Merton are among the leading functionalist sociologists. Marx pokes fun at functionalist logic in one of the extracts reprinted from his writings in Part I. Max Weber was an early twentieth-century German sociologist whose writings are used as a conceptual resource by some present-day non-Marxian conflict theorists. Austin Turk is a leading representative of this perspective. 23 See. for example. Gordon 11971) and Quinney 1197B:399l. On the other hand. Steven Spitzer's (1975) sketch of a Marxian approach to deviance theory is exemplary in taking explicit account of both base and superstructure. 24 To the extent that this is true. Marxist and non-Marxist criminology are not in competition with one another. and it would be meaningless to ask which is better. except insofar as one was concerned with judgments about the relative importance of the questions that each perspective raised. 25 The difficulties in operationalizing Sutherland's differential association theory. for example. have been known for decades. 26 It may be noted that even if one were to accept the rigid position that a Marxist criminology was impossible. one would not be denying the theoretical worth or empirical validity of the work done by those of us who think that the criminology we are doing is appropriately called Marxist. The only thing at stake would seem to be its pedigree. A more detailed criticism of the sort of reasoning employed by Hirst. Mugsford. and Bankowski. Mungham. and Young can be found in Thompson (1978) and Greenberg 11980a). 27 As the number of critics has been quite large. and much of the criticism has been repetitive; a point-by-point response would be tedious. Overall. a good deal of the criticism is misinformed. misrepresents sources. or attacks a few writers without demonstrating that their work is representative. For example. many critics. such as Klockars and Akers. have accused radical criminologists of exaggerating the degree of dissensus about the content of law. and of wrongly maintaining that all law represents the interests of powerful elites. without noting Chambliss's work. which seriously qualifies such arguments. According to Chambliss (1969:10). it would be a mistake to think "that all laws represent the interests of persons in power at the expense of persons less influential. In many cases there is no conflict whatsoever between those in power and those not. For' most crimes against the person. such as murder. assault. and rape. there is consensus throughout society as to the desirability of imposing legal sanctions for persons who commit these acts." He goes on to say that "laws are passed which reflect the interests of the general population and which are antithetical to the interests of those in power.... The influence of interest groups. then. is but one as-

30

Introduction peet of the processes which detennine the emergence and focus of the legal norms." Much criticism is seriously outdated. Having failed to recognize that the previously eclectic radical criminology has evolved into a theoretically more coherent Marxian criminology, critics have attacked work that has already been transcended, has been explicitly repudiated by its authors, or as Beirne (1979) stresses, has no real connection with Marxian theory. For example, Toby 11979b), like Meier (1976), accuses Marxists of oversentimentality toward criminals, failing to note the explicit repudiation of the romanticizing of crime in Young 11975) and Crime and Social Justice Collective (1976), The paucity of references to recent work suggests that our critics are not well informed about the current state of Marxist criminology. Thus Toby 11979b) cites but a single work of radical criminology in his polemic, and it was published in 1973.

28 For the work of Central and East European criminologists, see All-Union Institute 11974), Buchholz et al. (1974), Dzekebaev (1974), Godony 11974a, b), Jasinski (1978), Vermes (1978),and Redo 119S0l. For Western work on crime in socialist societies, see Connor 11972), Juviler 11976), Brady 11977), Wilson, Greenblatt, and Wilson (1977), Solomon (1978), Volgyes (1978), Salas 11979), Balkan, Berger, and Schmidt 11980:324-34), Shelley 11980), and Greenberg 11980b). 29 For example, Quinney praises Cuba and China as places where "popular justice institutions have been created and supported by the state. These institutions," he argues "protect and solidilY the working class against internal and external class enemies, as well as against elitist bureaucratic tendencies in the state apparatus" (1974:163). Balkan, Berger, and Schmidt assert that "The Chinese constitution does guarantee, at least in principle, the right to freedom of speech, association, demonstration, and the freedom to strike .... Citizens' freedom in their own homes is inviolable, and no citizen can be arrested before a complete investigation is made and the evidence considered sufficient by the Chinese court. Any arrest must be made in public, during the daytime, and in front of witnesses .... In addition, there are special legal agencies designed to deal with government and party officials who have violated the law" 11980:329). Neither of these sources refers to testimony that there are miIlions of slave laborers in Chinese penal colonies lRuo-Wang/1976). Neither mentions the possibility that freedoms guaranteed on paper may be drastically infringed in practice, or that popular justice institutions can be manipulated by bureaucrats for their own purposes. According to a recent report, "Over the last two decades, either trials were not held at all or the judicial process was left to the Ministry of Public Security Ithe police) and party authorities .... In a murder case in Kwangsi Province, the 'judicial workers, ... without hearing the case in a court of law and without making further investigation to verilY relevant data, suggested that the defendant be sentenced to death and summarily executed.' Later it was found that the whole case was a 'frame-up' and the defendant's confession had been extorted" (Butterfield, 1979: p. A4). Recent Chinese government announcements have reported many wrongful executions and false imprisonments. 30 Laibman (1978) presents a critique of both the above positions. 31 For descriptions of social inequality in the USSR, see Lane (1971) and Matthews (1978). 32 Nove 11980) argues that while these factors may hold back production, the centralized bureaucratic control of the economy is itself a fetter on production. 33 Rates for common forms of crime appear to be considerably lower in the Soviet Union than in the United States, although official figures are not published; they definitely are lower in Poland (Greenberg, 1980b). It is not certain, though, whether crime rates are lower because social inequality is considerably less, as Lane (1971:74) indicates to be the case, or because law enforcement is more effective. Prison populations in the Soviet Union are several times higher than in the United States, and restrictions on geographical mobility in the Soviet Union make possible a degree of social control not available in the United States in the "war against crime" (Shelley, 1980).

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31

REFERENCES

American Friends SeIVice Committee (AFSC) Working Party (1971). Strugglefor Justice. New York: Hill and Wang. Akers. Ronald L. (1979). "Theory and Ideology in Marxist Criminology: Comments on Turk. Quinney. Toby and K1ockars." Criminology 16:527-43. All-Union Institute for the Study of the Causes and Elaboration of Measures for the Prevention of Crime (1974) .Recent Contributions to Soviet Criminology. Rome: United Nations Social Defence Research Institute. Balkan. Sheila. Ronald J. Berger. and Janet Schmidt (1980). Crime and Deviance in America. Belmont. Calif.: Wadsworth. Bankowski. zenon. Geoff Mungham. and Peter Young (1977), "Radical Criminology or Radical Criminologist?" Contemporary Crises 1:37-51. Beirne. Piers (1979). "Empiricism and the Critique of Marxism on Lawand Crime."Social Problems 26:373-85. Bettelheim. Charles (1976). Class Struggles in the U.S.S.R .• First Period: 1917-1923. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bonger. William Adrian (1916), Criminality and Economic Conditions. Boston: little. Brown. Originally published in 1905. Brady. James P. (1977). "Political Contradictions and Justice Policy in People's China." Contemporary Crises 1:127-62. Buchholz. Erich. Richard Hartmann. John Lekschas. and Gerhard Stiller (1974) .Socialist Criminology: Theoretical and Methodological Foundations. Lexington: Lexington Books' Butterfield. Fox (1979), "China is Codifying Legal System and Plans to Insure Open Trials. "New York Times. Jan. 15. pp. AI. A4. Carroll. Leo. and Pamela lIVing Jackson (n.d.). "On the Behavior of the Determinants ofthe Size of Municipal Police Forces." Unpublished paper. University of Rhode Island Sociology Department. Center for Research on Criminal Justice (1975), The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove:AnAnalysis ofthe U.S. Police. Berkeley. Calif.: Center for Research on Criminal Justice. Chambliss. William J. (1969). Crime and the Legal PT'Ocess. New York: McGraw-Hill. ---and Robert B. Seidman (1971). Law. Order. and Power. Reading. Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Cliff. Tony (1974), State Capitalism in Russia. New York: Urizen. Connor. Walter (1972). Deviance in Soviet Society. New York: Columbia University Press. Crime and Social Justice Collective (1976). "The Politics of Street Crime." Crime and Social Justice 5:1-4. Cutler. Antony. Barry Hindess. Paul Hirst. and Athar Hussain (1977). Maf7('s "Capita/" and Capitalism Today. vol. 1. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Denisoff. R. Serge. and Donald McQuarie (1975). "Crime Control in Capitalist Society: A Reply to Quinney." Issues in Criminology 10:109-19. Draper. Hal (1974).' 'The Dynamics of Bureaucratic Collectivism." InBureaucratic Collectivism: The Stalinist Social System. Highland Park. Mich.: Sun Press. Dzekebaev. U.S. (1974). Criminality as a Criminological Problem. Alma Atar. USSR: Nauka. Gartner. Rosemary (1979). "Urbanization. Urban Growth and Homicide: A Comparative Analysis." Paper presented to the American Sociological Association. Gibbons. Don C. (1979). The Criminological Enterprise: Theories and Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs. NJ.: Prentice-Hall.

32

Introduction

Given, James B. (1977). Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press. GOdony, Joseph (1974a). "Criminality in Industrialized Countries." In Crime and Industrialization . Stockholm: Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology. -(1974bJ. "Report on Criminological Researches in the National Institute of Criminology and Criminalistics in Hungruy." In Crime and Industrialization . Stockholm: Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology. Gordon, David M. (1971). "Class and the Economics of Crime." ReviewofRadical Political Economy 3:51-75. Gouldner, Alvin (1968). "The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State." The American Sociologist 3:103-16. -(1973). "Foreword." In Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young, The NewCriminology: Fora Social Theory of Deviance. New York: Harper and Row. Greenberg, David F. (1979). "Book Review of Class, State and Crime: On the Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice, by Richard Quinney." Crime and Delinquency 25:110-13. -(1980a). "A Critique of the Immaculate Conception: A Comment on Piers Beirne." Social Problems (April). -(1980b). "Penal Sanctions in Poland: A Test of Alternative Models." Social Problems (December). - a n d Fay Stender (1972). "The Prison as a Lawless Agency." Buffalo Law Review 21:799-838. Gurr, Ted Robert (1976). Rogues, Rebels, and Reformers: A Political History of Urban Crime and Conflict. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hanawalt, Barbara A. (1979). Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348. Cambridge: HalVard University Press. Harmon, Chris (1970). "The Stalinist States." International Socialism 42: 1?-20. Reprinted in Bureaucratic Collectivism: The Stalinist Social System. Highland Park, Mich.: Sun Press. Hartmann, Klaus (1970). Die Mar}(.ische Theorie. Berlin: De Gruyter. Hepburn, John R. (1977). "Social Control and the Legal Order: Legitimate Repression in a Capitalist State." Contemporary Crises 1:77-90. Hindess, Barry, and Paul Hirst (1975).Pre-Capitalist Modes ofProduction . Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ---(1977). Mode of Production and Social Formation. Atlantic Highfields, NJ.: Humanities Press. Hirst, Paul Q. (1972). "Marx and Engels on Law, Crime and Morality." Economy and Society 1:28-56. -(1975). "Radical Deviancy Theory and Marxism: A Reply to Taylor and Walton." In Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young (eds.), Critical Criminology. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Jasinski, Jerzy (1978). "Direction and Determinants of Expected Changes in the Trends and Structure of Crime." In Jerzy Jasinski (ed.), Problems of Social Maladjustment and Crime in Poland. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences - Ossolineum Publishing House. Jeudwine, J. W. (1917). Tort, Crime, and Police in Medieval Britain. London: Williams and Norgate. Johnson, Joe (1972). "Behind the Prison Revolt." International Socialist Review 33:8-15. Juviler, Peter H. (1976). Revolutionary Law and Order: Politics and Social Change in the U.S.S.R. New York: Free Press.

Introduction

33

Klockars, Carl B. (19791. "The Contemporary Crises of Marxist Criminology." Criminology 16:477 -515. Krisberg, Barry (19751. Power and Privilege: Toward a New Criminology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Krohn, Marvin 119761. "A Durkheimian Analysis ofIntemationai Crime Rates." Paper presented to the American Sociological Association. Laibman, David 119781. "The 'State Capitalist' and 'Bureaucratic-Exploitative' Interpretations of the Soviet Social Formation: A Critique." The Review of Radical Political Economics 10:24-34. Lane, David 119711. The End of Inequality? Stratification under State Socialism. Baltimore: Penguin. Lemen, L. L.119671.Scientific Foundations of Criminal Policy. Warsaw: State Scientific Bublishing Company. ---119781.Zarys KIyminologii Og6lnej/Outlines of General Criminology. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Marx, Karl 118481. "The 'Model State' of Belgium." Neue Rheinische Zeitung 68 (August 71. In Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 7.

---119041. Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. Tr. N.!. Stone, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr. Originally published 1859. ---119131. The Eighteenth Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte. Tr. Daniel De Leon. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr. Originally published 1852. ---119671. Capital, vol. 1. Tr. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. New York: International Publishers. Originally published 1867. ---(19681. Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 2. New York: International Publishers. ---119731. Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Tr. Martin Nicolaus. New York: Vintage. Marx, KarL and Frederick Engels 119691. Selected Works, vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mathiesen, Thomas 119741. The Politics of Abolition. New York: Halstead. Matthews Merryn 119781. Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life-Styles under Communism. London: George Allen and Unwin. Matza, David 119691. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Meier, Robert (19761. "The New Criminology: Continuity in Criminological Theory." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 67:461-69. Michalowski, Raymond J., and Edward W. Bohlander 119761. "Repression and Criminal Justice in Capitalist America." Sociological Inquiry 46:95-106. Mike, Barry 119761. "Wilhelm Adriaan Bonger's 'Criminality and Economic Conditions': A Critical Appraisal." International Journal of Criminology and Penology 4:211-38. Mills, C. Wright (19591. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Mitford, Jessica (19741. Kind and Usual Punishment. New York: Vintage. Mugsford, S. K. (19741. "Marxism and Criminology: A Comment on the Symposium Review of'The New Criminology'." The Sociological Quarterly 15:591-96. NARMIC, National Action and Research on the Military-Industrial Complex 11971I.Police on the Homefront. Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee. Nettler, G"Yfln (19781. Explaining Crime. 2nd. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Nicolaus, Martin (19741. The Restoration of Capitalism in the U.s.S.R. Chicago: Uberator. Nove, Alec (19801. "Problems and Prospects of the Soviet Economy." New Left Review 119:3-19.

34

Introduction

Parsons, Talcott (1977). Evolution of Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall. Pearson, Geoffrey (1975). The Deviant Imagination: Psychiatry, Social Work and Social Change. New York: Holmes and Meier. Pepinsky, Harold E. (19761. Crime and Conflict: A Study of Law and Society. New York: Academic Press. . Platt, Tony (19691. The Child-Savers: The Invention ofDelinquency . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. -(1974), "Prospects for a Radical Criminology in the United States." Crime and Social Justice 1:2-10. ---(1978). '''Street' Crime-A View from the Left." Crime and Social Justice 9:26-34. Platt, Tony, and Paul Takagi (19771. "Intellectuals for Law and Order: A Critique of the New 'Realists'." Crime and Social Justice 7:1-16. Quinney, Richard (1970a). The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: little, Brown. --(1970b). The Problem of Crime. New York: Dodd, Mead. - - I 1973). "Crime Control in Capitalist Society: A Critical Philosophy of Legal Order," Issues in

Criminology 8:75-99. of Legal Order: Crime Control in Capitalist Society. Boston: Little, Brown. Redo, Slawomir M. (1979). "The New Criminology: The Problem of Etiology of Crime." Acta Universitatis Nicolai Copernici 18:109-22. - ( 19801. "Crime Trends and Crime Prevention Strategies in Eastern Europe." Working Paper for the Sixth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. Reiman, Jeffery (1979). The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. New York: Wiley. Ruggiero, Guido (19801. Violence in Early Renaissance Venice. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press. Ruo-Wang, Bao (1976). Prisoner of Mao. Baltimore: Penguin. Rusche, Georg, and Otto Kirchheimer (19391. Punishment and Social Structure. New York: Columbia University Press. Salas, Luis (1979). Social Control and Deviance in Cuba. New York: Praeger. Schachtman, Max (1962). The Bureaucratic Revolution: The Rise of the Stalinist State. New York: Donald. Schur, Edwin M. (1973). Radical Non-Intervention: Rethinking the Delinquency Problem. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall. Schwendinger, Herman and Julia (1970). "Defenders of Order or Guardians of Human Rights." Issues in Criminology 7:72-81. ---(19741. The Sociologists of the Chair: A Radical Analysis of the Formative Years of North American Sociology, 1883-1922. New York: Basic Books. -(1977), "Social Class and the Definition of Crime." Crime and Social Justice 7:4-13. Shelley, Louise (1980), "The Geography of Soviet Criminality." American Sociological Review 45:111-22. Smith, Joan, and William Fried (1974). The Uses ofthe American Prison: Political Theory and Penal Practice. Lexington: Lexington Books. Solomon, Peter H. (1978) .Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy. New York: Columbia University Press. Spitzer, Steven (19751. "Towards a Marxian Theory of Deviance." Social Problems 22:638-51. Swida, Witold (1977). Kryminologia. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Sykes, Gresham M. (1978). Criminology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. ---(19741. Critique

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35

Takagi, Paul 119741 . "A Garrison State in a 'Democratic' Society." Crime and Social Justice 1:27 - 33. Taylor, Ian, Paul Walton, and Jock Young 119731. The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. New York: Harper and Row. Therbom, Goran 119761. Science, Class and Society: On the Formation ofSociology and Historical Materialism. Atlantic Highfields, N.J.: Humanities Press. Thompson, E. P. 119751. Whigs and Hunters: Origins of the Black Act. New YOlk Pantheon. Thompson, E. P.119781. "The Poverty ofTheOlY or an Orrery of Errors." In E. P. Thompson led.I,The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Toby, Jackson 11979al. "Societal Evolution and Criminality: A Parsonian View." Social Problems 26:386-91. -(1979bl. "The New Criminology is the Old Sentimentality." Criminology 16:516-26. Turk, Austin T. 119691. Criminality and Legal Order. Chicago: Rand McNally.

---119791. "Analyzing Official Deviance: For Nonpartisan Conflict Analyses in Criminology."

Criminology 16:459-76. Vermes, Miklos 119781. The Fundamental Questions of Criminology. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff. Volgyes, Ivan 119781. Social Deviance in Eastern Europe. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Weisser, Michael R. 119791. Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe. Atlantic Highfields, N.J.: Humanities Press. Wilson, Amy Auerbacher, Sidney Leonard Greenblatt, and Richard Whittingham Wilson (19771. Deviance and Social Control in Chinese Society. New York: Praeger. Wolfgang, Marvin E. 119801. "Crime and Punishment." New York Times, March 2, p. E21. Wright, Erik Olin 119731. The Politics ofPunishment: A Critical Analysis ofPrisons in America. New York: Harper and Row.

---119781. Class, Crisis and the State. London: New Left Books. Young, Jock 119751. "Working-class Criminology." In Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young leds.l, Critical Criminology. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Part 1 Marx and Engels on Crime and Punishment

Part 1

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Part 1

Although crime was not a central interest for Marx and Engels, they did discuss crime and punishment in some of their writings. Now, when radical Marx and criminologists are attempting to reconstruct Engels criminology on Marxian foundations, these writings on Crime are of particular interest. To convey a sense of what and Marx and Engels had to say about crime, representaPunishment tive selections from these writings are reprinted here.1 The first three selections concern the relationship between crime and capitalism. The first, extracted from Capital, is part of a larger discussion of the origins of capitalism in early modem England. Marx was particularly concerned with refuting the view-held by economists of his day (as well as oursl-that capitalism was a natural way of organizing human relationships. What could be more taken for granted than the notion that some people are paid to work by other people who own businesses, hire workers, and collect profits? As we grow up in a capitalist society, we anticipate that we will perhaps be a paid wage earner, or an owner of a business that employs wage earners. Some of us may come to disapprove of these arrangements, but we are not surprised that they exist. Yet only a few centuries ago, in Europe and England, few people worked for wages. Most were free peasants, growing food on their own land. Artisans and craftsmen who made and sold things were usually independent workers. Few peasants or artisans were eager to give up their independence to work for wages on farms or in factories owned by others. Yet capitalism could never have developed had not large numbers of people been willing to do just that. A precondition for the establishment of capitalism as a mode of production, then, was the creation of people who had no alternative but wage labor. Wherever people had alternatives, they refused to do wage labor. Marx makes this point in Capital by telling the story of a certain Mr. Peel: Mr. Peel ... took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working-class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, "Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River! IMarx, 1967:766)

Mr. Peel's workers were able to desert him because Australian land was freely available. As long as English peasants had land, they too could avoid becoming employees. Before capitalism could be created, then, peasants had to be separated from land and deprived of other traditional sources of support. This theft was accomplished by force. When it became profitable for large landowners to raise sheep for market, they converted land previ-

Marx and Engels an Crime and Punishment

39

ously used for crops into pasturage, at first illegally and then later by Act of Parliament. Villagers were thus deprived of their customary rights to use common lands to graze their own livestock, gather wood, fish, and so on. Many therefore found it impossible to remain on the land, and whole villages were deserted. Then, too, the confiscation of Church lands deprived paupers of their legal right to share in the tithe. The feudal retainers discharged by their lords when private armies were suppressed swelled the ranks of those whose customary incomes were vanishing as economic relationships became commercialized and the state began to centralize. The common lands stolen from peasant use enlarged the estates of rural landlords and created a population that had no source of legal income other than the wage. Capitalism itself originated in larceny of the grandest scale imaginable (yet it was a larceny that was-to use Mark Kennedy's pregnant phrase-"beyond incrimination"). The textbook version of how capital is accumulated-by self-deprivation and saving-is belied, as Marx demonstrated, by the history of how primitive accumulation actually took place. Since the dispossessed could not all be absorbed in agriculture or in primitive industry, many turned to begging or theft. The Elizabethan undmworld of thieves, gamblers, and confidence men had its origins in the same processes that made capitalism itself possible: the massive, forcible restructuring of economic relationships. The goal of the increasingly bloody legislation of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries against vagrancy, begging, idleness, and petty forms of theft was to prevent all these alternatives to wage labor. Criminal law in this period was thus deployed to help give birth to a radically new form of economic organization: capitalism. In the passage excerpted, Marx sees crime and criminal law as different aspects of the same process. The transformation from independent, petty commodity production to capitalism entailed the taking of land, the criminalizing of the conditions of survival for those thrown off the land, and the violation of criminal laws by people who had no choice but crime for their livelihood. It is of more than passing interest that somewhat parallel processes took place in America. According to Gus Tyler (1962:44-45): Land grants, covering the acreage of full states, were gained by hribery of colonial legislatures and governors. Original accumulations of capital were amassed in tripartite deals among pirates, governors, and brokers. Fur fortunes were piled up alongside the drunk and dead bodies of our noble savages, the Indians. Small settlers were driven from their lands or turned into tenants by big ranchers employing rustlers, guns, outlaws-and the law. In the great railroad and shipping wars, enterprising capitalists used extortion, blackmail, violence, bribery, and private armies with muskets and cannons to wreck a competitor and to become the sole boss of a trade.

The second selection consists of several excerpts from Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in 1845. Sent to Manchester

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Part 1

to learn the ropes in his father's business, Engels spent much of his twenty months in England studying working-class life. Manchester was in the midst of rapid and unplanned industrialization, and Engels' book, based on wide reading and extensive personal investigation, concerns the social consequences of this development. Engels points out that the factories whose profits and cheap goods were raising middle-class living standards were at the same time creating a new social entity, the working class. For it, industrialization implied not prosperity, but uncertain periods of employment and unemployment, low wages and work that never varied in its routine.2 Demoralized by brutally unhealthy living conditions in the factories and factory towns, workers were reduced almost to animals, and responded with drunkenness, sexual indulgence, and even suicide. This portrait of working-class culture is unquestionably colored by Engels' middle-class morality. Yet, unlike most of his contemporaries, Engels saw these forms of behavior not as evidence of the inherent degeneracy of the working class, but as an understandable adaptation to social conditions that they had not chosen. In Engels'view, industrialization so dehumanized workers that virtually only one human faculty was left to them: the capacity to rebel. Anticipating present-day radical criminologists, Engels characterizes crime as a form of rebellion, a refusal to conform to the established order. Yet he recognizes that it is an unsatisfactory form. Individualistic and easily repressed, it fails to change conditions. Nevertheless, he argues, it is the first stage in a process in which working-class opposition to capitalism will become more unified and political. In a period of militant union and working-class political activity directed at getting universal suffrage, this was an understandable, if not entirely accurate political prediction. In his masterly discussion of this book, Steven Marcus (1974) points out that Engels was the first middle-class socialist to write of socialism as something to be achieved by workers themselves, rather than paternalistically established by employers or the government. The third selection, Engels' speech at Elberfeld, Germany, was one of several devoted to the subject of communism. Writing to Marx after the event, Engels indicated that everyone in the town attended-except the workers. In this speech, Engels attributed crime to the atomizing effect of capitalism. When the economy is based on competition, he told his audience, everyone comes to see everyone else as a potential competitor, an enemy. The consequence is social war. It is of some interest that Engels describes this war in language borrowed from Hobbes-a war "of all against all," not necessarily of one class against one another. Crime, Engels argued, is one manifestation of this war. Early in the twentieth century, Wilhelm Bonger extended this line of thinking in his massive study, Crime and Economic Conditions. Engels goes on to argue that in an egalitarian communist society, the antagonisms due to competition would be abolished by extensive administrative coordination. Once everyone received all the goods and seIVices they

Marx and Engels on Crime and Punishment

41

needed, crime would disappear, and with it the agencies of law enforcement. The few disputes that might still arise from time to time would be settled amicably, by arbitration. As the Introduction pointed out, the cor.ditions under which crime might be expected to disappear from society remain a topic for discussion among Marxist criminologists. The fourth and fifth selections are noteworthy for their anticipation of later developments in non-Marxian criminological theory. The fourth selection, taken from Marx's posthumous Theories of Surplus Value, was provoked by debates among economists about whether service occupations (Le., occupations that do not produce tangible goods) should nevertheless be considered "productive" because people are willing to pay for the services. Marx ridicules this notion by demonstrating that it logically entails viewing criminals as "productive," because they give rise to the occupations that provide the service of protecting people from crime. In this brief, mocking essay, Marx anticipates theories of crime that focus attention on the positive functions crime serves for society. The best known of these functionalist theories is probably that of Durkheim, who argued that crime contributes to social solidarity ~y arousing the collective wrath of the community.3 Although functionalism has been attacked on many grounds, the insight that crime benefits some people seems plausible. Many businesses profit from crime by selling protective devices or insurance; and without crime the Hollywood film industry would be at a real loss for plots. It may also be true that crime helps to stabilize capitalism, for example by dividing the working class and leading workers to depend on the government for protection. Marx's contention (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) that crime does as much as more familiar forms of class conflict to develop the means of production is not one that other students of crime have done much to test, and it is not likely to be generally true.4 However, Richard Quinney (1977) has argued that crime does contribute to the dialectic of capitalism, bringing socialism nearer by intensifying the fiscal crisis of the state. Wenger and Bonomo assess this argument in Part 4. The fifth reading, part of an article Marx wrote for a New York newspaper, anticipates labeling theory, a perspective that had great influence on criminology and the sociology of deviance during the 1960s and early 1970s. Whereas traditional criminological theory takes for granted the legal categories used to distinguish criminals from non-criminals, labeling theory takes these categories as problematic. In so doing, it opens them up to investigation. Howard Becker's classical formulation captures the key idea of the labeling theorists' perspective quite well (1963:9): Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an "offender," The deviant is one to whom that label

42

Part 1

has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.

As noted in the Introduction, Marxists-along with many criminologists with other theoretical orientations-have criticized various aspects oflabeling theory. Here, though, Marx himself writes squarely within the labeling tradition a hundred years before it was created. He observes that the social response to an infraction is governed not only by the behavior of the person who commits the infraction, but also by the way society chooses to respond to it. In "improvising crime," society decides, in fact, what is and what is not to be regarded as an infraction. A Marxist is unlikely to be satisfied until an explanation is given for the way society makes this decision. Presumably it is not arbitrary. But in this newspaper column, Marx does not say. The excerpt reprinted here was incidental to a discussion of another topic, and Marx never returned to the provocative ideas he suggested but did not develop. Only in recent years have scholars begun to develop them. The sixth selection, part of a newspaper column, concerns the punishment of criminals. It deals with the philosophical justification for capital punishment. As one might expect, given Marx's Hegelian background, Marx is contemptuous of utilitarian theories of punishment-theories that justify the right to punish criminals by pointing to the benefits that other members of society gain from reducing their chance of becoming a victim. Although Marx argues that punishment is not effective in reducing crime,5 his position fundamentally rests on nonutilitarian grounds: to sacrifice criminals for someone else's good is to treat them as objects. It denies their humanness. At first, Marx seems to endorse the "retributive" philosophies of Kant and Hegel, who depict crime as a freely chosen, willful act that should be punished because wrong-doers deserve punishment. (This rationale has nothing to do with the effect that punishment will have on crime rates.) Yet he immediately qualifies this endorsement. He does so not on political grounds (for example, by arguing that the law really defends ruling class interests rather than the interests of society as a whole), but rather because the abstract concept of "free will"-e.g., freely choosing to commit a crime-ignores the concrete differences in the conditions of people's existence. These differences playa large role in determining whether a person becomes involved in crime. Unlike later positivist criminologists who also rejected the retributive rationale for punishment, Marx does not deny the concept of free will; he simply argues that if we want to understand people's involvement in crime we must look at the concrete social circumstances in which they find themselves. Today this is a sociological truism. Although Marx was not alone in his own day in attributing crime to the effects of the social environment, the law took a quite different view. Even today, popular opinion has by no means adopted the sociological point of view. Elsewhere, Marx argues that the conception of man found in law and in the retributive theory of punishment is distinctly bourgeois. The conception

Marx and Engels on Crime and Punishment

43

views people as abstractly and formally free and equal despite manifest social differences and constraints. It is the market that equalizes qualitatively different commodities, including labor, essentially eradicating all distinguishing qualities. Marx concludes by citing the work of Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer and statistician of the early nineteenth century who pioneered in the statistical analysis of crime. Comparing the age distribution of criminality in France and in Philadelphia, Marx argues that the similarity in patterns shows that crime primarily reflects a society's social arrangements, not its political institutions. In truth, the comparison shows nothing of the kind. To conclude that social conditions cause crime we would need to examine crime figures from societies in which these conditions val}'. Similarity in crime patterns between France and Philadelphia is just as compatible with a biological explanation of crime as with a social explanation! Marx probably did not take strictly biological explanations of crime seriously enough to worl}' about them. He saw human nature as something that develops historically and is not fixed independently of social arrangements. Marx wrote again about the punishment of criminals in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. The Programme was drafted in 1875 as a platform for the founding congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. Marx found much of the draft to be theoretically weak and politically unsound, and expressed his criticisms in the Critique. One of the points in the Programme called for regulating prison labor to protect the working class. The demand was intended to cope with the competition to which free laborers were exposed when prisoners' labor was made available to manufacturers at low cost.6 In France, workers had made this a political issue as early as 1848 (Duesterberg, 1979:104). Marx responds by noting that socialists should have clearly said that they did not oppose humane treatment of prisoners, including the right to engage in productive labor-an activity that might help them to rejoin the working class in a lawful occupation after their release: it should have been clearly stated that there is no intention from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like beasts, and especially that there is no desire to deprive them of their sole means of betterment, productive labour. This was surely the least one might have expected from socialists. (1970:22)

Until quite recently, socialists after Marx's time have shown relatively little interest in advancing programs directed toward realizing the common interests of prison inmates and workers outside of prisons. In practice, even prisoners who labor have been ignored as a fraction of the working class. NOTES 1 The selections reprinted here are restricted to discussion of crime. None of Marx's and Engels' extensive writing on law has been included. Cain and Hunt (1979) provide a generous

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selection of their writings on law, as well as on crime. 2 Some of Marx's later writings on the effects on the subordination of workers to the machine are anticipated in this early work by Engels. 3 Other scholars who developed functional analyses of crime are George Herbert Mead, Robert K. Merton, Daniel Bell, Kingsley Davis, and Kai T. Erikson. 4 In particular circumstances, crime may contribute to the advance of the forces and/or the relations of production. In unpublished research on crime in eighteenth-century England, Peter Unebaugh finds that highway robbery contributed to the development of branch banking. 5 Neither the statistics available to Marx nor those available to us today conclusively demonstrate that pilnishment does not deter crime, but many consumers of crime statistics, including some far more sophisticated in statistics than Marx, have wrongly concluded that they do. For some of the methodological problems, see Blumstein, Cohen, and Nagin (1978) Greenberg (1977), and Greenberg, Kessler, and Logan (1979). 6 Rosalind Petchesky shows in her essay in Part III that competition between prisoners and workers outside of prison was a politically controversial issue in the United States at the same time.

REFERENCES Becker, Howard S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, and Daniel Nagin (1978). Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. Cain, Maureen, and Alan Hunt (1979). Maf7( and Engels on Law. New York: Academic Press. Duesterberg, Thomas (1979). "Criminology and the Social Order in Nineteenth Century France." Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University. Greenberg, David F. (1977). "Deterrence Research and Social Policy." In Stuart Nagel (ed.) Modeling the Criminal Justice System. Beverly Hills: Sage. Greenberg, David F., Ronald C. Kessler, and Charles H. Logan (1979). "A Panel Model of Crime Rates and Arrest Rates." American Sociological Review 44:843-850. Marcus, Steven (1974). Engels, Manchester and the Working Class. New York: Random House. Marx, Karl (1967). Capital, vol. 1. New York: International Publishers. Originally published 1867. - - - (1970). Critique of the Gotha Programme. New York: International Publishers. Quinney, Richard (1977). Class, State and Crime: On the Theory and Practice ofCriminal Justice. New York: McKay. 1Yler, Gus (1962). Organized Crime in America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

45

1 Crime and Primitive Accumulation Karl Marx Reprinted from Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. Edited by Frederick Engels and translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. London: Swan Sonnenschein, LoWlY and Co. The text is that 011 the 1887 English edition.

The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th centuI)'. A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour-market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart well says, "eveI)'Where uselessly filled house and castle." Although the royal power, itself a product of bourgeois development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty forcibly hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers, it was by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantI)' from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufactures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was, therefore, its cI)'. Harrison, in his "Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicles," describes how the expropriation of small peasants is ruining the countI)'. "What care our great encroachers?" The dwellings of the peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the ground or doomed to decay. "If," says HarrisOI., "the old records of euerie manour be sought ... it will soon appear that in some manour seventeene, eighteene, or twentie houses are shrunk ... that England was neuer less furnished with people than at the present ... Of cities and townes either utterly decaied or more than a quarter or half diminished, though some one be a little increased here or there; of townes pulled downe for sheepe-walks, and no more but the lordships now standing

46

Karl Marx

in them ... I could saie somewhat." The complaints of these old chroniclers are always exaggerated, but they reflect faithfully the impression made on contemporaries by the revolution in the conditions of production .... Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not yet stand on that height of civilisation where the "wealth of the nation" (i.e., the formation of capital, and the reckless exploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the peopre) figure as the ultima Thule of all state-craft .... [Marx goes on to describe Acts of Henry VII and Henry VIII that attempted to limit land enclosures and preseIVe the free peasantry. According to a passage Marx quotes from one of Bacon's essays, free peasants were thought to make the best foot soldiers, and it was feared that their destruction would weaken the kingdom militarily. Sporadic attempts to enforce this legislation were largely ineffective.] "The device of King Henry VII.," says Bacon, in his "Essays, Civil and Moral," Essay 29, "was profound and admirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standardi that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and no servile condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners and not mere hirelings." What the capitalist system demanded was, on the other hand, a degraded and almost servile condition of the mass of the people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and of their means of labour into capital .... The process of forcible expropriation of the people received in the 16th century a new and frightful impulse from the Reformation, and from the consequent colossal spoliation of the church property. The Catholic church was, at the time of the Reformation, feudal proprietor of a great part of the English land. The suppression of the monasteries, &.c., hurled their inmates into the proletariat. The estates of the church were to a large extent given away to rapacious royal favourites, or sold at a nominal price to speculating farmers and citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the church's tithes was tacitly confiscated.... Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry, the class of independent peasants, were more numerous than the class of farmers .... About 1750, the yeomanry had disappeared, and so had, in the last decade of the 18th century, the last trace of the common land of the agricultural labourer. We leave on one side here the purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. We deal only with the forcible means employed. After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed proprietors carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation, effected everywhere on the Continent without any legal formality. They abolished the feudal tenure of land, i.e., they got rid of all its obligations to the State, "indemnified" the State by taxes on the peasantry and the rest of the mass of the people, vindicated for themselves the rights of modern private property in estates to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally, passed those laws of settlement, which mutatis mutandis, had the same effect on the English agricultural labourer,

Crime and Primitive Accumulation

47

as the edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry. The "glorious Revolution" brought into power, along with William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of surplus-value. They inaugurated the new era by practising on a colossal scale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been hitherto managed more modestly. These estates were given away, sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private estates by direct seizure. All this happened without the slightest observation of legal etiquette. The Crown lands thus fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of the Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again during the republican revolution, form the basis of the to-day princely domains of the English oligarchy. The bourgeois capitalists favoured the operation with the view, among others, to promoting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modem agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand. Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective duties .... Communal property-always distinct from the State property just dealt with-was an old Teutonic institution which lived on under cover of feudalism. We have seen how the forcible usurpation of this, generally accompanied by the turning of arable into pasture land, begins at the end of the 15th and extends into the 16th century. But, at that time, the process was carried on by means of individual acts of violence against which legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought in vain. The advance made by the 18th century shows itself in this, that the law itself becomes now the instrument of the theft of the people's land, although the large farmers make use of their little independent methods as well. The parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords grant themselves the people's land as private property, decrees of expropriation of the people .... The spoliation of the church's property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a "free" and outlawed proletariat. The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this "free" proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legisla-

48

Friedrich Engels

tion against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working-class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as "voluntary" criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.

2 The Demoralization of the English Working Class Friedrich Engels Reprinted from Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, translated and edited by W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958, pp. 130, 145-46, 149, 242-43 .

. . . Immorality is fostered in every possible way by the conditions of working class life. The worker is poor; life has nothing to offer him; he is deprived of virtually all pleasures. Consequently he does not fear the penalties of the law. Why should he restrain his wicked impulses? Why should he leave the rich man in undisturbed possession of his property? Why should he not take at least a part of this property for himself? What reason has the worker for not stealing? .. . . . Distress due to poverty gives the worker only the choice of starving slowly, killing himself quickly or taking what he needs where he finds it-in plain English-stealing. And it is not surprising that the majority prefer to steal rather than to starve to death or commit suicide . . . . The clearest indication of the unbounded contempt of the workers for the existing social order is the wholesale manner in which they break its laws. If the demoralisation of the worker passes beyond a certain point then it is just as natural that he will turn into a criminal-as inevitably as water turns into steam at boiling point. Owing to the brutal and demoralising way in which he is treated by the bourgeoisie, the worker loses all will of his own and, like water, he is forced to follow blindly the laws of nature. There comes a point when the worker loses all power [to withstand temptation].

Demoralization of English Working Class

49

Consequently the incidence of crime has increased with the growth of the working-class population and there is more crime in Britain than in any other country in the world. The annual statistics of crime issued by the Home Office show that there has been an extraordinarily rapid growth of crime. The number of those committed for trial on criminal charges in England and Wales alone has increased sevenfold in thirty-seven years .... . . . There can be no doubt that in England the social war is already being waged. Everyone looks after his own interests and fights only for himself against all comers. Whether in doing so he injures those who are his declared enemies is simply a matter of selfish calculation as to whether such action would be to his advantage or not. It no longer occurs to anybody to come to a friendly understanding with his neighbours. All differences of opinion are settled by threats, by invoking the courts, or even by taking the law into one's own hands. In short, everyone sees in his neighbour a rival to be elbowed aside, or at best a victim to be exploited for his own ends. The criminal statistics prove that this social war is being waged more vigorously, more passionately and with greater bitterness every year. Social strife is gradually developing into combat between two great opposing camps-the middle classes and the proletariat. No one need be surprised at the existence either of the social war of all against all or of the struggle between the workers and the bourgeoisie. These conflicts are no more than the logical consequence of the fundamental principle upon which free competition is based. It is, however, somewhat surprising that the bourgeoisie should remain so complacent and placid in the face of the thunderclouds which are gathering overhead and grow daily more threatening. How can the middle classes read about these things in the newspapers every day without showing some anxiety as to the consequences? Do they not see that the individual crimes of which they read will one day culminate in universal revolution? . .. Acts of violence committed by the working classes against the bourgeoisie and their henchmen are merely frank and undisguised retaliation for the thefts and treacheries perpetrated by the middle classes against the workers. Since its beginning in the early days of the Industrial Revolution the revolt of the workers against the middle clas.ses has passed through several phases. I do not propose to examine here the historical significance of these phases in the history of the English people. This must be reserved for a later study. For the time being I propose to confine myself to a brief survey of the principal facts concerning the hostility of the workers to the middle classes in order to show what effect this has had upon the development of the English proletariat. Criminal activities were the first, the crudest and the least successful manifestation of this hostility. The worker lived in poverty and want, and saw that other people were better off than he was. The worker was not sufficiently intelligent to appreciate why he" of all people, should be the one to suffer-for after all he contributed more Ito society than the idle rich, and

50

Friedrich Engels

sheer necessity drove him to steal in spite of his traditional respect for private property. We have already pointed out how crime has increased as industry has expanded. It has been shown that there has been a constant relationship between the number of arrests and the annual consumption of bales of cotton. The workers, however, soon realised that crime did not forward their cause. The criminals, by their thefts, could protest against the existing social order only as individuals. All the mighty forces of society were hurled against the individual law-breaker and crushed him with their overwhelming power. In addition theft was the blindest and most stupid form of protest and consequently this never became the universal expression of the workers' reaction to industrialisation, although many workers doubtless sympathised privately with those who broke the law. The first organised resistance of the workers, as a class, to the bourgeoisie, was the violence associated with the movements against the introduction of machinery. This occurred in the earliest stage of the Industrial Revolution. Even the earlier inventors of new machines, such as Arkwright, were attacked in this way and their machines destroyed. Subsequently there were many instances of machine breaking. These generally followed the same course as the printers' riots in Bohemia in 1844, when both workshops and machines were destroyed. This type of protest was also far from universal. It was limited to certain localities and was confined to resistance to one aspect of industrial change. If the immediate object of the machine breakers was attained, then the defenceless law breakers had to face the full fury of the established order. The criminals were severely punished and the introduction of the new machinery went on unchecked. It was clearly necessary for the workers to find a new method of expressing their discontent.

51

3 Crime in Communist Society Friedrich Engels From Frederick Engels, "Speech in Elberfeld," Feb. 8, 1845. Reprinted by permission from Karl Marx. Frederick Engels Collected Works, vol. 4, pp. 248-49. Moscow: Progress Publishers, and London: Lawrence and Wishert, 1975.

Present-day society, which breeds hostility between the individual man and everyone else, thus produces a social war ot all against all which inevitably in individual cases, notably among uneducated people, assumes a brutal, barbarously violent form-that of crime. In order to protect itself against crime, against direct acts of violence, society requires an extensive, complicated system of administrative and judicial bodies which requires an immense labour force. In communist society this would likewise be vastly simplified, and precisely because-strange though it may sound-precisely because the administrative body in this society would have to manage not merely individual aspects of social life, but the whole of social life, in all its various activities, in all its aspects. We eliminate the contradiction between the individual man and all others, we counterpose social peace to social war, we put the axe to the root of crime-and thereby render the greatest, by far the greatest, part of the present activity of the administrative and judicial bodies superfluous. Even now crimes of passion are becoming fewer and fewer in comparison with calculated crimes, crimes of interest-crimes against persons are declining, crimes against property are on the increase. Advancing civilisation moderates violent outbreaks of passion even in our present-day society, which is on a war footing; how much more will this be the case in communist, peaceful society! Crimes against property cease of their own accord where everyone receives what he needs to satisfY his natural and his spiritual urges, where social gradations and distinctions cease to exist. Justice concerned with criminal cases ceases of itself, that dealing with civil cases, which are almost all rooted in the property relations or at least in such relations as arise from the situation of social war, likewise disappears; conflicts can then be only rare exceptions, whereas they are now the natural result of general hostility, and will be easily settled by arbitrators. The activities of the administrative bodies at present have likewise their source in the continual social warthe police and the entire administration do nothing else but see to it that

Karl Marx

52

the war remains concealed and indirect and does not erupt into open violence, into crimes. But if it is infinitely easier to maintain peace than to keep war within certain limits, so it is vastly more easy to administer a communist community rather than a competitive one. And if civilisation has already taught men to seek their interest in the maintenance of public order, public security, and the public interest, and therefore to make the police, administration and justice as superfluous as possible, how much more will this be the case in a society in which community of interests has become the basic principle, and in which the public interest is no longer distinct from that of each individual! What already exists now, in spite of the social organisation, how much more will it exist when it is no longer hindered, but supported by the social institutions!

4 The Usefulness of Crime Karl Marx From Karl Marx. "Theories o[Surplus Value," vol. 1. Reprinted by pennission from Thomas B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel (eds.). Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1964. pp. 158-601.

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet verse, a parson sermons, a professor text-books, etc. A criminal produces crime. But if the relationship between this latter branch of production and the whole productive activity of society is examined a little more closely one is forced to abandon a number of prejudices. The criminal produces not only crime but also the criminal law; he produces the professor who delivers lectures on this criminal law, and even the inevitable text-book in which the professor presents his lectures as a commodity for sale in the market. There results an increase in material wealth, quite apart from the pleasure which ... the author himself derives from the manuscript of this text-book. Further, the criminal produces the whole apparatus of the police and criminal justice, detectives, judges, executioners, juries, etc., and all these different professions, which constitute so many categories of the social divi-

Usefulness of Crime

53

sion of labour, develop diverse abilities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satistying them. Torture itself has provided o-;casions for the most ingenious mechanical inventions, employing a host of honest workers in the production of these instruments. The criminal produces an impression now moraL now tragic, and renders a "seIVice" by arousing the moral and aesthetic sentiments of the public. He produces not only text-books on criminal law, the criminal law itself, and thus legislators, but also art, literature, novels and the tragic drama, as CEdipus and Richard /II, as well as Mullner's Schuld and Schiller's Rauber, testifY. The criminal interrupts the monotony and security of bourgeois life. Thus he protects it from stagnation and brings forth that restless tension, that mobility of spirit without which the stimulus of competition would itself become blunted. He therefore gives a new impulse to the productive forces. Crime takes off the labour market a portion of the excess population, diminishes competition among workers, and to a certain extent stops wages from falling below the minimum, while the war against crime absorbs another part of the same population. The criminal therefore appears as one of those natural "equilibrating forces" which establish a just balance and open up a whole perspective of "useful" occupations. The influence of the criminal upon the development of the productive forces can be shown in detail. Would the locksmith's trade have attained its present perfection if there had been no thieves? Would the manufacture of banknotes have arrived at its present excellence if there had been no counterfeiters? Would the microscope have entered ordinary commercial life (cf. Babbage) had there been no forgers? Is not the development of applied chemistry as much due to the adulteration of wares, and to the attempts to discover it, as to honest productive effort? Crime, by its ceaseless development of new means of attacking property calls into existence new measures of defence, and its productive effects are as great as those of strikes in stimulating the invention of machines. Leaving the sphere of private crime, would there be a world market, would nations themselves exist, if there had not been national crimes? Is not the tree of evil also the tree of knowledge, since the time of Adam? In his Fable of the Bees (1708) Mandeville already demonstrated the productivity of all the English occupations, and anticipated our argument. "What we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must look for the true Original of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved." Mandeville simply had the merit of being infinitely more audacious and more honest than these narrow-minded apologists for bourgeois society.

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5 The Labeling of Crime Karl Marx Reprinted from Karl Marx, "Population, Crime and Pauperism," New York Daily Tribune, Sept. 16, 1859.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery, and increases in crimes even more rapidly than in numbers. It is true enough that, if we compare the year 1855 with the preceding years, there seems to have occurred a sensible decrease of crime from 1855 to 1858. The total number of people committed for trial, which in 1854 amounted to 29,359, had sunk down to 17,855 in 1858; and the number of convicted had also greatly fallen off, if not quite in the same ratio. This apparent decrease of crime, however, since 1854, is to be exclusively attributed to some technical changes in British jurisdiction; to the Juvenile Offenders' Act in the first instance, and, in the second instance, to the operation of the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, which authorises the Police Magistrates to pass sentences for short periods, with the consent of the prisoners. Violations of the law are generally the offspring of economical agencies beyond the control of the legislator, but, as the working of the Juvenile Offenders' Act testifies, it depends to some degree on official society to stamp certain violations of its rules as crimes or as transgressions only. This difference of nomenclature, so far from being indifferent, decides on the fate of thousands of men, and the moral tone of society. Law itself may not only punish crime, but improvise it, and the law of professionalla"yers is very apt to work in this direction. Thus, it has been justly remarked by an eminent historian, that the Catholic clergy of the medieval times, with its dark views of human nature, introduced by its influence into criminal legislation, has created more crimes than forgiven sins.

55

6 On Capital Punishment Karl Marx From Karl Marx, "Capital Punishment." New York Daily Tribune, Feb. 18, 1853. Reprinted by permission from Thomas B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel leds.l, Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy INew York: McGraw-Hill, 1964, pp.228-301 .

. . . It would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded, in a Society, glorying in its civilization. Punishment in general had been defended as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating. Now what right have you to punish me for the amelioration or intimidation of others? And besides, there is history-there is such a thing as statistics-which prove with the most complete evidence that since Cain the world has neither been intimidated nor ameliorated by punishment. Qui te the contrary. From the point of view of abstract right, there is only one theory of punishment which recognizes human dignity in the abstract, and that is the theory of Kant, especially in the more rigid formula given to it by Hegel. Hegel says: "Punishment is the right of the criminal. It is an act of his own will. The violation of right has been proclaimed by the criminal as his own right. His crime is the negation of right. Punishment is the negation of this negation, and consequently an affirmation of right, solicited and forced upon the criminal by himself." There is no doubt something specious in this formula, inasmuch as Hegel, instead of looking upon the criminal as the mere object, the slave of justice, elevates him to the position of a free and self-determined being. Looking, however, more closely into the matter, we discover that German idealism here, as in most other instances, has but given a transcendental sanction to the rules of existing society. Is it not a delusion to substitute for the individual with his real motives, with multifarious social circumstances pressing upon him, the abstraction of "free-will"-one among the many qualities of man for man himself? This theory, considering punishment as the msult of the criminal's own will, is only a metaphysical expression for the old "jus talionis," eye against eye, tooth against tooth, blood against blood. Plainly speaking, and dispensing with all paraphrases, punishment is nothing but a means of society to defend itself against the infraction of its

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vital conditions, whatever may be their character. Now, what a state of society is that which knows of no better instrument for its own defence than the hangman, and which proclaims through the "leading journal of the world" its own brutality as eternal law? Mr. A. Quetelet, in his excellent and learned work, l'Homme et ses Facultes, says: "There is a budget which we pay with frightful regularity-it is that of prisons, dungeons and scaffolds .... We might even predict how many individuals will stain their hands with the blood of their fellow-men how many will be forgers, how many will deal in poison, pretty nearly the same way as we may foretell the annual births and deaths." And Mr. Quetelet, in a calculation of the probabilities of crime published in 1829, actually predicted with astonishing certainty, not only the amount but all the different kinds of crimes committed in France in 1830. That it is not so much the particular political institutions of a country as the fundamental conditions of modern bourgeois society in general, which produce an average amount of crime in a given national fraction of society, may be seen from the following tables, communicated by Quetelet, for the years 1822 - 24. We find in a number of one hundred condemned criminals in America and France: Age

Under twenty-one years Twenty-one to thirty Thirty to forty Above forty

Philadelphia

France

19

19

44 23

35 23 23 100

14 100

Now, if crimes observed on a great scale thus show, in their amount and their classification, the regularity of physical phenomena-if, as Mr. Quetelet remarks, "it would be difficult to decide in respect to which of the two (the physical world and the social system) the acting causes produce their effect with the utmost regularity"-is there not a necessity for deeply reflecting upon an alteration of the system that breeds these crimes, instead of glorifYing the hangman who executes a lot of criminals to make room only for the supply of new ones?

Part 2 The Causes of Crime

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Part 2

Part 2

By the mid to late 1960s, some non-Marxist criminologists had virtually stopped looking for causes of crime and had turned instead to studying social The Causes of responses to it. They did so not merely to correct an Crime imbalance, to study the police and the courts because so much less was known about them than about thieves, addicts, and prostitutes. Rather, the shift represented fundamental theoretical commitments. Austin Turk (1964) assured us that the search for causes of crime was futile: what distinguished criminals from noncriminals was not their personal attributes but their lack of political power, which left them vulnerable to law enforcement agencies. The British criminologist Dennis Chapman (1968) similarly suggested that traditional criminological work, which was based on the assumption that there were class differences between criminals and noncriminals, reflected stereotypes created by class differences in immunity from law enforcement. Further, deviance theorists argued that crime had no systematic social causes but was largely a consequence of labeling an individual or group as deviant. David Matza (1964) maintained that there was no persuasive evidence that delinquents, for instance, were more likely to come from one part of the social structure than another, and he therefore criticized traditional criminological conceptions of causality. Of course, one could have accepted the claim that criminality is widely distributed in the class structure (with heavy upper-class involvement in white-collar crime) and still tried to establish causal explanations of criminality. One could do this by looking for causes unrelated to class (e.g., in biology), for an explanation of class differences in kinds of crime committed, or by considering the effect of social systems in their entirety on patterns of crime. This latter approach, which suggests comparisons between societies rather than between classes within a given society, even had some precedent in Durkheim's study of suicide. But this was not the direction that criminology took. Instead, the notion of causality itself was thrown into question. The British psychologist R. D. Laing and his associates exercised great influence over radical sociologists in the 1960s. They pointed out that human action could be explained in two quite different ways. One way looked at behavior physiologically, in terms of movements of muscle and bone, amino acids, and so on. Such a treatment conceives ofthe human body as a set of chemical and mechanical processes. The other way looked at behavior as purposeful. From this point of view, an action, say walking, is explained not as a set of muscle contractions and bone movements but as

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a way of executing some purpose. Thus,. if someone asks me why I am walking into my kitchen, I say that I am hungry and want to get something to eat. This second point of view is more recognizably human than the first, since people have purposes and mechanical objects do not. Although these two modes of explanation are not necessarily incompatible, they were often treated as such. Under the influence not only of Laing but also of European phenomenologists, many sociologists argued for research to discover the meaning of action to the actors as a substitute for older positivistic styles of research, which tended to ignore those meanings in the search for objective antecedents of criminality. The early radical criminologists found this repudiation of traditional causal analysis quite appealing (Quinney, 1970; AFSC Working Party, 1971; Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973). Much of the eXlisting literature on the causes of crime was patently insulting to criminals and often seemed to embody politically conseIVative assumptions. For example, some researchers suggested that the black ghetto uprisings of the 1960s were caused by brain pathologies among blacks. Much of the literature on female crime was based on sexist stereotypes (e.g., that women are inherently more deceitful than men, or that their criminality is a reflection of pathologically masculine tendencies). Some of the research had been undertaken to provide police, judges, wardens, and parole boards with the information needed to repress crime. In reaction, radical criminologists celebrated the authenticity of crime and stressed its meaningfulness, its rationality, and its quasi-political character as a response to social constraint or oppression (Cohen and Taylor, 1975). Yet the refusal to address the question of causes left radicals ill equipped to participate in the political debates that arose over the increase in common forms of crime that took place in the 1960s (Young, 1975). Since the radicals had no way of accounting for the increase, they tended to deny that there had been any (referring glibly to the poor quality of crime statistics), and thus they had little to say to residents of neighborhoods being overrun by junkies and teenage gangs or burned down by paid arsonists. And though radicals could engage in muckraking in connection with crimes committed by corporations or government officials, they could not explain these either, except as the doings of wicked people. It became apparent that the denial of causality was quite unsatisfactory. It may be that notions of causality are so deeply embedded in our culture that they cannot be entirely eradicated in explaining events. Thus, Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973) did not speak about the "causes" of crime but about its "origins," really a synonym for causes, provided "cause" is not interpreted too mechanically. Dissatisfaction with sweeping the question of causality under the rug was heightened as it became apparent that denying the structural sources of deviance had extremely conseIVative ramifications. If, as the more extreme labeling theorists argued, crime is produced largely by overreaction to basically innocent

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activities, then the solution is to do less. There need be no alteration in the patterns of property ownership or income distribution, for example, because these have nothing to do with crime causation. Instead, we must stop the police from arresting mischievous children and turning them into career criminals by changing their self-concepts, stigmatizing them, and so on. Implicit in this line of thinking is the assumption that the deviant actor has no commitment to continue deviation, that the violation is casual and will probably not be repeated if it is ignored. Although there may be some forms of noncriminal deviance for which that position is valid (e.g., stuttering)' there seem to be some obvious exceptions. Many homosexuals were involved in illegal homosexual activities on a continuing basis even though they had never been publicly identified as homosexual. Political radicals and revolutionaries seemed to have a commitment to their actions that did not originate with repressive or therapeutic labeling on the part of authorities (Mankoff, 1971; Walton, 1973; Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973; Manders, 1975). Thus, the extreme labeling position was too inconsistent with empirical information about crime to gain long-run acceptance, and too conservative politically to appeal to radicals on an ideological basis. Early in the 1970s, some radicals began to address the causes of crime again. David Gordon (1971), a Marxist economist, traced much crime to the basic structure ofthe American economy. Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973) called for the analysis of causation as part of a fully social (rather than individual) theory of deviance, though without undertaking that analysis themselves.

MARXISM AND THE CAUSES OF CRIME

Steven Spitzer (1975) took a major step toward overcoming the radicals' reluctance to deal with the causes of crime by outlining a Marxian approach to the social production of deviance. He posited an intimate link between socially produced deviance and the contradictions of a social formation. Spitzer argued that populations are treated as deviant in a capitalist society when in one way or another they disrupt capitalist social relations, and he explicitly identified two sources of these "problem popUlations." The economy is one of these sources. Drawing on Marx's treatment of the development of a capitalist economy, Spitzer argued that capitalism creates a "relative sUIplus population" that is not needed for production and is consequently excluded from remunerative employment. Even though unemployment benefits employers by keeping wages down, it also generates a number of problems for them. Crime may be one. The second source of problem populations is contradictions in the superstructural institutions created to secure class rule. The school is a familiar example. Mass education was introduced to the United States to

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meet the needs of corporate capitalism. Yet the intellectual skills it imparts may enable students to develop critical perspectives on capitalism. Weak students may become disaffected not only from the school, but from the larger society as well. Although Spitzer's essay concerned deviance, not crime, the two concepts overlap, and much of his reasoning can be applied to crime causation. In fact, since his essay was published, much Marxist theorizing about crime causation has appeared, most of it conforming to the paradigm that Spitzer established. Before turning to readings that pursue this logic, however, we must first examine what it might mean to call a causal explanation of crime Marxist. The absence of an explicit theory of crime in the writings of Marx and Engels forces us to develop one of our own. We are challenged to develop an explanation that is consistent with existing Marxist theory, or stems from its theoretical traditions, but goes beyond it to offer an account of crime patterns that is consistent with the relevant empirical evidence. Criminologists have been grappling with this challenge in a variety of ways, many sharing a logic in which Marxism provides an account of the existence or certain social conditions and criminology offers an explanation of why these conditions cause crime. 1 It is not obvious at the outset that an effort of this sort will prove fruitful. If one wanted to develop a Marxist explanation of sneezing, the effort might falter because Marxism might not have anything to say about the conditions that cause people to sneeze (allergies, rhinovirus infections). On the other hand, Marxism might help explain conditions that cause cancer (industrial pollution, an unhealthy diet) or heart attacks (stress) .2 Marxist analyses of crime causation begin with the working hypothesis that Marxism can contribute to an understanding of the social conditions responsible for crime. These analyses differ in the kinds of crime patterns they try to explain, the social conditions on which they focus, and the specific Marxist explanations they offer for these conditions. Crime and economic conditions

Within the past few years, several criminologists have tried to pursue this program by using Marxist economics to explain the existence of economic conditions they believe to be criminogenic (Iadicola, 1983; Lynch, 1988). This approach is attractive because Marxist economics is the most formally developed part of Marxist theory; some versions make predictions about economic trends that can be tested empirically. Marxist economics is founded on the proposition that in a competitive, market economy, the sale and purchase of commodities at a price is possible because they have something in common, value. This is the average amount of socially necessary labor required to produce the commodity.

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In capitalist production, profits originate in the appropriation of surplus value. After workers are paid for their labor and after raw materials and equipment used up in production have been paid for, what remains is surplus value. Though created by the "living labor" of the workers (it is they who make the goods, not the capitalist owners), surplus value is taken as profits by the owners of capital.3 With this and several additional assumptions, Marx was able to develop models of the business cycle that purport to explain the sequence of "boom and bust" in capitalist economies. He noted that in a competitive economy, private owners of capital do not coordinate their investment decisions. Under these circumstances it is easy for sectoral imbalances, characterized by excessive investment in one sector of the economy and insufficient investment in another, to develop. Also, when the economy is expanding, unemployment may decline, permitting the workers to command higher wages. To protect profits, employers may respond to increased wages by substituting labor-saving machinery, thereby throwing some of their employees out of work. With less money to spend, unemployed workers will buy fewer goods. The resulting lower level of demand will lead owners to cut back production further, bringing about a recession or depression. In addition, Marx suggested that in the aggregate, workers may be paid too little to buy back all the consumption goods they produce; if so, a "realization" crisis, stemming from capitalists' inability to sell all the goods they produce, wIll occur. Marx also made predictions about the long-term tendencies of capitalist economies. He predicted that the concentration of capital would grow with time, so that the economy would increasingly be dominated by monopolies and oligopolies. Though wages might rise temporarily, they would be brought down again by competition from the "reserve army" of the unemployed. This army is itself a product of capitalism, for it results from the replacement of workers by new capital-intensive technology introduced by capitalists who must spend less on wages to meet the competition. With wages held down by competition, Marx expected the share of labor in value produced to decline with time. In relative terms, if not absolutely, poverty would grow. With surplus value originating in the labor of employees, a rise in the organic composition of capital (ratio of capital expenditures to wages) should lead to a long-term decline in the rate of profit. Marx noted that other developments (such as a reduction in the cost of capital goods or an intensification in the exploitation of workers) could for a time compensate for this decline, but thought that in the long run, the tendential decline would prevail. Since capitalists invest to reap profits, this decline would ultimately choke the capitalist system. Clearly there is much here that could be utilized in developing a theory of crime causation. If one thought that frustration stemming from

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unemployment induced people to commit assaultive crimes, Marxism has an explanation for unemployment. If one believed that businesses threatened by declining profits are more likely than other firms to commit "white-collar crimes," Marxism explains why profits decline. This explanatory strategy makes sense, obviously, only if one thinks that economic factors actually play an important role in crime causation. Until the 1960s this importance was widely taken for granted. Criminologists regarded poverty and social disorganization (often in neighborhoods of immigrants) as contributing to high rates of crime and delinquency. Yet in the late 1960s and 1970s the importance of poverty became controversial. Though economists who began to depict crime as a rational choice on the part of utility-maximizing individuals continued to consider economic motivations important, other social scientists concerned with crime began to question their significance. Official crime statistics demonstrate seemingly clear-cut relations between economic status and crime. A high percentage of those arrested were unemployed at the time of arrest or were employed irregularly at jobs with low pay. Left-liberal criminologists of the 19605 dismissed these figures, along with statistics showing that blacks and Hispanics are arrested more often than whites, as the product of discriminatory police practices. And they criticized criminological theories linking lower-class personal backgrounds with delinquency as marred by a conservative, anti-workingclass bias. The kernel of truth in the skeptical position is that a great deal of crime, including illegal acquisition and drug use, is committed by individuals of the middle and upper classes. The sheer magnitude of this crime is staggering. According to an estimate prepared for the U.s. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, the annual cost to the American public from corporate crime in the early 1970s was in the vicinity of $200 billion (Coleman, 1989:6). But for specific kinds of offenses, such as robbery, there can be no doubt !that the poor and minorities are overrepresented. Statistical comparisons of crime rates in different jurisdictions, or in single jurisdictions in different years, are less clear-cut. Some find higher rates of crime where unemployment rates are high, others do not. 5 However, as Elliot Currie (1985:103-41) emphasizes in a very fine overview of these issues, methodological weaknesses render these studies inconclusive. Unemployment figures are only imperfectly related to joblessness. People who have never entered :the labor market, or who have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for jobs, are not counted as unemployed in the official statistics. Some of those who lose jobs-for example, middle-income or affluent professionals and business executives-have savings on which to fall back and good prospects for future employment, making their unemployment largely irrelevant as far as crime is concerned.

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Though liberal reformers sometimes suggest otherwise, employment in itself may not necessarily do much to prevent crime. Many jobs are not attractive alternatives to lucrative crime because they pay little for unpleasant and unrewarding work or offer only irregular employment with no prospects for advancement. Individuals who hold these jobs may supplement their incomes by stealing from their employers or others, or may use their jobs as covers for illegal activity. With the flight of manufacturing from northern cities to the South, and from the United States to Third World countries where labor costs are low, many of the newly created jobs in the American economy are of this kind (Wilson, 1987).6 In an especially careful study of the relationship between employment and crime, Emilie Allan and Darrell Steffensmeier (1989) found that property-crime rates for the period 1977-80 were higher in those states where employees tended to receive low wages and had to work part-time because they could not find full-time employment. The criminological implications of the trends Wilson notes are ominous: the American economy is evolving in a direction that will increase property-crime rates. Inequality is another dimension of economic conditions. Conservative social critics of the past decade have argued that the egalitarian social reforms of the 1960s have undermined the family, destroyed incentives to work, and brought about higher crime rates. Yet there is much evidence that runs counter to the conservative argument. Other factors being equal, crime rates in American cities are higher where inequality is higher, not lower (Blau and Blau, 1982; Devine, Sheley, and Smith, 1988; Neuman and Berger, 1988; Harer and Steffensmeier, 1989). The same is true in Great Britain, where crime rates grew by 50 percent during the Thatcher years of inegalitarian reforms and a "law and order" campaign (Sampson and Castellano, 1982; Taylor, 1988). International comparisons do not support the conservative position either. The bulk of the evidence indicates that crime rates are lower where unemployment and social inequality are low and where welfare supports are high (Krohn, 1976; Braithwaite, 1978; Braithwaite and Braithwaite, 1980; Messner, 1980; Currie, 1985:143-79; Kick and LaFree, 1985; Avison and Loring, 1986; Krahn, Hartnagel, and Gartrell, 1986; Neuman and Berger, 1988; Land, McCall, and Cohen, 1990). Among the industrial nations, the United States stands out as having high unemployment, high inequality, and low levels of welfare support. As a percentage of wages and salaries, government transfer payments in 1977-79 were 18.7 percent in the United States, 33.7 percent in Sweden, and 53.5 percent in the Netherlands (Heidenheimer, Heclo, and Adams, 1983:204). The corresponding homicide rates per 100,000 population in 1971 (the most recent year for which I was able to find them) were 8.50 in the United States, 2.70 in Sweden, and 0.61 in the Netherlands (Archer and Gartner, 1984). It is obvious from these figures that there are major differences among capitalist nations in the way income is distributed. These differences

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appear to produce corresponding differences in crime rates. Currie suggests an explanation for these differences in income distribution patterns: the United States has a far greater commitment to free-market economic policies than the European nations. Another has to do with class politics: "Generally egalitarian redistribution is stronger in nations with a powerful working-class political presence and weaker where this presence is lacking" (Heidenheimer, Heclo, and Adams, 1983:226-27; see also Esping-Anderson, 1985). In light of this analysis, recent trends in the distribution of income in the United States are worrisome. A study conducted for the House Ways and Means Committee and released in March 1989, found that between 1979 and 1987, private income for the bottom fifth of all American families dropped by 8 percent, while government benefits declined by 9 percent. For the top fifth of all families, on the other hand, private income rose by 16 percent, with no change in government benefits. During the same period, the amount of taxes paid by the bottom fifth did not change, while for the top fifth it rose by just 3 percent. Conservative political analyst Kevin Philips (1990) has noted that in 1980, corporate chief executive officers earned forty times as much as the average factory worker; by 1989, they earned ninety-three times as much. In a paper not reprinted here, Michael Lynch (1988) has used the predictions of Marxist economics to explain trends in American property-crime rates between 1950 and 1974 in terms of the rate of surplus value extracted in the manufacturing sector. The rate of surplus value, sometimes called the rate of e~ploitation, is the ratio of the surplus value extracted in producing an item to the wages paid. Lynch reasons that increased exploitation occurs at the expense of workers. When exploitation is sufficiently intense, workers are pushed into a "marginal" status. This could mean unemployment, but could also mean irregular, poorly paid employment. Marginalized workers have greater financial needs than nonmarginalized workers, and therefore have a greater incentive to commit property crime. Many have little to lose from an arrest or conviction. The conditions of life for marginalized workers discourage postponement of shortterm gratification to achieve long-term goals. This is so because marginalized workers are pulled in and pushed out of the labor market by developments in the economy over which they have very little control. Forced to piece together a living income from whatever sources are available-lawful employment, theft, drug sales, prostitution-they have little incentive to invest in strategies (such as education) to improve their "human capital" that may not payoff untiil years later (if ever). That the bottom ranks of the job "ladder" may provide insufficient rewards to prevent workers from turning to crime is not a new insight. The mid-nineteenth-century British ethnographer Henry Mayhew observed that "where the means of subsistence occasionally rise to ISs. per week and occasionally sink to nothing, it is absurd to look for prudence,

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economy or moderation. Regularity of habits are [sic] incompatible with irregularity of income . . . it is a moral impossibility that the class of laborers who are only occasionally employed should be either generally industrious or temperate" (quoted in Jones, 1971:263). Mayhew's insight is constantly being confirmed by those who live in poverty nowadays. When President George Bush visited a shelter for runaway youth in New York, one eighteen-year-old male, a formerresident of Harlem, told him, "I'm not working for $125 for a whole week. At McDonald's? Flippin' hamburgers? One hundred dollars a week? That ain't no money. I can make that in fifteen minutes selling drugs." When the President's wife, Barbara Bush, patronizingly pointed out that this might mean jail or death, he replied, "I don't care" (Sutton, 1989). Lynch (1988) finds empirical support for his hypothesis that the property-crime rate rises with the rate of surplus value. Even when other variables are controlled, the rate of surplus value extracted influences the property-crime rate positively. Though the influence of unemployment was also in the expected direction, it was not statistically significant. However, Lynch's work is still in its early stages. A variety of me tho do logical problems remain to be resolved before the empirical findings can be construed as providing strong support for his reasoning. Among other things, marginalization is a fuzzy concept. Statistics on the size of the marginalized population are not readily available, and Lynch does not develop any. Consequently his interpretation of the relationship between crime and surplus value, though plausible, is not yet firmly established. Work of this kind undoubtedly holds potential and merits further exploration. However, caution is essential when using Marxist economics. Since the end ofthe ninteenth century, non-Marxist economists have criticized Marx's economics. Over the past two decades, the revival of academic interest in Marx has led to a clarification of the logic of Marxist economics and has also subjected it to a new round of criticism, not just from anti-Marxists but from many Marxists and Marx-sympathizers as well. This criticism has cast grave doubts on the entire edifice of Marxist economics. Part of the problem is that Marx's predictions about tendencies in capitalist economies were based on extremely simple models. For example, his argument that exploitation occurs in production, not in exchange, assumes that pure competition prevails. In reality, competition is often imperfect. Monopolies, oligopolies, taxes, balance of payment problems, deficit spending, the money supply, and interest rates are matters that Marx either ignored totally or treated superficially. However, the problems in Marxist economics are not restricted to the simplicity of the models; after all, a simple model can always be elaborated if the basic ideas are sound. The problem is more fundamental: the foundations of Marx's analysis of economic activity are seriously flawed. This conclusion has been reached not just by economists who are hostile

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to Marxism but also by a number WhD are sympathetic (Blaug, 1982; Bowles and Gintis, 1981; King, 1982; Macy, 1988; Nell, 1981; Roemer, 1981:97-105, 118-19; Roemer 1982; Roemer 1986; Samuelson, 1982; Steedman, 1977, 1981; Valdes, 1987; Wolff, 1981). These economists have concluded that the labor theory of value, which lies at the heart of Marxist economics, is largely vacuous. There is nothing special about labor to privilege it over other factors of production as a unit for measuring other contributions to production, such as raw materials. These economists have concluded that Marx's belief that labor alone is the source of profits is not well-founded. In general, profits cannot be assigned uniquely to any single factor of production. Marx probably assigned them to labor, not because this conclusion was logically required, but for moral and propagandistic reasons. The labor theory of value suggests that profits are illegitimate, a kind of theft. The theory highlights the historical contingency of capitalist arrangements. It reminds us that it is not foreordained that the economic surplus always be appropriated by a class of owners rather than be made available to its produ eel's or used for general benefit. It points to the possibility of class conflict between owners and workers. As a strictly economic theory, though, it lacks explanatory power. Some of the conclusions Marx drew about tendencies within capitalist economies also appear to be flawed. There is no inherent tendency of the organic composition of capital to rise. Capitalists will introduce laborsaving technological innovations when the cost of labor is high, and capital-saving, labor-intensive methods when the cost of capital is high. Even when the organic composition of capital rises, rates of profit will normally not fall so long as wages do not rise. A broader challenge to Marx's work has been raised by the British Marxist historian E. P. Thompson (1978), who argues persuasively that the theoretical strategy Marx adopted in his later years was flawed. Although Marx was aware that economic developments could be influenced by class struggle and state inteIvention, the formal schemes worked out in Capital attempt to theorize the temporal development of a capitalist economy as if class struggle and state intervention were irrelevant. The attempt was valiant, but doomed to fail. Politics and ideology are too thoroughly interwoven with economic affairs for an attempt of this kind to succeed. Recent Marxist theorizing has implicitly ackowledged this by making the state and ideology integral to the theorization of crisis (Habermas, 1975; O'Connor, 1973). Textbooks in Marxist economics (e.g., E. Mandel, 1970) often point to evidence that supports Marx's conclusions. Given that the logic leading to these conclusions is faulty, the agreement is not so impressive. After all, an observed increase in the organic composition of capital or a fall in the rate of profits could have come about in ways other than those Marx suggested-for example, through investment tax credits, higher wages to workers, higher costs of raw materials, higher taxes, or the adoption of

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pollution controls that reduce the efficiency of production. Under these circumstances orthodox Marxist economics is a very shaky foundation on which to build a criminology. To bypass Marxist economics does not require that one abandon Marxism altogether. The essays included in this section draw on diverse elements in Marxist social theory to explain criminogenic social conditions, without relying on the shakier propositions of Marxist economics. Crime and the origins of capitalism

As pointed out in the Introduction, every social formation in which a state exists and criminalizes behavior has its own distinctive patterns of criminality. When the social relations of production and distribution change, so do crime patterns. One of the early chapters in their joint history is set in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the commercialization of English agriculture led the great landlords to evict tenant farmers and enclose common lands where peasants had previously grazed livestock and raised poultry. This and other processes related to the breakup of feudalism increased vagrancy dramatically and led to the formation of a criminal subculture in London and other large cities. Thus, as peasants were marginalized-that is, made marginal to the regular economy-they turned to crime. The first three readings that follow, by Peter Linebaugh, Geoffrey Pearson, and Steven Hahn, deal with crime and capitalism at later stages in the history of capitalism. In Germany, England, and the American South, capitalist development brought with it changes in the criminal law that cut the laboring classes off from a traditional livelihood. They resisted as they could and, in so doing, sometimes ran afoul of the law. In each of these locales, activities that were eventually to become criminal were initially lawful ways of making a living. They were criminalized as part of an offensive on the part of property owners, and from that time on, the newly criminalized forms of appropriation became a form of class struggle. In Germany, laborers stole wood from the forest rather than emigrate, starve, or work in factories. Linebaugh's discussion is of interest to the history of mainstream criminology, since most ofthe criminals studied by nineteenth-century German positivists had been prosecuted for stealing wood. At the same time, Linebaugh notes, it was the debates in the Rhine Diet, a parliamentary body, that first turned Marx's attention toward the significance of economic considerations in politics. Of greater interest for us, though, is Linebaugh's account of why laws against taking wood from the forests were passed, and why peasants took the wood. Customary law guaranteed peasants a wide range of uses of the products of the forest. Fuel and food gathered in the woods helped to cushion them from hardship during famine or depression. This cushion became especially important in the second quarter of the nineteenth

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century as parcelization of land and severe famine in central Europe created what one historian of crime has called "the greatest subsistence crisis of modern times in the Western world" (Zehr, 1976:43). It was just at this time that improvements in transportation (which created a national market) and increased industrial demand for lumber sent the price of wood rapidly upward. The interests of the forest owners joined those of the state, which had its own interests in the orderly exploitation of the forests, in passing laws against the taking of wood. Linebaugh's analysis of the class basis for the resistance to this legislation is of particular interest. He argues that this resistance did not come from people who were situated entirely outside capitalist relations. Many small cultivators were given plots of land or rights in the forest as compensation for their labor in manufacturing. In the early stages of industrialization, employers sometimes preferred such arrangements because they made lower wages possible, supported workers during periods of unemployment, and increased workers' dependence on their employers. Toward the end of his article, Linebaugh refers to the "latent"and "stagnant labor reserves" and to the "relative redundant population." Marx introduced these terms (1867:621--44) in an analysis of the effect of the growth of capital on the working class. Since the expansion of employment raises the demand for labolr, it would tend to raise wages. Marx argued that capitalists respond to the possibility of rising wages by introducing machinery that displaces workers. The ratio of constant capital (machinery, raw materials) to variable capital (wages) thus tends to rise. Workers who lose their jobs in this process or who are never hired in the first place, constitute the relative redundant, or surplus, population. Marx goes on to argue that the existence of this population further depresses wages, since employed workers can be replaced by members of the "industrial reserve army" if they demand excessive wages. Marx identifies four different forms of the relative surplus population. The "floating" form consists of workers who are hired and fired according to the requirements of business. Employees who lose their jobs when a factory is relocated would be an example. This category grows in number as capitalism expands, but not in proportion to the growth of production. Where there is an absolute reduction in the numbers of workers employed, there is the "latent" form. The transformation of the agricultural population into an urban or manufacturing proletariat depends on the existence of a "latent" surplus population in the countryside-"latent" because it may only move when the alternative employment opens up. The "stagnant" form consists of very low paid and irregularly employed workers, often in decaying sectors of the economy. Unskilled day laborers are an example. This form is "self-reproducing and self-perpetuating" in part because of an extremely high birth rate but also because it recruits redundant workers from other sectors of the economy. Lastly, there are paupers. This form includes those who are unable to work (the elderly,

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the disabled, the sick, the orphaned), those who do not adapt to industrial labor discipline, and a "dangerous class" of criminals. Linebaugh locates the theft of wood and related forms of resistance to capitalist industrialization in the latent and stagnant fractions of the relative surplus population, not in the "criminal classes." Some of the other readings in this book also grapple with the question whether crime should be considered primarily in connection with a criminal class or with a part of the working class. Linebaugh's subtitle, "A Contribution to the Current Debate," and the opening remarks of his essay invite us to consider the possibility that the categories he employs to analyze the criminal involvement of different strata ofthe nineteenth-century German working class may be relevant to our times. When urban riots erupted in the 1960s, some radicals pronounced them an advanced form of militancy on the part of an especially oppressed part of the working class. Other radicals dismissed rioters as lumpen proletariat, an epithet Marx used to describe criminals and paupers in his own day. Some of the leading positions in this debate are reviewed by Wenger and Bonomo in Part 4. Linebaugh clearly rejects the mechanical dismissal of criminals as lumpen, and demonstrates through his analysis of the theft of wood in nineteenth-century Germany that much analytical power is gained through a more careful conceptualization of the different factions of the working class. The term "lump en proletariat" does little more than display scorn for the people so described. Insofar as it suggests a stratum that exists independent of capitalist social relations, it may interfere with analysis rather than advance it. Needless to say, an argument about the character of riots and crime in twentieth-century America cannot be settled by studying another country in an earlier century. However, Linebaugh's analysis suggests that it might be fruitful to examine the movement of southern blacks to northern cities, the immigration of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland, and the immigration of illegal aliens to nations and the impact of these migrations on crime-in terms of the latent fraction of the relative surplus population. Cyril Robinson's essay on black crime, discussed below, implicitly adopts such a framework. Geoffrey Pearson's essay focuses on the responses of the English laboring classes to the industrial revolution. For some decades, historians have debated whether the living standards of the working class rose or fell during the industrial revolution? In part these differences revolve around technical questions. What years are chosen in studying trends? Are we talking about the working class as a whole, or some fraction of it? Should the standard of living be measured only by objective indicators for which data are available (such as variety and quality of food) or which the historian assumes are the most relevant, or may subjective responses to qualitative changes in a way of life be taken into account? As E. P. Thompson (1963) emphasizes, there can be little doubt that many

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workers experienced the changes in work and family life brought about by factory production as destructive. Lawful means of coping with this assault on traditional ways of life were very limited. Labor unions were illegal, and workers could not vote for Parliament. As a result, resistance often took illegal forms. Artisans, craftsmen, and laborers deprived of their autonomy by factory production destroyed machinery. They were joined by workers who had lost their jobs when capitalists introduced machines that made inferior goods cheaply and that could be operated by children, who were paid much less than adults. Farm laborers responded in similar ways to the modernization of agriculture by destroying labor-saving threshing machines. Crimes ofthis sort were a major dimension of class struggle. Pearson notes that historians and social scientists have tended to portray the destruction of machinery as irrational. Even some Marxists have treated it with disdain, arguing that it was backward-looking, obstructed the progress of industry, and was doomed to defeat. More recent research has forced a revision in this picture. The targets of destruction were carefully chosen. Warnings were often given in advance. Some of the smashers' proposals-such as taxing employers who introduced labor-displacing machines and using the revenues to pay for retraining and relocating displaced workers-sound surprisingly modem. Like other British radical criminologists (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973; Cohen and Taylor, 1975), Pearson argues that contemporary crime must be viewed as no more meaningless than crime committed two hundred years ago. To make his point, he traces "Paki-bashing" (assaults on Pakistanis in England) to economically engendered conflict between British youths and immigrant textile workers. What is not certain is how far this approach can be extended. There are probably few crimes that don't have some logic or meaning to those who commit them, but at the same time these crimes may be ineffective as means for attaining the perpetrators' goals, as well as destructive to their victims. Ultimately, we might ask, what difference does it make whether we can view crimes as rational? It does not tell us what, if anything, should be done about them. (Crimes of capitalist exploitation may be rational, but radicals would hardly condone them.) The possible contemporary relevance of this study of machine breaking is raised in Pearson's reference to the present-day ecology movement. Will "vandals" strike again at technology to save the environment? Recent civil disobedience aimed at stopping the construction of nuclear power plants forces us to take this question seriously. It is worth noting, though, that the acts Pearson describes took place at a time when other forms of working-class power did not exist. Once unions were permitted and suffrage was extended to the working class, the defense of workers' interests came to be channeled increasingly through these forms, though sabotage and other illegal activities were never totally abandoned (Taylor

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and Walton, 1971). The tactics adopted to oppose destructive technological developments are likely to be shaped by the types of struggle that are politically feasible at any given time. Until recently, it was thought that the story of how the legal creation of new property rights in land criminalized long-accepted methods of appropriating the products of nature was relevant only to English and European history in the early stages of capitalist accumulation. Steven Hahn's work shows that a similar process was at work in the American South during the nineteenth century. Though the legal form in which land was held as property in the first half of the nineteenth century was bourgeois, free from feudal-type restrictions on inheritance or transfer of land, a de facto acceptance of extensive, nonexclusive usunuct rights to unenclosed land prevailed. These customary rights permitted rich plantation owners to engage in their favorite sport, hunting, and to graze their herds on what was technically someone else's undeveloped land. They also enabled small cultivators and landless people to supplement their incomes by fishing and hunting. Though some planters demanded stricter protection for property rights, they made little headway with legislators who feared the potentially explosive consequences of restriction. As long as plantation owners had slaves to work their plantations, the owners were not terribly concerned with smallholders. After the Civil War, many freed slaves left the plantations to begin farming on unenclosed land. At this point, with their labor force threatened, plantation owners became more concerned with use rights to their land. The rise of commercial cotton farming gave them a greater incentive to bring unenclosed land into production. The new trespass and fencing laws they proposed elicited strenuous opposition from poor whites and ex-slaves-sometimes successful, but often not. These laws, even where evaded, made it harder for blacks to operate small farms and, in doing so, played a role in creating a black cottonpicking agricultural proletariat. They thus helped set the stage for the complex social processes that were later to generate high levels of black participation in crimes of theft and violence (delineated in Cyril Robinson's essay, discussed below). Organized crime

Class conflict is also a central element in Frank Pearce's analysis of organized crime. Strictly speaking, almost all crimes carried out jointly by two or more people could be accurately described as organized, since they involve a division of labor and shared expectations regarding role performance. Criminologists, though, have used the phrase "organized crime" in a narrower sense. Clinard and Quinney (1972:224), for example, define organized crime as business enterprise "organized for the purpose of making economic gain through illegal activities." They go on to note

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what they regard as its distinguishing features: hierarchical structure, monopolistic control, the threatened use of force to maintain internal discipline and discourage competition, immunity from law enforcement through corruption, and large profits resulting from specialization. In the public eye, and for many criminologists too, organized crime is virtually synonymous with "the Mafia," even though it is now widely understood that involvement in organized crime is far from exclusively Italian and that it is misleading to think of organized crime in terms of a single nationwide or international bureaucratic organization. Several scholars have investigated the historical development of the Sicilian mafia in relation to class forces, the organization of production and distribution, the character of the Sicilian state, and the position of Sicily in the international economy (Hess, 1973; Blok, 1974; Schneider and Schneider, 1976; Arlacchi, 1979). These themes have been less prominent in the literature on American organized crime. Instead, one finds discussion of the alleged roles that organized crime plays in stabilizing highly competitive sectors of the economy and in providing a route for upward social mobility to ethnic minorities that are barred by discrimination from the more remunerative lawful occupations (Bell, 1962; Ianni, 1972,. 1974).8 The entrepreneurial, income-generating activities most often mentioned in connection with organized crime are gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, the manufacture and sale of alcohol during Prohibition and of narcotics. What distinguishes these from crimes of violence and theft is that all of them are consensual. Buyers of illegal goods and services buy willingly, even though they may be the worse off for the transaction. Although the monopoly power of the seller permits him to charge the buyer higher prices than would prevail in a competitive market, there is no complainant who requests help or protection from the police. 9 Yet organized crime is by no means restricted to the supply of illegal but desired goods and services. The infiltration of lawful business and racketeering of various kinds may involve direct coercion. Businessmen, for example, may be forced to pay for "protection" lest their businesses be burned down. The fourth essay, an excerpt from Crimes of the Powerful, by Frank Pearce, deals with the relationship between organized crime and the labor movement. In the struggles over unionization in the early 1920s and 1930s, employers made use of gangsters to smash union organizing, and at times, the unions made use of gangsters to defend themselves against these attacks. Pearce goes on to describe the change in these relations brought about by the New Deal. Laws passed during the 1930s gave workers in most sections of the economy the legal right to form unions.1° The subsequent growth of unions made it possible for organized crime to siphon off union pension funds and to form fictitious union locals in return for payments from employers.u Union members who get substandard wages or no pension benefits clearly lose from these arrangements.

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The literature on organized crime is filled with passages expressing the fear that organized crime has become so powerful as to threaten the integrity of the government itself. Pearce challenges this view, maintaining that organized crime has been tolerated when useful to the ruling class and has been repressed whenever it damaged ruling class interests. Pearce's description of the way organized crime has been deployed on behalf of American foreign policy goals is of particular interest in this connection. It certainly challenges the notion of an underworld that is isolated from and antagonistic to the "legitimate world." The relation appears far more symbioticP Pearce's evidence is valuable in forcing a rethinking of the relation between organized crime and the ruling class, but in conveying the impression that organized crime is a mere pawn of capitalist interests, his essay may oversimplify the relation. His treatment may be too undialectical. The large financial contributions that organized crime can make to political campaigns arguably give it substantial political powerP This power is certainly not sufficient to threaten the capitalist system, but then there is no reason why organized crime figures would want to do so. Nevertheless, the exercise of the power that organized crime does have may at times be detrimental to business as well as to labor interests.1 4 Pearce's demonstration that there is a complex and at times intimate relation between business and government on the one hand and organized crime on the other not only puts organized crime in a new light but illuminates other forms of crime as well. It is clear, for example, that if we want to understand why some people use heroin, we must look beyond their own psychological traits and the values and norms that they and their friends hold. Heroin would not be available for these users to inject unless America's imperialist involvement on foreign continents made the importation of large quantities of heroin profitable (McCoy, 1973; Chambliss, 1977). Pearce's discussion raises questions that merit further investigation. For instance, organized crime on the scale found in the United States seems not to exist in Western Europe outside Italy. How can the difference be explained? Presumably we must look to such variables as class forces, political arrangements, and so on. Possibly where class consciousness is stronger and the state more centralized (making corruption more difficult), organized crime cannot so easily gain a foothold. If organized crime is not routinely necessary for capitalists but is only a convenient way of reaching certain goals from time to time, then we must ask about the precise circumstances under which it is convenient and why other alternatives are not chosen.

Crime without class conflict Though class conflict is important to the explanation of some kinds or instances of crime, all crime is not a direct manifestation of class conflict.

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To explain these crimes we must look to other components of Marxist theol}'. In the fifth essay of this section, Don Wallace and Drew Humphries examine the criminological consequences of profit -seeking on the part of privately owned businesses. In theol}', the pursuit of profits provides incentives to entrepreneurs to satisfY consumer preferences, improve efficiency, and win a larger share of the market by cutting prices. However, in the course of their operations, businesses can also impose costs ("externalities") on the rest of society which it has not agreed to bear and for which it receives no compensating benefit. An all-too-familiar example is the damage to our physical environment that manufacturing firms or those in the extractive industries have sometimes inflicted. Indirectly, a business can also impose costs on communities even when it is not violating the law, by influencing the social and economic conditions in a community. In hiring and firing, for example, businesses affect employment levels. When a company relocates from a region of the countl}' where labor costs or taxes are high to one where they are low, it changes the employment picture in both locations. In this way, it affects the opportunity structures that individual members of the working class face, as well as the potential costs and benefits of crime. Family dynamics can change when bread winners lose their jobs, or when housewives begin to earn more than their husbands. Thus, movements of capital have potential consequences for the distribution of power within the family. Violence is a familiar response of a husband whose dominance in the family is threatened by the loss of his job. Regional differences in crime rates

Criminologists have long known that there are sharp regional differences in crime rates in the United States (Kowalski, Dittman, and Bung, 1980). Sociological explanations of these differences have typically used such concepts as subculture, poverty, and inequality. Economists have tended to assume that prospective offenders seek to maximize gain and minimize loss or pain; the crime rate then depends on the possible gains from criminal and noncriminal activities and the losses associated with being arrested and prosecuted. (For one exposition of this approach, see Greenberg, 1979.) In an analysis of trends in urban crime rates in the United States, Wallace and Humphries examine regional patterns of crime and changes in these patterns over the years 1950 through 1971. The dynamic qualities of capitalism as an economic system are fundamental to their analysis. In the ceaseless quest for higher profits, capitalists shift their investments from one part of the countl}' to another--indeed, from one part of the globe to another. The collective consequences of these private decisions made for private gain are enormous, both in the regions where factories are abandoned or workers dismissed and in those where new investment

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takes place. The analysis presented in the essay by Wallace and Humphries concerns the consequences of shifting patterns of investment for rates of crimes reported to the police.1s This approach to the study of crime patterns makes research on the political economy of cities relevant to criminology (Harvey, 973; Fainstein and Fainstein, 1978; Tabb and Sawers, 1978). Such factors as wage differentials (themselves affected by minimum wage and right-to-work legislation), differences in tax rates, and direct subsidies from local governments have given rise to massive shifts in investment and, correspondingly, in patterns of crime. Although it is not emphasized in this reading, Wallace and Humphries' work suggests that higher crime rates in cities abandoned by manufacturers can be traced to successfUl class struggle. If workers in one area win higher wages, succeed in gaining greater social services from local government (to be financed by higher taxes), and prevent the subsidizing of industry, corporations may abandon production and relocate in regions of the country (or the world) where the working class is weaker and local government more pliable. Successful opposition to this strategy would seem to require national political control over investment; in the case of multinational corporations, international strategies are needed. Students who are unfamiliar with multiple regression statistical techniques will find it helpful to read the Editor's Notes at the end ofthe essay before reading the essay itself.

Arson for profit The routine profit-seeking behavior of capitalist enterprises is also central to James Brady's analysis of arson for profit. Brady points out that the rate of arson for profit has been soaring in American cities, as well as in the metropolitan centers of some of the capitalist European nations. There was no comparable development in the so-called socialist countries. This increase cannot plausibly be explained by the individual psychological traits of arsonists or the supposedly distinct subcultures of the lowincome neighborhoods where much of this arson takes place. Rather, it has to do with the political economy of capitalist cities. Marx pointed to a number of strategies that manufacturers faced with declining profits can adopt. They can find cheaper raw materials, pay their workers less, or layoff some of them; or they can increase their productivity (e.g., through a speedup or by introducing new machinery). If they sell in a noncompetitive market, they may be able to raise their prices. Many of these options are unavailable to landlords. Small owners command too little market power to reduce the cost of water, fuel, or garbage collection. Unions representing janitors and repairmen may prevent owners from cutting wages. Taxes are set by the state. Interest rates on mortgages are fixed at the time oflending. Rents cannot be raised

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at will because tenants living on welfare or working at poverty-level wages may be unable to pay more. 16 Nonpayment of rent because a tenant loses a job or a welfare agency has delayed a check is common in low-income neighborhoods. With costs constant or rising and no potential for increasing revenues, a landlord may be unable to operate a building lawfully in a manner that will yield expected returns on capital. Under these circumstances owners may find the prospect of burning down a building to collect an insurance payment quite attractive (other owners, of course, may buy the building for just that purpose). The owner of a failing business may take the same way out. That this should have happened in the past decade more than in the past reflects the conjuncture of several economic developments. One is the falling share of income going to the poorest section of the American population (Harrison and Bluestone, 1988). The migration of manufacturing to Third World countries, immigration from them to the industrial nations, and the introduction of labor-saving equipment that has reduced the demand for blue-collar labor-these have left residents of low-income neighborhoods increasingly unable to afford even the fundamentals oflife, like housing (Sassen, 1988). Rates of homeless ness have risen dramatically over the past decade (Marcuse, 1988). This deterioration in the economic position of the poorest stratum of the population has occurred in a society in which most housing is provided by private entrepreneurs, for profit. This system is proving incapable of supplying minimally acceptable housing (housing that meets minimal standards of occupancy set by law) at affordable prices to the poorest part ofthe populationP As dreadful as public housing can be in the United States, its tenants, some ofthem deeply involved with illegal drugs and other criminal activities, rarely try to destroy the buildings in which they live. In principle, one would expect the insurance companies to take measures to stop arson for profit. In 1980 they lost $1.6 billion to arson (Maitland, 1980). If only a fraction of that loss was due to arson, it was still a large amount. Surely it would be in their interests to discourage fraudulent claims. Yet it can be difficult to prove that a given fire was caused by arson, or that a building was overvalued. The legal costs of fighting a questionable claim could in many instances exceed the claim itself. Moreover, as Brady notes, brokers who sell insurance have no interest in screening applicants for policies (nor do banks whose loans are insured). Their commissions are based on the volume of sales, whether to fraudulent or honest owners. Faced with rapidly mounting costs, insurance companies have begun to use computers to identity buildings at high risk for arson. Yet criminality has always proved difficult to predict with high precision. This can never be more than a partial solution. Brady highlights "red-lining" on the part of the banks-refusal to lend

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money for buildings in certain neighborhoods-as another element in the picture. When banks refuse to lend money, owners may be unable to make needed repairs and ultimately may be forced to abandon their buildings. It would be a mistake to demonize banks for doing this. As capitalist institutions, they seek to maximize profits, not social welfare. Small loans to owners of residential buildings in slum neighborhoods may simply be riskier or less profitable than other loans. Banks are responsible to their shareholders, not to the public good. Were social criteria such as need and the social desirability of encouraging residential stability to influence the granting of loans, funding to improve the housing stock in low-income neighborhoods would undoubtedly be given much higher priority. Not only is this need not met by the use of strict profit-making criteria, it is exacerbated. By definition, most residents of a low-income neighborhood have low incomes. Their poverty limits the quality of the housing they can afford, as well as their ability to keep it in good repair. Yet they do have some income. Brady's figures show that in Boston, when this income is deposited in local banks, most of it is not used for loans within the neighborhood. Instead, the money is lent to more affluent borrowers outside the neighborhood, whose higher and more stable incomes make them more attractive to lenders. Thus godless capitalism willy-nilly follows the cynical religious aphorism "To every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have in abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath" (Matthew 25:29). Arson for profit exacerbates neighborhood deterioration. The destruction of the housing stock and the exodus of tenants erodes the tax base. In the single year 1976-77, for example, the Bushwick section of Brooklyn lost a third ofits housing to arson (Maitland, 1980). The resulting loss of customers led many neighborhood businesses to fail, further weakening the neighborhood's financial base. Tax losses stemming from business closings weaken a city's ability to fight fires (budget problems have forced the closing of fire stations in New York) and to supply other essential services. State inteIVention in the housing mi:rket-an issue Brady does not discuss-also contributes to arson. For some decades, federal, state, and city housing programs have made loans, subsidies, and tax write-offs available to owners to encourage the rehabilitation of residential buildings. In New York, these include the city's J-51 program-under which funds are granted automatically for the upgrading of buildings that are not tax delinquent and are free of liens, even when the owner has had a history of harassing tenants-and section 8 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. Under the latter program, the city of New York targets designated neighborhoods for assistance. Evidence has been accumulating that these programs have unintentionally stimulated the burning of buildings. To restore buildings to the tax rolls and to avoid having to locate

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tenants, the city made funds available for the renovation of large vacant buildings. With tenancy an obstacle to the granting of funds, some unscrupulous owners of occupied buildings took steps to ensure that their buildings would become vacant. They withdrew services (heating, hot water, garbage collection), hired goons to harass tenants, and let security in the building lapse. A series of small fires-intended to frighten tenants without doing major structural damage-usually finished the job of driving tenants out. Once the subsidized rehabilitation was complete, the improved apartments could be rented at higher rates to more aflluent tenants or sold as cooperatives or condominiums.18 Crime and monopoly

Most of Marx's works in economics concerned the laws of motion of a competitive capitalist economic system. Yet Marx also noted the tendency for capital to become more concentrated over time, ultimately destroying the competitiveness of the market. Less efficient enterprises are driven out of business, leaving a few large enterprises to dominate a given sector of the economy. The technical demands of advancing industry may also favor the concentration of capital by forcing firms to adopt equipment that is too expensive for small ones. On the basis of this reasoning Marx concludes (1867:763), "One capitalist always kills many." Classical liberal economists (i.e., contemporary conseJvatives) have argued that this conclusion is premature, because purely economic tendencies toward increased concentration and decreased competition may be undermined by other economic factors. If oligopoly or monopoly position in an industry leads to higher-than-average rates of profit, for instance, investors attracted by the prospect of higher profits will move into the industry in question. Competition will then drive prices down. These economists, therefore, argue that monopolies based on purely economic strength tend to be unstable. They suggest that the government creates and perpetuates monopolies by granting special privileges and largess, and by imposing costs on businesses (e.g., pollution standards, safety precautions, minimum wages) that smaller firms cannot meet. This position is by no means incompatible with Marxists' undertanding of the role that the state plays in the monopoly stage of capitalism. Whether one looks only at economic forces, or examines political factors as well, there seems to be little doubt that capital is indeed becoming more concentrated. In 1948, the hundred largest manufacturing firms held 40.1 percent of total manufacturing assets; by 1971, they held 48.9 percent (Edwards, 1975). In the seventh essay in Part 2, Harold Barnett argues that the concentration of economic power in the monopoly and oligopoly sectors of the economy can be an important cause of crime. When only a few firms dominate a sector of the economy they can more easily collude to fix

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prices, divide up the market, and eliminate competitors. Since stock ownership is concentrated in the upper income brackets, it is primarily the wealthy whose incomes are enlarged by these means. Thus, corporate crime that is made possible by monopolization of the economy intensifies inequality of income. An especially intriguing facet of Barnett's work concerns the effect of corporate crime on street crime. Since empirical research indicates that rates of theft and interpersonal violence go up when inequality in income increases (Danziger and Wheeler, 1975), it follows that the oligopoly structure of the economy increases the rates of these forms of crime. In other words, crime in the suites and crime in the streets are not simply two different types of crime that coexist; rather, they are causally connected. Although Barnett does not explore the issue, the economic consequences of oligopolization for the competitive sector of the economy are worth noting. Just as individuals must pay higher prices because of oligopoly power, so must firms in the small, competitive sector who buy from the giants. In addition, small firms who sell products to large corporations may have to accept a lower price for their goods. The consequences will be lower profits in the competitive sector and stronger motivation to shore up these profits by illegal means. One would thus expect consumer fraud, labor law violations (such as hiring illegal immigrants at wages below the legal minimum), fencing operations, and tax evasion to occur more frequently when the economy is dominated by a few large firms. Little is known about the frequency of such violations. However, Marilyn Walsh (1977) found that 64 percent of the receivers of stolen goods whom she studied were proprietors of "permanent, legitimate" businesses. In many instances, the revenue derived from fencing seemed to make the difference between bankruptcy and the profitable operation of the small businesses she studied. What are the implications of this analysis for social policy regarding oligopolies and monopolies? Conservative economists argue that the role of government in the economy should be minimized. In particular, government regulation that favors large corporations should be ended so that market forces will come into play, reducing prices and increasing efficiency. Socialists have often argued that a return to a competitive economy is impossible. And they favor, instead, a transformation of the economy along socialist lines. In earlier decades, socialists did not view the growth of monopolies as particularly bad. This growth was seen as part of the process by which production became socialized. If industry were dominated by a few large enterprises, socalists thought, it would be easier for the state to take it over. Today, many socialists queston the notion that socialism amounts to no more than the government taking over industry and running it without a fundamental change in the social relations of the work process

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itself. Obviously, fundamental issues about the nature of socialism are at stake here. Is the essence of socialism a centrally planned economy? Some socialists have thought so. Others hold that centralized planning is inefficient and gives too much power to the planning bureaucracy. For them, the essence of socialism is the direct power of workers and community members over production, Debate over this issue continues.

Auto theft Normally we expect a theory of crime causation to be a theory that explains why some people, but not others, are motivated to commit crime, or why some ofthe people who are motivated to commit crime do so, while others do not. This is true, for example, of such mainstays of criminology as anomie theory, learning theory, and control theory. In recent years, though, we have seen other explanatory strategies. Cohen and Felson (1979), for example, have argued that the high crime rates American cities have seen for the past quarter century can be explained not by changes in offender motivation, or in their assessments of the cost of crime, but in changes that have taken place in the structure of illegal opportunity. Increased affluence in American life has made available more commodities that can be stolen-in particular, items that are small and light, easy to carry away. With women entering the labor force in greater numbers, they spend more of their waking hours outside the home, where they are more vulnerable to assaultive crimes. Homes that are empty during the day are easier to burgle. Harry Brill's study of auto theft approaches the facilitation of crime differently. He notes that automobiles are extremely easy to steal. Car manufacturers could easily make theft more difficult, passing the very modest cost of doing so on to customers. They do not do this because it is in their financial interest to sell more cars. Most car thieves are not in the market to buy new ones, but those whose cars are stolen are. Insurance companies could provide an incentive to customers to pay the higher cost of buying a protected car by offering lower premiums. However, insurance companies profit by investing customers' premiums. Lower premiums would reduce the cash they have available for investments, thereby reducing their profits. For this reason, insurance companies have fought legislation requiring that manufacturers make cars difficult to steal. The papers by Wallace and Humphries, Brady, Barnett, and Brill highlight the various ways that the actions of privately owned business enterprises, operating in a market economy, lead to crime. However, it cannot be forgotten that the state, too, is an influential presence in the economy. It makes rules and enforces rules for private economic transactions, and also inteIVenes directly in the economy. It taxes incomes, provides "transfer payments," subsidizes private investment, issues regulations that impose costs on business, and is a major purchaser of goods and services.

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The state and the ghetto economy Cyril Robinson's essay sketches some little-discussed forms of state action that have had major ramifications for urban vice and crime. For 150 years "ethnic" immigrants-the Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews-have had difficulty in finding a place in the lawful economy. Discrimination, language disabilities, and the limited job skills of immigrants from rural regions made it hard for many to find good jobs. Still, when the economy was expanding, the demand for low-skilled manual labor was high enough to provide jobs for most. Some, on the other hand, turned to illegal sources of income such as stealing and supplying illegal goods and services (including alcohol, sex, drugs, and gambling). For most of American history, blacks were little involved with most of these activities. Until the First World War, more than ninety percent of the black American population lived in the South-primarily in rural areas, where opportunities for illegal activities were limited. Then, as white workers were drafted out of the factories to fight in Europe in both world wars, northern employers recruited blacks from the South. The mechanization of southern agriculture greatly increased this immigration. The introduction of a machine that could pick cotton displaced both black and white agricultural workers, but blacks suffered more than whites because they were more likely to work on large plantations where economies of scale facilitated capital investment. Significantly, this development did not occur via free markets. Much of the research to develop the cotton picker, and scientific methods of farming more generally (including the use of irrigation and fertilizers), was done at U.S. agricultural stations with federal funding.19 Other federal programs, including road construction, irrigation, loans, and crop insurance, facilitated the transition to capital-intensive agriculture. 20 It was understood from the start that this transition would drastically reduce the number of people who would be able to find employment in the agricultural sector. Yet no steps were taken to resituate the displaced workers. Thus, the mechanization of agriculture involved major subsidies to the land-owning class and the loss of a livelihood for the workers. These developments had a much more severe impact on blacks than on whites. In 1920, one of every seven farmers in the United States was black; in 1982, only one in sixty-seven (Amott, 1989). The uneven development of capitalist industry, together with racial discrimination, made it impossible for most of those displaced to find employment in southern cities. Large numbers came north. Just as southern blacks and some poor whites were arriving in the northern cities, the white middle and upper classes already living there were leaving for the suburbs. No doubt many factors contributed to this exodus; among them, Robinson points out, were enormous government subsidies for home mortgages in the suburbs, denial of mortgage support for residences in racially integrated and low-income neighborhoods, and

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federal highway construction that made it easy for suburbanites to commute to jobs in central cities. Though many of the new arrivals found employment in the manufacturing, retail, and service sectors ofthe nm1hern cities, not all were able to do so. Limits on the number of jobs available, inferior schooling, and discrimination in employment left many without a reliable source of adequate income. In the absence of lawful employment, some turned to theft. Others found employment in the "vices," or "victimless crimes,"supplying illegal goods and services to willing customers.21 With the higher levels of organized crime dominated by those who had entered it earlier, blacks had difficulty moving into the more lucrative, higher levels of production and distribution (Gage, 1971), though some managed to take over distribution in predominantly black ghetto neighborhoods (Ianni,1974). ECONOMICS ISN'T EVERYTHING As important as economic conditions obviously are in causing crime, economics isn't everything. The holistic character of Marxism lends itself to a more inclusive analysis. Attempts to include noneconomic factors in an analysis of crime have taken various forms. The essay on juvenile delinquency by David Greenberg represents one approach. Although it takes immediate economic considerations into account, it also considers the effects of institutions, like the school, that Marxist theory has regarded "superstructural" (see the Introduction to this volume for a discussion of the "base-superstructure" metaphor). Juvenile delinquency

Twentieth-century criminologists have probably written more about juvenile delinquency than about any other single topic. Much of this literature has been criticized by radical criminologists as logically defective and empirically wrong (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973). I argue (in the tenth essay) that this literature need not be dismissed out of hand. Although some of it may be mistaken, it is not all worthless. In fact, it can be used in creating a theory of delinquency that goes beyond the juvenile's immediate social setting, consisting of family, school, neighborhood, and peer group, to deal with the place of the juvenile in the larger society. Noting that only recently have levels of juvenile involvement in crime been exceptionally high, this reading suggests that high levels of delinquency have been caused by changes in young people's relation to economically productive activity in a capitalist society.22 These changes have made juveniles a part of the relative surplus population, creating

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motivation toward delinquency by excluding them from lawful sources of income. The reading goes on to argue that these changes have also had ramifications for the juvenile's position in the family and the school in ways that have increased delinquency. This analysis conforms to the general approach outlined by Spitzer (1975) in placing delinquency in the context of both the ongoing reorganization of the social relations of production and the responses of other social institutions to this reorganization. The approach also provides plausible accounts of differences among races and between sexes in involvement in delinquency. It is implicit in this reading that the concerns of positivist criminology and its empirical research findings are not inherently incompatible with a Marxian perspective.23 This is a controversial position, and the reader may want to pay particular attention to the way these two perspectives are handled. Another point of interest in this reading is the treatment of class. Although class analysis is usually considered distinctive to Marxism, many non-Marxian criminologists have explored the relevance of social class to delinquency. They have argued on a variety of grounds that rates of delinquency are expected to be especially high among lower-class male youths (Cohen, 1955; Miller, 1958; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960). Yet self-reporting studies in which juveniles are asked about offenses they have committed show small or vanishing differences among the classes (for a review of these studies, see Tittle, Villemez, and Smith, 1978). These findings have led some sociologists to suggest that class differences in the rates of officially processed delinquents-those who are arrested and/or brought into the juvenile court-are entirely due to discrimination on the part of the criminal justice system. There are several reasons for thinking that this conclusion is premature. First, there is a good deal of evidence for the existence of racial differences with regard to some forms of crime, for example, homicide, assault with weapons, armed robbery, and the use and sale of heroin (not to speak of corporate crime, where blacks have few opportunities to become involved). Some of this evidence comes from self-reporting studies, but much of it comes from victims, who can usually provide information about the race of an attacker (Hindelang, 1978; Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1979). If it were true that within each racial category, class had no effect on involvement in crime, we should find an overall association between class and crime, since race is itself correlated with class. Ifthe overall correlation vanishes, it must mean that class membership has effects on criminality that are opposite for blacks and whites. This would imply, for example, that lower-class blacks have lower crime rates than middle-class blacks, but lower-class whites have higher crime rates than middle-class whites. We know of no reason to expect patterns of this kind. In addition, most of the self-reporting studies have used a definition of class that is questionable from the point of view of Marxian theory.

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'JYpically, a child's class is determined in these studies by the prestige of the father's job, the parents' combined income, the number of years of education the parents have had, or similar indicators. Yet, as noted in the Introduction, Marxists define class in terms of relation to the means of production. Although there may be some relation between these two different definitions, it is by no means a perfect one. Some members of the working class, for example, have had more years of education and earn better pay than some members of the petty bourgeoisie. Going further, we can ask whether children should be automatically assigned to the class of their parents. The reading reprinted here implicitly questions that procedure by examining the juveniles' relation to the means of production. In industrial societies this relation is largely one of exclusion from economically productive activity, accompanied by mandatory training for future production" In these terms, youths can be considered to constitute a class of their own. Membership in this class is of course very brief, though with the protraction of education, longer now than it was a few decades ago. In treating class in this unorthodox way, I implicitly take a stand against the application of fixed categories in favor of an analysis of social arrangements as they are. With the development of capitalism, familiar class categories such as "capitalist" and "proletariat" are not necessarily conceptually adequate for understanding everyone's place in production; there are too many people who have some relation to production other than those of these two classes. The women's movement has pointed out the difficulty of understanding the housewife's relation to production in familiar Marxian categories, and the same seems true for juveniles as well. In Marx's day this problem of conceptualization would not have existed, because the children of working-class families entered the labor force at an early age. Although I argue that most attempts to eliminate delinquency would have little effect in the absence of far-reaching economic change, it may be worth considering whether this conclusion is too pessimistic. Are there steps that might go part way toward integrating juveniles more fully in the economic and social life of the society, and that might lower the delinquency rate? In Switzerland, where most youths leave school at age sixteen and enter apprenticeships, school-related delinquency is low (David, 1978). Could a system like that be adopted here?

Crime and social integration Drawing on the philosophical anthropology of Marx's early writings, Gregory Grose and W. Byron Groves (1988) have proposed a theory of crime causation that is fundamentally noneconomic. They interpret passages in Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts-passages that build on some of Hegel's writings--as positing the existence of fundamental human needs, among them, the need to identifY with a

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human group and to feel oneself a valued member of that group (one who contributes to its collective labor and whose contributions are socially recognized and valued) .24 As Grose and Groves point out, it is not entirely clear whether Marx considered these needs to be basic to human nature or to be acquired. It is clear that he regarded the realization of the potential for identification with the entire human species as both desirable and a goal toward which human society was moving. Though the need to be recognized may be universal, social arrangements can frustrate it by denying to individuals or groups the opportunity to make a contribution to the achievement of a collective goal and to be valued for that contribution. Grose and Groves suggest that when the possibility of achieving recognition lawfully is frustrated, individuals may attempt to achieve it illegally. Crimes usually considered in other terms can be reinterpreted in light of this idea. For example, much economic crime is not a means for achieving the necessities of life or even material comfort. Possessions can be regarded as an indicator of moral worthiness, a sign that one is the sort of person that others should honor or respect.26 People who steal may be doing so to gain this recognition from others, or even from themselves. In some instances, the intent of violent interpersonal crime is to force the target to accord the perpetrator recognition or respect that would not otherwise be forthcoming (Katz, 1988; Bernard, 1990). Social formations differ in the degree to which they offer members opportunities for fulfilling recognition needs. In a small-scale band or tribe, typically everyone is accepted as a part of the collective, but in the more stratified societies this is not so. In the extreme case, slaves may be treated by their owners as nothing more than beasts. A society with a large marginalized population has on its hands a large number of people who will have great difficulty satisfYing their "recognition motive" within the law. Crime and empathy

Empathy, or the lack of it, is another noneconomic factor that must be taken into account. Where it exists, empathy with an intended victim may restrain someone from committing a crime, even where the motivation to commit the crime is strong. When criminals talk about their criminal activities, one of the most striking themes is their utter indifference to the pain they cause their victims. Some even enjoy the sense of power that comes from hurting othersP The sociologists Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957) have dealt with delinquents' lack of empathy in terms of their "techniques of neutralization." Most delinquents, they argue, do not reject the moral dictates of respectable society that frown on violence and theft. If they wish to engage in these activities, they must find a way to "neutralize"

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their moral inhibitions. They do this) not by rejecting society's norms and values) but by finding them inapplicable in a particular instance because of special circumstances. Among these rationalizations is the derogation of the victim. By representing potential victims to themselves as deserving suffering) delinquents can carry out crimes that inflict suffering and still think of themselves as morally worthy. Rationalizations can be learned in face-to-face interaction or from the mass media. This social-psychological analysis can be connected to Marxism through the observation that the availability and acceptability of techniques of neutralization vary with the social relations present in a society and the ideological discourses that circulate in it. To date) no one has studied this question systematically; consequently only a few preliminary thoughts can be offered here. It is true of many social formations Ithat they sustain definitions of social boundaries that distinguish social members from nonmembers) and that they consider the moral injunctions against victimizing behavior to be valid only in relation to members. In a primitive culture) for example) a clan or lineage will generally try to discourage theft and violence within the kinship unit) while regarding the same acts against members of other clans) lineages) or tribes in purely pragmatic terms. The salient question is not whether an attack on others is morally wrong) but whether they will retaliate or end a mutually beneficial, ongoing social arrangement, such as a trade agreement. In a nontribal society) identification and loyalty are to an ethnicity) religion) or nationality. Where conflict with another group) religion) or nationality develops) victimization of those who belong to the antagonistic group is often defined as praiseworthy. In some parts of the capitalist world) the growth of commerce and industry that marks the rise of capitalism have weakened these loyalties. According to the early twentieth-century Russian jurist Evgeny Pashukanis) the cash nexus tends to dissolve particularites into an abstract formal equality (Greenberg and Anderson) 1981). However) precapitalist social identities surviving into the capitalist era have sometimes been strengthened by tensions connected with capitalist (or "socialist") development. New ideological justifications for victimization have appeared under these circumstances; Nazism is the classical example. 28 Ideologies devaluing members of other classes have also contributed to victimization-for example) when a slave owner beats or rapes a slave) or a rebellious slave kills a master) or alienated workers steal from their employers to compensate for perceived exploitation) or capitalists use violence to kill union organizers or suppress strikes. Certain developments associated with capitalism tend to promote not just group victimization but more or less random victimization of anyone within the offender's reach. Empathetic identification that could restrain victimization is to a degree the product of long-term social interaction) but the mobility of capital and labor that accompanies capitalism tends

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to reduce attachments to neighbors that might sustain an ethic of responsibility. Unless we are in sharp conflict with them, we generally care about our neighbors more than we do about strangers. 29 The competitive phase of capitalism brings with it an ideology of radical individualism that asserts the desirability of self-seeking behavior. To profit at the expense of others is considered praiseworthy. A responsibility to the collectivity is denied. Indeed, philosophers of the nineteenth century argued that help for the unfortunate would in the long run prove socially pernicious. Their arguments may have helped upwardly mobile businessmen sleep more soundly at night; arguably, they also made it easier to commit crime. When the word of the day is "success at almost any cost," it is hardly surprising that some will drop the "almost," especially when the cost is to be paid by someone else. The market itself reinforces teachings of social irresponsibility. Consider the case of a manufacturer whose orders are declining. He wants to layoff some workers but realizes that doing so will cause them financial hardship. If he keeps them on the payroll, his costs will be high at a time when sales are not producing enough revenue to pay their salaries. His kindheartedness will lead him straight to bankruptcy. If he wants to continue running his business, he must not indulge his tenderheartedness and will have to fire them. Material conditions may influence the adoption of callousness or indifference to the well-being of others. Someone whose wealth guarantees every imaginable pleasure can afford a bit of generosity. On the other hand, those who live at the edge of survival will tend to jettison ethical teachings as useless claptrap in an anomic, dog-eat-dog world. Colin Turnbull's (1972) study of the Ik, an African people, under conditions of mass starvation, shows us the extremity of social disintegration; life among some drug dealers, pimps, loan sharks, extortionists, and thieves may come close (Messerschmidt, 1986:66-67; Katz, 1988). Too much should not be made ofthis, however. The "hardened" street criminal who kills to impress his competitors or associates with his toughness has nothing on the Ford Motor Company executives who calculated that it would cost the company less to pay damages awarded in liability suits stemming from the deaths of drivers who would bum while driving the defective Pinto than to correct the defect at the manufacturing plant (Dowie, 1977). Nor is there any reason to think them more "sociopathic" than the business executives who exported children's sleepware treated with a flame-retardant known to be carcinogenic, or sold intrauterine devices (Dalkon shields) after it was known that they posed a major risk of fatal infections, or continued to set employees to the task of painting watch dials with radium paint after it was known that exposure to radium caused cancer (Michalowski and Kramer, 1987; Caufield, 1989). These cases suggest that even in the absence of poverty, capitalism can be powerfully criminogenic. This discussion might lead one to think that capitalism is unique in

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fostering the instrumental, depersonalized treatment of other human beings. An examination of state policy and ideology in the Soviet Union or in the People's Republic of China quickly refutes that conclusion. State policies adopted in the USSR during the Stalin era, and in China under Mao, brought suffering and death to millions. Some have argued that by viewing historical change as the product of impersonal class forces dialectically working toward human emancipation, and by derogating the role of spirituality in human life, Marxism lends itself to the depersonalization and objectification of flesh-andblood human beings. Others explain these developments in terms of the pressures on Communist states to industrialize rapidly and defend themselves against implacable external enemies as well as internal opposition. Still others point out that corruption develops among holders of dictatorial political power anywhere. Gender and crime

One of the liveliest areas of recent criminological work has concerned gender aspects of crime. Interest has focused on two broad issues. The first is the explanation of crimes against women, crimes such as forcible rape. 30 Why do they occur? What explains the variation in their rates? The second concerns the gendering of all kinds of crime. Why are lawbreakers so disproportionately male? Why more so for some crimes than others? How and why is this disproportionality changing? A strictly economic explanation for crime would have a hard time accounting for some of the most basic facts. Women earn less than men and are employed less often. If low wages and unemployment lead to higher rates of crime, we should expect levels of crime to be higher for females than for males. The reverse is true for every category of crime except prostitution. Moreover, most legislators are male. If they operated solely as an interest group, one would expect them to criminalize female activities, not those of their own sex. The essay on forcible rape, by Julia and Herman Schwendinger, was one of the first to tackle these issues. It was written at a time when radical feminists who favored separatism were attributing rape to the essential makeup of human males. 31 If this position were true, the Schwendingers point out, most men should be rapists, and levels of rape should be more or less the same in all societies. Arrest statistics and victimization surveys, however, indicate that relatively few men rape. 32 Anthropological evidence suggesting that levels of rape depend on the status of women in a society points to the importance of social factors in causing rape. The Schwendingers go on to interpret cross-cultural variation in the situation of women within an evolutionary framework based on Engels's classic study, The Origins of the Family, the State, and Private Property. Engels believed that in the early stages of human life, women's status, power, and autonomy were high. The development of

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class divisions and the rise of the state brought this Garden of Eden to an end by subordinating women. Engels's analysis of gender has been controversial among anthropologists. They have pointed out that Engels was writing at a time when very little was known about contemporary primitive peoples, much less about the Stone Age. Some find dubious the tacit assumption of evolutionary theorists that one can learn about early stages in human history by studying contemporary primitives, who, after all, have had a history as long as ours. Nonetheless, Engels's ideas have found support from some anthropologists. In the Engels-Schwendinger model, gender relations in primitive society change because the development of production or exchange relations favors the exploitation of female labor, or because warfare leads to higher levels of all kinds of violence. These changed gender relations then lead to higher levels of rape. The Schwendingers' analysis never makes explicit just what it is about gender that leads to an asymmetry. When it becomes profitable to exploit another person's labor, why is it women whose labor is selected for exploitation? The last essay, by David Greenberg, examines the reasons men are more likely to be criminal. In every country for which crime statistics are available, sex differences in rates of involvement in crime are as large or larger than class or race differences. Yet it is only with the rise of "second wave" feminism in the past quarter century that criminologists have devoted major energies to the study of these differences. Greenberg's essay explores the possibilities for explaining these differences within the framework of Marxist theory.

NOTES 1 This strategy circumvents the contention of Hirst 11975) and O'Malley 119871 that a MaI'xist criminology is an impossibility because crime is not an element of Mar'Xist theory. The logic described in the text does not require crime to be an element of Marxist theory. only the conditions that cause it. 2 Evidence consistent with this kind of Marxist explanation of heart attacks can be found in Wolf and Bruhn (19921. 3 Of course, the owners will usually have to pay some of this surplus value to the government as taxes. Some of it will also go to owners ofland for rent. to patent holders in the fonn of royalty payments or license fees. etc. For that reason, the sUI'Plus value a firm produces cannot be equated with its profits in the conventional sense. 4 National figures are not available for arrestees, but for inmates of state cormctional institutions. In a 1974 survey. 60 percent of inmates had not completed high school, 30.8 percent had been unemployed at the time of their arrest, and only 13.7 percent had had an income of $10,000 or more in the year before their arrest IU.S. Department of Justice, 1976:24. 25. 271. 5 For overviews and selected msearch studies see Orsagh (1980). Long and Witte (19811; Horwitz (1984); Thornberry and Christenson 119841; Cantor and Land 119851; Cook and Zarkin (1985.19861; Chiricos (1987); Allan and Steffensmeier 119891.

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6 Bluestone and Harrison (1987) note that in the period between 1963 and 1979, only 20 percent of new jobs had low wages (less than $7400 in constant 1986 dollars); while between 1979 and 1985, 44 percent did. At the same time, welfare support was seriously reduced (Mann and Albelda, 1989; Henry and Brown, 1990). 7 The most systematic argument in favor of the optimistic position can be found in Hartwell (1971). Thompson (1963) presents the case for the pessimistic position. S In understanding organized crime as a response to discrimination, some of Arlacchi's (1979) work may be helpful, even though ethnic mobility is not an issue in western Sicily. Arlacchi argues that the prices of Sicilian commodities fluctuate on the national and international markets so rapidly that upward and downward mobility is extreme. Under these conditions, subjective classes cannot form. Mafia-like strategies for self-advancement are thus chosen instead of socialist strategies for advancing the class. It may be that the conditions associated with emigration to the United States weakened class identification for some emigrant groups, encouraging individualistic rather than group efforts to overcome discrimination. 9 It is this feature of these offenses that has led some sociologists to call them "victimless" (Schur, 1965). Strictly speaking, the notion that consensual transactions are victimless is bourgeois ideology. Marxian critique of the wage contract makes this explicit in the case of agreements between employers and employees. Reiman (1979) has develoed a parallel argument for addiction and prostitution. 10 Pearce interprets this development as a manifestation of corporate liberalism, a concept developed by early New Left American historians. It was argued that twentieth-century liberal forms were conceived, guided, or approved by leaders of large corporations. Their concern was to stabilize capitalism by government intervention, and by allowing the poorer classes a share of the wealth produced by an expanding economy (Weinstein, 1968). Recognition of unions that accepted corporate capitalism and supported the government's cold war policies fit into this scheme as a strategy to head off growing working-class radicalism. The historians who developed this perpective recognized that the initiative in drawing attention to social problems often came from below, but insisted that solutions were largely shaped by business interests. Recent critics of the perspective have argued that it exaggerates capitalists' ability to control the direction of reform, and minimizes the Significance of working-class victories (Ratner, 1981). 11 In 1988, approximately 15 percent of the nonfarm employed labor force in the United States was unionized, a very low percentage by historical standards and in comparison to other western industrialized democracies. 12 William Chambliss has developed this theme with regard to professional theft (1972:165-79) and organized crime (1979).A suggestive piece of journalism that suggests such symbiosis can be found in Crile 11975). 13 Bell (1962) suggests that corporate contributions were channeled into federal elections after the New Deal, with the result that scarce funds for local campaigns opened the door to organized crime. Suppliers of these funds sought immunity from unpopular legislation in return for their contributions. However, several writers have suggested that during the Nixon administration, the influence of organized crime reached into the White House (Myerson, 1973; Gerth, 1974; Oglesby, 1976). 14 This is clearest in the case of small firms that must pay for protection or buy their goods under threat of violence; but even large firms have sometimes had to make payments to organized crime in order to retail their products. Occasionally, business executives who have refused to cooperate with organized crime figures have been killed. 15 There seems to be some evidence that economic expansion can contribute to crime even in noncapitalist societies. According to Moscicki (1978), factory construction in

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Part 2 Poland is associated with temporary increases in crime. These increases are apparently linked with migration and the bringing of manpower reseIVes into the economy. Landlords sometimes point to rent control regulations as an additional factor limiting profits. However, rent control does not seem to have the impact that landlords claim (M. Mandel, 1986J. The problem is only in part one of individuals being unable to afford housing because they are too poor. There are also obstacles that interfere with the construction of new low-cost housing, including building-code standards, zoning restrictions, and the channeling of housing subsidies to the high end ofthe market (Swanstrom, 1989). This discussion is based on information acquired as a consultant to New York City's Arson Strike Force. Significantly, Congress did not fund agricultural research at the black land-grant colleges until 1972 (Amott, 1989). Had it done so, the direction of this research might have been quite different. The Farmer's Home Administration, an agency of the u.S. Department of Agriculture created during the Great Depression to aid low-income farmers, did not extend credit to black farmers, making it difficult for those who owned land to adopt the new, more costly methods (Amott, 1989). In recent years they have been joined by still newer immigrants-Latinos, Asians, Russian Jews, etc.-who have also turned to organized criminal activity. Several other criminologists have also analyzed delinquency in relation to the structural position of the juvenile in modem society. Bloch and Niederhoffer (1958), Glaser (1972), Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1976), Friday and Hage (1976), and Christie (1978) have all analyzed delinquency from this angle. A similar approach is implicit in Seppilli and Abbozzo's attempt to understand crime in Italy in the context of post-World War II economic development. They argue (1975) that the rapid, uneven development of the Italian economy exposed individuals to inconsistent systems of social control; the resulting inconsistency in socialization gave rise to psychological conflict, which was in tum a source of crime and other forms of deviance. This line of reasoning resembles some of the ideas of early social disorganization theorists, such as Thomas and Znaniecki, but places them in the context of the dynamic development of a particular capitalist social formation. Groves and Sampson (1987) argue more generally that radical criminology is not incompatible with such mainstays of "traditional" criminology as strain theory, cultural deviance theory, and critical theory. The early twentieth-century social psychologist W. I. Thomas developed related ideas independently. Of the four "wishes" .that he postulated as fundamental to human nature, one was the wish for recognition, another was the wish for response. There is less emphasis here on an integrated relationship with a collectivity. In his book The Unadjusted Girl, published in 1923, Thomas argued that young women could be led to crime through attempts to fill these wishes. Grose and Groves refer to these needs as the "recognition motive," but the need for feeling "subjectively integrated" strikes me as more apt. Marx's views on the question of "human nature" have been given a detailed analysis by Archibald (1989J. This insight may help to make sense of the large volume of acquisitive crime committed by corporate executives and high-ranking government officials. An obvious limitation of explanations of robbery and burglary that focus only on need is that some people who are relatively well-to-do steal when they are given the opportunity. To take an example from a recent newspaper story, a twenty-one-year-old high school

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dropout confessed to killing a nurse by stabbing her in the neck: "I felt real high, a sense of power when I stabbed her and when she died. She died and I lived. It felt good" 1Cassidy and McNamara, 19891. 28 As violent ethnic conflicts now breaking out in the former Soviet republics demon-

st!'ate, these ethnic identifications do not disappear simply because a revolution abolishes capitalism. Indeed, favoritism in the distIibution of government benefits, which can occur when the socialist state is dominated by a single ethnic group, can exacerbate traditional antagonisms.

ever simple. Arguably, the increased exposure to diverse cultures that has accompanied the expansion of capitalism gave rise to the Enlightenment ideal that "all men are equal" and that one's loyalty should be to humanity as a whole. Such developments, aIising at a certain stage in European capitalism, together with an older Christian notion that in the eyes of God all are equal, gave rise to such developments as antislavery movements, feminism, pacifism, and humanitaIian concern for the oppressed. When one considers the bloody histOJY of capitalist societies during the past couple of centuries, it is difficult to lend much credence to the restraining fon;e of humanitarian sentiment, but that force should not be dismissed altogether. 30 Homosexual rape also occurs, but outside penal institutions it is infrequent by comparison with the heterosexual rape offemales. 31 More I'ecently, some sociobiologists have seen !'ape as an evolutionary adaptation that helps to maximize the number of children a man has.

29 Nothing is

32 James Messerschmidt (19861 has challenged the Schwendingers on this point, noting

that if fOJ'cible or coercive sexual relations with a spouse or intimate are taken into account, rape is far from infrequent in contemporary AmeIican society.

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Sampson, Robert J., and Thomas C. Castellano (1982). "Economic Inequality and Personal Victimization." British Journal of Criminology 22:363-85. Samuelson, Paul (1982). "The Normative and Positivistic Inferiority of Marx's Values Paradigm." Southern Economic Journal 49:11-18. Sassen, Saskia (1988), The Mobility of Capital and Labor: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, Jane, and Peter Schneider (1976). Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily. New York: Academic Press. Schur, Edwin M. (1965). Crimes without Victims. Englewood Cliffs, N J.: Prentice-Hall. Schwendinger, Herman, and Julia Schwendinger (1976). "Delinquency and the Collective Varieties of Youth." Crime and Social Justice 5:7-25. Seppilli, Tulio, and Grazietta Guatini Abbozzo (1975). "The State of Research into Social Control and Deviance in Italy in the Post-War Period (1945-1973)." In Herman Bianchi, Mario Simondi, and Ian Taylor, eds., Deviance and Control in Europe, 35-50. New York: Wiley. Spitzer, Steven (1975). "Toward a Marxian Themy of Deviance," Social Problems 22:638-51. Steedman, Ian (1977). Marl(. after Sraffa. London: New Left Review. - - - (1981). The Value Controversy. London: New Left Review. Sutton, Lany (1989). "Dear Prez, This Is Life." Daily News, June 5, 5. Swanstrom, Todd (1989). "Homelessness, a Product of Policy." New York Times, March 23, AZ9.

Sykes, Gresham, and David Matza (1957). "Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency." American Sociological Review 22:664--70. Tabb, William K., and Larry Sawers (1978). Marl(.ism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban Political Economy. New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Ian (1988). "Left Realism, the Free Market Economy and the Problem of Social Order." Paper presented to the American Society of Criminology. Taylor, Ian, Paul Walton, and Jock Young (1973). The New Criminology. New York: Harper and Row. Taylor, Laurie, and Paul Walton (1971). "Industrial Sabotage: Motives and Meanings." In Stanley Cohen, ed., Images ofDeviance, 219-45. Baltimore: Penguin. Thompson, Edward P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage. - - - (1978). The Poverty ofTheory and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Thornberry, Terence P., and R. L. Christenson (1984). "Unemployment and Criminal Involvement: An Investigation of Reciprocal Causal Structures." American Sociological Review 49:398-411. Tittle, Charles R., Wayne J. Villemez, and Douglas A. Smith (1978). "The Myth of Social Class and Criminality." American Sociological Review 43:643-56. Turk, Austin (1964). "Prospects for Theories of Criminal Behavior." Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 55:454--61. Turnbull, Colin M. (1972). The Mountain People. New York: Simon and Schuster. U.S. Department of Jusice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (1976). Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities 1974-Advance Report. National Prisoner Statistics Special Report SD-NPS-SR-2. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Valdes, Benigno (1987). "Technical Change and Profitability: The 'Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall' Reconsidered." In Richard W. England, ed., Economic Processes and Political Conflicts: Contributions to Modern Political Economy, 107-17. New York: Praeger.

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Walsh, Marilyn (1977). The Fence. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Walton, Paul (1973). "The Case of the Weathermen: Social Reaction and Radical Commitment." In Ian Taylor and Laurie Taylor, eds., Politics and Deviance: Papers from the National Deviancy Conference, 157-81. Baltimore: Penguin. Weinstein, James (1968). The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918. Boston: Beacon Press. Wilson, William Julius (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, Stewart, and John G. Bruhn (1992). The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Hean Disease. New Brunswick: Transaction. Wolff, Robert Paul (1981). "A Critique and Reinterpretation of Marx's Labor Theory of Value." Philosophy and Public Affairs 10(2): 89-120. Young, Jock (1975). "Working-Class Criminology." In Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young, eds., Critical Criminology, 63-94. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Zehr, Howard (1976). Crime and the Development ofModern Society. London: Croom Helm.

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Karl Marx, the Theft of Wood, and Working-Class Composition Peter Linebaugh From "Karl Marx. the Theft of Wood. and Working Class Composition: A Contribution to the Current Debate." Crime and Social Justice: Issues in Criminology 6 11976): 5-16. © Crime and Social Justice. P.O. Box 4373. Berkeley. CA 94704. Reprinted by permission.

The international working-class offensive of the 1960s threw the social sciences into crisis from which they have not yet recovered. The offensive was launched in precisely those parts of the working class that capital had formerly attempted to contain within silent. often wageless reserves of the relative surplus population, that is, in North American ghettoes, in Caribbean islands, or in "backward" regions of the Mediterranean. When that struggle took the form of the mass, direct appropriation of wealth, it became increasingly difficult for militants to understand it as a "secondary movement" to the "real struggle" that, it was said, resided only in the unions and the plants. Nor could it be seen as the incidental reactions of "victims" to an "oppressive society," as it was so often by those organizations left flat-footed by the power of an autonomous Black movement and an autonomous women's movement. This is not the place to elaborate on the forms that the struggles have taken in the direct appropriation of wealth, nor how these were able to circulate within more familiar terms of struggle.1 We must note, however, that they thrust the problem of crime, capital's most ancient tool in the creation and control of the working class, once again to a prominent place in the capitalist relation. As the political recomposition of the international workI wish to thank Norman Stein. who provided me with some material assistance in the preparation of this article. My deepest thanks to Gene Mason, Bobby Scollard, and Monty NeilL my comrades in the Northeast Prisoners' Association, for their criticism of an earlier draft of this paper.

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ing class threw into crisis the capitalist organization of labor markets, so that part of traditional social science, criminology, devoted to studying one of the comers in the labor market, "criminal subcultures" and street gangs, had to face a crisis of its own. George Jackson recommended burning the libraries of criminology. Young criminologists began to question the autonomous status of criminology as a field of study (Hirst, 1972:29; Phillipson, 1973:400; Mellosi, 1976:31; Currie, 1974:113). Accompanying both the internal and external critique of criminology has been a recovery of interest in the treatment of crime within the Marxist tradition. Yet, that tradition is by no means accessible or complete and in fact contains contradictory strains within it, so that one cannot be completely unqualified in welcoming it. In stating our own position let us try to be as clear as possible even at the risk of overstatement. We wish to oppose the view that fossilizes particular compositions of the working class into eternal, even formulaic, patterns. We must, in particular, combat the view that analyzes crime (or much else indeed) in the nineteenth century in terms of a "lumpenproletariat" versus an "industrial proletariat." It is to be regretted that despite the crisis of criminology and the experience of struggle that gave rise to it, some militants can still speak of the "lumpenproletariat" tout court as though this were a fixed category of capitalist relations of power. When neither the principle of historical specification nor the concept of class struggle is admitted there can be no useful analysis of class strategy, howsoever exalted the methodology may be in other respects.2 In the rejection of various idealist interpretations of crime including their 'marxist' variants, there is, perforce, a revival of interest in the situation of the problem within specified historical periods, that is, within well constituted phases of capitalist accumulation. In this respect the recent work that discusses the problem in terms of original accumulation must be welcomed (Melossi, 1976:26ff). At the same time we must express the hope that this analysis may be extended to the discussion of the appropriation of wealth and of crime at other periods of the class relation. The contribution of those whose starting point in the analysis of crime is the concept of "marginalization" (Crime and Social Justice Collective, 1976:1-4; Herman and Julia R. Schwendinger, 1976:7-26) leads us to an analysis of the capitalist organization and planning of labor markets, certainly an advance in comparison to those for whom capital remains de-historicized and fixed in the forms of its command. On the other hand one cannot help but note the unilateral nature of the concept, the fact that it entails an approach to the question that must accept capital's point of view without adequately reconstituting the concept with working-class determinants. One remembers that the life and works of Malcolm X and George Jackson, far from being contained within incidental, "marginal sectors," became leading international reference points for a whole cycle of struggle. The recent publication of the English translation of Marx's early writings on the criminal law and the theft of wood provides us with a propitious moment for another look at the development of Marx's thinking on the

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question of crime.3 We hope that some suggestions for placing those articles within the context of the real dynamics of capitalist accumulation may not only allow us to specify the historical determinants of class struggle in the 1840s, but-what is of far greater importance-may make a contribution to the present debate, a debate which in its abandonment of "criminology" as traditionally constituted in favor of an analysis of the political composition of the working class has more than a few similarities with Marx's own development after 1842.

II It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it was a problem of theft

that first forced Marx to realize his ignorance of political economy, or to say that class struggle first presented itself to Marx's serious attention as a form of crime. Engels had always understood Marx to say that it was the study of the law on the theft of wood and the situation of the Moselle peasantry that led him to pass from a purely political viewpoint to the study of economics and from that to socialism (Cornu, 1958:ii, 68). Marx's own testimony is no less clear. In the 1859 preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he wrote, In 1842 - 43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitun~ I found myself embarrassed at first when I had to take part in discussions concerning so-called material interests. The proceedings of the Rhine Diet in connection with forest thefts and the extreme sub-division of landed property; the official controversy about the condition of the Mosel peasants into which Herr von Schaper, at that time president of the Rhine Province, entered with the Rheinische Zeitung; finally, the debates on free trade and protection, gave me the first impulse to take up the study of economic questions (Marx, 1904:10).

Faced with his own and Engel's evidence, we must therefore beware of those accounts of the development of Marx's ideas that see it in the exclusive terms of either the self-liberation from the problematics of Left Hegelianism or the outcome of a political collision that his ideas had with the French Utopian and revolutionary tradition that he met during his exile in Paris. The famous trinity (French politics, German philosophy, and English political economy) of the intellectual lineages of Marx's critical analysis of the capitalist mode of production appears to include evel)'thing but the actual, material form in which class struggle first forced itself to the attention of the young radical in 1842. Our interest, however, is not to add the footnote to the intellectual biography of Marx that his ideas, too, must be considered in relation to their material setting. Our purpose is different. We wish to find out why, as it was his inadequate understanding of crime that led him to the study of political economy, Marx never again returned to the systematic analysis of crime as such. As we do this we shall also find that the mass illegal appropriation of

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forest products represented an important moment in the development of German capitalism, and that it was to the partial analysis of that moment tnat a good part of the work of some founders of German criminology was devoted. The same moment of struggle in German agrarian relations produced contradictory results among those .attempting to understand it: on the one hand, the formation of criminology, and on the other, the development of the revolutionary critique of capitalism.

III

Between 25 October and 3 November, 1842:, Marx published five articles in the Rheinische Zeitung on the debates about a law on the theft of wood that had taken place a year and a half earlier Hl the Provincial Assembly of the Rhine.4 The political background to those debates has been described several times (Cornu, 1958: ii, 72-95; Mehring, 1962:37fi). Here we need only point out that the "liberal" emperor, Frederick William IV, following his accession, attempted to make good on a forgotten promise to call a constitutional convention, by instead re-convening the provincial assemblies of the empire. Though they had little power, their opening, together with the temporarily relaxed censorship regulations, was the occasion for the spokesmen of the Rhenish commercial and industrial bourgeoisie to stretch their wings in the more liberal political atmosphere. The Rheinische Zeitung, staffed by a group of young and gifted men, was their vehicle for the first, hesitant flights against the Prussian government and the landed nobility. Characterized at first by "a vague liberal aspiration and a veneration for the Hegelian philosophy" (Treitschke, 1919:vi, ,538), the journal took a sharper tum under Marx's editing and it was his articles on the theft of wood that caused von Schaper to write the Prussian censorship minister that the journal was now characterized by the "impudent and disrespectful criticism of the existing government institutions" (Marx, 1842:747). Though containing passages of "exhilirating eloquence" (Wilson, 1940:124), the articles as a whole suffer from an uncertainty as to their central subject. Is it the appropriation of wood, legal or illegal? Is it the equity of the laws of property governing that appropriation? Or, is it the debates with their inconsistencies and thoughtlessness that took place in the assembly before the law was passed? Marx is least confident about the first subject; indeed, we learn little about the amounts and types of direct appropriation. He really warms to the second as it allows him to expound on the nature of the state and the law. On the third his chamcteristic wit and sarcasm come into full play. Despite these ambiguities, the articles as a whole are united by the theme of the contradiction between private self-interest and the public good. He objects, in particular, to nine provisions in the new law: 1. It fails to distinguish between the theft of fallen wood and that of standing timber or hewn lumber.

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2. It allows the forest warden to both apprehend wrongdoers and evaluate the stolen wood. 3. It puts the tenure of the appointment of the forest warden entirely at the will of the forest owner. 4. Violators of the law are obliged to perform forced labor on the roads of the forest owner. 5. The fines imposed on the thief are remitted to the forest owner (in addition to compensation for damaged propertyl. 6. Costs of defense incurred at trial are payable in advance. 7. In prison, the thief is restricted to a diet of bread and water. S. The receiver of stolen wood is punished to the same extent as the thief. 9. Anyone possessing wood that is suspected must prove honest title to it.

Young Marx was outraged by the crude, undisguised, self-interested provisions of punishment established by this law. He was no less indignant with its substantive expansion of the criminal sanction. His criticism of the law rested upon an a priori, idealist conception of both the law and the state. "The law," he wrote, "is the universal and authentic exponent of the rightful order of things." Its form represents "universality and necessity." When applied to the exclusive advantage of particular interests-the forest owners-then "the immortality of the law" is sacrificed and the state goes "against the nature of things." The "conflict between the interest of forest protection and the principles of law" can result only in the degradation of "the idea of the state." We stress that this criticism applied to both the substantive and the procedural sections of the law. In the latter case, "public punishment" is transformed "into private compensation." "Reform of the criminal" is attained by the "improvement of the percentage of profit" devolving on the forest owner. The attack on the substantive part of the law rests on similar arguments. "By applying the category of theft where it ought not to be applied you exonerate it." '!All the organs of the state become ears, eyes, arms, legs, and means by which the interest of the forest owner hears, sees, appraises, protects, grasps and runs." "The right of human beings gives way to the right of trees." As he stated this, Marx also had to ask, which human beings? For the first time he comes to the defense of the "poor, politically and socially propertyless" when he demands for the poor" a customary right." On what basis is the demand made? Some confusion results as Marx, only a few years away from his Berlin studies of the pandects and jurisprudence, attempts to solve the problem. First, he justifies it on the basis that the law must represent the interests of all "citizens," that is, he refers to the classical arguments of natural justice. Second, and not altogether playfully, he says that "human poverty ... deduces its right to fallen wood" from the natural fact that the forests themselves present in the contrast of strong, upright timber to the snapped twigs and wind-felled branches underneath an "antithesis between poverty and wealth." Third, in noting that the inclusion of the appropriation of fallen wood with that of live and hewn timber under

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the rubric of the criminal sanction is inconsistent with both the sixteenth century penal code and the ancient "Germanic rights" (leges barbarorum), he suggests the greater force of these feudal codes. It is true that Marx understands that these changes of law correspond, over the centuries, to changes in property relations: "all customary rights of the poor were based on the fact that certain forms of property were indeterminate in character, for they were not definitely private property, but neither were they definitely common property, being a mixture of private and public right, such as we find in all the institutions of the Middle Ages." Accumulation has in these articles no separate existence apart from the law which indeed determines it, as Marx implies when he says that it was the introduction of the Roman law that abolished "indeterminate property." Powerless to resist, as it were, the tide of a millenium of legal development, Marx seeks to defend the "customary right" by fleeing the seas of history altogether and placing his defense upon the terra firma of nature itself. There are objects "which by their elemental nature and their accidental mode of existence" must defy the unitary force of law which makes private property from "indeterminate property," and the forests are one of these objects. Appeal as he might to the "universal necessity of the rightful order of things" or to the bio-ecology of the forest, neither of these lofty tribunals could so much as delay, much less halt, the swift and sharp swath that the nobility and burgomasters in Dusseldorf were cutting through the forests of the Rhineland. Fruitless as such appeals had to be, Marx could not even understand, by the idealist terms of his argument, why it was that the rich Rhenish agriculturalists found it necessary' to pass such a law at that time, thus expanding the criminal sanction. Nor-and this was far dearer to his interests-could he analyze the historical forces that propelled the Rhenish cotters to the direct appropriation of the wood of the forests. To be sure, we know from passing remarks made in other articles of the 1842-43 period that Marx understood that the parcelling of landed property, the incidence of taxation upon the vineyards, the shortages of firewood, and the collapsing market for Moselle wines were all elements of a single situation that he could, however, only see from the partial, incomplete standpoint of natural justice.

IV When looking at these articles from the standpoint of Marx's later works, we can see that he analyzes only the contradictmy appearance of the struggle. Having no concept of class struggle or capitalist accumulation he treats the Rhenish peasantry with a democratic, egalitarian passion, but still as an object external to the actual forces of its development. Unable to apprehend the struggle as one against capitalist development, he assumes that a rea-

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soned appeal to the agrarian lords of the forest, or to their sympathetic brethren in Cologne, will find sympathetic ears. Thus real development occurs, he thought, at the level ofthe state, which only needed to be reminded of its own inherent benevolence to reverse the course of the law and of history. Precisely this viewpoint, though in an inverted form, dominated the work of the early German criminologists.5 Like the young Marx, they separated the problem of the state and crime from the class relations of accumulation. They saw crime from a unilateral, idealist viewpoint. However, for them it was less a question of state benevolence than it was of the malevolence of the working class. They sought to determine the "moral condition of the people" by the classification, tabulation, and correlation of "social phenomena." The work produced in this statistical school sought to find "laws" that determined the relative importance of different "factors" (prices, wages, extension of the franchise, etc.) that accounted for changes in the amounts and types of crime. Like the young Marx, they were unable to ask either why some forms of appropriation became crimes at specified periods and others not, or why crimes could at some times become a serious political force imposing precise obstacles to capitalist reproduction. The problem of the historical specification of class relations and in particular those as they were reflected in Marx's articles, can be solved only from the standpoint of his later work, especially the first volume of Capital. There we learn that in discussing the historical phases of the class relation it is necessary to emphasize the forms of divisions within the working class that are created by combining different modes of production within the social division of labor. This is one of the lessons of Chapter xv. The effect of the capitalist attack managed by means of the progressive subordination of living labor to machines is to extend and intensilY "backward" modes of production in all of their forms. This is one of the weapons capital enjoys in establishing a working class articulated in a form favorable to it. Another is described in Chapter xxv of Capital, a chapter that is often read as a statement of a dual labor market theory, i.e., that capital in maintaining both an active and a reseJve front in its social organization of labor power creates the mechanism for reducing the value of necessary labor. In fact, the "relative surplus population" is maintained in several different forms, forms determined precisely by the combination of different modes of production. With the reproduction of capital and the struggles against it, that combination constantly changes. The chapter begins with a difficult, apparently technical, section on the value composition of capital that reminds us that the configuration of the working class cannot be analyzed exclusively in terms of its attachments to different "sectors" or "branches" of the social division of labor. Even while accounting for divisions in the class that rest upon its relation to capitals with variant compositions, the political composition of the working class must always be studied from the additional viewpoint of its ability to use these divisions in its attack upon capital. These are divisions whose determinations are not merely the relation to the labor

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process (employed or unemployed), but divisions based upon the quantitative and qualitative form of the value of labor power. Lenin, in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia and, generally, in his polemics with the "legal Marxists" of the 1890s, was forced to cover much of this ground. "As for the forms of wage-labor, they are extremely diverse in a capitalist society, still everywhere enmeshed in survivals and institutions of the pre-capitalist regime" (Lenin, 1899:590). In contrast to the Narodnik economists who considered the size of the proletariat exclusively as current factory employment, Lenin was forced to remind militants that the working class must be considered only in its relation to capital and in its ability to struggle against capital, regardless of the forms in which capital organizes it within particular productive settings. From a quantitative point of view the timber and lumber workers of post-Reform Russia were next in importance only to agricultural workers. The fact that these belonged to the relative redundant population, or that they were primarily local (not migratory) workers, or that a proportion of their income did not take the form of the wage made them no less important from either the standpoint of capitalist accumulation or from that of the working-class struggle against it. Although "the lumber industry leaves all the old, patriarchal way of life practically intact, enmeshing in the worst forms of bondage the workers left to toil in the remote forest depths," Lenin was forced to include his discussion of the timber industr,Y in his section on "large-scale machine industry." He did so not on the grounds of the quantitative scale of lumber workers within the proletariat as a whole, but because the qualitative extension of such work remained a condition of large-scale industry in fuel, building, and machine supplies. Under these circumstances it was not possible to consider the two million timber workers as the tattered edges of a dying "feudalism." Forms of truck payment and extra-economic forms of bondage prevailed not as mere remnants from a pre-capitalist social formation, but as terms of exploitation guaranteeing stability to capitalist accumulation. This was made clear in the massive agrarian unrest of the years 1905 -1907 when the illicit cutting of wood was one of the most important mass actions against the landowners (Perrie, 1972:128-29). Let us return, at this point, to the development of capitalism in the Rhineland and, in sketching some elements of the class relation, see if we can throw some light upon the historical movement of which Marx's articles were a partial reflection.

v Capitalist development in Germany, at least before 1848, is usually studied at the level of circulation as the formation of a national market. In 1818,1824, and 1833, at the initiative of Prussia, a series of commercial treaties were signed creating a customs union, the Zollverein, that sought to restore the larger market that Napoleon's "continental system" had imposed. The

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treaties removed restrictions on communications and transport. They abolished internal customs, established a unified external tariff, and introduced a common system of weights and measures. "In fact," as a British specialist stated in 1840, "the Zollverein has brought the sentiment of German nationality out of the regions of hope and fancy into those of positive material interests" (Bowring, 1840:1). In 1837 and 1839 treaties with the Netherlands abolishing the octroi and other Dutch harbor and navigation duties established the Rhine as the main commercial artery of western Prussia (Henderson, 1939:129-30). Indeed, the Zollverein was only the most visible aspect of the offensive launched by German capital, providing as it did the basis for a national banking and credit market, a precondition of the revolutions in transportation of the 1830s and 1840s, and the basis of the expansion in trade that found some of its political consequences in the establishment of Chambers of Commerce, the consolidation of the German bourgeoisie, and the liberal initiatives of the young Frederick William IV. The reforms in internal and foreign commercial arrangements, together with the reforms of the Napoleonic period that created a free market in land and "emancipated" the serfs, provided the foundations not only of a national market but laid the basis within a single generation for rapid capitalist development. Older historians, if not more recent ones, clearly understood that those changes "far from bringing into being the anticipated just social order, led to new and deplorable class struggles" (Treitschke, 1919:vii, 201). The expropriation of the serfs a'nd their redeployment as wage laborers are of course logically and historically distinct moments in the history of capital. During the intermediating period the articulation of the working class within and without capitalist enterprises must present confusions to those attempting to analyze it from the framework established during other periods of working-class organization. A consideration of the working class that regards it only when it is waged or only when that wage takes an exclusively monetary form is doomed to misunderstand both capitalist accumulation and the working class struggle against it. To consider our period alone, those who find class struggle "awakened" only after the 1839 strike of gold workers at pfortsheim and the Berlin cotton weavers' and Brandenburg railway workers' strikes will not be able to understand why, for all their faults, Marx's articles on the theft of wood expressed an important moment in the dynamics of accumulation and class relations. In the following pages we can only suggest some elements of those dynamics. The recomposition of class relations in the Rhineland during the 1830s and '40s was not led, as in England at the time, by the introduction oflargescale machinery. German manufacture was nevertheless deeply affected. From the point of view of class relations, manufacturing capital was organized in two apparently opposite ways. On the one hand the changes in transportation required massive, mobile injections of labor willing to accept short-term employments. Under state direction the great railway boom of the 1830s more than quadrupled the size of the railway system. River transport also changed-steam-powered tugs replaced the long lines of horses

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pulling laden barges on the Rhine. These changes provided, as it were, the material infrastructure to the possibilities made available by the Zollverein. On the other hand, the capitalist offensive against traditional handicraft and small workshop production met setbacks that were partially the results of workers' power in the detail of the labor process or of the obstacles remaining in the traditional, often agrarian, relations that engulfed such productive sites. What Banfield, the English free-trader, wrote of the foremen of the Prussian-owned coal mines of the Ruhr applied equally well to most forms of Rhenish manufacture in the 1840s: "Their business they generally understand, but the discipline, which is the element by which time is played off against money, and which allows high wages to co-exist with large profits, does not show itself" (Banfield, 1848:55-56). Only a visitor from England with two or three generations of experience in the organization of relative surplus value, could ·have so clearly enunciated this fundamental principle of capitalist strategy. In Prussia the height of political economy stopped with the observation that the state organization of the home market could guarantee accumulation. In the silk and cotton weaving districts of Elberfeld where outwork and task payments prevailed, workers' power appeared to capital as short-weighting of finished cloth, "defective workmanship," and the purloining of materials. The handworkers of the Sieg and Ruhr (wiredrawers, nail makers, coppersmiths, etc.) prevented the transition to largescale machinery in the forge industries. Linen workers and flax farmers prevented the introduction of heckling and scutching machines. Alcoholism and coffee addiction were regarded as serious impediments to the imposition of higher levels of intensity in work. Of course, another aspect of this power to reject intensification in the labor process was a stagnation that brought with it low wages and weaknesses in resisting the prolongation of the working day which, in cotton textiles, had become sixteen hours by the 1840s. Such were the obstacles to accumulation throughout Rhenish manufacture-the Lahn valley zinc works, the sugar refineries of Cologne, the rolling mills and earthenware factories of Trier and the Saarbrucken, the fine steel trades of Solingen, as well as in coal, weaving, and forge work. These apparently opposite poles of the labor market in Rhenish manufacturing-the "light infantry," mobile, massive, and sudden, of railway construction, and the stagnant, immobile conditions of small-scale manufactUring-were in fact regulated by the rhythms of agrarian relations. The point needs to be stressed insofar as many tend to make an equivalence between agriculture and feudalism on one hand and manufactures and capitalism on the other, thus confusing a primary characteristic of the social (and political) division of labor under capitalism with the transition to capitalist dominance in the mode of production as a whole. Both the form of the wage and the labor markets of manufacture were closely articulated to agrarian relations. Remuneration for work in manufactUring was in part made either by the allotment of small garden plots or by a working year that permitted "time off" for tending such plots. Other non-monetary forms of

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compensation, whether traditional perquisites in manufacture or common rights in forests, provided at once an obstacle to capitalist freedom in the wage and, at the pivot of the capitalist relation, a nodal point capable of uniting the struggles of workers in both agrarian and manufacturing settings. This mutual accommodation between manufacturing and agriculture could sometimes present bottlenecks to accumulation, as in the Sieg vaHey, where village control over the woodlands guaranteed that timber exploitation would remain more an aspect of working class consumption than a source of industrial fuel for the metal trades. Macadamization of the roads to the foundries allowed owners to buy and transport fuels, at once releasing them from the "parsimony" of village-controlled wood supplies and providing the basis for the re-organization of the detail of the labor process (Banfield, 1846:142). Thus we can begin to see that technical changes in transportation are as much a weapon against the working class as they are adjuncts to the development of circulation in the market. The progressive parcelling of arable and forest lands in the Rhine, the low rates of agricultural growth, as well as the mixed and sometimes subsubsistence forms of compensation provided a dispersed and extensive pool for the intensive and concentrated labor requirements of the railway and metallurgical industries, and concurrently established (what was well known at the time) a form of agrarian relations wherein political stability could be managed (Palgrave, 1912: ii, 814-16; and Lengerke, 1849). The "latent" and "stagnant" reserves of proletarians were regulated, in part, by the institutions designed to control mendicity and emigration. The emigration of German peasants and handicraft workers doubled between 1820 and 1840. Between 1830 and 1840 it actually tripled as on average forty thousand German-speaking emigrants a year jammed the main ports of embarkation (Bremen and Le Havre) awaiting passage mroz, 1957:78). The areas with the most intense emigration were the forest regions of the upper Rhine (Milward and Saul, 1973:147). A lucrative business existed in Mainz for the factors who organized the shipping of the peasants of the Odenwald and the Moselle across the Atlantic to Texas and Tennessee. Pauperization records are no less indicative of active state control of the relative surplus popUlation than they are of the magnitude of the problem. Arrests for mendicity increased between 1841 and 1842 in Franconia, the Palatinate, and Lower Bavaria by 30 percent to 50 percent (Mayr, 1867:136-37. In the 1830s one in four people in Cologne were on some form of charitable or public relief (Milward and Saul, 1973:147). Emigration policies and the repression of paupers alike were organized by the state. The police of western Prussia were directed to prevent the accumulation of strangers. The infamous Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 devoted much of its work to the encouragement and regulation of emigration. What early German criminologists were to find in the inverse relation between the incidence of emigration and that of crime had already become an assumption of policy in the early 1840s. The agrarian proletariat of the Rhine was thus given four possible settings of struggle during this period: emigration,

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pauperization, the immiseration of the "dwarf economy," or the factory. Its history during that period is the forms of its refusal of the last, the least favorable terrain of struggle. Of course to many contemporaries these problems appeared to be the result of "overpopulation," whose solution might have been sought in Malthusian remedies were it not for the fact that the struggles of the Rhenish proletariat for the re-appropriation of wealth had already forced the authorities to consider them as a major problem of "crime and order." The organization of agriculture in the Hhineland during the 1830s and 1840s was characterized by the open-:field system regulated by the Gemeinde or village association on the one hand, and by the progressive parcelling (or even pulverization) of individual ownership on the other (Milward and Saul: 82). Friedrich List called it the "dwarf economy" (Ibid.). Since the time of the French occupation of the Rhine when cash payments replaced labor dues, the first historic steps were taken in the "emancipation of the peasantry." The two forms of agrarian relations were complementary: the Gemeinde tended to encourage parcelling, and thus one would be mistaken to consider the property relation of the Gemeinde opposed to the development of private property. Parcelling and the concurrent development of a free land-market in Rhenish Prussia wrought "devastation among the poorer peasantry" (Treitschke, 1919:vii, 301). The village system offarming, still widespread in the 1840s, was the "most expensive system of agriculture," according to one of its nineteenth century students. It was argued that the distance separating the individual's field from his dwelling. caused a waste of time, and that the tissue of forest and grazing rights and customs caused a dupllication of effort, constituting an impediment to "scientific" farming. Similarly, common rights in the mill were an inefficient deployment of resources and an obstacle to innovations. Side by side with the Gemeinde existed the enormous number of small allotment holders who, living at the margin of subsistence, were intensely sensitive to the slightest changes in prices for their products and to changes in interest rates at seeding or planting time. On ten million arable acres in the Rhineland, there were eleven million different parcels ofland (Cornu, 1958: ii, 78-79). As a result of the opening of the Rhineland to competition from east Prussian grain and the extension of the timber market, small allotment holders could neither live on the lower prices received for their products nor afford the higher prices required for fuel. Under this progressive erosion of their material power, a life and death struggle took place for the re-appropriation of wealth, a struggle that was endemic, highly price sensitive, and by no means restricted to timber and fuel rights. "In summer many a cow is kept sleek on purloined goods" (Banfield, 1846:157). In the spring women and children ranged through the fields along the Rhine and its tributaries, the Mosel, the Ahr, and the Lahn, cutting young thistles and nettles, digging up the roots of couch-grass, and collecting weeds and leaves of all kinds to tum them to account as winter fodder. Richer farmers planted a variety of lucerns (turnips, Swedes, wurzel), but

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they had to be ever watchful against the industrious skills of their neighbors, skills that often "degenerated into actual robbery." It must be remembered that a good meal in the 1840s consisted of potato porridge and sour milk, a meal that depended upon the keeping of a cow and on access to fodder or grazing rights that had become increasingly hard to come by. The terms of cultivation among the orchards were similar to conditions of grazing and foraging-operose work and a suspicious eye. The size of orchards was determined not by the topography of the land but by the walking powers of the gardes champetres who provided "inefficient protection against the youth or loose population of the surrounding country." At harvest time cherries, apples, pears, walnuts, and chestnuts were guarded by their owners who rested on beds of straw during evening vigils. The expansion of the field police in the 1830s did nothing to reduce the complaints of depredations. A "man of weight" in the Moselle valley provides us with this description: The disorderly habits that have such an influence in after life, it may safely be asserted have their root in the practice of sending children to watch the cattle on the (uninclosed) stubbles. Big and little meet here together. The cattle are allowed to graze for the most part on other people's lands; little bands are formed, where the older children teach the younger their bad habits. Thefts are discussed and planned, fighting follows, then come other vices. First, fruit and potatoes are stolen, and every evening at parting the wish is entertained that they may be able to meet again the next. Neither fields, gardens, nor houses are eventually spared, and with the excuse of this employment it is scarcely possible to bring the children together to frequent a summer day-school, or to attend on Sundays to the weekly explanation of the Christian doctrines (quoted in Banfield, 1846:159). We note that in these observations no fine distinction can be drawn between the struggle to retain traditional common rights against their recent expropriation and the endemic depredations that were executed without cover of that appeal to legitimacy. Nor should we expect it. In viticulture, garden, and orchard farming the transformation of the market, the fall of prices, the stringencies of credit, especially during the period of 1839-1842, intensified the immiserations of the Rhenish agrarian population which still accounted for about 73 percent of employments. Traditionally, one of the most important cushions to natural and cyclical disaster was the widespread existence of common rights in private and corporate forests. Despite the relatively high levels of population density and manufacturing development in western Prussia, the proportion of forest to arable lands was three to four, in contrast to Prussia as a whole where it was about one to two. The riches of the forests could provide not only fuel, but also forage, materials for houses, farm equipment, and food. The crisis hitting the Rhenish farming population made these riches all the more necessary to survival. At the same time, access to them was becoming progressively restricted with the inexorable expropriation of forest rights.

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The forest, one knows, had supported a complex society both within its purviews and in the neighboring terrain: woodcutters, charcoal burners, coopers, sabot makers, basket makers, joiners, tanners, potters, tile makers, blacksmiths, glass makers, lime burners--the list is limited only by the limits of the uses of wood. Particular use-rights in the traditional forest economy had a social life of their own prescribed in a "tissue of customary rights" that defy the norms and clarities of private property. All rights were governed by two principles. First, that "no Man can have any Profit or Pleasure in a Forest which tends to the Destruction thereof," in the words of a sixteenth century treatise (Manwood, 1717:2). Second, the forms of human appropriation were designed to guarantee and preserve the stability and hierarchy of class relations which guaranteed to the lord his liberty in the hunt and mastery of the chase and to the poor particular inalienable usages. Assart of the forest, rights of agistment, rights of pannage, estovers of fire, house, cart or hedge, rush, fern, gorze and sedge rights, rights to searwood, to windfalls, to dotards, rights of lops and tops-in all, the overlapping vocabulary of natural and social relations recall a forgotten world, easily romanticized by those first criticizing the simplicities of meum et tuum. Indeed such romanticism is provoked by the harshness of the opposite view that said the existence of such rights "hindered intensive sylviculture, disturbed the progress of orderly cutting, prevented natural regeneration of the forest and depleted the fertility of the forest soil" (Beske, 1938:241). Forest relations in the Rhineland had already changed considerably by the time that Karl Marx took up his angry pen in 1841. The parcelling off of large forest estates, the buying and selling of woodlands, the expropriation of forest usufructs had all well progressed by the 1840s. The movement to abolish forest rights really began with the French Revolution. The Prussian agrarian edict of 1811 removed all restrictions that encumbered the free, private exploitation of forest properties. The first forty years of the century were characterized by a secular appreciation in the value of timber relative to the value of other agrarian products. This may be attributed to the markets encouraged by the Zollverein, to the demands of railway construction, to the increasing demand for machinery (oak was still widely used), and to the burgeoning market for both individual and productive fuel consumption, itself the result in part of the expropriation of forest usufructs. Dutch shipbuilding, traditionally dependent on the wide rafts of oak brought down the Rhine, remained active. British shipbuilding relied in part on Rhenish hardwoods-oak, elm, cherry and ash-for its supply of spars, masts, yards, staves, and knees (Bowring, 1840:137). Industrial and commercial building in Cologne and the Ruhr was dependent on Rhenish timber. The discovery of the deep seams in 1838 that launched the great expansion of the Ruhr coalfields brought with it an equally sudden rise in the demand for mining timbers (Henderson, 1975:54). Timber prices rose no less in the fuel maI'ket where beech was extensively used as an industrial firing fuel, and where timber remained the main source of working-class fuel consumption despite the growing importance

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of coal. The price of beech tripled between the beginning of the century and 1841. Between 1830 and 1841 it doubled, rising in part due to the demand for railway ties (Banfield, 1846:1091. Constructional timber prices rose by 20 percent during the same period. This secular trend in forest prices and the struggle of the "peasant proletariat" against it (Noyes, 1966:231 brought about a real crisis in legitimate appropriation that required the active intervention of the state. That which exports to Belgium and Holland started, the wind and the sun completed, and hundreds of years of soil and mulch in the Rhenish broadleaf forests were destroyed in the first part of the century (U.S. Government, 1887:741. The free alienation of forest lands, their subdivision and parcelling, and the violent, unplanned clearing of the woods threatened both part of the livelihood of an entire class in the Rhineland and sound principles of sustained yield management. Without succumbing to the romanticism of the forest which seems everywhere to accompany its destruction (e.g., Chateaubriand, "forests preceded people, deserts followed them"l, we must note that on the vanguard of the movement to "preserve" the German woods was the Prussian state, anxious to socialize the capital locked up in private forest acres. For a start, the state reduced the clearing of its own forests and expanded the proportion of forests it owned relative to private, corporate and village forests. By the summer of 1841 more than one half of the Rhenish forests were Prussian owned or controlled. Under state encouragement an apparatus, independent of particular capitalists, was developed for the scientific study and management oftimber. G. L. Hartig (1764-18371, organizer of the Prussian Forest Service, and Heinrich Cotta (1763-18441, founder ofthe Forest Academy at Tharandt (the oldest such school in the worldl, pioneered the development of scientific sylviculture. Partially under their influence, the free assart and clearing of the forest was subjected to state supervision in order to prevent the further depredation of the woods. The schools established in this movement produced a forest police expert in soil rent theory, actuarial calculations, afforestation scheduling, and cutting according to age-class composition. Not until the end of the century had the Germans lost their pre-eminence in sustained yield management.s Enforcing the plans developed by these specialists in sustained yield and capital turnover against a working population increasingly ready to thwart them, stood the cadres of the police and the instruments of law. "No state organization was more hated," a Prussian sylviculturist wrote, "than the forest police" (quoted in Heske, 1938:2541. At the end ofthe 19th century the mere listing of the manuals and books of the Prussian forest police filled 61 pages in a standard bibliography (Schwappach, 18941. The law that these cadres enforced, in state and corporate and village forests, was the result of some centuries of development. Nothing could be more misleading than to regard the legislation criticized by Marx as law that with a single stroke cut through the thicket of feudal rights in order to establish the property law of the bourgeoisie. That process had been going on for a long time, at least since the forest ordinances of 1515 which, more than anything else, had

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abolished the unwritten, communal nonns of the Carolingian period. The revisions of the law which Marx criticized were modifications of the main legal instrument concerning Prussian forests, the Forestal Theft Act of 1837 (U.S. Government, 1887:53). Several other Gennan states had recently reorganized their forest police and revised their written codes. That of Baden, for example, enacted in 1833, contained 220 sections establishing rules and punishments for nearly every detail of forest appropriation. In Thuringia and Saxe-Meiningen similar codes were established. Written pennits were required for berry and mushroom gathering. Dead leaves and forest litter could be gathered for fodder only "in extreme cases of need." The topping of trees for May poles, Christmas trees, rake handles, wagon tongues, etc., was punishable by fine and prison. By the 1840s most forests of Prussia had become subject to the police and deputies of the Forstmeister of the Ministry of Interior in Berlin (Banfield, 1846:115). The moment of class relations reflected in Marx's articles was not that of the transition from feudalism to capitalism or even one whose reflection in the law marked a transition from Teutonic to Roman conceptions of property. Each of these had occurred earlier. Nevertheless, it was an important moment in class relations which is to be measured not only by its intensity, for which there is ample evidence, but also by its victories, an aspect of which must be studied in the obstacles placed upon the creation of a factory proletariat in the 1840s. The countryman had a tenacious memory. "The long vanished days when in the teeming forests anyone who wished might load his cart with wood, remained unforgotten throughout Germany" (Treitschke, 1919: vii, 302). Of course, anyone could never have loaded his cart with wood. That some could think so is testimony to the power of the movement in the 1830s and 1840s that was able to confuse the issue of lost rights with the direct appropriation regardless of its ancient legitimacy. Lenin in a similar context warned against accepting those "honeyed grandmothers' tales" of traditional "paternal" relations, a point that must be stressed even while we note that such tales have a way of becoming a force in themselves. One need not be a specialist in 19th century Gennan folklore to recognize that much of the imagination of the forester expressed hostility to the forces transfonning the forests and their societies. In these imaginary worlds the trees themselves took sides with the cotters against their oppressors. Michael the Woodman roamed the forests of the Odenwald selecting trees destined for export on which to place his mark. Such trees were fated to bring misfortune upon their ultimate users: the house built of them would bum, the ship would sink (Hughes, 1910:36). Knorr in the Black Forest played pranks on travellers. The wild Huntress in the same place gave strangers wrong directions. Particular trees were endowed with marvelous powers. A cherry whose loose boughs provided the cradle of a lost infant, a walnut that withstood the sieges of tumultuous gales, these could confer unexpected generosities upon neighboring peasants. Others exercised capricious malevolence against wayfarers, travelers or others strange to the woods. The legends and stories of the forests testified to the fact that poor

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woods-people and the peasants of the purlieus could find friends in the densest regions of the forest against the oppressions not only of princes and seigneurs but also of their more recent enemies-the tax collector, the forest police, and the apostles of scientific forest management. By the end of the 1830s the forests of the Rhineland were haunted by more effectual dangers than the evil spirits of popular imagination. Thus in 1842 a Prussian guidebook warned travelers: Keep as much as possible to the highways. Every side path, every woodway, is dangerous. Seek herbage in towns when possible, rather than in villages, and never, or only under the most urgent necessity, in lonely ale-houses, mills, wood-houses, and the like .... Shouldst thou be attacked, defend thyself manfully, where the contest is not too unequal; where that is the case, surrender thy property to save thy life (Quoted in Howitt, 1842:89-90).

The real dangers in the forests before the revolution of 1848 were not those that Michael the Woodman might effect upon wayfarers but those that a mass movement for the appropriation of forest wealth placed upon capitalist accumulation. In 1836, of a total of 207,478 prosecutions brought forward in Prussia, a full 150,000 were against wood pilfering and other forest offenses (Cornu, 1958: ii, 74; Wilson, 1940:41). In Baden in 1836 there was one conviction of woodstealing for every 6.1 inhabitants. In 1841 there was a conviction for every 4.6 inhabitants, and in 1842 one for every four (Banfield, 1846:111). So widespread was this movement that it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that German criminology cut its teeth in the tabulation of this movement. From the standpoint of later bourgeois criminology their works appear crude methodologically, and in their substance, so many trivialities. Dr. G. Mayr, for instance, one of the first academic statisticians of criminology and the Zollverein, discovered that the more difficult it is to gain a livelihood in a lawful manner, the more crimes against property will be committed. Hence property crimes will vary directly with the price of provisions and inversely with the level of wages. He discovered that wood pilfering was likely to be greater in regions where privately owned forests prevailed over corporate and communal forests (Mayr, 1867: ch, 4). W. Starke studied the theft of wood in Prussia between 1854 and 1878. He concluded that the theft of wood was greater during the winter than the summer, and greater in cold years than in warm ones (Starke, 1884:88). L. Fuld [1881] made painstaking calculations to show that in Prussia between 1862 and 1874 there was a significant positive correlation between the price of rye and the number of convictions for the theft of wood. Valentini, the director of prisons in Prussia, discovered that within the eight districts of Prussia that he studied, the amount of crimes recorded varied according to the forms of land tenure prevalent in each. He found that in the "dwarf economy" of the Rhineland, where the parcelling of land had been carried to its extremes, pauperism was highest and the pilfering of wood the greatest, though these high rates did not hold for other types of crimes" against property" (Valen-

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tini, 1869:58). However, objectionable as such work may appear to the more sophisticated calculators of crime, one must stress that it reflects in part a real social analysis of the wage, or a decisive form of income, for a large part of the western Prussian proletariat. It is just as much an indication of that struggle as the "honeyed grandmothers' tales." In fact, we could say that the development of scientific sylviculture and of positivist criminology were two sides of the same coin: one studying sustained yield and the other the endemic ("moral," as they would say) obstacles to that yield. If we take a glance forward to the revolution of 1848 a number of our problems become clarified. First, the great rural jacqueries of March that swept southwestern Germany were in part united by their common attempts to reappropriate the wealth of the forests, sometimes under the slogan calling for the recovery of lost rights and other times not. The attempts were geographically widespread and common to several juridically distinct sectors of the agrarian population-feudal tenants, day laborers, crofters and cotters alike (Droz, 1957:151-55). Second, this movement defies a rigid separation between a class of "rural peasants" and "urban workers," as the coordination and leadership of them was the responsibility of itinerant handworkers, loggers, rivermen, bargemen, teamsters, and wagoners, precisely those categories of workers with a foot both in the "country" and the "city." Furthermore, the working class that was locked within "backward" settings of manufacture and domestic industry burst out in flashes of destruction against factories and machines, a movement that paralleled the struggle against the forest police, enclosures, functionaries, tax collectors, and forest owners, a movement that in the Rhineland certainly was often united by the same personnel (Adelmann, 1969: passim). This is not the place to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary working class of 1848 as a whole, nor do we mean to replace as its revolutionary subject the eastern textile workers or the Berlin craftsmen with the south German agrarian masses. We only wish to indicate that the relation between the "latent" and "stagnant" labor reserves to capitalist development in the Rhineland, some of whose unities we've tried to suggest, had their political analogues in 1848. The Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 found that the work of its Agriculture and Forestry Commission overlapped with that on Workers' Conditions and that the problems of repression of autonomous rural and urban movements were similar (Noyes, 1966:ch. 9 and 13). The defeat of these movements, more than anything else, paved the way for the advanced assault of German industrialization. Only after 1848 do those familiar indices of capitalist power against the working class (spindles per factory, number of steam engines employed, output of pig iron, etc.) begin to "take off." In light of that it is especially poignant to find that it was not until late into the Nazi period that the full expropriation of forest rights was completed, a time, in other words, when they had long ceased to be a principal terrain of struggle (Reske, 1938:240ff). It is a fact worth considering, nevertheless, by those who consider the final expropriation of such rights as the decisive moment in the birth of capitalism!

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VI In sketching the dynamics of the class struggle in western Prussia during the 1840s, we've tried to show that the problem of the theft of wood should be seen neither as a problem of Primary Accumulation in the expropriation of a feudal peasantry nor as a problem of an anarchic, individualized "lumpenproletariat." Instead, we've attempted to present the elements of an analysis that cast the problem in a different light. In particular, we've seen in it a struggle to maintain and increase one of the forms of value of the working class, a form that enabled it for a time to reject those terms of work and exploitation that German capital was seeking to make available in the factory. We recall that the detonators of the working-class explosion in the spring of 1848 were precisely various categories of workers, agrarian and urban, within different forms of the relative redundant population. Marginal, to be sure, from the point of view of Siemens or Krupp, but an historic mass vanguard nevertheless. Other recent examples come easily to mind. We may end by noting that the author of Cap itai, the work that is the starting point of the working-class critique of the capitalist mode of production and that provides us with the concepts for at once analyzing the forms of the divisions within the working class and the conditions for using these within the revolutionary struggle against capital, dedicated his work to a Silesian peasant, Wilhelm Wolff, "the brave, noble fighter in the vanguard of the proletariat."

Notes 1 I have found the article by Paolo Carpignano, ··U.S. Class Composition in the Sixties," Zerowork 1, December 1975, invaluable in the development of this theme. 2 One thinks here of those "deviancy specialists" influenced by Althusser (see, for example, Hirst, 1972:28-56). It may be that Marx "never developed an adequate philosophical reflection of his scientific discoveries." However, some account of those discoveries is in order, especially when by Marx's own account one of his most important contributions over the advances made by Adam Smith and David Ricardo was that of the principle of historical specification of the categories of political economy (Marx, 1867:52-54). 3 I would like to thank E.J. Hobsbawm and Margaret Mynatt at Lawrence and Wishart who kindly assisted me in making available the English translation of these articles before their publication. 4 There does exist a small literature on Marx's articles (see, for example, Cornu, 1958:ii, 72IT., and Vigouroux, 1965:222-33) but its chief interest is in the intellectual passage of Marx's thought from Kant, Rousseau and Savigny to Feuerbach and Hegel. 5 These works will be discussed in more detail below: see section V. See Fuld, 1881: Mayr, 1867: Starke, 1884: and Valentini, 1869. 6 Even at the end of the nineteenth century the Italian, French and English literature on forestry subjects presented a dearth in comparison to the German. This is the conclusion of the American sylviculturist Bernard Femow (1902:492).

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References Adelmann, Gerhard 1969 "Structural Change in the Rhenish Linen and Cotton Trades at the Outset of Industrialization," in F. Crouzel, W. H. Chaloner and W. M. Stem, Essays in European Economic History, 1789-1914. London: Arnold. Banfield, T. C. 1846 Industry on the Rhine: Agriculture. London: C. Knight 1848 Industry on the Rhine: Manufactures. London: C. Cox.

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Bowring, John 1840 "Report on the Prussian Commercial Union," Parliamentary Papers, XXI. Cornu, Auguste 1958 Ka.r/ Marx et Friedrich Engels: Leur Vie et leur oeuvre. 3 vots. Paris: Presses Universit aires de France. Crime and Social Justice Collective 1976 "The Politics of Street Crime." Crime and Social Justice, 5ISpring-Summerl, pp. 1-4. Currie, Elliott 1974 "Review: The New Criminology." Crime and Social Justice 2 (Fall-winter), pp. 109-13. Deveze, Michel 1961 La Vie de fa Foret Franc;aise au XVl e siecie. 2 vols. Paris: S.EVP.E.N. Droz, Jacques 1957 Les Revolutions Allemandes de 1848. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Endres, Max 1905 Handbuch der Forstpolitik. Berlin: J. Springer. Fernow, Bernhard E. 1902 Economics of Forestry: A Reference Book for Students of Political Economy. New York: T. W. Crowell &, Co. Fuld, L. 1881

Der Einfluss der Lebensmittelpreise auf dern Bewegung der StraJbaren Handlunger. Mainz: J. Diemer.

Hamerow, Theodore S. 1858 Restoration, Revolution, Reaction: Economics and Politics in Germany, 1815-1971. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Henderson, W. O. 1939 The Zollverein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975 The Rise of German Industrial Power, 1834-1'914. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Heske, Franz 1938 German Forestry. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hirst, Paul Q. 1972 "Marx and Engels on law, crime and morality." Economy and Society L 1 IFebruaryi. 1973 "The Marxism of the 'New Criminology.'" The British Journal of Criminology Xlii, 4 (October). pp. 396-98. Howitt, William 1842 Rural and Domestic Life in Germany. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Hughes, C. E. 1910 A Book of the Black Forest. London: Methuen

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Die Rheinische Zeitung von 1842-43 in ihrer Einstellung zur Kulturpolitik des Preussischen Staates. Munster: F. Coppenrath. Lengerke, A.v. 1849 Die Landliche Arbeiterfrage. Berlin: Bureau des Konigl. ministeriums fur landwirthschaftliche angelegenheiter. Lenin, V.1. 1899 The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Manwood, John 1717 Manwood's Treatise of the Forest Laws. Fourth edition, edited by William Nelson. London: B. Lintott. 1927

Marx, Karl 1842 Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly. Third Article. Debates on the Law of the Theft of Wood. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Volume 1. New York: International Publishers, 1975. 1859 A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy. Translated by N.!. Stone. Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1904. 1867 Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. London: George Allen &. Unwin. Mayr, G. 1867 Statistik der Gerichtlichen Polizei im Konigreiche Bayern. Munich: J. Gotteswinter &. Mosel. Mehring, Franz 1962 Karl Marx: The Story of His Life. Translated by Edward Fitzgerald. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Melossi, Dario 1976 "The Penal Question in Capita/. " Crime and Social Justice, 5 (Spring-Summerl, pp. 26-33.

Milward, Alan S., and S. B. Saul 1973 The Economic Development of Continental Europe, 1780-1870. New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. Noyes, P.H. 1966 Organization and Revolution: Working Class Associations in the German Revolutions of 1848-1849. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Palgrave, R. H. 1912 Dictionary of Political Economy. 3 volumes. London: Macmillan and Co. Perrie, Maureen 1972 "The Russian Peasant Movement of 1905-1907: Its Social Composition and Revolutionary Significance." Past and Present, 57 (November). Phillipson, Michael 1973 "Critical Theorising and the 'New Criminology.'" The British Journal of Criminology XIII, 4 (October), pp. 398-400. Schwappach, Adam 1894 Forstpolitik. Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld. Starke, W. 1884 Verbrechen and Verbecher in Preussen, 1854-1878. Berlin: T.C.F. Enslin. Stein, H. 1972 "Karl Marx et Ie pauperisme rhenan avant 1848." Jahrbuch des Kiilnischen Geschichtsvereins, XIV.

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Treitschke, H. v. 1919 A History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. 7 volumes. New York: McBride, Nast & Co. U.S. Government 1887 Forestry in Europe: Reportsfrom the Consuls of the United States. Washington. D.C.: Government Printing Office. Valentini. H. v. 1869 Das Verbrecherthum in Preussische Staat. Leipzig. Vigouroux. Camille 1965 "Karl Marx et la legislation forestiere Rhenane de 1842." Revue d·histoire economique sociale, XLIII, pp. 222-33. Wilson. Edmund 1940 To the Finland Station. New York: Harcourt. Brace and Co.

Editor'S note Howard Zehr's quantitative study of nineteenth-century theft and violence in Europe finds that crime rates in the period Linebaugh discusses were eorrelated with the price of grain. as one would expect from Linebaugh's analysis. (Crime and the Development of Modern Society: Patterns of Criminality in Nineteenth Century Germany and France [London: Croom Helm. 1976].1 Few other studies of this relationship have been carried out for early-nineteenth-century Germany. though many studies have been carried out for other countries and times. These studies differ in both the measures of crime and the indicators of economic conditions they employ. and not surprisingly. they reach conflicting conclusions. Zehr discusses these other studies. and notes as well that in his own data the relationship between crime and economic conditions in the latter part of the nineteenth century diffel'ed from what it had been in the early part of the century.

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Goths and Vandals: Crime in History Geoffrey Pearson Reprinted from Geoffrey Pearson, "Goths and Vandals-Crime in History," Contemporary Crises 2 IApril 1978): 119-39. © Geoffrey Pearson.

Since the end of the Second World War the understanding ofthe history of the common people of England has been redrawn, even transformed. In particular, the works of Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Raymond Williams and Edward Thompson have illuminated the critical English transition from a predominantly agricultural economy into the world's first urban and industrial nation.} It would be wrong to think of these writers as constituting a "School": their work is not marred by that kind of tedious scholastic dogmatism. It also contains within it many shifts of emphasis, and some internal inconsistencies. Nevertheless, these writers do share a common direction which is distinctly socialist. And one of their many accomplishments is that they unearth the experience of the agrarian and industrial revolutions as they were lived and felt "from below"-that is, in terms ofthe material experience of the common people, rather than "from above" in the committee chambers of high office. The particular aspect of this work which I will discuss here is its bearing on our understanding of crime. Especially the "senseless" and "irrational" crimes-hooliganism and vandalism, smashing and wrecking-which are thought to be pointless because they do not even submit to the guiding acquisitive principle of theft. Dismissed in a history "from above" as mere "social background" to the allegedly "real" historical events, which are the decisions and opinions of the mighty (judges, manufacturers, rulers etc.), crime emerges in this revitalized social history as something central to our understanding of the historical transformation into capitalism. It is also a body of work which challenges criminology to shake itself out of its ahistorical slumbers, to come to a new understanding of what crime is, an understanding which is concretely situated in real historical time.

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MACHINE-SMASHING AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Come all you cotton weavers, your looms you may pull down And get employed in factories, in country or in town For your cotton masters have found out a wonderful scheme These calico goods they weave by hand, they're going to weave by steam, So, come all you cotton weavers, you must rise up very soon For you must work in factories from morning until noon You mustn't walk in your gardens for two or three hours a day For you must stand at their command, and keep your shuttles in play, (19th century weavers' ballad by John Grimshaw of Gorton)

In the winter of 1842 when young Engels came to live in Manchester-hot volcano city of the industrial revolution-he stepped into a world which had already been transformed by the machine. The cotton industry was the spearhead of the English industrial revolution and machinery had been increasingly employed there since the late eighteenth century. The introduction of the power-driven loom, which accelerated from the 1820s, had virtually displaced the handloom weaver. The factory system of labour which accompanied the mechanization of the textile industry had come to rule over and rule out the small-scale domestic economy which had previously been the dominant form of production in the small towns and valleys of Lancashire. Almost everyone who was anyone, it seems, came to Manchester in the mid-nineteenth century to maIVel at the wonders of the new industrial system-Dickens, Disraeli, de Tocqueville, Carlyle.2 But they usually went home horrified and shocked by the brutality of Manchester. Unless, that is, they were particularly thick-skinned, or blinded by the glitter of wealth which could pour out of the thundering factories. "Manchester is the chimney of the world" is how Major-General Sir Charles James Napier, appointed to command the northern district at a time of massive political disturbances in the manufacturing districts, put the matter. "But who," he added, "wants to live in a chimney?" He might also have mentioned (others did) the stinking, polluted rivers, the excrement piled high in the streets, the squalid cellar homes, or the hordes of unemployed men standing in the streets which greeted Engels' arrival during the depression of 1842. What is truly extraordinary is that the changes which produced this monstrosity-in Ancoats, a working class district, as few as 35 children out of 100 born would survive until their fifth year-can be described by historians with such calm rhetoric. In a history from above the creation of the factory system is described as the steady erosion of inefficiency by the captains of industry and their new rational methods. It is a history of progress and buoyancy. It tells of the enterprising men-Arkwright, Crompton, Peel, Hargreaves-whose inventions (mules, carding frames, spinning jennies, etc.) and whose capital were to transform the world. What a history from above does not tell is that the common people fre-

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quently attacked both the machines and their inventors, tore down and burned their mills, and drove these "great heroes" of the industrial revolution out of the locality. If a history from above does mention this opposition at all, it puts it down to ignorance. The story of this bitter resistance, the sense and meaning of riot and vandalism, is reserved for a history from below. A history, that is, which emphasizes the viewpoint of the common people and how the machine contributed to the destruction of their way of life. Attacks on machines took place from the 1760s when Hargreaves' spinning jenny was repeatedly smashed, and mills which used the jenny were turned over. According to traditional accounts, Hargreaves was chased out of the neighbourhood, and his promoter, the factory owner "Parsley" Peel, retreated from North East Lancashire in disgust, taking his capital to another area where he hoped the work force would be more sensible. Peel's mills near Blackburn and Accrington were completely destroyed, one having been already rebuilt after attacks by machine-smashers only a few years before. There were many more attacks on machines. One of the most famous periods of disturbance was during the War in Europe when from 1811 to 1813 various kinds of new machines were attacked in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire. The attackers were known as the "Luddites," and they claimed leadership from a probably fictitious "General Ludd." To mention one more instance, there was a great uprising against the machine in North East Lancashire in 1826, when power-looms were destroyed in the cotton towns. Machine-smashing was not restricted to the textile industry, of course. In 1830 there was an explosion of popular discontent throughout southern and eastern England when the rural poor attacked the hated threshing machines and set fire to hay ricks. Known as the Swing Riots, these rioters attacked the machines in the name of "Captain Swing.',a Considerable dispute surrounds the question of how to interpret the activities of the machine-breakers. One dominant traditional form of argument describes these outbreaks of violence as the sporadic, unpredictable and senseless antics of the riff-raff-the mob, "fa canaille." It asks "Why does the mob riot?" And it answers: "For the fun of it," or simply "Who knows?" There is a powerful line of historical continuity between this response to the "mob" and modern accounts of hooliganism and crime as senseless.4 Another traditional line of reasoning suggests that loom-breaking, etc. was the desperate action of people pressured and frustrated by the strains of social change into wild and lawless behaviour. This historical form continues, however, to describe the mob as senseless. Its only concession is that machine-breakers are victims of forces outside their control which cause them to behave senselessly and randomly. For example, Smelser in his Parsonian sociological analYSis of the industrial revolution in Lancashire points to shifts and alternations in the organization of the economy, factory labour and family life which (he argues) released the bind of steady socializing influence and led to pathological and unsocialized behaviour, e.g.

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machine-wrecking. He describes it as "a relaxation of the most basic controls over socialized behaviour" and as "violent and bizarre symptoms of disturbance."s In both cases-whether it is the snobbish refusal to allow any meaning whatsoever to mob riot, or the paternalistic response of judging the behaviour as a pathology-the idea that "the mob" represents purposive, rational conduct is banished, out of sight, out of mind. However, these dismissive accounts inevitably fall prey to a contradiction in that while their controlling argument is that machine-breaking is irrational and pointless, it is exceedingly difficult to portray the factory system in anything other than a dark light. And it is precisely this dark aspect of the factory and its machines which guided machine-breaking and gave it its rationality. Take, as an illustration of this contradiction, some statements by the distinguished historian of the eighteenth century H. J. Plumb. His account of machine-smashing is admittedly schematic, since in the tradition of history from above Plumb is always restless when describing social conditions, anxious to get on with the "real business" of intrigue between the rulers. Nevertheless, his account is plagued with contradiction. At one point he states, for example, how the new machines in textiles "revolutionized the production of yarn and brought to the weaver an age of golden prosperity which was to last for a quarter of a centUIy."6 The statement is not so ridiculously wrongheaded as it might at first appear. The earliest phase of mechanization involved the introduction of improved spinning machinery which greatly increased the output of yarn and hence the demand for weavers-the weaving looms were as yet unmechanized. The complexities of this early period are best set out in Thompson, where he shows that, although the idea of a "golden age" is a myth which overstates the prosperity of the weavers in this period (roughly from the 1780s until the early 1800s) there was, nevertheless, a period of boom in handloom weaving? From then on, however, the condition of the weavers was steadily attacked, so that looking back the earlier period might appear as a "golden age." As Thompson expresses the matter: "The history of the weavers in the nineteenth century is haunted by the legend of better days."s But even in this earlier period of relative prosperity, cotton mills and machines had been attacked, and there is nothing to justity Plumb's rosy optimism of an overall improvement in living standards. The contradictions deepen in Plumb's account as the antagonistic encounter with the factory system progresses. The worsening conditions are inescapable-the increasing exploitation of children in the mines and factories, the erosion of the more intimate and flexible forms of production which preceded the factory, the repression of working class movements and early trade union organizations, the seven year contracts which bound men to their factory masters at risk of imprisonment, the massive increase in the number of capital statutes which could send men to the gallows for a whole number of newly defined crimes, the destruction of the makeshift economy of the poor which followed from the enclosure of the common land which

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robbed the common people of their common rights-"rights" which were often redefined as "crimes" (poaching, trespass, wood theft). Plumb mentions most, if not all, of this. He also writes that workmen "viewed with deep suspicion the barrack-like factories whose long and regular hours savoured to them of the prison."9 Under the preindustrial systems of production, men had been much more in control of the rhythms of their lives. One should not romanticize this state of affairs-as if every man had been an independent, unalienated and free man-but one should recognize, nevertheless, what was involved in the changes in production systems. Before, the factory workers had customarily observed "Saint Monday" as a day of rest, often taking Tuesday as a holiday as well, then working flat out to finish off the week's work. Factory discipline and factory time changed all that. As Plumb describes the factory: The hours of work were fourteen, fifteen, or even sixteen a day, six days a week throughout the year except for Christmas Day and Good Friday. That was the ideal timetable of the industrialists. It was rarely achieved, for the human animal broke down under the burden; and he squandered his time in palliatives-drink, lechery, bloodsports. Or he revolted, burned down the factory, or broke up the machinery, in a pointless, frenzied, industrial jacquerie .10

\Nhat is extraordinary is that Plumb, having explicitly set out the grounds for understanding the discontent of the times, continues to describe machine riots as "pointless." The same contradiction is found in other writings on this period. In Bythell's work on the handloom weavers, he writes about the 1826 power-loom smashings: "Their luddism of 1826 was a blind display of hatred against an improved machine which must be destroyed before it took away the old weavers' livelihood," and he refers earlier to these same riots as an "act of blind vandalism."n We must ask, what is blind about an action which strikes out to destroy something which threatens one's own destruction? What is expressed in these simple contradictions is that it is somehow intolerable to allow rationality to popular resistance and popular violence. It is much more comfortable to write off the machine breakers as a tiny pathological fringe of hot-heads, and to write a cosy history in which the mass of people are said to quietly bear the yoke of the new factory system. That is, as if people understood the superior rationality of the machine, and accepted the injustices which flowed from this superior rationality for the sake of "progress" and "improvement." It is in these ways that historical thought has simply followed the contours of power. Although, as we have seen, even in its language it continued to express-against the will of the author, as it were-the bitter contradictions and struggles which constituted the real history of the period. What is perhaps an even more fundamental difficulty with these accounts is that we know that within their own community the machinewreckers often had a heroic status. In striking out at the machine, they were

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striking out against their oppression within the developing system of factory labour-the relentless monotony of the pace of the machine, the relentless gaze of the factory master and overseer, the relentless tick of the factory clock. Above all, what must be remembered is that just as the human significance of time12 was changed by the new rhythms of the factory and the machine, so were many other aspects of culture. In one sense, the arrival of the machine and the factory was the first direct encounter by working people with the material experience of hard-headed utilitarian philosophy and political economy. The dominating principle of hard cash, of buying cheap and selling dear, also turned the human relations of the factOIY into commodity relations and transformed men into objects or cattle. So that when Plumb writes about the "human animal" breaking down under factory conditions, it is necessary to remember that it was precisely the logic of the new systems which reduced men from human to animal status. Language both mirrored and informed these transformations: so that the men and women who worked the machines came to be called, simply, "Hands." The word "common" also underwent a transformation, away from the sense of things "held in common" or a "commonwealth," towards a revaluation of certain (particularly plebeian) practices and customs as "common," meaning "vulgar."13 The experience of these transformations should not be underestimated. Resistance to the factory and its logic continued well up into the 1840s, and the Chartist movement in some of the Pennine cotton towns at this time carried as one of its demands that each man should receive, as a birthright, a smallholding of land-they began stakiing out Pendle Hill for just this purpose. The logic of the factory and of enclosure worked in an opposite direction. The independence of working men who had access to small patches of land was in utilitarian terms understood as dangerous and wasteful. As late as the Select Committee on Commons Enclosure of 1844 we find the assertion that the enclosure and "improvement" of the land would also bring an "improvement" in the character of the people. and that "the unenclosed commons are invariably nurseries for petty crime."!4 What is meant by this is that if they had access to land, men would tend their pigs, or their cow, instead of turning into the factory. In the Poor Law Reports of 1834, the culmination of utilitarian principle, there are attempts to calculate how big (or, rather, small) an allotment of land should be given to working men. It was agreed that a small allotment for vegetables provided a working man with an innocent and sober amusement, and also enabled him to feed his family, thus keeping down the likelihood of wage demands. But the utilitarian logic also dictated that the Poor Law Commissioners should try to calculate what size of an allotment (that is, a garden) would provide amusement and some food without causing the working man to keep away from work, or without causing him to. waste too much of his valuable body energy, his labour power, which was the rightful property of the factory owner-and not the

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man himself. There was a recognition in these Poor Law debates that food (largely potatoes) equals energy, equals improved labour power; but that digging a potato patch spends energy, and workers might find it more enjoyable to spend energy digging the earth to provide food for their family than to rise at the crack of dawn and watch over a noisy and dangerous machine for someone else's benefit!5 It was a significant moment of illumination of the nature of the contest which was involved in the advancement of the machine and the factory. It is thus in the nature of this historical transition-which involved profound changes in human values as well as a technological break-that it is utterly impossible to go along with Smelser, for example, and describe the machine-breakers as disorganized and unsocialized beings. Instead we need to ask, "Socialized according to what standards?," and in particular, "Socialized according to whose standards?" The machine-smashers were not only courageous and determined in their attacks on the machines, they were also sometimes very discriminating. In early attacks on the spinning jenny during the 1760s, for example, the rioters sometimes spared small machines which had less than twenty spindles-that is, machines which could be operated in small cottages on the established principle of the domestic economy, and which were for this reason regarded as "fair" machines. That is hardly behaviour which could be described as "bizarre," "frenzied," "irrational" or "unsocialized." The great power-loom smashing of 1826 provides other examples of these kinds of rationality.l6 The outbreak was a particularly determined one which was confined to the cotton towns around Accrington, Blackburn and the Rossendale Valley and which was eventually put down by violent Army reprisals. It is even possible that we should think of it as a general insurrection against the machines in these townsP Be that as it may, the rioters had considerable sympathy within the community. Robert Peel, eventually to become Prime Minister, a man whose fortunes were founded on cotton, found it necessary to rebuke local magistrates for not taking sharp action against the rioters-whether he was motivated as a politician, or as a man with property stakes in the towns, is not clear. The reluctance of magistrates to act decisively was not uncommon, reflecting the fact that local opposition to machinery was so widespread. For example, small masters feared and hated the new machines as much as working people. Without sufficient capital to invest in machinery, the machines threatened to kill their small businesses-a fact which could provide some unexpected alliances of sympathy between the poor and the lower echelons of the owning class. Even before the attacks on the power-looms had started, rioters had been stopped by troops-the most solid embodiment of State power. But when the troops heard the complaints of the weavers, instead of opening fire they opened their knapsacks and gave their food to the rioters. The troops then moved on and the weavers held a meeting amongst themselves to decide whether or not to continue: "Were the power-looms to be broken or not?

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Yes, it was decided, they must be broken at all costS."IS Mlen the first mill was attacked-Sykes Mill at Accrington-the first thing to go, smashed by a woman, was the tyrannical factory clock, the hated symbol of the slave rhythms of factory labour.19 By nightfall, it is said that there was not a power-loom left standing within six miles of Blackburn. The riots spread to other nearby towns and within three days more than a thousand looms had been destroyed. It can be argued that 1826 was a year of slump, and that the grievances of the handloom weavers derived from the trade cycle and not from the machine. But, although outbreaks of machine-smashing coincided frequently enough with periods of trade recession, I find the argument an unconvincing one which lends itself too easily to a crude economic determinism which ignores the cultural developments which are decisive for an understanding of machine riot. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that different outbreaks of machine-breaking could, and did, have different motives. Quite often, for example, what was being contested was not the principle of the machine itself, but the level of wages etc. Attacks on machines provided a way of getting at an employer so as to encourage him to raise wages, improve working conditions, take on more men, or whatever. It is this kind of motive for machine-breaking which Eric Hobsbawm has described as "collective bargaining by riot," a primitive form of trade union struggle. These "primitive rebels," to use another of Hobsbawm's suggestive phrases, are said to be primitive in the sense that they had not yet found a mature political vocabulary, nor a mature political strategy, within which to phrase their discontent and direct their struggle. This line of thinking urges us to conceive of the Luddites and other machine-breakers as precursors of the mature forms of labour organization. Hobsbawm's distinctions are important if only because they caution us not to oversimplity machine-smashing, and not to think of it all as direct resistance to machinery as such. It is nevertheless a form of historical reasoning which can in its own way belittle, discredit and misconstrue the motives and actions of the machine-smashers. In claiming machine-breakers for the history of the labour movement, for example, it causes us to compare their frail outbursts with the more "mature'" forms of struggle-trade union organization, collective bargaining, the strike, the general strike-which only selVes to underline the "primitivity" of the machine-smashers. As working class consciousness emerges, it tells us, men set to one side these infantile forms of resistance to exploitation and "see the light." It is thus an inherent danger of the concept of "primitive rebellion" that it can lead us to think that the intelligibility of the machine-breakers' struggle only emerges as history unfolds; that its intelligibility is derived only from the subsequent history of the labour movement. As if the intelligibility of the machine-breakers emerges only when they are already dead-when they are dead, then we can come to see them in their "true" historical sig-

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nificance, the vanguard of an emerging proletariat. The heart of the matter, however, is that the machine-smashers were not a proletariat. On the contrary, they would as often as not be people from the countryside, with its own distinct inherited traditions. People who looked at the factories-shaking and trembling with their violent energy-and who did not like what they saw. It is an important truth that there were some people around at the time of the Luddite disturbances from 1811 to 1813 who were part of the general mood of insurrection which surrounded the period and who expressed more forward-looking political opinions. People who saw in the machines the possibility of liberating men and women from the burden of physical labour, and who could be thought of as early forerunners of a later working class consciousness.20 But they were the exception rather than the rule. Thompson, with his usual lucidity, expresses the matter thus: "For those who live through it, history is neither 'early' nor 'late.' 'Forerunners' are also inheritors of another past. Men must be judged in their own context."21 For this reason, if we are to set machine-breaking in its full context, it is necessary to tum back briefly to some of the inherited traditions of the machine-breakers' world, a world which was entering a rapid eclipse.

THE TRADITIONS OF THE "CROWD" AND "RIOT" Farmers taek nodistform This time be fore It is to let Before Christ mus Day sum of you will be as Poore as we ifyou Will not seef Cheper

This is to let you no We have stoel a Sheep, For which the resson Was be Cass you sold your Whet so dear and if you Will not loer pries of your Whet we will Com by night and set fiear to your Bams and Reecks gentleman Farm mers we be in Amest now and That you will find to your sorrow soon.

IAn onymous letter fixed to the pillory, Salisbury market

1767)22

Luddism and the other machine-breaking riots were not the first burst of a new class anger from an infant proletariat. Rather than being based on the new, emerging traditions of the men of that new class, they were more likely to be based on older traditions. Traditions, that is, which looked back to the domestic economy, to the common lands, and to former traditions of radicalism. "Riot" and "crime" had been an important feature ofthe social life of 18th century England. The "crowd," or the "mob," could take as its object the

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defence of any number of rights and customs-the fair price of food, fair access to the common lands, or smuggling, which was [sufficiently] common in England, as in most parts of Europe, to be thought of as a "right" rather than a "crime." In fact, where one drew the line in 18th century England between what was a "crime" and what was a "customary right" depended very much on one's position in the social order. For example, an activity called "wrecking" was a common occurrence in those coastal regions where ships most frequently ran aground and were wrecked.23 "Wrecking" was a form of coastal plunder in which local people would salvage what they could of wrecked ships and their cargoes for their own use, and it formed an important part of the local economy in some coastal regions. From the point of view of the local people, "wrecking" was an important, even indispensable, part oflocal life, whereas to shipping merchants it was a criminal nuisance, and merchants petitioned the government throughout the 18th century to act more severely against wreckers. As a result, an Act of 1753 made "wrecking" a crime punishable by death-although that did not halt the activity. It is a similar story in relation to a large number of other customary activities of the poor and the common people-taking hares and rabbits from fields; taking gravel and turf; taking fish from streams; collecting wood in the forests. The notorious Black Act of 1723 was one bloodstained piece of legislation, drawn up with extraordinary speed and carelessness by Walpole and his ruling clique, to contain these kinds of offences. The precipitating factors were complex, as Thompson shows in his masterly analysis of the Black Act, involving amongst other things attempts to curry favour with the new Hanoverian monarch whose deer parks at Windsor were in a state of collapse.24 Local people in that region had begun to reassert their rights in the forest, as opposed to the rights of the deer. Thompson suggests that people may have been looking back to the days of the Commonwealth when "the deer had been slaughtered wholesale, the Great Park turned over to farms, and the foresters had enlarged their 'rights' beyond previous imagining."25 Although there was nothing like an insurrection on that scale in the 1720s, the struggle between men and deter had been reengaged-to the disadvantage of the deer. These conflicts should not suggest simply strong feeling against the monarchy. Deer were a damned pest which ate and trampled on crops. Sometimes it is necessary to resurrect very specific details of the local economy in order to understand these struggles. Around Farnham, for example, timber rights were crucial. Farnham was a hop-growing area, depending on a supply of good, strong poles to support the hops, "but if deer cropped ash saplings they grew up bent and unusuable for poles."26 Men and deer were enemies: unless, that is, the men were privileged men with the right to hunt deer and eat venison. The Black Act, which was a response to these struggles, made at least fifty distinct offences punishable by death including: going about the countryside armed and in disguise with one's face "blacked" (hence the "Black Act," although the Act was obviously black in other respects too); hunting,

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wounding or stealing deer; poaching hares, rabbits or fish; damaging fishponds; cutting down or damaging trees; maiming cattle; sending anonymous threatening letters; and setting fire to houses, barns, etc. Although it was unprecedented in its venom, the Black Act was just one of many similar enactments in this period: during the 18th century there was an astronomical increase in the number of offences punishable by death.27 \Nhereas a history from above might describe this development of Law in 18th century England as the rationalization of property relations, providing a coherent system for the regulation of trade and commerce; "from below" the Law was experienced as the lash of the whip, the threat of transportation, the gallows at Tyburn, and the awful sight of the bodies of convicts swinging in chains. These were the delicate means by which the gentle rulers of Merrie England set out to terrorize the population into conformity with the steady encroachment of the new commercial values and the new property rights. \Nhat precisely did these encroachments involve? To take first the example of land, under a precapitalist arrangement, land was frequently a place where a number of coincident use-rights intersected. This man would have the right to graze cattle here; that man would have the right to take wood from there; this one would have the right to gravel or turf; that one to hares; another would have the right to timber; etc. Sometimes these rights were defined by copyhold-a legal arrangement which might have been established many years before. More commonly perhaps, they were simply honoured as customs which went back, as the people would say, "time out of mind." This messy arrangement of coincident use-rights was anathema to the emerging forms of capitalist ownership through which land was transformed into a commodity: During the eighteenth century one legal decision after another signalled that lawyers had become conveI1ed to the notions of absolute property ownership, and that ... the law abhorred the messy complexities of coincident use-right. And capitalist modes transmuted offices, rights and perquisites into round monetaIY sums, which could be bought and sold like any other property.28

This was also a period in which the great country houses and country seats of England were being built and Thompson jokes that it was not much fun for those being "sat upon." The volcanic wealth of the new commercial interests-based on stock jobbing, or on the slave trade for example-was unimaginable in a traditional agricultural economy. As these new city spivs exported their city wealth into the countryside, building luxurious mansions and parks, local farmers and yeomen were squeezed out. William Cobbett writes in his Rural Rides, for example, about Lord Aylesbury's park: he "seems to have tacked park on to park, like so many outworks of a fortified city. I suppose here are 50 to 100 farms of former days swallowed Up."29 The case was in no sense exceptional. Wealth was beginning to accumulate into lumps, and the land with it. Soon the complaint would be heard, and Cobbett would be one to voice it, that the people were also accumulating into "lumps" or "heaps" in the factories and cities.

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It is a vital historical transition surrounded by conflict amounting almost to guerrilla warfare. But often at the centre of this warfare, it was not the very poor; the poor may have had little to do with the struggles which surrounded the Black Act, for example. It was the middle men-the small farmers and yeomen farmers-who often had most to lose, who were at the centre of the disturbances which surround the Black Act, and who were the "Blacks" who visited the houses and parks of the new rich, who ripped down their fences and attacked their deer: We appear to glimpse a declining gentry and yeoman class confronted by incomers with great command of money and of influence, and with a ruthlessness in the use of both ... [Their] families must have had a rich and tenacious tradition of memories as to rights and customs ... [But] these farmers had no money from sinecures or killings on the stocks with which to manure their lands, and they remained stationalY or declining, with a traditional economy, while the new rich moved in all aI'Ound.3o

Although in this instance the poor may have been marginal to the disturbances (and even so they were drawn into the conflicts, and labourers figure strongly in the prosecutions brought undelr the Black Act) there were other areas of resistance where the poor occupied the hot centre. One such form of resistance was the food riot, a persistent interruption in the history of 18th century England. Thompson has shm\TI how the 18th century food riot was no random, hit or miss affair, but an activity tuned to a precise "moral economy."31 Precapitalist relations between producers and consumers on the local markets had been hedged about with many regulations and customs which safeguarded the tangible rights of the common people and the poor. For example, corn could not be sold standing in the field to a large buyer; nor was it proper form for farmers to withhold their corn in the hope of rising prices. Corn had to be transported to the local market, and there large buyers were required to delay their deals until common people had made their small purchases. Market bells signalled the restricted period in which the poor could buy first, and weights and measures were also supervised. Most of this regulation of the market was based on custom or common law, although it was sometimes regulated by Statute. For example, "an enactment of Charles II had even given the poor the right to shake the measure, so valuable was the poor man's corn that a looseness in the measure might make the difference to him of a day without a loaf."32 The regulations were, naturally, constantly evaded and ignored: it is the "natural" privilege of ruling groups to break their own rules without these infractions being called "crimes" and punished with severity. Although, to press the point further, these were not "their own" rules: they were the rules of an older, dying precapitalist formation which the new men, giddy with the prospect of wealth which the new capitalist values promised, had no interest in enforcing. The temptations to break the market customs were many: particularly with the growing demand from the cities and large towns, such as hungry London. Selling in bulk to a large dealer, seIling corn

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as it stood in the field, or hoarding corn in anticipation of a better pricethese were also more "rational" market principles which maximized the possibilities of gain for the farmer's labour and investment. However, another "rational" and "natural" consequence of these rational and natural developments was that the poor did not see eye to eye with the farmers and millers. In times of scarcity, or when prices rose dramatically, "riot" was a common means of restoring the old regulations. These riots were sometimes highly disciplined affairs in which the people attempted to intimidate farmers into selling at a fair price. Commonly enough, the "crowd" engaged in direct action, taking the corn from the farmers by force and distributing it amongst themselves at a fair price (known as "setting the price," similar to the French "t8}(8.tion populaire") whereupon the money, and in some instances even the sacks, were handed over to the farmer as his rightful due. "Riot," then, was a well established form of resistance in the 18th century. And, as often as not, simply the threat of riot would be enough to remind magistrates of their obligations to enforce the old customs. Preachers might urge the poor that prayer was the most effective means of surviving food shortages or price rises, but as Thompson remarks, "The nature of gentlefolks being what it is, a thundering good riot in the next parish was more likely to oil the wheels of charity than the sight of Jack Anvil on his knees in church."33 Thus, riot or the threat of it formed part of the irregular democracy of the countryside. In his essay "The Crime of Anonymity" Thompson34 argues that anonymous threatening letters provided a means of dialogue between the "crowd" and the millers, farmers and magistrates. Peter Linebaugh35 shows, for example, how often a poor man sent to the gallows by a man of means would threaten to haunt his persecutor. The threat seems laughable by modern standards. But it worked often enough to make sense, and the rich man would call off (or buy off) the long arm of the law in order to avoid being troubled by bad spirits, or a bad conscience. At other times the threats were more blood-curdling, "This will all com true ... kill the over Seeer .. . tom Nottage is a dam Rouge ... kill him for one there is 4 more we will kill .. . sink your Flour to 2 and 6 a peck set fier tu it and burn it down. Burn up all the Mills ... Burn up all ever thing an set fier tu the Gurnray."36 The threats were nothing if not extravagant, and sometimes they even came in rhyme. The continuity of the tradition can be measured by the fact that during riots against the spinning jenny in Lancashire in the 1760s there were threats to pull down whole towns. It was unlikely that anyone would believe such enormous threats but that was the genre. A claim that an army of men was sworn in and ready to fight and kill and maim was a warning shot from the "crowd" which worked often enough to coerce the local authorities into subsidizing food prices on a local basis, or into enforcing other common rights ... at least for a time. However, as far as these forms of popular resistance were concerned, their time was up. So was the time of the forms of social organization from

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which this resistance claimed its legitimacy. If we once more take the arrival of Engels in Manchester as a datemark, both were by then as good as dead. Population changes spell out the scale of the social changes. In 1773 Manchester had been a town of 24,000 people. In 1801 its population had risen to 70,000; by 1831 the figure was 140,000 with almost a 45 percent increase in the decade from 1821 to 1831. And so it went on. In 1841 there were 217,000 people in Manchester; and by 1851-the landmark year when the census revealed that now more than half the population of Great Britain were city dwellers-Manchester's population was a quarter of a million.37 If one takes the whole of the surrounding urban conurbation of Manchester, then the figure is close to half a million people living together in one large "lump." Even more had changed than just the scale of things. Most importantly there had been the emergence of Chart ism demanding a People's Charter involving electoral reform based on universal manhood suffrage which signalled a new kind of consciousness within the working class. The summer of 1842 had also seen a massive industrial and political upheaval throughout the cotton manufacturing districts of Lancashire, with 50,000 workers on strike in Manchester alone. These were the "Plug Riots," so named because striking workers marched into factories and removed the plugs from their boilers and furnaces, thus stopping the factory and enforcing the strike. After considerable political disagreement within their ranks, the Chartist leaders came behind the strike which moved towards a critical political confrontation, demanding the Charter as the condition for returning to work. The Plug Riots strike was a total failure, involving arrests on a wide scale. When Engels stepped into this transformed world, he was stepping into a world where not only was it reported in some of the industrial towns that "numbers kept themselves alive by collecting nettles and boiling them down,"38 but also 1,500 labour leaders were in prison. The men associated with Chartism and the Plug Riots were different kinds of men with different demands from those who had broken machines. For better or worse, many of them had come to accept the factory, and to resituate their politics accordingly. That is to state the transition too abruptly, however, for as I described earlier, in the smaller outlying cotton towns the Chartists still harked back to the "preindustrial" demand that each man should have a smallholding of land. Perhaps the Plug Riots and the time of Engels' arrival stand as a bridge between two traditions: those of the dying crafts and attitudes of preindustrial England, and the emerging de-skilled factory workers. The political heritage with which Engels came to be associated, of course, turned its back on the old traditions, and embraced the new. This is entirely understandable: to do otherwise at that historical conjuncture would in all probability have meant political suicide. Nevertheless, given the nature of what had been involved, we can perhaps only maIVel at the remarkable insensitivity of that well-worn phrase from the Communist Manifesto which celebrated the new system as something which "has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life."

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That, to put the matter bluntly, is not how the machine-breakers would have judged the matter.

THE LAST WORD

... a place called Manchester, which has now disappeared (William Morris, News from Nowhere, 1890)39 The theme of this essay has been historical, and I have argued that the hooligan behaviour of the machine-breakers is intelligible and rational if one listens to their experience in their own terms-that is "from below." However, the direction of the essay hopefully carries some implications for the criminological and sociological study ot contemporary hooliganism-for example, vandalism, fights between rival gangs of youths, attacks on migrant workers, street crime and mugging, and the powerful ritual violence of football hooliganism. In our historical time we have become all too familiar with the ways in which this trouble, particularly amongst young working class men and boys, is shrugged off as utterly irrational, and is portrayed in the mass media as a series of senseless and mindless spectacles. Although the pace of the mass media has quickened the pulse of these "moral panics"40 which surround the violent antics of youth, it is true that the machinebreakers were understood in their historical time in much the same way as the hooligans are dismissed in our historical time. There is consequently an urgent requirement on the part of criminologists to ask themselves: How would" our" hooligans appear if they were afforded the same possibilities of rationality and intelligibility, say, as those of Edward Thompson? A number of directions have already been pointed OUt.41 Elsewhere in one almost certainly too simple an attempt, I have offered a comparative historical account of outbreaks of machine-breaking and hooliganism in the 1960s when migrant workers were attacked by youths in the same Lancashire cotton townS.42 In the postwar period the British cotton industry entered a rapid decline, involving profound dislocations in the working class life of the cotton towns. Migrant workers-principally from India and Pakistan-were employed in increasing numbers in the textile industry in order to facilitate the technological changeover to more intensive forms of shift-working which were introduced to fight off competition from foreign cotton imports. Ironically, these low-cost cotton imports often came from the same countries as the low-cost migrant labour. Intense conflicts and rivalries emerged between local people and the migrant workers over housing, jobs and-as far as young working class men were concerned-girls. The phenomenon of "paki-bashing" as it was called, which was condemned on all sides as an irrational hooliganism, emerges as a rational (if primitive) form of resistance to the dislocations within the cotton towns when it is set in its social and historical context. "From below" the migrant workers appeared to be the cause of much of the distress in the cotton towns in the

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late 1950s and 1960s; just as the machines appeared as the enemy of working people in the earlier historical dislocation of the industrial revolution. I have argued that it is much more useful tOi think of "paki-bashers" in these terms, rather than to conjure with such dubious criminological ephemera as "criminal psychopath" or "chromosome defect" or "unsocialized youth" who are allegedly the products of "broken homes." It is necessary, in other words, to reconnect the fractured political and historical contexts of criminology where it is customary to make an unnecessarily severe distinction between "crime" on the one hand and "politics" on the other.43 In attempting such an enquiry into the motives of contemporary hooliganisms, the Criminologist must confront deeply embedded cultural bans which deny any intelligibility to hooligan conduct, a profound line of historical continuity between our own historical time and the apparently remote historical conjuncture of the machine-smashers. In their day also, the powerful ruling elites of landowners and factory owners afforded supreme rationality to their own actions, and were blind to any others. Who could object to the building of the rational factory? Who could object to the dissemination of the rational machine? Who could object to the rational enclosure and improvement of the land? Indeed, when great men built their great country houses, sometimes tearing down whole villages simply in order to improve the view, who could object? And the answer bounced back: only rogues, vagabonds, men tainted with criminal folly, hooligans and vandals. In what must figure as one of the earliest uses of the word "vandal" to shrug off the implications of working class hooliganism, the Manchester Mercury in 1812 compared a huge crowd who attacked a cotton mill, involving loss of life on their part, with "the very Goths and Vandals of antiquity." It is no longer customary to drag the Goths into the act, but this early use of the term vandal, a word which has now become wholly transformed, carried with it a powerful imagery of barbarian hordes breaking into the precincts of civilization. In that sense, nothing much has changed. When faced with the sometimes desperate energies of young hooligans-and many of the machine-breakers were also young-mainstream criminology, and the culture which throws it up, becomes self-satisfied and witless. The historical fate of the machine-breakers is an unhappy one. History, it is always said, is written by the side which wins. The machine civilization has proved the machine-breakers wrong and won the day. But, the historical clock has a long spring and, to my own satisfaction at least, the historical fate of the machine-breakers has not yet been finally settled. We may have yet to see the last of the machine-breakers. As the industrial world moves towards the historical possibility of a damaging ecological crisis, the machines could come to be understood once more as the enemy of human society. If the prophets of ecological imbalance and collapse are even remotely correct, then the day will come when men and women will attack the machines again. They will, of course, be condemned by public authorities as "mindless hooligans," enemies of civilized progress~just as the

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Luddites and the others were condemned in their time. Their motives will be certainly different from those of the power-loom breakers and the men who wrecked the spinning jennies. Nevertheless, their actions will be equally intelligible. It may even come to pass-when our culture and its preoccupations are as dead and as unthinkable as the Luddites sometimes seem in our time-that the machine-breakers will have the last word.

Notes 1 J am not drawing here on all the work of these authors. The most relevant writings are Thompson. E. P. (19671. "Time. Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism." Past and Present 38. pp. 56-97; Thompson. E. P. (1968). The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Thompson. E. P. (1971). "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century." Past and Present 50. pp. 76-136; Thompson. E. P. (1975), Whigs and Hunters. London: Allen Lane; Thompson. E. P. (1975). "The Crime of Anonymity" in D. Hay et a1 .• Albion's Fatal Tree. London: Allen Lane; Hobsbawm. E. J. (1964), Labouring Men. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson; Hobsbawm. E.J. (1969). Industry and Empire. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Hobsbawm. E.J. (1971), Primitive Rebels 3rd Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Hobsbawm. E.J. (1972). Bandits. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rude. G. (1973). Captain Swing. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Hill. C. (1975), World Vpside Down. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Williams. R. (1961). Culture and Society 1780-1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin; Williams. R. (1973). The Country and the City. London: Chatto and Windus; Williams. R. (1976), Keywords. London: Fontana. My text and argument relies so heavily on these works that I have not made cumbersome footnotes and references at every point, except in the case of direct quotations. Another crucially important historical work on the early industrial period is Foster. J. (1974). Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson. Finally. although some of their interpretations are now disputed (see Note 17) the list would not be complete without mention of the classical and unprecedented labour history of the Hammonds. in particular Hammond. J. L. and Hammond. B. (1919). The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832. London: Longmans, Green. and Co. 2 For a useful account of how Manchester appeard to these distinguished visitors. see Marcus, S. (19741. Engels, Manchester and the Working Class. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson. in the chapter entitled "The Town." 3 See Hobsbawm. E.J. and Rude. G. (1973). op. cit. 4 See Pearson, G. (1975), The Deviant Imagination. London: Macmillan. ch. 6. 5 Smelser. N.J. (19591. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 227. 246. 6 Plumb. H. J. (1950), England in the Eighteenth Century. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p. 79. 7 Thompson. E. P. (1968). op. cit .• ch. 9. 8 Ibid .• p. 297. 9 Plumb. H. J. (1950). op. cit.. p. 89. 10 Ibid., p. 150. 11 Bythell, D. (1969). The Handloom Weavers. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 198, 199. 12 See Thompson, E. P. (1967), op. cit. 13 Williams, R. (1976). op. cit .• pp. 61-62. 14 Report ofSelect Committee on Commons Inclosure (1844). vol. 5. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, p. 364.

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15 The Poor Law Report on 1834, edited by Checkland, S. G. and Checkland, E.OAI19741. Harmondsworth: Penguin. For example: "The allotment of larger portions of land than ten rods to an individual, has this evil-if the labourer cultivates it himself with only the aid of his family, he over-forces his strength, and brings to his employer's labour a body exhausted by his struggle," ibid., p. 280. "Nor is this the only e\~1 of the large allotments; a hovel perhaps is erected on the land, and marriage and children follow. In a few years more, the new generation will want land, and demand will follow demand, until a cottier population similar to that of Ireland is spread over the country, and misery and pauperism are every where increased," ibid., p. 280. And again: "A farmer of the parish of Guildsfield, in Montgomeryshire, stated that a labourer could not do justice to his master and the land if he had more than half an acre .... He added that if he wanted a labourer, and two men, equally strong and equally skillful, were to apply, one of whom had a quarter of an acre, and the other one or two acres of land, he should without hesitation prefer the former," ibid., p. 282. 16 1826 was a bad year for utilitarianism. In the same year that the textile workers were rebelling against the material embodiment of utilitarian diSCipline and philosophy, John Stuart Mill at the age of twenty went mad. In his psychic revolt against the utilitarian discipline of his father's educational system, Mill experienced himself as a machine with all feeling drained away from him. See Mill, J. S. (19711. Autobiography. London: Oxford University Press, ch. 5 .... We can only guess at what untold madnesses were produced in the minds of common people by the new forms of [factory) discipline. John Stuart Mill's case demonstrates that even the mighty were not exempt from the ill-effects of the emergent petrifYing life forms. 17 It is difficult in relation to this and other outbreaks of machine-smashing to fully undel'stand the level of organization of the rioters. It is possible, for example, that the Luddite outbreaks of 1811 to 1813 moved in the direction of an organization for a national uprising of the English people. The case is most forCibly argued in Thompson (19681, op. cit., ch. 14 and passim. One major difficulty is that men who are plotting insun'ection leave few traces, especially at a time when labour organizations are legally repressed as they were at the time in England. Most of the evidence for conspiracy, consequently, comes from government spies, informers and agents provocateurs; and it is sometimes argued that spies exaggerated the conspiracies in order to impress their paymasters. This is the line of argument in Hammond J. L. and Hammond B. (19191, op. cit., where the idea of an insurrectionary current is dismissed as the product of spies with lurid imaginations. Thompson answers most of these points coherently and, if he is right, then the Luddite disturbances must certainly be placed in a much broader context of revolutionary agitation than is customaJY. The case is not settled to everyone's satisfaction, however. Compare, for example, Thomis, M.1. 119701, The Luddites. Newton Abbott: David and Charles, who argues, although somewhat unconvincingly, against Thompson. There is a discussion of this conflict in Donnelly, F. K. (19761. "Ideology and Early English Working Class Histol)': Edward Thompson and His Critics," Social History, 2, pp. 219-38. As far as the 1826 outbreak is concerned, even less is known. Traditional accounts describe a "mob" travelling from town to town, wrecking looms and mills. If so, it would have had to be a particularly energetic mob. Imagine the energies of Samson which would have been required to destroy more than a thousand looms and several whole mills in just three days, to have successfully evaded troops throughout this period, and all this involving journeys between towns across rough moorland and hills carrying the equipment necessary for loom-breaking. The whole idea is most unlikely. What is at least equally likely is that the insurrection against the power-looms had been planned beforehand; there had certainly been rumours in the air for a few weeks before the first attack took place. For example, a week before the insurrection proper, a country calico weaver recorded in his diary: "There is a great disturbance at Acclington; they break the windows where the steam looms are; the country is all of an uproar for the poor weaver has neither work nor bread," quoted in Bennett, W. (19481. The History of Burnley 1650-1850.

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Burnley: Burnley Corporation, appendix. A third possibility is that it was a fairly spontaneous affair in which people from one town heard that the mills had been attacked in neighbouring towns, thought that it sounded like a good idea, and decided to have a go themselves. What is certain is that the public authorities did not treat the matter lightly. Accounts vary, but seveJ"a1 dozen people were charged, about three dozen were imprisoned, and ten men and women were sentenced to hanging, their sentences later commuted to transportation for life. As a response to the riots, turnpike roads were built in the area for easier troop movements, garrisons and prisons were built, and in one instance a factory was defended by cannon and a moat. Whatever the final outcome to the puzzle tif there is a final outcome) the recent research by John Foster 11974), op. cit., on working class organization in the cotton belt reminds us that we should not underestimate the level or strength of the English working class in the early 19th century. 18 Quoted in Aspin, C. 11969). Lancashire, the First Industrial Society. Helmshore: Helmshore Local History Society, p. 48. 19 Hargeaves, B. 11882). Recollections of Broad Oak. Accrington: Bowker. 20 See, for example, the letter quoted by Thompson 11968), op. cit., pp. 653-54: "We know that every machine for the abridgement of human labour is a blessing to the great family of which we are a part." The letter was written in May, 1812 at the point when Thompson suggests that Luddism was giving way to revolutionary organization. It was signed "Tom Paine." 21 Ibid., p. 648. 22 From Thompson, "The Crime of Anonymity" in Hay et at. 11975), op. cit., p. 281. 23 For "wrecking," see Rule, J. G. 11975). "Wrecking and Coastal Plunder" in Hay et al., op. cit. For smuggling, see Winslow, C. 11975). "Sussex Smugglers" in Hay et al., ibid. And for smuggling in France, Hufton, O. H. 11974). The Poor ofEighteenth Century France. London: Oxford University Press. 24 Thompson 11975), op. cit., is an extended analysis of the Black Act. There is also a discussion of poaching and the game laws in Hay, D. 11975). "Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase" in Hay et aI., op. cit. The criminalization of the rights of the poor is, of course, reminiscent of Marx's early essay on the debates ofthe Rhenish Assembly concerning the theft of wood: Marx, K. 11975), "Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood," Mal7' and Engels Collected Works, vol. 1. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marx also promised articles on poaching and the game laws which never appeared. For the relationship between Thompson's work and Marx, see Pearson, G. 11976). "Eighteenth Century English Criminal Law," British Journal of Law and Society, 3:1, pp. 115-31. For Marx and the question of wood theft as it relates to the situation in Germany, setting the matter in the context of political economy, see Linebaugh, P. 119761. "Karl Marx, the Theft of Wood, and Working Class Composition," Crime and Social Justice, Fall-Winter 1976, pp. 5-16. 25 Thompson 11975), Whigs and Hunters, op. cit., p. 40. 26 Ibid., p. 131. 27 However, the actual number of convictions did not rise correspondingly and capital sentences were frequently commuted. For a brilliant analysis of how the ·'rule of law" in 18th century England operated through a blend of terror and mercy, see Douglas Hay's essay, "Property, Authority and the Rule of Law," in Hay et al. (19751, op. cit. There are some ambiguities in Thompson's treatment of the rule oflaw in Whigs and Hunters, op. cit., for which see Pearson 11976), op. cit. 28 Thompson 11975). Whigs and Hunters, op. cit., p. 241. 29 Cobbett, W. 11912). Rural Rides, vol. 1. London: Dent, p. 17. 30 Thompson 119751. Whigs and Hunters, op. cit., pp. 108, 113, 114. 31 In Thompson 11971), op. cit., and Thompson 119681, op. cit., ch. 3.

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32 Thompson 11971), op. cit., p. 102. 33 Ibid., p. 126. 34 In Hay et al. 11975)' op. cit. 35 Linebaugh, P. 11975), "The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons" in Hay et aI., op. cit. 36 Thompson 11975), "The Crime of Anonymity" in Hay et al., op. cit., p. 330. 37 Marcus 11974), op. cit., p. 4. What is usually not noted about the 1826 power-loom smashings is that they took place in small, outlying towns which in many essential respects had not yet been drastically changed by the industrial revolution. Towns whose own population explosion belonged to the later period of Victorian buoyancy from the 1850s until the end of the century. Therefore, the rioters were in many ways still "country people." But they were, crucially, country people who lived only twenty miles away from Manchester which was passing through a period of growth more explosive and catastrophic than anything to be witnessed by Engels. The experience of watching, from the sleepy hollows of the Pennine towns, while Manchester-its steam-driven factories, its chimneys, and its slums-grew at such an alarming rate, provides an important inferential clue for reconstructing the motives of the great power-loom smashing of 1826. Significantly, the riots had few repercussions in the much more developed centres of popUlation and industrialization, and although there was a brief period of excitement in some parts of Manchester when power-looms and mills were attacked, the trouble was easily contained. ISee Hammond and Hammond [1919], op. cit., pp. 127-28.1 The origins of the 1826 riots in the small towns, as opposed to the city, reminds us once again that a simple economic determinism which puts the riots down to "slump" provides an insufficient argument. 38 Fay, C. R. 11920). Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 178. 39 Morris, W. 11973). Three Works. London: Lawrence and Wishart, p. 295. 40 Cohen, S. 11973), Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Paladin. 41 In particular, ibid.; Parker, H.J. 11974), View from tile Boys. Newton Abbott: David and Charles; Mungham, G. and Pearson, G., eds. 11976.1. Working Class Youth Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Hall, S. and Jefferson, T., eds. 11976), Resistance Through Rituals. London: Hutchinson; and Taylor, I. 11971). "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism" in Cohen, S., ed.,lmages of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. For the role of the mass media in generating concern on the hooligan question, see Cohen 11973), op. cit., on the "Mods and Rockers" disturbances of the mid 1960s; and Hall, S. et aI., eds. 11978). Policing the Crisis. London: Macmillan, on the mugging panic of the early 1970s. For an account of the main lines of critical sociology's approach to hooliganism, see Pearson, G. 11976). "In Defence of Hooliganism: Social Theory and Violence" in Department of Health and Social Security, Violence, ed. N. Tutt. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 42 Pearson, G.11976). "Paki-bashing in a North East Lancashire Cotton Town: A Case Study and Its History" in Mungham and Pearson, eds., op. cill. 43 For example, Horowitz, I. L. and Liebowitz, M. 11968). "Social Deviance and Political Marginality: Notes Towards a Redefinition of the Relation Between Sociology and Politics," Social Problems 15:3, pp. 280-96.

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Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging: Common Rights and Class Relations in the Postbellum South Steven Hahn Reprinted by pennission from Radical History Review 26119821: 37-64.

When the Beech Island Farmers' Club, a planter organization in Aiken, South Carolina, met in January 1875, it passed resolutions instructing members to "prosecute all trespassers and violators of the game laws" and prohibit "tenants and laborers" from keeping "stock of any kind on any enclosed or unenclo,.ed land" not "specifically allotted to" them. The club further implored that livestock "trespassing beyond [the] alloted land be impounded" at the laborer's expense "for the first offense and ... forfeited or destroyed" for the second and urged "the adoption and enforcement" of these "conditions by all persons in our community." Three years later the club overwhelmingly supported the enactment of a general stock law that would require the enclosure of animals rather than crops.! Trespassers, enclosures, stock and game laws-the stuff of local skirmishes often obscured by the broader and imposing events of the postbellum era. But in an agricultural society the grid of use rights in the land underlies basic social relationships, and in the turbulent aftermath of the Civil War, skirmishes over such rights helped define the larger meaning of the sectional reconciliation. The Aiken planters and their counterparts throughout the South knew this well enough. Reeling from the twin jolts of military defeat and abolition, though having avoided general land confiscation, they moved to reclaim the labor of ex-slaves who hoped to farm for themselves or, at least, to escape the rigors of plantation life. 2 In the South, as in other postemancipation societies, the fists of coercion and repression came down in efforts to restrict the fi'eedmen's mobility, alternative employment opportunities, and access to the means of production and subsistence, tying them to the land as a propertyless work force. 3 Thus, the all-too-familiar black codes, vagrancy laws, enticement statutes, apprenticeship arrangements, and vigilante

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violence. Yet the appeal for a toughened stance against trespassers, and particularly the agitation for game and stock laws, suggests that the strong arm of compulsion did not easily hold sway, that confrontations and competing claims went into the making of new class relations in the South. And it was a process that soon extended beyond the Plantation Belt, setting the stage for wide-ranging social and political conflict. It is the very breadth of these struggles that compels our attention. For if the high drama-not to mention the historiography-of the Southern transition from slavery focused upon the reorganization of the plantation sector, the repercussions touched all corners of the region.4 Any overall assessment of the nature of this transition must, therefore, link the experiences of planters and Afro-Americiills with those of other social groups, most notably white family farmers. Although the majority of these farmers had owned no slaves and resided in nonplantation areas, the postwar period saw growing numbers drawn into the cotton economy, eventually leaving the South with an unprecedented level of economic integration.5 The connections between Emancipation and the absorption of white yeomen into the market have not been examined fully, but of central importance was the transformation of productive relations. Here, the issue of use rights, of common access to unenclosed land-embodied in the movement for game and stock laws-resonated with a special intensity.6 \Nhat follows, then, is a preliminary exploration of mounting contentions over common rights and their role in the reshaping of Southern class relations. It will raise many more questions than it will answer, partly because the subject has received scant attention and partly because the subject demands highly localized research? \Nhile state assemblies ratified enabling legislation, counties, militia districts, and, at times, individual plantations became the theaters of activity and strife. Enough information is readily available, however, to make for a promising venture, and the obvious comparative implications make the venture all the more intriguing.8

Fee-simple landownership prevailed in the antebellum South. Real property, unencumbered by primogeniture, entail, or other formal obligations, could be bought and sold at will, its purchaser entitled to full possession.9 But from earliest settlement, custom and law circumscribed exclusivity and widened use rights. Unimproved, and thus unenclosed, land, which constituted most of the acreage on Southern farms, won sanction as common property for hunting, fishing, and grazing. "Though it is the broad common law maxim, 'that everything upon a man's land is his own'

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... and he can shut it out from his neighbor without any wrong to him," wealthy South Carolina planter William Elliott grumbled in 1859, "yet custom, with us, forfeited by certain decisions of the court, has gone far to qualify and set limits to the maxim."lO While Elliott, an avid sportsman, disapproved of customary practices, he left little doubt that his sentiments ran against the grain of public opinion. "The right to hunt wild animals is held by the great body of the people, whether landholders or otherwise, as one of their franchises," he obselVed, bemoaning that the land one acquired must be enclosed or it was one's "neighbors' or anybody's." A court case, which Elliott disdainfully recounted, attested further to the nature and tenacity of popular attitudes on hunting rights. An action for trespass, growing out of the conflicting claims of hunter and landholder, came to trial in South Carolina. One of the hunters, himself a landowner, took the stand and was asked by the prosecuting attorney, "Would you pursue a deer if he entered your neighbor's enclosure?" HUNTER:

Certainly.

COUNSEL:

What if his fields were planted, and his cotton growing or his grain ripe?

HUNTER:

It would make no difference; I should follow my dogs where they

JUDGE:

And pull down your neighbor's fence, and trample on his fields?

HUNTER:

I should do it-though I might regret to injure him!

JUDGE:

You would commit a trespass; you would be mulcted in damages. There is no law for such an act!

HUNTER:

It is hunter's law, however!

might.

"And hunter's law is likely somewhat longer to be the governing law of the case in this section of the country," Elliott groaned, "for the prejudices of the people are strong against any exclusive property in game."ll Elliott and like-minded planters feared that unregulated common rights would lead to a depletion in the supply of game and, thereby, threaten one of their favorite sports. Hunting, with its occasional pageantry and ostentatious display, reinforced the cultural prestige of the master class.12 During the 1850s, pressure for game laws began to surface. Legislation was local and the greatest inroads came in Maryland and Virginia, although several counties in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia also established hunting seasons for deer, turkeys, partridge, and quailP Overall, however, the impact of such laws remained quite limited, for they met with deep popular resistance. As Elliott could again note, the "laboring emigrants" from Britain brought a profound "disgust at the tyranny of the English game laws .... The preselVation of game is thus

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associated ... with ideas of aristocracy--peculiar privileges to the rich, and oppression toward the poor."14 Common right to unenclosed land had even greater significance for livestock raising. Rather than provide pasture, Southerners customarily turned their hogs, cattle, and sheep out in the woods to forage. "The cows graze in the forest ... [and the hogs] go daily to feed in the woods," traveler John Pinkerton found in mid-eighteenth-century North Carolina, and reports of what was known as the "open range" came from allover the nineteenth-century South.1s "Many people in the piney woods of Mississippi are herdsmen," J.F.H. Claiborne recorded, "owning large droves of cattle ... [which] are permitted to run in the range or forest." Northern Alabama, a United States Patent Office correspondent wrote in 1851, had "no system of raising stock ... of any sort. The cattle live halfthe time on Uncle Sam's pasture." So, too, in the South Carolina Piedmont. "We really raise [cattle] with so little care, that it would be a shame to charge anything for their keep up to three years," one resident claimed. "We raise our hogs by allowing them to range in our woods, where they get fat in the autumn on acorns."16 Widespread in Britain, continental Europe, and Africa before capitalist agriculture fully penetrated the countryside, these grazing practices entered Southern statute books during the colonial period in the form of fence lawsP An act passed as early as 1759 in Georgia, for example, established guidelines that would persist throughout the antebellum era. It required farmers to enclose their crops, thereby peImitting livestock to roam freely upon uncultivated land. The specifications were detailed and precise: ... all fences or enclosures ... that shall be made around or about any garden, orchard, rice ground, indigo field, plantation or settlement in this province, shall be six feet high from the ground when staked or ridered and from the ground to the height of three feet of every such fence or enclosure, the rails thereof shall not be more than four inches distant from each other; and that all fences or enclosures that shall consist of paling shall likewise be six feet high from the ground and the pales thereof not more than two inches asunder: Provided always, that where any fence or enclosure shall be made with a ditch or trench, the same shall be four feet wide, and in that case the fence shall be six feet high from the bottom ofthe ditch.

Although Georgia's assembly reduced 1the legal height of fences by a foot during the nineteenth century, the other provisions stood. Should animals break into a farmer's field, his fencing had to measure up to these standards ifhe hoped to collect damages. ''If any trespass or damage shall be committed in any enclosure, not being protected as aforesaid," the Georgia Code flatly decreed, "the owner of such animal shall not be liable to answer for the trespass, and if the owner of the enclosure shall kill or injure such in any manner, he is liable in three times the damages." Other Southern states enacted similar laws. 18

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Decisions rendered by antebellum state courts upheld the dictates of statute law. In a series of damage suits brought against railroad companies by farmers and planters whose animals had been struck by trains, judges invariably found for the plaintiffs on the grounds of legal and customary public access to private, albeit unenclosed, land. Thus, when the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad Company appealed such a lower court verdict in 1854 by contending that common-law precedent absolved it from responsibility, the Alabama Supreme Court demurred. The common law was not operative in Alabama, Judge J. Ligon declared, noting that the state code prescribed that "unenclosed lands ... are to be treated as common pasture for the cattle and stock of every citizen." The Mississippi High Court of Errors and Appeals issued much the same ruling in an almost identical case two years later, reasoning that "by common consent [the woods and prairies] have been understood ... to be a common pasture." Any shift in the burden of obligations "would require a revolution in our people's habits of thought and action," Judge Stephens of the Georgia Supreme Court proclaimed in 1860. "Our people ... would be converted into a set oftrespassers."19 Dissident voices could be heard. As the antebellum era wore on, agricultural reformers and "progressive" planters blamed the custom of open-range foraging for the poor quality of Southern livestock. They also argued that the fence laws worked a special hardship on farmers as expanded cultivation led to timber shortages and made fencing unduly expensive, not to mention laborious and time-consuming. "In some parts," one critic insisted, "timber is becoming so scarce that it will be a serious question how we are to provide fences for our fields." Another complained that "custom and the example of our fathers have riveted upon us practices, which although they are injurious to our interests, are nevertheless unnoticed, because they are familiar." And, in the words of a Virginia planter, the prevailing fence laws represented the "heaviest of all taxes on farmers." The Southern Cultivator, an agricultural journal, suggested the use of wire fences or thorn hedges, but agitation eventually turned to a call for new statutes requiring the enclosure oflivestock rather than cropS.20 Reformers not only pressed for conservation and agricultural improvement, they challenged the validity of common rights. "Justice and policy have concurred in fixing as a general principle in the laws of civilized nations, that every individual should be compelled to refrain from trespassing on the property [of] ... other persons," one of them told the Virginia General Assembly, but in the case of fencing "the rule is just reversed ... [and] every individual shall guard and protect his property from depredators and everyone is permitted to consume or destroy all that may not be well guarded." More succinctly, another proponent asked, "Why ... should my land which I choose to turn out to improve by rest, be taken possession of and impoverished by other people's stock."21

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These arguments, however, won little support, partly because of the issue's sensitivity. Poorer farmers, the reformers admitted, derived special benefits from common rights and would not surrender easily. "It is notorious," one vocal reformer sneered, "that those frequently have the largest stock who have the least land to graze." The Committee on Agriculture and Manufactures in the Virginia Assembly made the same point in a different way when rejecting petitions for a "Change of the General Law of Enclosures": "Many poor persons have derived advantage from grazing their stock on the commons and unenclosed lands, and to whom the obligation to confine them, or a liability to damages if not confined, would operate as a great hardship." Several Virginia counties made adjustments in the fence law, but limited advance could be seen there or elsewhere in the South before the Civil War.22 The commitment of yeomen and poorer whites to common rights reflected more than strictly economic considerations. The majority of them resided on small farms outside the Plantation Belt where a household economy predominated. Farm families primarily grew food crops, made much of their own clothing and furnishings, and raised substantial numbers of livestock, supplementing their efforlts with local exchanges of goods and labor. Like petty producers in many parts of the United States, these yeomen viewed property ownership as the foundation of independence. Yet, also like other petty producers, they understood that independence could not be achieved through individual enterprise alone. In this regard, common hunting and grazing rights took their place beside other "habits of mutuality"-various forms of "swap work," for instance---as important features of productive organization. Common rights, in short, not only enabled small landowners and the landless to own livestock, but they fit comfortably into a setting where social relations were mediated largely by ties of kinship and reciprocity rather than the marketplace.23 Unquestionably, the planters' desire to mitigate class conflict within the South as the sectional crisis deepened afforded protection to these popular customs. William Elliott and members of the Virginia Assembly were not alone in forecasting explosive consequences should hunting and grazing rights be curtailed. More than political pragmatism was at work, however, for the dominant relations of the Plantation Belt provided essential room. With an enslaved labor force, planters did not have to confront the problems that common property rights posed for labor supply and discipline-problems that, historically, set the economic and intellectual underpinnings for exclusivity.24 Indeed, save for the handful of agricultural reformers and their sympathizers, planters themselves found advantage in the "commons." Thus, Mississippi slaveowner William L. Patton was "in the habit of pasturing [his animals] upon unenclosed lands ... owned by other persons and ... used by the neighborhood generally." It was then with some force that pro-slavery spokesmen

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could argue that black bondage secured the independence of all whites by obstructing the development of market relations. 25

Emancipation effected a fundamental alteration in Southern race relations. In a manner more sweeping and imposing than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere, forms of racial subordination, nearly two centuries old, were dissolved. Yet, slavery was not simply a system of race relations, it was also a system of labor exploitation and, thus, of class relations. And however much discussions of its aftermath were cast in racial terms, abolition brought planters squarely up against what they themselves called "the labor question." Their fortunes as a class resting on the surpluses that flowed from staple agriculture, the planters understood that the civil, political, and economic status of the ex-slaves were intimately related. Fears of "Negro rule" and "racial amalgamation" notwithstanding, the "question oflabor control," as South Carolinian William H. Trescott put it in 1865, "underlies every other question of state interest."26 The old masters confronted the issue with little optimism. Experience had demonstrated, they believed, that blacks were inherently lazy, indolent, and unreliable and would never submit voluntarily to the demands of a plantation regime. "As a general rule the world over, in freedom or in bondage," the Southern Cultivator declared, "labor can be extracted from the Negro only by compulsion."27 The freedmen had their own version, but it spoke to the planters' dilemma nonetheless. Emancipation saw a largescale black exodus from the plantations as the ex-slaves tested the new waters of freedom. They roamed the countryside, made their way to cities and towns, squatted on unenclosed land. Reluctant to sign contracts and return to regimented field work, they looked to-and felt they had a right to---set up for themselves. "The greater number," a Mississippi Freedmen's Bureau agent reported, "are determined to try farming on their own responsibility." And when the opportunity presented itself, according to another federal official, the blacks acquitted themselves "with good success." "All I wants," one freedman explained, "is to gits fo' or five acres ob land, dat I can build me a little house on and call my home."28 The "labor question," therefore, became linked inextricably with the "land question." Many planters worried, and many freedmen expected, that the federal government would confiscate and redistribute the land of wealthy ex-Confederates. Although prospects for such a radical measure faltered in Congress, the enfranchisement of the freedmen and the struggle to build a Southern wing of the Republican party kept the issue alive and contributed to the surge of white vigilante violence.29 More immediately, planters recognized that customary use rights, along with the availability of

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public domain in some states, jeopardized labor supply and discipline and, by extension, the revitalization of the cotton economy. The travail of the plantation system in much of the postemancipation Caribbean, they were well aware, stemmed largely from the success of ex-slaves in taking up former provision grounds and other uninhabited land that proved unsuited to staple cropS."30 Freedmen in the South evinced similar proclivities: They seemed ready to spurn wage and sharecropping incentives in favor of a rude subsistence on game and raised foodstuffs rather than cotton when able to farm on their own account. Tidewater planters, the Richmond Times charged in 1866, "suffer great annoy,mce and serious pecuniary loss from the trespasses of predacious negroes and low pot hunters, who with dogs and guns, live in the fields . . . as if the whole country belonged to them." A more sedentary independence apparently promised little better. Should "the negroes ... become possessed of a small freehold," Alabama's Clark County Journal warned, they "will raise their com, squashes, pigs, and chickens, and will work no more in the cotton, rice, and sugar fields." The freedmen's "disposition is to be content with the most precarious subsistence," a Louisiana planter complained, "where left to themselves they reside in huts, and live upon small game and com meal."31 Proscriptions against "vagrancy" and the renting of land to freedmen, which some Southern legislatures enacted as part of their "Black Codes" during Presidential Reconstruction, represented the planters' initial, if temporary, steps to use state authority to control the black labor force.32 At the same time, planter spokesmen, citing the "depredations" of "wandering" freedmen, began to press for stricter definitions of and stronger safeguards for private property. "Negroes have a notorious propensity to appropriate what belongs to another," the Countryman lectured, arguing that while under "slavery they could be checked by their masters in the indulgence of this propensity [n]ow ... the strong arm of the law must protect all property-holders." By 1866 the Louisiana and Georgia assemblies had passed "trespass laws," and a bill to the same effect was under consideration in Virginia. The laws imposed stiff fines or prison terms on anyone convicted of entering "enclosed or unenclosed land" to cut timber or collect anything growing without the owner's permission. The Georgia law also prohibited "squatting or setting upon enclosed or unenclosed land of another whether public or private without bonafide claim, title, or consent."33 The perception that a redefinition of traditional use rights was essential for a successful adjustment to free labor gave agricultural reformers and conseIVationists an increasingly receptive audience. Pointing to the "wholesale and ill-seasoned destruction" of fish and wildlife, the diminishing supply of timber, the costs and inefficiencies of fencing practices, and the benefits of improved animal husbandry, they renewed agitation for game and stock laws. And they spirited a substantial following, as newspa-

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pers and agricultural journals filled with similar refrains. In the face of "straitened circumstances" and "the altered system of labor," planters from Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia cried that the "old habits" were too "expensive" and "burdensome," and demanded that "every person who owns any kind of stock" be required "to keep such stock within their own enclosures." "Why in the name of common sense," one asked, "am I compelled to maintain 12 or 13 miles of hideous fence around my plantation at an annual cost of upwards of a thousand dollars, in order to prevent the cattle and hogs which my neighbors tum loose . . . from destroying my crops and robbing my property?"34 The concerns for conservation and agricultural rehabilitation were quite genuine, as before the war. But it was the connection between these concerns and new labor relations that won growing numbers of large landowners to the cause. South Carolina planter Henry Hammond thus voiced his support for game laws by asserting that while he "was not opposed to amusements," hunting and fishing only "demoralized man, and in many cases led to crime." A contributor to the Countryman heartily agreed, insisting that "stringent trespass laws" be supplemented with "stringent game laws." "We are just as much entitled to the possums, rabbits, squirrels, and partridges on our land, as we are to our chickens and turkeys," he proclaimed. Strict observance of such laws "would remove many temptations," another South Carolinian believed. "It would keep the negroes more confined."35 Much the same was said in regard to fencing. According to the Beech Island Farmers' Club, "the present laws of enclosure," which permitted common grazing, weighed heavily upon "the landed interest," protecting only "whites and blacks, poor, lazy, worthless people ... living mainly off to themselves, who eke out a living on a few hogs and other stock running at large." John H. Dent, the Georgia planter and agricultural reformer stated it bluntly: "Our greatest trouble is Labor and Fencing." Indeed, the Memphis Southern Home and Farm included the regulation of hunting, fishing, and foraging on a list of "needed laws" that could serve as an agenda for restoring the plantation system. Along with preventing any person from "ranging livestock . . . hunting, fishing, trapping, netting, or seining on another's land without permission," the journal called for measures enforcing all labor contracts, outlawing the enticement or hruboring of any laborer who had broken an agreement, giving landlords first lien on the crops of laborers and tenants, restricting merchants' transactions with laborers, taxing dogs, and prohibiting "any person from tampering with fences."36 The laws were easier to discuss than implement, however. Black Belt advocates initially met a cool reception from the Hill Country, where commercial agriculture had made limited inroads, and from the Wiregrass and Pine Barrens, where open-range stock raising assumed considerable importance, making statewide statutes unfeasible. As one Low

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Country planter admitted, "No uniform fence law throughout the state can operate justly. The present law is very well adapted to the pine and sand country and also to the mountain country, but ruinous to the middle country."37 Consequently, legislation was localized, authorizing counties, or militia districts within counties, to carry out the law or provide for some means of public deliberation, whether by petition or ballot. And the early postwar years saw a scattered and tentative beginning. In 1865 the Mississippi General Assembly passed two bills: one enabling the "Citizens of Hinds County," where 70 percent of the population was black, to require the fencing of livestock, and one making it a misdemeanor to hunt on privately owned land without consent in all counties outside the southeastern piney woods and the northeastern hills. The next year the Virginia assembly followed suit, establishing procedures for "any county" to deem "land boundaries legal fences" for crops, thereby prohibiting stock from "running at large," and defining as a trespass the act of hunting on unenclosed land without permission. Coincidentally, game restrictions took hold in parts of South Carolina, and between 1866 and 1868 several counties in the Alabama Black Belt obtained the right to adopt a new fencing, or stock, law. 38 Yet, planters bent upon limiting public access to landed property met another challenge-this time from within their own locales. Although the social structure and relations of the Plantation Belt had linked the fortunes of many whites through slave ownership, economic interchange, aspiration, and kinship, the campaign on behalf of conservation, progressive agriculture, and the sanctity of private property did little to win the support of numerous small landholding and landlless farmers who depended on common hunting, fishing, and grazing for sustenance.39 To be sure, these poorer whites feared that abolition would unleash "thieving negroes" and often rode with vigilante bands to keep the freedmen in check. But the game and stock laws struck at their own welfare and sense of justice. A planter from Greene County, Georgia, found that the "stock law would meet with much opposition, if it could pass at all. The opposition is bitter, made up more of prejudice than reason." A similar report came from Sumter County, Alabama: "We have a class of farmers and stock owners among us [who] ... are opposed to any innovation on the practice of their fathers, from the use of the subsoil plow to the enactment of a no-fence [stock] law." Not simply economic interest but, from the planters' point of view, "strange ideas of individual rights" appeared to inspire opponents.40 Poorer whites were joined in this battle by their long-acknowledged adversaries, the ex-slaves. Antebellum law prohibited slaves from freely using he forests to hunt, from carrying firearms and other weapons, from owning property, and from marketing produce. Formal law did not necessarily reflect day-to-day reality, however, and what masters might have seen as paternal indulgences the slaves transformed into expecta-

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tions and rights. Slaves commonly hunted and fished, both to supply the plantations and augment their provisions, acquiring a reputation for their skill. If unable to use guns, the blacks relied on dogs to trap prey and, in the words of one historian, enjoyed "indiscriminate permission to fish at large." Indeed, so proficient were the slaves that in certain areas they "monopolized all the good fishing holes" and sold their catches, despite the grumblings of some locals.41 What is more, scattered evidence suggests that the slaves were not only familiar with open-range grazing, they had livestock and other possessions recognized by their owners as personal property. Most impressive was the situation in the rice districts of coastal South Carolina and Georgia where the task system provided special room for slave accumulation. But as far away as Louisiana a group of recently liberated slaves could ask a prospective employer if they might "keep their pigs." Seeking to curtail their dependence on whites, the freedmen thus rankled at the prospect of game and stock laws. Traveler Edward King observed that the blacks "are fond of the same pleasures which their late masters gave them so freely-hunting, fishing, and lounging." And one ex-slave remarked: "I tell you one thing. This here no fence law was one of the lowest things they ever did."42 The opposition of the white and black lower classes came to notable effect with the advent of Radical Reconstruction. Holding newly conferred political rights, the freedmen-along with Unionist whites-flocked to the Republican party standard and made their presence felt. They voted in large numbers, soon sat in state legislatures, and, in many parts of the Black Belt, took command of county government. The momentum of restrictive legislation wound down during their tenure and, in some cases, laws already on the books were repealed.43 The proliferation of Republican local officials, of both races, had especially telling repercussions. Now in a position to adjudicate labor contracts and oversee the implementation of coercive statutes, these officeholders and judges often clipped the planters' wings. One South Carolinian fretted that the game laws "would be of great benefit ... but with such trial justices as we now have, they are not enforced." The adoption of stock laws stood in doubt, another believed, for "the negroes will defeat any [such] measures." Small wonder that a planter spokesman could declare that penalties for various forms of trespass "should be definite and certain, and not be left to a court to decide what the damages are." Small wonder, too, that a Georgia proponent of fencing reform could insist that the issue be decided by "the freeholders of each county" who "alone have a direct interest."44 The Black Belt counteroffensive proved short-lived. By the early 1870s white conservatives had "redeemed" most Southern states and even in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi the Republicans tread a thin balance.45 Taking their cue from national developments which signaled a declining commitment to the protection of black civil and political rights,

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planter-dominated legislatures moved forcefully to recapture the initiative in regulating labor relations. In the process, the attack on common hunting, fishing, and grazing privileges intensified. Game laws multiplied in Black Belt counties of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia; by the end of the decade they operated on a statewide basis in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.46 The laws prescribed hunting seasons for deer and fowl, prohibited certain methods of trapping game and fish (some of which had West African roots), and curtailed access to woods and waterways. In Georgia, for example, where Republican rule ended in 1871, three plantation counties enacted game laws in 1872, six in 1875, eighteen in 1876, six in 1877, and six in 1878. An act passed for Burke, Taylor, and Jefferson counties was typical, deeming it a misdemeanor to "kill or destroy" deer or partridges between April and October, to "trap, snare, or net" partridges, to catch fish by means of drugs or poison, and to "hunt, trap, or fish" on an individual's land without permission.47 Alabama witnessed a similar trend. The Reconstruction legislatures repealed game laws adopted by several counties before 1874. That year brought "redemption" and by 1877 most of the Black Belt had such laws in effect.48 The progress of new fencing laws also received a boost in the latter years and aftermath of Reconstruction, as local and state agricultural societies, the Grange, and railroad companies joined to press the issue. 49 In response, the Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina assemblies ratified local-option stock laws in 1872, 1873, and 1877 respectively.50 Elsewhere, individual counties petitioned for enabling legislation. Procedures for implementation were not uniform. In some areas the matter was left to the discretion of local officials; in some to the decision of landowners; and in some to the deliberation of all eligible voters. Although it is impossible at this point to determine the results with precision, it can be said that by 1880 the stock law was under active consideration, if not in operation, in at least thirty Georgia, seventeen Alabama, twenty-six North Carolina, twelve Mississippi, and eighteen South Carolina counties, most of which had black majorities.51 Further signs of the mounting attack on common rights could be seen in the rulings of Southern judges. Thus, when the Georgia Supreme Court heard a relevant case for damages in 1876, it found the plaintiffs claim "that he had in the woods ... the right of common pasture for his cattle which are numerous and which have been accustomed to range heretofor . . . wholly insufficient," as "he does not set forth any contract, prescription, or other lawful basis for the right." In a dramatic departure from previous policy, the justices expressed incredulity "as to common of pasture upon lands which are all private property" and ruled that "citizens generally have no strict right of common pasture in the 'woods' or upon the unenclosed lands of others." Courts in other states moved with greater caution, hedging on the question of general principle while

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upholding the constitutionality of legislative statutes. "The common-law doctrine, which requires the owner of stock to keep them off the land of others ... does not prevail in this state," the Supreme Court of Mississippi could announce in 1887. "But the subject is within the power and control of the legislature; and no legal right is violated ... when one is required by law to keep his stock off the land of others." Judges in Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina rendered similar decisions. 52 The resistance to game and, especially, to stock laws that surfaced in the Black Belt during Reconstruction by no means entirely collapsed. North Carolina's Charlotte Democrat observed that the prospect of a "no-fence law" in one county prompted threats by local freedmen "to leave." The Atlanta Constitution found numerous counties "unfriendly to the stock law" due primarily to the fact that "blacks opposed." And in South Carolina a major political controversy was stirred. As an Aiken County planter exclaimed: "The passage of the 'stock law' by our legislature is creating much excitement and angry comment. Threats of a new party are made and fears entertained by some that it will unharmonize the Democratic party." The planter's fears were justified, for independent candidates seized the issue and rallied noteworthy support among poor whites and blacks.53 Nonetheless, much of the Black Belt, in South Carolina and other states, came to heel by the early 1880s. Indeed, South Carolina, where planter power loomed particularly large, stood alone among Southern states during the nineteenth century in passing a "general" stock law-which eliminated local prerogatives-in 1881.54 On an elementary level, the spread of game and stock laws attests to the planters' efforts, and success, at reasserting their authority over black labor-attests, in short, to the reestablishment of economic power relations in the Black Belt despite Emancipation and Reconstruction. Even Henry Grady, the leading spokesman for a new, industrial South, conceded in 1881 that a "landholding oligopoly" lorded over vast acres "through all the cotton states."55 But from a wider vantage point, the movement to eradicate common rights pointed, as well, to an important metamorphosis in the character of the planter class and of basic social relations. And the metamorphosis came as the result of intense social conflict. If the planters had had their way, a formal system of dependent labor would have been erected in the postwar South, giving "the landowner an absolute control over the freedman as though he was his slave." Planters believed it beneath their dignity to bid for the labor of ex-slaves. The federal government made such a repressive system difficult to install; the freedmen made it impossible. Resisting gang labor, withdrawing women from the fields, seeking their own land and subsistence, and moving from plantation to plantation to strike better contracts, blacks forced their old masters to come to terms with free labor. For some members of the elite,

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this was too much to bear: They sold out and, perhaps, left for Brazil or Cuba. Others met the challenge.56 It was an unequal confrontation, to be sure, yet one that gradually brought forth a structure of market relations in agriculture. The redefinition of property rights, which strengthened the planters' control over productive resources and eroded the claims of their laborers, paved the way. Lien laws limited tenants' property in their growing crops; court decisions fully eliminated such property for sharecroppers and categorized them as wage laborers; constitutional and legislative reforms ended protections that certain property had from levy for debt. 57 And, of course, the game and stock laws greatly narrowed use rights in landed property, further circumscribing access to the means of subsistence and threatening ownership of livestock and draft animals among the poor. The planters were increasingly transformed into agricultural employers and the freedmen into agricultural employees. The compulsions of necessity replaced the compulsions of the lash. The metamorphosis of Black Belt social relations, which the game and stock laws highlighted, also had significant cultural and ideological ramifications. The Southern defense of slavery always rested, in large part, on doctrines of racial inferiority. Over time, however, Southern intellectuals and politicians alike linked the racial defense of slavery with the defense of slavery in the abstract: with notions that inequality was the natural condition of humankind, that natural inequalities were reflected in social stratification, that free society left the poor and inherently disadvantaged to the mercy of the labor market, and that organic relations of dependency and mutuality offered the best means for security and social peace. The most conservative theorists argued that slavery was the proper status for the poor of both races. 58 But even those who spoke the language of "Herrenvolk democracy" mixed conservative theory with racism and insisted that only Ithe enslavement of blacks stood between poorer whites and the ravages of the marketplace. It seemed to strike a responsive chord among the majority of white Southerners who were outside the mainstream of the staplle economy and who cast their votes for a political party that depicted the expansion of commerce and the market as a threat to independence.59 With Emancipation the planters' outlook and worldview, much as the relations they entered into, were gradually transformed. The racism remained and grew more vociferous. Yet, drawing upon ideas previously advanced by the small brigade of antebellum agricultural reformers, the planter class slowly embraced the market, not dependency or reciprocity, as the proper arbiter of social relations. The new ideology began to surface with special force in the agitation for game and stock laws, as advocates dismissed the "strange ideas" associated with common rights in favor of the logic of absolute property. "The land outside a farm is as

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much the property of the farmer as that he may cultivate," a Georgia newspaper proclaimed, "and truly in essential justice [no person] ... has any right thereon without express permission." Similarly, a Virginian maintained that "we are just as entitled to [the wildlife] on our land as to the domestic animals." Or, as an Alabama planter asked rhetorically, "Is there any reason or right that A should furnish land for B's cattle to graze upon?"60 The logic melded easily with the dominant bourgeois currents of postwar America, suggesting the dimensions of the emerging postwar settlement. But the "strange ideas" held on and helped thrust the South into deeper social and political turmoil.

The locus of contention over common rights, and particularly over common grazing rights, shifted from the Black Belt to the Hill Country during the late 1870s and 1880s, reflecting the advance of commercial agriculture into areas previously dominated by semisubsistence farming. Indeed, the absorption of the Southern Hill, or Up country, into the cotton economy was one of the significant developments of the postwar period. Inhabitants of this region had been hard hit by wartime privation, drought, and pillaging; destitution was widespread in 1865 and for a while thereafter. Local officials of the Freedmen's Bureau spent much of their time distributing needed rations to whites, not blacks. By the first years of the next decade, however, a new orientation seemed evident. "Cotton," a county newspaper reported in 1872, "formerly cultivated on a very limited extent, has increased rapidly in the last few years in production." And the trend would continue so that by century's end white labor raised most ofthe cotton in the South.61 The initial thrust toward market production likely came from yeomen farmers hoping to avail themselves of relatively high cotton prices and recoup war-related losses. Railroads, which began to penetrate the Up country during the 1870s, offered added inducement by easing access to supralocal markets. But most importantly, the transition came as a product of new social relations and credit arrangements. Like many peasantries, Vpcountry yeomen normally cultivated a limited cash crop along with foodstuffs; the dynamic of the household economy, itself, encouraged the pattern. Even in 1873, a Black Belt paper could note that these farmers attended to "their grain, provender, and provisions and then bestowed their surplus labor on cotton."62 What turned cotton from one item in a crop mix into a defining feature of the region's economy was a process that tied yeomen firmly to the export market, made vulnerable their productive property, and eventually reduced many of them to tenants and laborers. Expanded lines of transportation and communica-

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tion and legislation bearing on production and exchange laid the foundation for the transformation; supply merchants carried it through. The 1870s witnessed a considerable influx of merchandisers into Upcountry towns and hamlets. Prospects of a large clientele along with the developing lien system provided the lure and enabled them to establish a foothold. The Southern lien laws, passed after Emancipation, permitted suppliers to obtain mortgages on the crops of their customers to secure advances of money and provisions. After a series of twists and turns, most legislatures gave landlords superior lien rights for both rent and advances; merchants could get first lien only on the crops of proprietors. Since the majority of Black Belt customers were tenants and croppers and since landlords began to move into the supply business to bolster sUIpluses, the opportunities of landless merchants diminished. In the Upcountry, on the other hand, the majority of customers were freeholders, and the planter element was small. Growing numbers of merchants, thereby, hoped to capitalize on the legacy of wartime hardship and short food crops. As one Upcountry resident recalled: "When the lien law was passed the town merchant became an important factor in farming."63 Merchandisers decisively shifted the energies of Upcountry producers to commercial agriculture. Farmers wishing to purchase goods on credit-the norm-now had to mortgage their crops as security, and storekeepers made plain their preference for cotton, it being the most likely to bring a return. High interest rates charged for credit further impelled yeomen to raise the staple, if only to keep their heads above water.64 Soon, by virtue of legislative initiative, real and personal property could also serve as collateral, thus placing land, tools, and livestock in jeopardy of attachment and offering merchants greater control over the productive process. As cotton prices slid in the 1870s and 1880s, the auction block became the resort for the hopelessly indebted, and a new class of merchant-landlords, based in the Upcountry towns, began to emerge.65 It is not surprising, then, that merchants, landlords, and other interests associated with these towns seized upon the stock law as they pushed to consolidate their command of the developing cotton economy. By 1880 the law was being discussed "fiercely," and during the next decade a bitter struggle erupted over its adoption. Hill counties in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi entered the fray.66 While little more is known about the episode on a South-wide scale, the story in Georgia is rich and revealing and, in its main lines, probably representative. Following their counterparts in the plantation districts, advocates in the Georgia Up country linked the stock law to the cause of agricultural improvement and the ideals of exclusivity in property, which they saw as fitting hand in glove. Open-range foraging, they submitted, was "sad evidence of old fogyism, general ignorance, and backwardness of agriculture," contributing to timber scarcity, inefficiency, and the proliferation of

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"useless, scrubby stock."67 It was a custom dignified by no more than peculiar circumstances and hardheadedness, a sap on economic progress and prosperity, and a violation of "natural rights." Indeed, many supporters of fencing reform viewed common grazing as a "privilege or favor" bordering upon theft. "My neighbor has as much right to pasture my enclosed land as my unenclosed," one of them put it, "as his stock robs it of its vegetable matter ... making it poorer everyday."6B Compelling as these arguments appeared to be, they failed to win much popular acceptance. The Georgia local-option statute of 1872 provided for county elections, and when the vote came, the stock law met resounding defeats. Only the towns and militia districts boasting the highest per capita wealth and the largest farm units lent the law substantial backing; elsewhere it was routed. 69 Opponents had no objection to the cause of agricultural progress per se. Rather, they perceived it as window dressing for class exploitation. "The law would benefit the extensive landowners," one insisted, and, in tum, "would be the greatest curse to the poor laboring men that ever befell them." Not prosperity but expropriation and dependency would be in store for yeomen and tenants alike, who "will be relieved ofthe privileges ourfathers established, ofthe care and use ofthe hog, the cow, and all the necessities, only as they are furnished by the" large landowners and merchants. Thus, one Up country smallholder predicted that "the stock law will divide the people into classes similar to the patricians and plebians of ancient Rome." Another concluded that it "would be proof of insanity for a poor man that don't own as much as 100 acres ofland to vote" for the measure?O The stuff of popular resistance ran deeper. Opponents not only challenged the stock law on economic grounds, they "controverted" the principles of ownership upon which it rested, "the proposition that 'What is mine I have a right to do as I please with.' " "The woods were put here by our Creator for a benefit to his people," they declared, endowing "custom to the range" with "legal, moral, and bible" sanction-sanction that could not be abrogated by private title.71 Arguing that stock-law supporters were "men who never split but few, if any rails" and that no man was properly a "farmer until he does keep his fields fenced," they expressed the abiding logic of the open range: "While my cow is on my neighbor's land eating grass, his is on mine, that makes it alright." Reciprocity, not exclusivity, promoted "equal rights, equal liberty, and equal privileges," and sustained the community of producers.7Z In sum, stock-law opponents began to articulate the values of cooperative commonwealth and counterpose them to the hegemony of the marketplace. Finding in such attitudes "the spirit of communism fully displayed," disappointed reformers attributed their defeats to the workings of "pauper" democracy. "Agrarianism rules," one of them cried, and "nothing but a restriction on the voters' qualifications will ever protect capital from

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such injustice and wrong."73 Disfranchisement did not come to pass in this instance, but since legislation made additional contests possible, stock-law proponents prepared themselves to carry the issue. Utilizing the machinery of the Democratic party, which they had come to dominate, and particularly the vehicles of local agricultural clubs, they waged a campaign throughout the counties. Electoral fraud and coercion, so familiar to postbellum politics, also came into play. While neither side could claim innocence, most of the complaints emanated from opponents who cited cases of bribery, threats, ticket fixing, ballotbox stuffing, and the tossing out ofvotes74 Yet, even these efforts failed to bring victory. Despite increasing its share of the vote somewhat, the stock law w.as beaten again and again in countywide elections during the 1880s, as white yeomen and tenants, along with blacks, scotched the drive of commercial interests. In the words of one landlord, "the Niggers and white trash" voted against the law75 Agitation then shifted to individual militia districts \vithin counties, where reformers made some headway. Not surprisingly, town and village districts, which included many of the largest farms and most highly assessed acres, often led the way, followed by wealthier rural districts. Other rural areas proved far more troublesome, and adversaries locked horns in a battle that saw voting results overturned, district boundaly lines changed, lawsuits rued, and outbreaks of violence before formal resolution76 And although by 1890 a majority of districts in most Upcountry counties had come under the law's jurisdiction, enforcement was another matter. County newspapers charged that "outlaws" occasionally tore newly constructed enclosures "to smash," and that in a few places opponents were "doing their best to evade the law and warning that if any man takes up their stock, they will use their little guns on him." It would be another sixty-five years before a blanket, statewide stock law entered the books77

IfUpcountry farmers resisted the attack on common rights more successfully than did poorer whites and blacks in the Plantation Belt, the conflict in both regions illuminated the new relations and fissures spreading throughout the postbellum South. Quite significantly, it suggests that the struggle for control of production may be the key link between the postemancipation experiences of diverse Southern locales: from the Upper to the Lower South, from the plantation to the small farming districts78 In an important sense, too, the conflict suggests how much a part of Gilded Age America the South had become. Landlords, merchants, and other commercial types remained junior and, at times, disgruntled partners, but they came to share with Northern elites a language, outlook,

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and set of concerns that increasingly put them on one side of a great historical divide. The Southerners, of course, handled these concernsmost conpicuously the "labor question"-in what seemed to be their own peculiar way, to a certain extent because race inteIvened at so many levels. Yet, it should also be remembered that this very period saw Northern industrialists rely on force, or the threat of force, to settle labor disputes, saw the "best men" call for voting restrictions and other political reforms designed to "cleanse" government, and saw segregation become institutionalized nationally. At the same time, petty producers in the South came to share with their Northern counterparts another language, outlook, and set of concerns. However different their backgrounds and specific circumstances, they faced similar problems and joined, at least in spirit, in defending a version of the Revolutionary heritage that associated freedom with economic independence and tyranny with massive concentrations of wealth and power. One cannot read arguments opposing the stock law and not be reminded of the Greenbackers and the Knights of Labor.Bo Thus, a dirt farmer in the Georgia Up country could declare that "we as poor men and negroes do not need the law but we need a democratic government and independence that will do the common people good." And the inhabitants of northwestern Alabama and northeastern Mississippi could celebrate the maintenance of open-range grazing by dubbing their locales "freedom hills."BI Such sentiments and sensibilities formed the heart of an emergent popular radicalism that would be harnessed by populism.

Notes 1 Beech Island Farmers' Club, Aiken, South Carolina, Minutes, January 1875, 210, 279, South Caroliniana Library. 2 As a consequence of the Second Confiscation Act of 1862, federal taxation, and General WIlliam T. Sherman's Field Order No. 15 of 1865, the federal government had control of nearly 900,000 acres of Southern land at war's end. President Johnson subsequently restored most of this land to its former owners. While a handful of Radical Republicans hoped to carry out a general program of land confiscation and redistribution, they met defeat in Congress. Only on the seaislands and coast of South Carolina and Georgia, where freedmen had established claims and defended them even against Federal troops, did a significant shift in the structure oflandownership take place. See Claude F. Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Landownership !Baton Rouge, 1978), 1--45; James M. McPherson, The Strugglefor Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, 1964), 246-259; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal El'-periment (New York; 1964), 320-331: Eric Foner, "Thaddeus Stevens, Confiscation, and Reconstruction," in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, eds., The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial (New York, 1974), 154-183; Manuel Gottlieb, "The Land Question in Georgia During Reconstruction," Science and Society 3 (Summer 1939),356-388.

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3 For comparisons from Latin America and continental Europe, see C. Vann Woodward, "The Price of Freedom," in David Sansing, ed., What Was Freedom's Price? (Jackson, Miss., 1978), 93-113; Wilhemina Kloosterboer, Involuntary Servitude Since the Abolition ofSlavery: A Survey of Compulsory Labour Throughout the World (Leiden, 1960); William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great E;re were largely left to run their own affairs under loose white direction. American blacks, on the other hand, were in the minority and were subordinated to the plantation economy; thus, "the lack of slave self-maintenance and markets in the United States would tend to account for the disappearance of such customs among American blacks" (40). Lacking native cultural institutions on which to rely, blacks turned to American ones, banks and fraternal orders. Such ventures were doomed

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to failure because they lacked adequately trained and qualified personnel, largely reflecting the low educational level of most blacks and the unavailability of profitable investment opportunities for black-owned banks. Inner cities were often turned down by white banks for this very reason, but for black banks, the inner city was the sole area where they could invest and the sole reason for their existence (ch. 3). In addition, black banks had to rely on individual borrowers who, because of their impoverishment, had no security and could not profitably be pursued if they defaulted. Black organizations, such as the National Negro Business League, established in 1900, or the National Urban League, organized in 1911, consisted entirely of the black upper class. Neither the Urban League, whose mission was to provide welfare smvices for the lower class, nor the Business League, whose members had little contact outside their own class, could recruit lower-class youth into business (ch. 6). In addition to ethnic identity, ethnic groups frequently came from the same locality in the mother country and shared family ties, all of which encouraged cooperative endeavor. Blacks, not having these cultural ties, were more likely to engage in individual proprietorships, thereby decreasing the chance of success. When blacks did band together for some common economic goal, it was difficult to maintain unity against outside competition because blacks did not have the formal and informal sanctions required to maintain discipline in such groups. Most ethnic cultures had retained sanctions against members who broke the rules, and thus were able to maintain unity (Light, 1972:125-26; Drake and Cayton, 1962:723-30; Nelli, 1970:ch. 5).9 Some blacks, of course, did attain business success. But such success often involved a mulatto who had received white support, or someone who engaged in illicit enterprise (Haller, 1991). Having described the circumstances that brought blacks to Chicago and their relation to the forces of production, I now turn to the corporate dynamics that, for many blacks, would sever the employer-employee relationship.

Corporate reorganization as a determinant of global job distribution Because large manufacturing corporations formed at the end of the nineteenth and beginning ofthe twentieth centuries were having considerable trouble in controlling labor forces concentrated in central cities, these corporations began to leave the inner cities for suburban locations. Such a move also came at a time when corporations had grown to the point where the largest could separate their productive function (which often moved to the suburbs) from their administrative function, marketing, and product development (which moved to office buildings in downtown business districts with access to financial seIvices and contacts with other like firms). Inner-city areas were thereby transformed from industrial sites surrounded by working-class neighborhoods to

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downtown businesses adjacent to emptying manufacturing areas and deteriorating working-class districts (Gordon, 1978:5D-51, 54). Following World War II, the United States emerged as the banker and creditor of the world, one consequence of which was the dominant position of the dollar. This advantage allowed U.S. corporations to make massive investments in new plants and equipment overseas, producing commodities through foreign subsidiaries and shipping them back here. Such practices resulted in a steady rise in productive capacity and profits. By the 1960s, one-third of all corporate investment was in other countries. During the same postwar period, large corporations began the continuing trend of switching from manufacturing to predominantly marketing products. Such corporate reorganization accelerated, accompanied, and encouraged the building of a national and city-suburban highway system, the boom in auto production, and the mass movement of jobs from the cities to the suburbs. Improved technology worked in tandem with these organizational changes. Computerized console control permitted coordinated production to be carried out in a worldwide market; global communication systems, using satellites, freed corporations from dependence on U.S. skilled labor, shifting fragments of production to areas of the world where cheap labor was plentiful. A series of government policies aided this corporate strategy: accelerated depreciation and depletion allowances, investment tax credits, tax loopholes, military and foreign aid, favorable tariff provisions, and the creation of various government agencies whose sole purpose was to subsidize, encourage, and protect foreign investment. By the late 1960s, increased world competition placed pressure on corporations to maintain a capital flexible position enabling them to move in and out of profitable and unprofitable lines. Corporations engaged in a number of strategies: Rather than reinvest in and update their properties, they attempted to buy profitable and sell off unprofitable lines or companies; management became increasingly centralized; less profitable companies were shut down; production was shifted to parts of the country or out of the country where nonunion and low-paid workers could be found; and modem technology allowed corporations to operate hundreds of small geographically dispersed plants (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982; DuBoff, 1989:134-39). Government and market policies as a determinant in the composition of inner cities

While corporations were reorganizing for their global mission, government policymakers were responding by shifting priorities toward an infrastructure that would support the new organization of capital. By the mid-1960s, the large northern city was characterized by a poor black inner city with

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Cyril D. RDbinsDn

adjacent working-class neighborhoods desperately defending against blacks they perceived as invading their turf. Affiuent white suburbs ringed these cities. Key to the eventual segregation of jobs fium the inner-city population was the extensive $100 billion (90 percent federally financed) highway construction program initiated during President Eisenhower's first term in office. In the case of Chicago, the expressway network expanded fium 53 miles in 1956 to 506 miles in 1970 (de Vise, 1985:143:; de Vise, 1967:120). Its effect was to stimulate explosive suburban growth of factories, stores, and home developments fium which proliferated communicating roadways, shopping centers, office towers, and corporate headquarters (Polenberg, 1980:130; Du Boff, 1989:102-3). Access to highways, and hence to intercontinental trucking, became more important to industry than access to rail and water routes, in former times an advantage of inner-city location. Moving more labor to the suburbs made location of businesses there more "rational" and made inner-city areas even less attractive as they took on the reputation of having an unskilled and unreliable labor force in addition to their other liabilities (Katz, 1980:25, 27, 285). Alternatives that would have distributed the transportation burdens and benefits (more efficient and extensive public transport or access fium the inner city to suburban employment) were not considered (Small, 1985:214-15). Although highways accelerated the growth of suburbs, it was federal home-ownership policies that allowed the millions of white middle-class families (most of whom could not have otherwise afforded such homes) to flee from the already decaying cities. In the early New Deal thirties, home ownership became a central focus of government policy through the refinancing of home mortgages, the development of the amortized long-range federally insured home mortgage, encouragement of largescale development of single-family homes, and federal guarantees of long-term credits. The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation Acts of 1933 and the National Housing Act of 1934, establishing the Federal Housing Administration, were all steps in the creation of a federal policy facilitating home ownership (Castells, 1976; Anderson, 1964:chap. 6).10 This policy had its roots in the depressed condition of the home building industry. Thus, the main objective of the National Housing Act of 1934 became the use of the construction industry to energize the economy and to prevent future recessions rather than to provide better housing for all Americans (Morrow-Jones, 1980:31). This goal came into conflict with the enunciated ideal of individual home ownership as "one of the fundamental canons of the American way of life," ensconced as it was in an abiding faith that private enterprise could fulfill that dream. Because a large proportion of Americans did not have the funds to purchase houses on the private market, public housing represented a means for all Americans, regardless of their economic situation, to have a home. But public housing advocates were thwarted at every legislative

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tum by private housing lobbies arguing that it was not the role of government to build houses (Kleniewski, 1982:113). In addition, the United States Housing Act of 1937 was fatally flawed in that it required that location of public housing be approved by local authorities. As set forth in more detail below, that provision effectively precluded housing for blacks outside already segregated areas (Aaron, 1971:195). Even this program was killed in 1939 (not to be revived for a decade) by a combination of private interests, banking, real estate, and construction operators, who saw low-cost housing as unfair competition with private enterprise (Gelfand, 1975:59, 151-65). After World War II, federal guarantees of FHA and VA low-interest, long-term mortgages subsidized communities of young white middleclass families in suburban living but made few loans to urban blacks of the same income level (Fleisher, 1979:26). The Housing Act of 1952 was designed to aid in building housing for military personnel. Local zoning regulations that raised the price of building, local property taxes, federal income tax deduction of interest on mortgage payments, and the denial of a similar deduction to renters encouraged home ownership for those able to afford it (National Commission on Urban Problems, 1968:11, 86-87; Haar, 1960:99; Duskin, 1974:129; Willhelm and Powell, 1967:243). The FHA, between 1935 and 1950, warned in its underwriting manuals against the instability of integrated areas and refused loans for reasons of "incompatible racial elements" (Taylor, HI71:91; Fleisher, 1979:26; Weaver, 1948:72). Fire insurance on inner-city housing was almost impossible to buy or was available only at exorbitant rates. Military installations were built in suburban centers and in southern and western states, attracting white workers to better housing and higher paying jobs. Section 220 federal mortgage insurance provided funds for urban renewal and for financing the construction ofluxury apartments and commercial centers, ousting large numbers of poor black and working-class ethnic whites. For those blacks who were willing and able to migrate to suburbs, county and municipal officials (with independent legislative powers and homogeneous white constituencies) kept blacks out by using zoning and permit powers to discourage moderate, subsidized, or public housing. Summing up, one writer concludes that "on the whole ... federal policy has followed local practice, and on the whole, local practice has been discriminatory" (Willhelm and Powell, 1967:255-56). On a state level, suburbanization was accompanied by a shifting of state political power from central cities to suburbs and rural communities (Cox, 1982:22). Associated with these poliCies were deteriorating inner-city neighborhoods, the demise of public education, increases in crime and drug use-all of which led anyone who could to leave the inner city. Thus, slums and blight became the prime product of northern cities, resulting from a series of interlocking public and private decisions, dominated by the ethos of private profit seeking. Movement ofthe advantaged out of the inner cities to suburbs long antedated the mass migration of blacks into

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Cyril D. Robinson

the inner cities as falling rents and increased vacancies made these areas attractive to the incoming poor. Policies such as those described encouraged mass out-migration of white middle-class families while foreclosing this possibility to the poor, black or white.

Elite response to the poor black incursion-urban renewal After World War II, an additional consequence of the loss of manufacturing plants and attendant loss of jobs and revenue was to push northern cities toward a fiscal crisis that in turn reduced the value of inner-city real estate (Cox, 1982:27). In an effort to counter these developments and protect their investments, a pro-growth coalition of corporate executives, real estate leaders, merchant interests, and labor leaders was able to elicit the help of mayors and governors to use public monies to save private investments. For the most part, these projects took the form of urban renewal, highway construction, and downtown redevelopment, which almost uniformly reduced housing available to the poor (Mollenkopf, 1977:123, 135). Just as white ethnics were frightened by incoming poor blacks, Chicago downtown business interests felt threatened by the deterioration in the 1940s of adjacent housing and neighborhoods, which decreased property values, increased costs for fire and police protection, and chased white middle-class customers to the suburbs and to suburban shopping centers (Squires 1987:154). But while white ethnics reacted to these threats with violence, the economic elite, consisting of the chief executives of Marshall Field (one of Chicago's largest department stores), the Chicago Title and Trust Company, and the city's important real estate companies, were able to devise a formula for redevelopment, motivated and controlled by private capital, but largely paid for and propelled by public power (Hirsch, 1983). For those tenants displaced, there was no relocation plan. Relocations often resulted in family breakup. Public housing was used as a main conduit, so that by 1954 half of all tenants of public housing were displaced persons, most of whom could not reenter their former neighborhoods, because rents were now 300 to 600 percent higher than 1940 rents (124-25). While almost half of the dislocated whites were relocated within the area, less than 20 percent of the blacks were. Almost all blacks displaced had been long established in the neighborhood (Fasenfest, 1984:111,185). When they moved, they frequently paid more in rent than in their previous location (de Vise, 1985 :104).n Moreover, the uprooting of lower-class blacks had an impact on surrounding neighborhoods of ethnic working-class whites, thereby increasing interracial tensions. Tenants replacing the outgoing blacks in these projects were predominantly white, single, or married without children, had college educations, were professionals, and often worked in nearby hospitals or universities that had been active in engineering the projects. Most had previously

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lived in similar high-rise, high-rent apartments and moved for convenience of location. The ultimate result has been "the creation, on the one hand, oflarge corridors of culturally and racially segregated communities of very low income Negroes on some ofthe city's least desirable land, and on the other hand, of enclaves of professional and academic elites of single persons and childless couples, albeit racially integrated, on prime urban land" (de Vise:1967:117). The Chicago Housing Authority's site selection process added to the problem by requiring site selection to be approved by the city council, whose members were almost all from white ethnic districts.12 This policy guaranteed that all black tenants would be located in black areas, and effectively shut the door to 180,000 white applicants who refused to live in all-black projects (de Vise, 1985:62).13 As de Vise (1985:306) suggests, "Chicago'S preeminence in having 10 of the nation's 16 poorest neighborhoods testifies to the past power of Chicago's government to concentrate and lock in the city's black poor." Causes of the depletion of the low-skilled iob market for young blacks

Jobs in the central city, mostly white-collar, were taken by whites driving in from suburban homes, financed by federally secured mortgages, over federally built roads. Between 1948 and 1977 Chicago lost nearly 400,000 jobs; after 1967, most of these were in the blue-collar area (Kasaroa, 1989:29,45). Between 1955 and 1963 black poverty areas, extending west and south of the central business district, suffered the greatest job loss, while northwestern Cook County, fifteen to twenty five miles away, showed the largest increase.14 Blacks suffered disproportionately as a result of plant movements, because blacks have been employed disproportionately "in industries with the largest number of layoffs due to economic cutbacks, plant closings, and the relocation offirms to cheaper labor sites and to the suburbs" (Wilson, 1987:35). Jobs increased in the central business district, but few black males were qualified for available while-collar jobs. These same companies with offices downtown have plants in the outlying suburbs. Because few blacks work in the suburbs, the Illinois Central Railroad closed stations in black areas while expanding its suburban service. Only 10 to 20 percent of blacks living in these areas own automobiles. While in 1966 there was negligible white unemployment, black unemployment in these poor communities varied from 5 to 37 percent. Between 1950 and 1966, average family incomes of these poorest communities increased from $2,494 to $4,809; but during the same period in the richest communities, the increase was from $7,390 to $22,330. Thus, "the transformation of large cities from centers of production to centers of administration bypassed much ofthe black community" (Fusfeld and Bates, 1984:90). Even the disappearance of jobs from inner cities is not an adequate explanation of black unemployment. If black youth had moved to the

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suburbs, as many did in the 1970s, studies show the unemployment rate for blacks would have been just as high (Farley and Allen, 1987:246). Blue-collar jobs in the types of heary industries where low-skilled blacks were most highly concentrated disappeared, and government jobs, a normal middle-class entry point for all ethnic groups, required skills lower-class blacks often lacked. One survey showed that almost twothirds of all government employment required professional, technical, or clerical skills (Fusfeld and Bates, 1984:39). Just as government policies encouraged mechanization in the preWorld War II South-which in tum eliminated large numbers of blacks, first as farmers and then as worke~ther government tax, social investment, and capital-formation policies increased the numbers of white-collar jobs and those qualified to enter them, while at the same time decreasing blue-collar employment. Government tax policies (investment credits, accelerated depreciation, and social security) have made it economically more sensible to invest in labor-replacing machines rather than in labor, and to replace blue-collar with white-collar employees, whose jobs most lower-class blacks are educationally unqualified to fill. Government investment in education of managers, scientists, engineers, teachers, and various technicians, as well as in research and development in all areas of business and industry, and the collection of census and other statistical information of great use in marketing are essential to corporate growth. Benefits from such expenditures accrue almost entirely to the middle class, with little or no benefit to the working class. Because three-quarters of all blacks live in inner cities, and because blacks are disproportionately employed in low-wage jobs and are usually unprotected by tenure and seniority, they are peculiarly vulnerable to instabilities in the economy. Unemployment among blacks had not been a problem before the 1929 depression. While unemployment in 1930 among blacks in the South did not rise above 3 or 4 percent, in the cities black male unemployment rose to 14.3 percent while white male unemployment rose only to 8.2 percent. This disparity in employment rates can be explained by two factors. During hard times, employers were more apt to layoff blacks than whites, and whites were willing to take lower-paying "dirty" work that they would have spurned in better times (Fusfeld and Bates, 1984:37-40, 45; Wilson, 1987:104, 121). Between 1939 and 1973, the GNP grew at an average annual rate of 2.6 percent, propelled by military expenditures during World War II and the Korean conflict. Rates of profit, however, began declining between 1966 and 1972, and from 1973 to 1986, real annual growth dipped to 1.5 percent; and during the years 1970-80, economic growth was practically stagnant at 0.7 percent annually. Recessions of 1970-71, 1974-75, 19791980, and 1980-81 contributed heavily to black unemployment and to a restricted labor market, making it more difficult for entry-level blacks to stay in or to enter the market (Bowles, Gordon, and Weisskopf, 1983:95-97,

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ch. 5; Gordon, Edwards, and Reich, 1982:207-222; James P. Smith, 1988:30; Fusfeld and Bates, 1984:153). Blacks gained between 1958 and 1974: their employment rates declined, and more blacks moved into the middle class. Yet, because white unemployment decreased substantially more than black (43 to 23 percent), blacks actually lost ground relative to whites. Black family income in 1988 was just 57 percent of white family income, a percentage that has remained fixed where it was when measured in 1900 and 1950 (Marks, 1989:135). Many of the black families that have achieved middle-class income levels depend on both spouses working to maintain that status (Glasgow, 1980:5-6). Thus, absolute improvements in blacks' economic standing left intact a large base for a developing "underclass." The Carter (1976-1980) and Reagan administrations (1980-1988) fought combined inflation and recession (stagflation) at the expense of workers, particularly black workers. The administrations' main policy tool was to reduce the growth of the money supply (Tilly, 1990:112). This move had the intended effect of raising interest rates, one consequence of which was to reduce the demand for consumer goods, causing layoffs in these industries. Curbs in government nonmilitary spending led to layoffs of thousands of government employees. Because blacks constituted about 20 percent of all federal employees in 1981 and were often the last hired, when the government began forced reductions, minorities were the first let go. Minorities represented 40 percent of those laid off. Reductions in federal funds going to states required like reductions in force at state levels (Blackwell, 1985:64--65; Lemann, 1991:201). By the 1980s, the blackwhite ratio of unemployment had grown to 2.5 to 1 from the "conventional" rate of 2 to 1. A more recent study shows that this discrepancy has mounted in 1989 to 4 to 1 (Chicago Tribune, May I, 1991, sec. I, p. 7). Difficulties in finding jobs hit young workers hardest (Hirschman, 1988:65-67).15 Why then after so many years of "progress" (from 1940 to 1980, a decline in families in poverty from 70 to 30 percent) do we still find almost one-third of black families in poverty? Two factors have continually been cited in explanation: inadequate economic growth since the late 1960s, together with recurrent recessions; and the "breakup" of the black family (Wilson, 1987; James P. Smith, 1988:161). These two causes are intimately related. Not only did the percentage of black mother-headed families increase from 1940 to 1980, but a larger percentage of women were becoming pregnant at an earlier age, women who had never been married and came from impoverished families. They started offpoor, had a limited capacity to earn because of low skills, needed to care for their children, had no spouse to add to the income, and often lived in low-income neighborhoods. Many women who divorce or separate from their husbands drop into poverty because they are so close to the poverty line already that the loss of the spouse's pay moves them below the line

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(Smith, 1988:161-65; McLanahan and Garfinkel, 1989:100; Sullivan, Warren, and Westbrook, 1989:ch. 8). Rolison (1986:43) argues that the social and economic origins of the underclass lie in the formation of the "underclass family." While the normative middle-class family places the father in the labor force and the mother in the home, or in today's society, both the mother and father in the labor force, the underclass family places only the mother in the labor force. "Therefore, it can be seen that the underclass family is the family form in which children are present and the mother must at some point sell her labor-power given that the father [who is unemployed] cannot. Given a patriarchal society marked by gender inequality, this insures the subordination of the underclass (read now in terms offamily)" (43). From 1950 through 1980 the rise in female-headed black families followed the growth of unemployed black males (44):

Unemployed Males

1950

1960

1970

1980

27.6%

30.7%

34.4%

41.1%

17.6%

21.7%

30.5%

41.7%

(16+)

Single-Female-Headed Families

During this same period, unskilled jobs that did open up in the central business districts-secretarial, data processing, office clerk-were defined as women's work, thus excluding "black men from good-paying unskilled male jobs because of race and low-paying unskilled female jobs because of gender" (210-11). Thus, in capitalist America, the black lower-class family, far from being "society's basic mode of economic organization [as it was] in the pre-industrial land" (Bodnar, 1985:38), was positively dysfunctional. Another useful indicator of the stability of the poverty population is the percentage of the population at or below the poverty line from 1964 to 1986. Between 1964 and 1969, numbers in poverty had been reduced about one-third, from 36 million in 1964, to just over 24 million in 1969, or from 19 to 12.1 percent. Nevertheless, in 1976, 25 million people, or 11.8 percent, were still in poverty; between 1979 and 1986, the poverty level climbed above 13 percent, higher than it was in 1969 at the start of the war on poverty (Harris and Wilkens, 1988:36-38). These figures are another indicator of the sensitivity of large parts of the population to macro changes in the economy. When jobs were plentiful in the 1960s, the poverty population declined radically. But even the "war" on poverty beginning in 1969 and continuing in subsequent years was unable to maintain the decline. The series of recessions in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the Reagan administration's withdrawal of many benefits pushed the poverty population in 1983 to 152 percent (two-thirds of whom were white).

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Black joblessness is most concentrated among those sixteen to nineteen years old. The "rule" has been that "black youth have always experienced higher unemployment if they competed in the same labor market with white youths" (Hirschman, 1988:69). Indeed, since the late 1960s, young black men have shown a decreasing participation in the civilian labor force. From 1969 to 1983, for black males eighteen to nineteen years old, labor force participation rates declined from 62.3 percent to 49.1 percent, while for white males it increased from 59.6 percent to 65.5 percent; that is, whereas in 1969 black male labor force participation was almost three percentage points higher than white, by 1983, it had fallen to more than 15 percentage points below (Fusfeld and Bates, 1984:113). In Chicago, this discrepancy between black and white youth employment didn't happen just by change: There was a sense that blacks were not really in on the intricate system of deals by which Chicago operated. When a white baby was born ... certain things were guaranteed. The minute the priest sprinkled the water on his head at his baptism, it was as ifthree powerful interlocking institutions had lined up on his side: The Roman Catholic Church, the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, and the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council. He was in. He had a future. (Was it an accident that an unusually high proportion of the blacks who were truly wired into the machine were converts to Catholicism?) In grammar school, the priests would check the kid out and decide what track to put him on. Ifhe was smart and ambitious, it would be Loyola or DePaul law school, the state's attorney's office, and then a partnership at one of the big law firms on LaSalle Street. Ifhe wasn't so smart and ambitious, there was Washburn Technical Institute (which the unions controlled), a plumber's or electrician's license (the unions controlled the city licensing agencies, too), and a relatively undemanding billet with a municipal department like Streets and Sanitation or Public Works (again, hiring controlled by the unions in conjunction with the Central Committee). The kid might even achieve the Chicago Dream-a job with the city and a job with the county, running concurrently-or, failing that, he could at least supplement his salary with a little moonlighting on (union-controlled) private contracting jobs. Neither route, the one to the state's attorney's office or the one to Streets and San, was open to a black kid. (Lemann, 1991:93-94)

If some black young men were not or could not participate in the "legitimate" labor force, what were they doing?

THE UNDERWORLD, THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY, THE UNDERCLASS, AND BLACK VIOLENCE During the first few years of the twentieth century, blacks coming to Chicago with few resources found residence in areas where rents were low and where there were employment opportunities. For many, this was

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Production of Black Violence

an area adjacent to the downtown business area, which housed the city's red-light district and continued to be the home of vice even after the red-light status was ended in 1912. The area consisted of "high-class colored residential neighborhoods, as well as 'black and tan' cabarets, white and colored vice resorts, and the worst type of slum," and "dilapidated houses carrying signs of rooms for rent at fifteen and twenty cents a bed, junk shops, markets with stale meat, and crowded Negro quarters with filthy bedding half-visible through sooty and broken windowpanes" (Thrasher, 1963:14; Frazier, 1966:278). But vice to some meant jobs for others as porters and maids in houses of ill fame, as entertainers, madams, pimps, prostitutes, panderers, and policy runners for gamblers. As the area became a center for jazz, blacks as well as whites furnished customers for these enterprises, the only spot in Chicago where blacks and whites could mix (Haller, 1991:725-26). Policy, a type of lottery involving a drawing of numbers, was particularly attractive to the black poor because as little as a few pennies could be wagered. In order to reduce their risks, policy banks were formed, covering perhaps one hundred policy stations, which, in tum, employed runners, who carried betting slips between the stations and the banks. In addition, there were clerks, cashiers, accountants, lawyers, police, and politicians on the payroll. With the increasing numbers of blacks arriving, and their concentration in the vice areas, white and, later, black politicians organized them into voting blocks that dominated two South Side wards. Blacks were excluded from bootlegging and bookmaking but were able to gain entrance to policy, although whites initially controlled most banks. Reciprocal relations evolved between black gamblers and politicians, in which the black vote was traded for political protection from police interference with illegal enterprise or for police raids on competing businesses. Police often allowed whites to operate vice more openly in black than in white areas. At the same time they harassed black prostitutes, driving them into the hands of pimps or white politicians (Haller, 1991:734; Peterson, 1952:143; Ianni, 1974:112-17). By the end of the nineteenth century, a few blacks became important gambling entrepreneurs, investing their profits in legitimate enterprises such as real estate or cabarets, where bootleg liquor was served, prostitutes plied their trade, and marijuana and cocaine could be used or sold. In the 1920s, contemporaries already considered narcotics addiction a "serious problem." Blacks dominated inner-city numbers playing and narcotics, but, as in the rest of society, black illegal activity was limited to black areas (Pinderhughes, 1987:148). A few black owners of policy games had amassed fortunes from which they built political bases. Entrepreneurial gains were pumped back into inner-city legitimate business, religious and other philanthropic causes. Such men, aside from wielding considerable political influence, provided what was perhaps the largest and best employment opportunities in

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inner-city areas, employing an estimated 6,000 persons in policy operations alone. Although few blacks were able to accumulate enough money to invest in legitimate enterprises as had other ethnic groups, these men, by their illegal activities, made illegal enterprise an integral part of the community economy (Cartney, 1970:28; Schaffer, 1972:4; Gosnell, 1967:118-35; Haller, 1991:728-31). This world, however, was changing, to the detriment of black illegal enterprise. By the end of the 1920s, the diffusion of radios and talking pictures, the popularity of dance bands, and the building on the South Side of large white-owned ballrooms sounded the death knell for the more intimate cabaret black culture. Accelerating this decline was the burgeoning criminal underworld that scared away white patrons (Haller, 1991:732). For most blacks the Great Depression was a disaster. Black children, no longer receiving pocket money from their parents, took to purse snatching and petty thievery. Commercialized prostitution gave way to streetwalkers. Scattered among the "church folks" were the "denizens of the underworld ... the pimps and prostitutes, the thieves and pickpockets, dope addicts and reefer smokers, the professional gamblers, cut-throats, and murderers." Criminals, however, tended to be "lone wolves." Most crimes were either crimes of passion or petty misdemeanors (Drake and Cayton, 1962:600, 611; Frazier, 1966:277). For the policy kings the depression was a time of growth. To unemployed working-class blacks, policy represented not only a source of employment but a change of fortune. Reportedly, in 1941, blacks were spending $7 million yearly on policy (Virgil Peterson, 1952:195). A small industry developed in predicting winners: dream books, spiritualists, and numerologists. To the gambling-entertainment-political link, the 1930s added the emerging field of black sports, partially supported by gambling money. Policy kings, long recognized as "race leaders," improved their social position during the depression by being among the few blacks having the capital to establish legitimate businesses and thereby having the ability to continue as patrons of charity. Considerable community influence was acquired by their ability to withhold as well as to give. Known as the "Upper Shadies," they were powerful enough so that other community leaders were hesitant to criticize their leisure activities: association with "sporting" women, extravagant and expensive clothing, extensive traveling, and wild parties. Policy kings invested in nightclubs and ballrooms, attended horse races, associated with theatrical and sports celebrities. At the same time, in an attempt to replace the old black upper class, they sent their children to the best eastern prep schools (Haller,1991:729; Drake and Cayton, 1962:ch. 17). The decade of the 1940s was dominated by the economic good times energized by World War II. Those blacks who came north after the war often exchanged $10-a-week farm jobs for $200-a-week city jobs in labor-staIVed war industries or government. Increased supplies of cash in

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Production of Black Violence

hands that were unused to such sums, and where there were limited opportunities for them to put the money to better use, provided a boom for saloons and dance and pool halls. Between 1945 and 1950, policy operations took in over $150 million (Pinderhughes, 1987:147). Gambling continued its climb into respectability, attracted middle-class interest, and thereby lost its dependence on violence as a means of norm enforcement. Chicago was in the secure tenure of Mayor Kelly's Democratic machine. Accommodations were easy to work out: hands off illicit business activities, such as policy, in exchange for votes. Police continued to underpolice black areas. A high police profile, particularly when it threatened black business interests (gambling, unlicensed or after-hours taverns, fencing and drug operations, houses of prostitution or streetwalkers) would result in charges of race prejudice from black politicians. Because ofthe numbers and concentration of black voters, their support, controlled by black politicians, was crucial to the machine's success. Meanwhile, the underground economy flowered: policy, prostitution, narcotics, and outlets for juvenile theft (pawnshops and fencing operations). Dope, which earlier had been pretty much limited to the jazz subculture, was merchandised throughout the inner city by whitecontrolled rings. Cocaine was available from the west coast of Central America. Teenage pushers sold reefers to other school children who stole to pay for them. Robberies, purse snatchings, thefts, muggings, and beatings of white "johns" drove away the remaining white trade. With the end of Prohibition, Italian and Jewish bootleggers took over leadership of black operations, with the exception of policy. Black gamblers still ran the inner-city gambling apparatus, but "a substantial portion" of the profits poured into the "pockets of the Capone syndicate" (Peterson, 1952:29193; Lait and Mortimer, 1950:45, 151-56). Because recent research has shown that delinquency (theft, burglary, and robbery) and gang violence have different etiologies and forms (Spergel, 1984), I discuss the two separately. Evolution of black gangs as drug sales organizations

Until the 1960s, except at the street level, blacks had been shut out of bootlegging and drug sales, principally by Italian-controlled groups. In the mid-1960s, blacks engaging in illegal enterprise saw their chance to take over the drug operation. A number of factors coalesced to make this possible: (1) Italians and allied groups who had now moved into the middle class were unwilling to use sufficient force to maintain their domination, while lower-class blacks were both willing and able to use violence; (2) blacks had the organization to merchandise drugs either through the use of their policy network or through organized street gangs; (3) youth employment was sufficiently bad in the late 1960s and thereafter, that the nature of gang composition changed-once the work

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option for maturing out of gangs disappeared, stable families became problematic, and the gang became the substitute family and the smvival technique for many youth; and (4) in the late 1960s and 1970s the drug market expanded into the middle class. Various other factors played a part in the transformation of some gangs into drug sales organizations. The politicization of crime, accompanied by intensive law enforcement efforts against gangs, had the unintended effect of encouraging intra- and intergang conflict and of enhancing gang organization. Large numbers of young men were concentrated in poorly maintained public housing; and in families where there was no male presence, mothers were on welfare, and their own prospects were dismal. Numbers of Hispanics, some with criminal connections, immigrated from drug-producing centers in Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America; and access of blacks to Far Eastern drug markets, as a result of their Vietnam War experience, freed them from dependence on Mafia sources (Abadinsky, 1990:255-60; Suttles, 1968:122; Hagedown and Macon, 1988; Ianni, 1974; Wilson, 1987:36-39; M. Sullivan, 1989:109-113; Spergel, 1990:174; Reuter, 1983:chap. 3, 1985:chap. 7). In the 1920s, the black South Side was bordered on the north by Italians, on the south by Irish, and on the west and south by Poles and Germans. Although there were more black gangs than white gangs per capita, white gangs were usually better organized, often as ethnic-based "athletic clubs"; that is, they had political sponsorship, which might later lead to political jobs for members. Such groups were active in fomenting mobs against blacks in the 1919 race riots. Black gangs, therefore, may have first formed both to protect themselves and their communities from these "clubs" and to imitate white gangs (Royko, 1971:30--32; Thrasher, 1963:42-43; Perkins, 1987). Usually, however, gang fights were over territory more than race and could involve the use of firearms. "Gangs are most numerous in the poorer sections and especially in the so-called 'crime spots' where gambling, robbery, and murder are prevalent." Gangs evolved from neighborhood play groups. Members, once they reached marriageable age, usually left the gang, and when most members were that age, the group would disappear, to be replaced by younger boys forming another group. By 1920, however, there was the rare "criminal gang," composed of older boys, "purely commercialized groups" that engaged in crime for profit. One of the gangs specialized "in dopepeddling" (Thrasher, 1963:14, 121, 130, 140,. 289). During the 1940s, gangs began organizing in housing projects. Violence consisted principally of intergang fights, in which gangs settled their differences with zip guns, knives, baseball bats, and brass knuckles. Criminal acts consisted of muggings, holdups, assaults, and burglaries, but, on the whole, during the 1950s and 1960s, property crime was the most prevalent form of delinquency. "Serious violence" was uncommon (Curry and Spergel, 1988:382; Spergel, 1990:188). With the increase in black and decrease of white enrollment, however, schools began to deteriorate.

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Production of Black Violence

School dropout rates reached 40 percent in some schools. Gang recruitment often followed school dropout, which in tum led to petty crime and involvement in the juvenile court system (Perkins, 1987:33-34). Various attempts were made to domesticate these gangs by such organizations as the YMCA, the Chicago Boys Club, Chicago Youth Centers, and Hull House. Social and law enforcement agencies were often at odds in their treatment of gang members. As a result, neither gained their trust. City business and political interests did little to provide gang members with alternatives to criminal activity (Perkins, 1987:31-32). During the late 1960s a number of abortive efforts were made by various interests to tum newly formed powerful gangs to their political advantage. In 1968, leaders of the Black P. Stone Nation were invited by President Nixon to the White House. Funds from the federal government and private foundations were used for a number of short-lived training and small business ventures that failed because they lacked sufficient ongoing funding and professional guidance to assure successful management and were hampered by internal struggles for power among gang members (Kotlowitz, 1991:37). But perhaps most of all, they were defeated by harassment from City Hall forces led by Mayor Daley, who feared a competitive political force not under his control. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the city launched a war against gangs. A series of prosecutions on weapons, racketeering, and murder charges resulted in the incarceration of many gang leaders, who claimed that they were railroaded on trumped-up charges and that black organizations, which had earlier worked with them, had now abandoned them (Perkins, 1987:21-23, 37; Olivero and Schremmer-Phillip, 1989; Fry, 1973; Dawley, 1973; Royko, 1971:206). Incarceration of gang leaders had mUltiple effects: new gang coalitions formed; gang violence increased in the prisons; and as gang members were released, gangs reformed in the streets (Perkins, 1987:38-39; Spergel, 1989:246). Disorganization within and competition between gangs resulted in fights for leadership and for control of drug territories. According to one study, the most serious period of gang violence was between 1967 and 1971, followed by a lull (on the streets, not in the prisons) between 1972 and 1976, and then a heightened degree of violence, reaching a high of eighty-four gang-related homicides in 1981 (Spergel, 1984:204; Olivero and Schremmer-Phillip, 1989:15). Black gamblers had maintained their dominance in policy operations until the early 1950s, when Italian and Jewish mobsters "with superior manpower and organization muscled in" (Ianni, 1974:117, 317). Blacks continued to run street operations as well as intermediate ranks within the inner city, but for the most part, outside operations were controlled by Italian syndicates with the political contacts to provide police protection. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the character of black gangs began to change from territorially oriented younger members to commercially oriented older (nineteen plus) members (316-17).

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With the decline of the large profits earlier obtained by black policy kings, drugs became the logical and perhaps the only road left to poor blacks if they wished to follow the Irish, Jews, and Italians who used bootlegging as a means of social mobiliW. Increasing law enforcement efforts, public condemnation, and stiff penalties drove other groups out of the field. Enormous drug profits provided ample funds for political graft. Selling cocaine as well as heroin on the street enormously expanded the market and therefore the profitabiliW of drug operations (Ianni, 1974:318-23; Haller, 1989). Through the late 1960s into the mid-1970s, congruent with gang involvement in drug trafficking, both the seriousness and the violent nature of crime increased: There were numerous instances of gangs extorting businessmen; threats, beatings, widespread use of guns; shooting of young men who resisted attempts at gang recruitment; coercion of witnesses to prevent them from testifYing against gang members; and retaliation against neighborhood residents who dared defy gang rule (Olivero and Schremmer-Phillip, 1989:21-23; Perkins, 1987:80; Cuny and Spergel, 1988:383; Spergel, 1990:201, 214). In 1975, territorial disputes over narcotic sales resumed as imprisoned gang leaders began to be released. Large percentages of prisoners were black, from the same economic class, often from the same neighborhoods, and thus I could easily and active~y organize and recruit while in prison. In 1978, one leader, Jeff Fort, of the Black P. Stone Nation formed the El Rukns. Soon after his release, he met with representatives of the Italian syndicate having vice interests in El Rukn territoI)'. Reputedly, the Italian group ordered Fort to keep hands off. After burning down the mob restaurant where the warnings were given, Fort, in tum, ordered the syndicate out of El Rukn territoI)'. The reorientation of some Chicago gangs from territorial defense to economic gain through drug sales was reflected in the 1978 reorganization of the Chicago Police Department: The Gang Crimes Unit and the Narcotics Unit were merged (Olivero and Schremmer-Phillip, 1989:38, 60, 62; Abadinsky, 1990:257; Kotlowitz, 1991:38). By 1981, the El Rukns were investing their drug profits in real estate and other legitimate businesses and were employing pharmacists, doctOl'S, accountants, and la""Yers. Satellite clubs or alliances were formed in other parts of the countl)' (Olivero and Schremmer-Phillip, 1989:67-99; Klein and Maxson, 1989:217; Lemann, 1991:244--52).16 (For a similar evolution of black gangs into drugs and violence in Harlem, New York, and the accompanying violence, see Smith and Chapelle, 1991). Reportedly, by the mid-1980s gangs were so strong that they were able to keep crack out of Chicago until 1988, while it was ravaging other cities. The incentive to prevent its distribution was that it could be easily produced and sold by small entrepreneurs and thus, if allowed to enter the market, might have challenged the monopoly of the established gangs (Kotlowitz, 1991:38).

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Production of Black Violence

As to why anyone would engage in such a dangerous and short-lived occupation as selling drugs, a "young adult already launched on a career in organized crime" answered (Ianni, 1989:212), "If the people I saw driving Lincolns and Cadillacs in my neighborhood had been doctors or lawyers, that's probably what I would have wanted to be, but they weren't; they were drug dealers and pimps who were making it."

The path of black violent crime Historians, writing about the late nineteenth century, have concluded that after 1870 the socializing effects of industrialization-public schooling, bureaucratic and industrial employment-brought about a significant downturn in all varieties of crime, from drunkenness to murder. In Philadelphia, between 1900 and 1930, young Italian male immigrants had high rates of criminal involvement, much of it violent. But such violence declined, as it did in other northern cities, as "they went to school, got married, and settled into the orderly pattern of home ownership [and] neighborhood stability," thereby focusing the immigrant's attentions "on family and future." Blacks, on the other hand, have been "denied the experience of regimentation, the need to adjust to the psychological and emotional demands exacted by urban-industrial discipline" (Lane, 1989:71; Lane, 1986:3, 13-16, 37-44). National crime rates appear to bear out this thesis. Crime rates for all groups, including blacks, fell through the 1940s and 1950s, years of full employment. Moreover, the predominant type of murder during these years was between persons known to each other, that is, assault rather than robbery homicide (Zahn, 1989:224). But beginning in the mid-1960s, at a time when black youth once again were excluded from industrial advancement, crime, particularly violent crime, began to skyrocket to rates comparable to the preindustrial 1840s and 1850s (Lane, 1989:73-74; Zahn, 1989:224). Additional support is given to this hypothesis by subsequent Chicago crime statistics. The homicide rate in 1965 was about the same as in 1926 and 1927, during the Prohibition era, and remained relatively stable during the interim, even though the black population in Chicago rose from 7 to 28 percent ofthe total. But between 1965 and 1974, although the black population increased only 22 percent, its homicide rate doubled, and robberies by blacks increased 55 percent (Block, 1977:39). Thus, the higher homicide rate cannot be explained by the increase in the young male population. Additionally troubling findings are that those youths between fifteen and twenty-one who got into trouble acted in concert with other youth, began to commit more serious and violent offenses (more than 50 percent were robberies) as they got older, and increasingly used guns during robberies. In 1977, three-quarters of all homicides during robberies resulted from gun use (Skogan, 1989:239; Block and

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Block, 1980:11, 32; Block, 1977:29,43), and during the period 1965 to 1981, blacks committed 76 percent of all Chicago robbery homicides (Block, 1985b:vi) As one Chicago researcher commented, "Some black youths have taken up robbery as an economically viable profession" (Richard Block, 1977:51, 53). Because Chicago is the most racially segregated city in the country, and because most offenders, particularly younger offenders, normally commit crimes in their own vicinity, both offenders and their victims are usually black. In Chicago, 95 percent of the victims of black assault homicide are black. In the case of robbery homicide, however, black victims have the dubious advantage of being poor targets because they usually have little to steal, so that in 1980, only 24 percent of the victims of black robbers were other blacks (Block, HI85a:69, 27). In 1985, across the United States "84 percent ofthe violent crimes perpetrated against blacks were committed by black offenders .... The leading cause of death among black males between ages 15 and 24 is murder by other blacks" (Flowers, 1988:83, 85). The problem of black crime has been exacerbated by the tempting political target of black male predators roaming the streets in search of white middle-class victims. From Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon's law and order campaign to George Bush's Willie Horton escapade, politicians have found its attractions hard to resist. As a result, law enforcement policy and resources have targeted the black male violent offender with dramatic results. A recent study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency shows that 29 percent of Cook County black males between the ages of 20 and 29 were in jail at least once last year, as against 4 percent for whites (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 1990, p. 1). Nationally, almost one in four (23 percent) black men in their twenties is in the custody or control of the criminal justice system, either in prison, jail, on probation, or on parole on any given day. In 1989, half of all men in state prisons (138,706) were black, and about one third of all men in federal prisons (7,358) were black (Mauer, 1990:3, 8; Curtis, 1989:148). In Illinois in 1987, of 19,071 males in prison, 11,422 were black. Perhaps 60 percent of these men were imprisoned for some crime of violence such as robbery, murder, rape, or aggravated assault. Because the vast number of blacks in Illinois live in Chicago, we can presume that all but a small number of these blacks in prison had been Chicago residents (U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1987; Dykstra, 1981:18). Although this statistical review tells us about the seriousness and extent of involvement of black youth in crime and the effects of their crimes on other blacks, it tells us nothing about how young people get into crime. The history I have set forth detailing the inner-city economy, the limited choice that black youth have to pursue legitimate employment, and the history of illicit enterprise in the Chicago inner city brings us to the point where it is appropriate to answer that question.

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Production of Black Violence

Getting into crime Thrasher (1963:258, 263-66) suggests that in the 1920s delinquency typically began with truancy, often accompanied by the truant leaving home, living by picking up rags, bottles, and barrels to sell, then stealing milk, groceries, and bicycles, often selling the articles to junk dealers or fences, who then might direct children to steal items more easily disposed of. The ready accessibility to saloons and gambling, the unavailability of positive moral incentives, and the reinforcement of this behavior by the boy's peer group insured its continuity. Mercer Sullivan (1989:ch. 5) brings this analysis up to date in a study comparing youth in three Brooklyn, New York, communities, one white, one Puerto Rican, and one black. The book focuses on "the process by which inner-city youths choose between employment and crime as alternative sources of income" (108). The white neighborhood consisted largely of Catholic ethnic descendants of Italian and Polish immigrants, with income levels "markedly higher" than the two other neighborhoods but lower than most white areas in the city. The residents of the predominantly black area were from first- and second-generation children of southern immigrants. And the Puerto Rican neighborhood was composed predominantly of first- and second-generation families. Levels of AFDC and of families below the poverty line were 10 percent in the white area and about 50 percent in the minority areas. The black neighborhood consisted of "a massive concentration of low-income housing projects amid acres of burned-out rubble relieved only by a few shopping streets, a small section of private houses, and a very few factories. Fire [set by arsonists, presumably for insurance money] continued to ravage what was left ofthe retail section" (148). Sullivan and his coworkers found a complex but rational system of choices that led some youth to choose crime. Factors that encouraged such a choice arose from a combination of limited family resources (no father in the household, or a father without access to labor market networks for sons to follow, and parents with little income to share with their children) and the expectation that youths spend their mid-teens in school despite the inability of the schools to fulfill their function as preparatory institutions for future work because a segmented labor market excluded black youth with these qualifications. ''youth joblessness ... makes economic crime more attractive, while adult un- and underemployment contribute to a weakened social control environment" (226). Regardless of the neighborhood the youths came from, all youths, as they grew older, went through a series of steps tending to increase or decrease their involvement in crime: 1. In their early to middle teens, youths from the same area hung together in temporary assoclations (cliques), engaging in fighting for

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turf and reputation with other cliques from surrounding areas. During these street fights, theft did take place (taking radios, bicycles, or clothing), but the aim was fun, excitement, or to establish a personal "rep." Boys, at this stage, stole for the property's use value, not its sales value; if it was sold, little would be received because the boy had no idea of its market value. Fighting did, however, prepare the youth for more serious criminality because the taking of property revised his view of property rights-they were no longer fixed but were something over which he could exercise control. From fighting he learned techniques that could be applied to violent crime and how weapons could be acquired and used. 2. By mid-teens, boys had more experience in crime; they were stronger. Few had been caught, and if caught, not severely punished. They had a greater need for income (for clothing, entertainment, marijuana, girls); they learned more about the value of stolen items and about the networks for converting them to cash; they were better able to weigh the risks and benefits between types of crime, as well as between crime and legitimate employment. The motivation for crime now became economic, a means of support rather than an occasional excursion to vary the day-to-day boredom of just hanging out. Generally, street 1lighting preceded involvement in economic crime, and as a youth took on crime as his main source of income, he dropped out of street fighting. 3. Once youths had determined on a career of crime, the ecology of the area determined the type of crime in which they might engage. Because the black housing projects in which black youth lived provided limited opportunities (apartment burglaries, muggings in elevators or staiIwells), they eventually had to commit robberies and purse snatchings outside their neighborhoods where, with repeated exposures, their chance of apprehension was heightened. Most youths by their late teens decided "the risks outweighed the benefits" and discarded violent crime as their principal occupation (163). 4. Several of those who were disillusioned with the risks of street crime were attracted to drug sales. At the time of these obseIVations (the early 1980s), there were "smoke shops" and "reefer stores" where marijuana was sold. Heroin and cocaine were sold on the streets. It was easy to obtain drug consignments until the youth had enough capital to stake himself. A competent seller could earn between $500 and $1,000 a week. Sullivan found that work was a crucial variable in the incidence and seriousness of crime committed by these youth: (1) "crime preceded work," usually occurring between ages ten and thirteen; (2) "occasional crime for economic gain overlapped with early employment"-that is, employment had the effect of reducing the frequency or predatory nature

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of the crimes committed; (3) crime involvement was reduced as the boys aged and found steady work; (4) a few of the group, in their late teens, entered a type of crime that would provide "a steady income in lieu of wages from legitimate employment" (207). The white neighborhood, the only one with many adults in blue-collar jobs, provided a network into legitimate employment unavailable to the black and Puerto Rican youths. Where legitimate employment was available, most youths opted for such employment over a criminal career. Even those who pursued crime tended to commit less risky and predatol}' crime than youth in the other two neighborhoods. Crime, particularly violent street crime, which has a noxious influence on any community, hits black communities particularly hard. Because blacks are so segregated and are so visible in other communities, the general absence of easy, lucrative targets such as factories and stores, as well as their lack of access to employee theft, "forces" young blacks into available crime opportunities such as robberies and drug sales. In the Puerto Rican neighborhood, by contrast, nearby factories provided easy access to young burglers. For auto thieves, there were markets in both legitimate auto repair shops that dealt on the side and with illegitimate chop-shops. Stolen goods were sold at "bargain basement" prices to community residents. For community residents such crime represented a kind of wealth redistribution, and the perpetrators were therefore "more or less tolerated at the local level according to the extent to which they distribute scarce resources into a neighborhood" (244). On the other hand, blacks who commit crimes in their own neighborhoods receive no such tolerance. But reqardless of their choice---crime or no crime-the futures for these youth are dim: some will "accept the low-wage, unstable jobs to which they did not have access during the period of their involvement in serious theft, ... some will die, others will spend much of their lives in prisons or mental hospitals. Few will graduate to lucrative criminal careers, and few will continue the patterns of street crime of their youth" (250). Even at $500 to $1,000 a week a drug seller's future was dismal;I7 "I'm a good businessman .... I know how to buy and sell. But I've been ripped off, cut, and arrested. Now, I'm on probation and I won't get off so easy next time. But how am I gonna get a job now? ... I can't go up to somebody and say, "Listen, I know how to buy and sell, ... I've been buying and selling drugs for years." And I sure don't want to be no messenger, not after the money I'm used to" (175).

An economic and political end product-The Henry Horner Housing Project Kotlowitz (1991) tells the stol}' of two black preteen-age boys, Terrence and Lafeyette Rivers, during the period 1986 to 1989 in the Henl}' Horner Housing Project on Chicago'S near West Side. Of the 66,000 people in 1980

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living in the immediate area, 88 percent were black and 46 percent had incomes below the poverty line. In the stunmer of 1987,6,000 lived in the project, 4,000 of whom were children. Eight-five percent of the households were headed by women (65). The neighborhood had no banks, theatres, movie houses, skating rinks, or bowling alkys, all having moved away with the white and black middle classes in the 1960s and 1970s. Welfare checks were cashed at currency exchanges at a cost of $8 a check. Once a month women took cabs out of the neighborhood to buy all their groceries (140). Both in management and design, the project matched the deterioration of the neighborhood. Beginning in 1965, a series of damning reports alleged that the Chicago Housing Authority was run by incompetents and political hacks. One report concluded that the CRA "is operating in a state of profound confusion and disarray. No one seems to be minding the store [or) seems to genuinely care" (260). LaJoe Rivers, the mother of the two children who are the subject of this book, moved to the project with her parents because they were about to be evicted from their apartment to make way for the building of the Illinois Institute of Technology (21). Some years later, when LaJoe obtained her own apartment, the shoddy design and construction were already taking their toll. Apartments had remained unpainted, and repairs had virtually ended in the 1970s when the CRA ran out of money; her apartment was roach-ridden; closets had been constructed without doors, making orderliness almost impossible; sheet-metal cabinets were rusted through; during the winter, tenants had to open windows because the heating ran out of control; bathrooms had been designed without windows, and because the fans atop the building that were supposed to provide ventilation had been stolen, they were darl< and dank; scalding water ran day and night from the broken tub faucet (there was no shower); one toilet emitted a fetid odor from an unknown source, until April 1989, when an inspection ordered by a new CRA director found the basement crowded with forgotten and now rusted refrigerators and stoves, together with dead animals, the cause of the stench (24, 27-28, 241). LaJoe met her husband, Paul, when she was thirteen and he seventeen. Paul is the father of all her eight children, the first of whom LaJoe had at the age of fourteen. When LaJoe found out that Paul, who began to shoot drugs at twenty-two, had fathered two children by another woman, their relationship soured; he now spent little time at the house, but did his best to father the children (24). Ever-present violence, gangs, and drugs dominated project life. In 1975, someone strangled LaJoe's older sister in her bathtub. More recently, two teenagers robbed LaJoe, cutting her right middle and ring fingers with a butcher knife, severing the neIVes, so that she has been unable to do many ordinary household chores. The friend with LaJoe was stabbed seven times. A local candy store was firebombed for unknown reasons; a fourteen-yearold friend of her son Lafeyette died in the crash of a stolen car when it went out of control as the police gave chase (54,98,186,209).

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Horner was divided between two gangs) the Conservative Vice Lords and the Disciples. The Vice Lords occupied two of the high rises. One apartment was outfitted with a television) a sofa) and lounge chairs. Empty apartments were used to store guns) drugs) and money. In one week police confiscated twenty-two guns and 330 grams of cocaine. The gang worked out of two cars stationed in front of their high rises. Sentries were posted to watch for cops. Entrance hall lights were knocked out to make any police search of that building more difficult. "Soldiers" sold cocaine and heroin and returned a percentage of the proceeds. The estimated take of the gang was $50)000 to $100)000 a week. Gang shootings became a part of the growing-up experience. Gangs shot from one high rise to another; a gang member was shot on the street in front of LaJoe's building and died on the stairway (still stained with his blood); an eight-year-old boy and thirteen-year-old girl were wounded by stray bullets; young men were seen waving guns and automatic weapons in the street; several times a year LaJoe and her children were pinned down in her apartment or in the street by exchanges of gunfire; a youngster was given a gun to shoot a gang member found in another gang's territory; a fifteen-year-old friend of Lafeyette who got into an argument with a gang member was shot dead (17-18) 32) 41--42). At the time of these observations) Jimmie Lee) thirty-eight) headed one faction of the Vice Lords) was the undisputed ruler of the project) and determined who could sell drugs in his territory. Lee arrived in a safari of three cars) the two bracketing him being his bodyguards. He wore a bulletproof vest and used a cellular telephone to communicate with his network. His arrival was greeted by a mob of worshipping teenagers. Lee also acted as arbitrator in family disputes) occasionally bought food for poor families) gave children dollar bills or bought them new shoes) and did not allow his gang to use thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds in gang fights. In 1987) he was convicted of possession of a controlled substance) with intent to deliver) and sentenced to thirty years in prison) but others were waiting in line to take over (33-36) 41) 138). One of LaJoe's main concerns was to keep her sons out of gangs. She forbade them to wear caps (the bill turned one way signaled a Disciple) the other way a Vice Lord) or ear rings (another gang insignia). But for a young boy the sale of drugs was enticing. Although Paul, Terrence's father) warned one drug dealer who had befriended his son to stay away from him) twelve-year-old Terrence was soon back. He sold under the L) two blocks from the project, where it was convenient to stash his drugs and money in the supporting pillars. The dealer set up Terrence in his own apartment and entrusted him with as much as $10)000 in the belief that no one would suspect a boy that young of carrying such sums. Evenings he and the dealer would play at target practice with a .45 revolver. Because he missed his family) Terrence eventually moved back home. But by the time he was eighteen he had been arrested forty-six times for crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to purse snatching) and

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finally, for his involvement in a tavern hold-up, he received an eight-year term. LaJoe's next oldest son, Lafeyette, was arrested with four other boys for breaking into and stealing items from a car. Because he had no record, Lafeyette was given a year's probation and one hundred hours of community seIVice at a boys club (265,2991).18

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Blacks in the United States make the perfect subject for the study of unequal accumulation of capital. As I have demonstrated, the function of blacks in the American social formation was to become part of a process of wealth accumulation for others. As slaves, they were accumulation machines for cotton plantation owners. That relation substantially continued until they became part of the northern industrial proletariat. There, through the 1960s, they represented a reseIVe army of unemployed: a group of mostly low-skilled laborers who did the dirtiest, hardest, and lowest-paying jobs, often substituting as strikebreakers, laid-off during recession and slow production periods, to be rehired as needed by employers (Marks, 1989:134-35). When those jobs disappeared, so did their place in the labor market. On a macro basis the creation of an underclass can be understood as the end product of a massive redistribution of wealth. As one study concluded (Tilly, 1990:104), the "economic restructUling [described above] has primarily [widened] the gap between high- and low-paid workers" (emphasis in original). A 1983 sUIVey of wealth distribution in the United States found that it was "remarkably uneven" and that such maldistribution has been increasing in the past twenty years, the wealth moving upward from the poor to the rich (Joint Economic Committee, 1986:23, 36).19 The multiple roadblocks in the way of black accumulation act also as collection points for a transfer of wealth from poor blacks into richer hands.20 When this process is multiplied in all the ways I have tried to show in this essay, it is apparent that lower-income blacks, being at the base ofthe market structure, have the least ability themselves to accumulate capital. Life for them is the equivalent of an Atari war game. If one missile doesn't get you, another will. Like the children's game "king ofthe hill," those on top stay on top by pushing down those who try to scramble up to the top themselves. Not only do those on top push down, but all those along the path up have an interest in keeping those below them always below them. Just as space on top is limited, so is space along the path up the hill. By using the capitalist process of accumulation as the point of inquiry, I have shown that all resources, whether found in government policy, corporate enterprise, market forces inside and outside the inner city, or in their own racial group at a higher level on the hill, have some interest in keeping a certain number of young black males at the bottom or, more to the point, have no interest in them at all. One should not be surprised

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therefore if those at the very bottom create their own hill and turn all of these forces on their heads. Through the gang, powerlessness becomes power, daily boredom is replaced by melodrama; through drug sales, wealth is instantly created, accompanied by the possibility of acquiring a future of material goods and status. In a word, people denied all means of legal accumulation have created their own ladder of opportunity, temporary and destructive though it may be. Although the accommodation arrived at by some blacks-violent crime in black communities-is understandable, it creates havoc and great pain and suffering, mostly for other blacks, and thus, ironically, substantially decreases their ability to accumulate educational and occupational riches. The reality for inner-city blacks is that white capitalist America no longer needs to exploit them. Left high and dry on the capitalist shore, these same young men, infused with capitalist values of power and materialism, have turned to the only other victims available in their segregated world, other blacks. If one were to sit down with a class of graduate students in criminology and were to assign them a problem-to set forth all the criminogenic conditions necessary to create the community violence described in this essay-it would take considerable study, time, and thought before a brilliant team of students could provide as perfect a set of public and private decisions as would be needed to bring about this result. Yet such a result was produced, not with much, but with little thought; not because powerful people necessarily wanted to harm blacks, not even because of racism. It all happened perfectly naturally according to the law of politics whereby power seeks its own level, and the law of the economics of capitalism, that of the "invisible hand," whereby one, by seeking one's own profit, benefits all.

Notes 1 Similar conditions will be found in other northern cities, although the details will vary in accordance with each city's political and economic structure. See, for example Boston (Sheehan, 1984); New York (Jonnes, 1986; Schnick, 1982); Cleveland (Kusmer, 1976); Philadelphia (Kleniewski, 1981; Ley, 1974; Lane, 1986); Milwaukee (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988); North Manhattan (Katznelson, 1981); and Los Angeles (Glasgow, 1980). 2 It should not be concluded, however, that poverty is an exclusively black problem. Although the 1990 census shows that minorities make up about 25 percent of the U.S. population (12.1 percent black, 9.0 percent Hispanic, 2.9 percent Asian, and less than 1 percent Native American), even in 1980 minorities composed 42 percent of those in poverty, meaning that most persons in poverty are white (U .S. Dept. of Commerce, 1992, tables 16, 717). A large proportion of those in poverty are members of female-headed households (Sandefur and Tienda, 1988:2-3). 3 The vast number of such crimes are committed by males. Why this should be so has been investigated by Hagan (1989), Jack Katz (1988), and Spergel (1986:110): "Gang violence involves males almost exclusively." With reference to black women, see Marable (1983).

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4 During the period 1890-1910, described by McMillen (1989:141--491 as the most repressive years of the postwar era, both "tenant stealing" by other landowners and voluntary migration were considered deadly threats to the South's labor supply. This threat was combated with a variety of devices, from physical restraint to countless means of maintaining tenants in debt, and a criminal justice system supporting these practices (Bloom, 1987:26--271. 5 Ford (1973:241 asks, "Higher farm incomes for whom? What was to be the fate of the 1,183,000 displaced farm workers and their dependents? Were the impending changes to take place in the interest of efficiency or in the order of special interest? What, in fact, happened? The two full-time equivalent series for agriculture (family workers and hired farm workers) indicate a job loss of 2,291,000 for Southern agriculture between 1950 and 1969." 6 To survive, a family may employ several aspects of this economy: one "articulate" daughter helps her mother to obtain her welfare entitlement; another daughter who is doing well in school is expected to continue, eventually entering the regular job market; and a son good at hustling deals in drugs (Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1985:321. Only one study (Schaffer, 19731 analyzes in- and outflows of inner-city income. In 1969, the author compared two Brooklyn, New York, neighborhoods-Bedford-Stuyvesant, a predominately black low-income area, and Borough Park, a middle-class white area about forty blocks distant-and concluded that "the flows of income through the Bedford-Stuyvesant community ... [make it] appear to be rather like a sieve, with a relatively small stream of income flowing through it [and] with little remaining." 7 All their lives, southern rural blacks had been defrauded of their earnings by landowners. They were forced to borrow at unlawfully high interest rates, to buy supplies at company stores at inflated prices, and were subjected to falsified accounts of money owed. Powerlessness to seek legal remedies assured they would be constantly abused. The effect of such practices on the ability of blacks to accumulate capital is obvious (McMillen, 1989:132--41; Lemann, 1991:18-19, 55--571. 8 What was said about European immigrants before them could also be said about migrating blacks: "In reality two immigrant Americas existed. One consisted largely of workers with menial jobs. The others, a smaller component, held essentially positions which pursued personal gain and leadership. Immigrants did not enter a common mass but adapted two separate but related worlds which might be termed broadly working class and middle class" !Bodnar, 1985:2081. 9 The difference in the way blacks and ethnic groups accumulated capital for small business may be limited by economic as well as cultural imperatives. Suttles (1968:122, 2241 describes the personal labor in lieu of cash that went into the purchase of a building. An immigrant group would engage in a business on the first floor of a building and pack other floors with family and friends to pay for the building's purchase. Blacks, on the other hand, were doing well if they could live in a project, where such business ventures were impossible. See Kotlowitz (19911 and note 20. 10 Blacks received only about 5 percent of the HOLC refinanced loans. Various FHA

policies, particularly the recruitment of personnel from hostile banking institutions and their lack of resources, prevented blacks from profiting from the program (Weaver, 1948:711. 11 The reason dislocatees paid more for rent was that they were looking for a rental units

of the same kind as had just been demolished. Thus, there were fewer such units available to meet a greater demand. Conversely, those units built for middle-class renters added to an already adequate supply, so that rents for such units were reduced. The net effect was that the lower-income renter subsidized the middle- or upperincome renter or buyer (Hirsch, 1983:62-631.

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1.2 Of 33 projects approved during the 1950s to mid-1960s, only one was in an area with

less than 85 percent blacks. Between 1948 and 1953, the CHA built 9,903 housing units, of which 9,141 were located in black areas, 615 in mixed areas, and 147 in a white area. Between 1954 and 1967, the CHA built 10,193 of 10,256 family units in black areas, 33 in a mixed area, and 30 in a white area (Hirsch, 1983:243). 13 Feeble federal inteIVention, white opposition, and city intransigence combined to

successfully stifle litigation to force integration in public housing projects or to place blacks in white areas. During the 1970s and 1980s, fewer than 200 public housing units were built in Chicago despite orders by two federal judges (Hirsch, 1983:265-68: de Vise, 1985:290-91). 14 "Between 1957 and 1963 the number of jobs near the Negro Ghetto declined by almost

93,000 while the number of jobs in outlying and suburban areas increased by 72,000" (Baron and Hymer, 1972:304). In manufacturing, the suburbs provided only 37 percent of the jobs in 1948, but by 1963 they accounted for more than half (Taylor, 1971:59). Retailing employment located in the central cities fell from almost 75 percent in 1948 to just over half the total employment by the mid-1960s. Whereas in 1954 Chicago still contained 10,000 "manufacturing establishments," employing nearly 500,000 bluecollar workers, by 1982 this number had been cut to less than 162,000. Thus, although low-skilled blacks in the 1950s had about the same employment rate as whites, by the 1980s two out of three blacks residing in ghetto areas were jobless, while six out of ten white adults were employed, about the same rate as during the 1950s (Wacquant and Wilson, 1989:13). 15 After 1940, as whites left unskilled labor for other occupations, blacks increasingly occupied the places vacated. For example, in Chicago, the percentage of all males fourteen and older employed as operative and nonagricultural laborers declined from 30.8 percent, in 1940 to 29.7 percent in 1950. For black males, for the same years, the percentage went in the opposite direction, from 40.2 percent to 52.0 percent. This same trend continued through at least 1980, when 37.2 percent of all black males were in such unskilled occupations, as compared to only 21.6 percent of white males (Rolison, 1986:144). A recent study of the history of unemployment over a hundred-year period concluded that "in 1982, as in 1882, unemployment was a class phenomenon, a malady afflicting blue-collar workers while sparing nearly all members of the middle class. In 1982, for example, the annual unemployment rate for managers and professionals was 3.3 percent, while the figure for 'operators, fabricators, and laborers' was 16.7 percent" (Keyssar, 1989:19). Thus, to the extent that a high percentage of blacks remain in the laboring class, they will be disproportionately unemployed. 16 Spergel (1984:204, 206) found that during the period studied, 1967-81, in Chicago there

were 12,000 homicides, of which 5.5 percent, or 634, were attributed by the police to gangs. "Of the fifty-five identified violent gangs, thirty-three were Hispanic, fifteen were black, and seven were white. Chicago's population is approximately 40 percent white, 40 percent black, and 14 percent Hispanic." More recently the police estimate one hundred to two hundred gangs operate in Chicago (Select Committee, 1986:46). 17 A July 1990 study of open-air and crackchouse markets in Washington, D.C., shows the

centrality of narcotics sales to black urban life. Narcotics has offered middle-class employment opportunities, netting $24,000 a year, to daily sellers (Reuter, MacCoun, and Murphy, 1990). A Rand Corporation research group studied all those charged with crimes, 1985-87. They found that 66 percent of the "District population-and 80 percent ofthe group most likely to be involved in crimes, males aged 20-24-are black," that "in recent years, each succeeding age group entering adulthood has shown increasing involvement in dealing. As many as one out of six black males born in 1967

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were charged with drug distribution between ages 18 and 20 .... Extrapolating from current, age-specific arrest rates, the ratio is likeJly to be closer to one in three before the age group reaches 30. Few of those charged ... had completed high schoo!. ... Those who sold on a daily basis (three out of eight) have net earnings of $2000 per month at the median and $3600 per month on average .... Feeding a personal habit seemed to be a prime motive for involvement." Two-thirds of those arrested had legitimate jobs and devoted more time to such work than dealing. Even though risks in such salles involved a 22 percent chance of imprisonment, a 7 percent chance of severe injury, and a 1.4 percent chance of death, and even though sellers knew of these risks, sales continued. Twenty-four thousand residents sold in street drug markets, about half of whom were regular dealers, at a total market value of $350 million. 18 This summary of Kotlowitz's work (1991) is a very pale replica of his detailed

description of the impact of these conditions on family life, how they work on the young male's view of the world, and finally how violence becomes a logical defense against all the violence in his environment. See also Lemann (19911, who follows a number of black families from the South to their'lives in Chicago. 19 The survey divided the population into four categories: the "super rich" (the top 0.5

percent of households I, the "very rich" (the next 0.5 percent of households I, the "rich" Ihouseholds between the 99th and 90th percentilel, and "everybody else." Super rich households In = 420,000, excluding wealth attributed to personal residences I owned more than 26.9 percent of privately held family wealth; and the top ten percent controlled approximately 68 percent of the nation's wealth (Phillips, 1990:111. While those on top got richer, those in the middle or at the bottom got poorer. In other words, there was a direct transfer of wealth from lower to upper, not new creation of wealth. While the average net worth of the top 0.5 percent of families rose 6.7 percent in the 1980s, the bottom 90 percent fell 8.8 percent. The greatest loss was by white men 25 to 34 without college educations. For them the poverty level nearly doubled to 17 percent. During the period real hourly wages fell 5 percent. Among jobs created, 77 percent were in retail and service occupations paying the lowest wages (Mishel and Frankel, 19901. By the end of 1990, it was projected that the top 1 percent of the population 12.5 million Americans) would have almost as much income after taxes as the bottom 40 percent (Dollars and Sense, October 1990, 51. For such maldistribution of wealth as an early manifestation of capitalist development, evident by 1845, see DuBoff (1989:25, 43, 87,1791. 20 One important government policy affecting wealth transfer is federal tax policy. While the corporate income tax has fallen from 34 percent offederal tax receipts in 1950 to but 7 percent in 1983, during the same years the payroll tax has risen from 12 percent to 38 percent, a tax that primarily burdens the working poor. Taking into consideration changes in "progressive" taxes (personal and corporate income, estate, and gift taxes) and regressive taxes (excise, customs, and payrolll, progressive taxes as percentages of the total federal tax receipts have declined from 70.5 percent in 1950 to 55.5 percent in 1983. During this same period, the poor also paid higher state and local sales and payroll taxes (Blank and Blinder, 1986:197-203). Reduction in capital gains taxes also benefited the rich, as households in the top 1. percent of the population more than doubled their income from that source (Dollars and Sense, October 1990, 5; Mishel and Frankel, 1990). For the political consequences of this shift in income, see Phillips, 1990. Although the U.S. and state governments provide substantial gross sums to the poor in transfer payments (food stamps, welfare, AFDC), the United States in 1981 spent a lesser percentage on income distribution (14.91 than any Western industrialized nation (Germany, 26.5; France, 23.8, Italy, 22.7; United Kingdom, 18.91 (Burtless, 1986:46).

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Fusfeld, Daniel R. 1968. "The Basic Economics of the Urban and Racial Crisis." Reprint no. 1 from conference papers of the union for Radical Political Economics. December. - - - and Timothy Bates. 1984. The Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Gelfand, Mark I. 1975. A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965. New York: Oxford University Press. Glasgow, Douglas G. 1980. The Black Underclass: Poverty, Unemployment, and Entrapment of Ghetto Youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Gordon, David. 1978. "Capitalist Development and the History of American Cities." In William K. Tabb and Larry Sawers, eds., Maf7(.ism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban Political Economy. New York: Oxford University Press. - - - , Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich. 1982. Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation ofLabor in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gosnell, Harold F. 1967. Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grodzins, Morton. 1958. The Metropolitan Area as a Racial Problem. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grossman, James R. 1989. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Haar, Charles M. 1960. Federal Credit and Private Housing: The Mass Financing Dilemma. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hagan, John. 1989. Structural Criminology. New Brunswick, N J.: Rutgers University Press. Hagedorn, John, with Perry Macon. 1988. People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rust Belt City. Chicago: Lake View Press. Haller, Mark H. 1989. "Bootlegging: The Business and Politics of Violence." In Ted Robert GUIT, ed., Violence in America, vol. I, the History of Crime, pp. 146-62. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications. - - - . 1991. "Policy Gambling, Entertainment, and the Emergence of Black Politics: Chicago from 1900 to 1940." Journal ofSocial History 24:719--39 (Summer). Harris, Fred R., and Roger W. Wilkins. 1988. Quiet Riots: Race and Poverty in the United States. New York: Pantheon Books. Haynes, George E. 1924. "Negro Migration: Its Effect on Family and Community Life in the North." Opportunity 2: 271-74 (September), 303-306 (October). Herrick, Mary J. 1971. The Chicago Schools: A Social and Political History. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. Hirsch, Arnold R. 1983. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hirschman, Charles. 1988. "Minorities in the Labor Market: Cyclical Patterns and Secular Trends on Joblessness." In Gary D. Sandefur and Marta Tienda, eds., Divided Opportunities: Minorities, Poverty, and Social Policy, pp. 63-86. New York: Plenum Press. Homel, Michael W. 1984. Down from Equality: Black Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920-41. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Ianni, Francis A. J. 1974. Black Mafia. New York: Simon and Schuster. - - - . 1989. A Search for Structure: A Report on American Youth Today. New York: Free Press. Jaynes, Gerald David, and Robin M. Williams, Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press 1989). Joint Economic Committee (lEC), u.S. Congress. 1960. Economic Policies for Agriculture in the 1960s: Implications of Four Selected Alternatives. 86th Congress, 2d session. Washington, D.C.: GPO. - - - . 1986. The Concentration of Wealth in the United States: Trends in the Distribution of Wealth Among American Families. Prepared by the Democratic staff of the JEe. Washington, D.C.: JEC. Johnson, Charles S., Edwin J. Embree, and W. W. Alexander. 1935. The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies and Statistical Surveys, 1933-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Jonnes, Jill. 1986. We're Still Here: The Rise, Fall and Reconstruction of the South Bran!'. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. Kasaroa, John D. 1989. "Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass." Annals of the AAPSS 501: 26-47. Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. Katz, Jonathan. 1980. "Implementing Development and Manpower Strategies in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia." PhD. diss., Brandeis University. Katznelson, Ira. 1986. City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States. New York: Pantheon. Kenny, Timothy J. 1980. "Black Population Distribution and Racial Change in Major American Cities: A Modified Sector Model of Black Neighborhood Growth. Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago. Keyssar, Alexander. 1989. "History and the Problem of Unemployment." Socialist Review 4: 15-34 (Oct.-Dec.!. Klein, Malcolm W., and Cheryl L. Maxson. 1989. "Street Gang Violence." In Neil Alan Weiner and Marvin E. Wolfgang, eds., Violent Crime, Violent Criminals, 198--234. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Kleniewski, Nancy. 1982. "Neighborhood Decline and Downtown Renewal: The Politics of Redevelopment in Philadelphia, 1952-1962." Ph.D. diss., Temple University. Kotiowitz, Alex. 1991. There Are No Children Here. New York: Doubleday. Kusmer, Kenneth L. 1976. A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lait, Jack, and Lee Mortimer. 1950. Chicago: Confidential. New York: Crown Publications. Landry, Bart. 1987. The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lane, Roger. 1986. Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ---.1989. "On the Social Meaning of Homicide Trends in America." In Ted Robert GUIT, ed., Violence in America, vol. 1, The History of Crime, 55-79. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Lemann, Nicholas. 1991. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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Ley, David. 1974. The Black Inner City as Frontier Outpost: Images and Behavior of Philadelphia Neighborhood. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers. Lidman, Russell. 1973. "'The Distributional Implications of Agricultural Commodity Programs." The Economics of Federal Subsidy Programs. A Compendium of papers submitted to the Subcommittee on Priorities and Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress part 7-Agricultural Subsidies. Washington, D.C.: GPO. Light, Ivan H. 1972. Ethnic Enterprise in America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. McLanahan, Sara, and Irwin Garfinkel. 1989. "Single Mothers, the Underclass, and Social Policy." AAPSSAnnals 501: 92-104. McMillen, Neil C. 1989. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age ofJim Crow. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Marable, Manning. 1983. How Capitalism Underdeveloped BlackAmerica: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society. Boston: South End Press. Marks, Carole. 1989. Farewell-We're Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Marullo, Sam. 1985. "The Migration of Blacks to the North, 1911-1918." Journal of Black Studies 15 (March): 291-305. Mauer, Marc. 1990. Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System: A Growing National Problem. Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project, February. Meier, August, and Elliot Rudwick. 1970. From Plantation to Ghetto. Rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang. Mishel, Lawrence, and David Frankel. 1990. The State of Working America. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, September. Mollenkopf, John H. 1977. "The Crisis of the Public Sector in America's Cities." In Robert E. Alcaly and David Mermelstein, eds., The Fiscal Crisis ofAmerican Cities: Essays on the Political Economy of Urban American With Special Reference to New York, 113-31. New York: Vintage Books. Morrow-Jones, Hazel A. 1980. "The Impact of Federal Housing Policy on Population Distribution in the United States." Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University. Myrdal, Gunnar. 1962. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy. New York: Harper and Row. National Commission on Urban Problems. 1968. More Than Shelter: Social Needs in Low and Moderate Income Housing. Washington, D.C.: GPO. Nelli, Humbert S. 1970. Italians in Chicago, 1880-1930: A Study in Ethnic Mobility. New York: Oxford University Press. Ogbu, John U. 1978. Minority Education and Caste. New York: Academic Press. Olivero, J. Michael, and Audrey Schremmer-Phillip. 1989. Chicago Street Gangs: A Cause for Alarm. Edinberg: University of Texas-Pan American. Osofsky, Gilbert. 1966. Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890-1930. New York: Harper and Row, Torch Book. Parker, William N. 1972. "Agriculture." In Lance E. Davis et al., eds., American Economic Growth: An Economist's History ofthe United States. New York: Harper and Row. Perkins, Useni Eugune. 1975. Home Is a Dirty Street: The Social Suppression of Black Chicago. Chicago: Third World Press. ---.1987. Explosion of Chicago's Black Street Gangs, 1900 to the Present. Chicago: Third

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Peterson, Paul E. 1985. The Politics of School Reform, 1870-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peterson, Virgil W. 1952. Barbarians in Our Midst: A History of Chicago Crime and Politics. Boston: Little, Brown. Phillips, Kevin. 1990. The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath. New York: Random House. Philpott, Thomas Lee. 1978. The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle-Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930. New York: Oxford University Press. Pinderhughes, Dianne M. 1987. Race and Ethnicity ill Chicago Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Polenberg, Richard. 1980. Olle Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States Since 1938. New York: Viking Press. Pruter, Robert. 1991. Chicago Soul. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rasmussen, Wayne D. 1975. "A Postscript: Twenty-Five Years of Change in Farm Productivity." Agricultural History 49 IJanuary): 84-86. - - - . 1976. Technology and American Agriculture: A Historical View." Unpublished paper of Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, June. Reuter, Peter. 1983. Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. - - - . 1985. The Organization of Illegal Markets: All Economic Analysis. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice. Reuter, Peter, Robert MacCoun, and Patrick Murphy. 1990. Money from Crime: The Economics ofDrug Dealing in Washington, D.C. New York: Rand Corporation. Robinson, Cyril D. 1984. Legal Rights, Duties, and Liabilities of Criminal Justice Personnel: History and Analysis. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas. Rolison, Garry L. 1986. "The Political Economy of the Urban Underclass: Black Subemployment in Advanced Capitalism." Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Cruz. Rose, Harold M. 1971. The Black Ghetto: A Spatial Behavioral Perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill. Royko, Mike. 1971. Boss: RichardJ. Daley of Chicago. New York: E. P. Dutton. Sandefur, Gary D., and Marta Tienda, eds. 1988. Divided Opportunity: Minorities, Poverty, and Social Policy. New York: Plenum Press. Schaffer, Richard Lance. 1972. Income Flows in Urban Poverty Areas. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books. Schnick, Sandor Evan. 1982. "Neighborhood Change in the Bronx, 1905-1960." Ph.D. diss., HalVard University. Schnittker, John A. 1973. "Changes Needed in Farm Legislation." The Economics ofFederal Subsidy Programs. A compendium of papers submitted to the Subcommittee on Priorities and Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Part 7-Agricultural Subsidies. Washington, D.C.: GPO. Schwendinger, Herman, and Julia Siegal Schwendinger. 1985. Adolescent Subcultures and Delinquency. New York: Praeger. Scott, Emmett J. [920)1969. Negro Migration During the War. New York: Amo Press. Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. 1986. "Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking in Chicago." Hearing before the Select Committee, House of Representatives, Ninetyninth Congress, First Session, May 31-June 1, 1985. Washington, D.C.: GPO. Sheehan, J. Brian. 1984. The Boston School Integration Dispute: Social Change and Legal Maneuvers. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Skogan, Wesley G. 1989. "Social Change and the Future of Violent Crime." In Ted Robert Gurr, ed., Violence in America, vol. I, The History of Crime, 235-50. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Small, Kenneth A. 1985. "Transportation and Urban Change." In Paul E. Peterson, ed., The New Urban Reality, 197-224. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute. Smith, James P. 1988. "Poverty and the Family." In Gary D. Sandefur and Marta Tienda, eds., Directed Opportunities: Minorities, Poverty, and Social Policy, 141-72. New York: Plenum Press. Smith, Rita Webb, and Tony Chapelle. 1991. The Woman Who Took Back Her Streets. Far Hills, N J.: New Horizon Press. Smith, T. Lynn. 1966. "The Redistribution of the Negro Population of the United States, 1910-1960." Journal ofNegro History 51: 155-173 (July). Spear, Allan H. 1967. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spergel, Irving A. 1984. "Violent Gangs in Chicago: In Search of Social Policy." Social Science Review 58: 199-226 (June). - - - . 1986. "The Violent Gang Problem in Chicago: A Local Community Approach." Social Science Review 60: 94-131 (March). ---.1990. "Youth Gangs: Continuity and Change." In Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, eds., Crime and Justice 12: 171-275. Squires, Gregory D., et al. 1987. Chicago: Race, Class, and the Response to Urban Decline. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Street, James H. 1957. The New Revolution in the Cotton Economy: Mechanization and Its Consequence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Sullivan, Mercer L. 1989. "Getting Paid": Youth Crime and Work in the Inner City. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Sullivan, Teresa. A., Elizabeth Warren, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook. 1989. As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit America. New York: Oxford University Press. Suttles, Gerald D. 1968. The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, William L. 1971. Hanging Together: Equality in an Urban Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster. Thrasher, Frederic M. 1963. The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Abridged ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tilly, Charles. 1974. "Race and Migration to the American City." In James W. Hughes, ed., Suburbanization Dynamics and the Future of the City, pp. 149-70. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University. Tilly, Chris. 1990. "The Politics of the 'New Equality.'" Socialist Review 90: 103-20 (Jan.March), Tuttle, William M., Jr. 1970. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. New York: Atheneum. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1992. Statistical Abstract of the United States. 112th ed. Washington, D.C.: GPO. United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 1987. Correctional Population of the United States, 1987. Table 5.6. Wacquant, Loic J. D., and William J. Wilson. 1989. "The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City." Annals of the AAPSS 501: 8-25 (January).

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Weaver, Robert C. 1948. The Negro Ghetto. New York: Harcourt Brace. Weinberg, Meyer. 1977. A Chance to Learn: The History of Race and Education in the United States. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. Willhelm, Sidney M., and Edwin H. Powell. 1967. "Who Needs the Negro." In Jeffrey K. Hadden, Louis H. Masotti, and Calvin J. Larson, eds., Metropolis in Crisis, pp. 211-18. Itasca, Ill.: Peacock Publishers. Williams, Walter E. 1982. The State Against Blacks. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zahn, Margaret A. 1989. "Homicide in the Twentieth Century: Trends, 'TYPes, and Causes." In Ted Robert GUIT, ed., Violence in America, vol. I, The History of Crime, pp. 216-34. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.

EDITOR'S NOTES 1 Robinson argues that ghetto neighborhoods are impoverished because capital flows out of these neighborhoods. However, neighborhoods do not produce capital. Capital can flow out only if it has first flowed in. The same is true in more affluent neighborhoods. If ghetto residents are poor, it is because their incomes are low and they cannot save much. 2 Evan Stark, in his essay in Part 4, "Gangs and Progress: The Contribution of Delinquency to Progressive Reform," argues that the institutions of social control established by Progressive Era reformers to acculturate the children of immigrants-the school, the social work agency, the reformatory-played an important role in creating a working class that could transcend ethnic and national differences to organize the factories they entered as workers in the 1930s. Robinson's analysis indicates that today these institutions are no longer producing these "positive" effects. Schools turn out graduates who are barely literate; the reformatory fails to reform; and the factories that used to provide entry-level jobs to workers with little skills have in many instances relocated outside the United States, where labor costs are low and repressive governments stand in the way of unionizing efforts. Possibly the armed forces are now the only institutions that take in and socialize large numbers of young black urban males. In doing so, they remove them from the community and train them in the use of weapons. Only to a limited extent can they provide skills that will be useful in careers outside the military. The flight of manufacturing jobs has weakened U.S. labor unions and made the achievement of working-class unity across racial and ethnic lines more difficult. 3 Robinson's analysis leads one to wonder whether more recent immigrants to the United States from Asia, Africa, and Latin America will encounter the same kind of obstacles that blacks met when they came to the Northern citJies. Is it possible that some immigrant groups will bring with them cultural resources or capital that can help them succeed? One also wonders whether the outcome Robinson describes for blacks was truly inevitable. Suppose the consequences of throwing large numbers of blacks off the land in the South had been anticipated. Could some way have been found to prevent their dispossession, or to help them enter the capitalist economy? What would the obstacles have been? Could blacks themselves have shaped their future more successfully? By doing what? 4 Many of the processes that Robinson describes for Chicago were also taking place in other American cities. Blair Badcock, Urifairly Structured Cities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) discusses these processes within the framework of alternative traditions of Marxist theory.

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Delinquency and the Age Structure of Society David F. Greenberg Adapted by permission from David F. Greenberg. "Delinquency and the Age Structure of Society." Contemporary Crises: Crime. Law and Social Policy 1 IApril 1977): 189-223.

An extraordinary amount of crime in American society is the accomplishment of young people. In recent years, more than half of those arrested for the seven FBI index offenses have been age 18 or under. Per capita arrest rates for vandalism and property crimes not involving confrontation with a person (burglary, grand larceny, auto theft) peak at age 15 to 16, fall to half their peak values in two to four years, and continue to decline rapidly. Arrest rates for narcotics violations and offenses involving confrontation with a victim (homicide, forcible rape, aggravated assault, robbery) peak a few years later, at 19 to 21, and also decline with age, but less rapidly. Field and self-reporting studies of delinquency confirm that delinquents commonly abandon crime in late adolescence.1 This pattern is a fairly recent development. The peak ages for involvement in crime seem to have been higher in nineteenth-century America than they are today. Other industrialized capitalist nations, such as England, seem to have undergone a similar shift in the age distribution of involvement in crime. By cqntrast, comparatively few crimes are committed by young people in the less industrialized nations of the modem world.2 The increasingly disproportionate involvement of juveniles in major crime categories is not readily explained by current sociological theories of delinquency, but it can be readily understood as a consequence of the historically changing position of juveniles in industrial societies. This changing position has its origin, at least in Europe and the United States, in the longterm tendencies of a capitalist economic system. I am grateful to Ava Baron. Eliot Freidson. Daniel Glaser. Irwin Goffman. Drew Humphries. Caroline Persell. Edwin Schur. and James Q. Wilson for helpful discussions and suggestions.

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DELINQUENCY THEORY AND THE AGE DISTRIBUTION OF CRlME Since neither the very young nor the very old have the prowess and agility required for some types of crime, we might expect crime rates to rise and then fall with age. But the sharp decline in involvement in late adolescence cannot be explained in these terms alone. If age is relevant to criminality, the link should lie primarily in its social significance. Yet contemporary sociological theories of delinquency shed little light on the relationship between crime and age. If, for example, loweit' class male gang delinquency is simply a manifestation of a lower class subculture, as Miller (1958) has maintained, it would be mysterious why 21-yealt'-0Ids act in conformity with the norms of their subculture so much less often than their siblings just a few years younger-unless the norms themselves were age-specific. While agespecific expectations may contribute to desistance from some forms of delinquent play, such as vandalism and throwing snowballs at cars, as Clark and Haurek (1966) suggest, there is no social class in which felony theft and violence receive general approval for persons of any age. Moreover, adult residents of high crime areas often live in fear of being attacked by teenagers, suggesting that if delinquency is subcultural, community does not form the basis of the subculture. The difficulty of accounting for "maturational reform" within the framework of the motivational theories of Cloward and Ohlin (1960) and Cohen (1955) has already been noted by Matza (1964:24-27). In both theories, male delinquents cope with the problems arising from lower class status by entering into and internalizing the norms of a subculture which repudiates conventional rules of conduct and requires participation in crime. As with other subcultural theories, it is not at all clear why most subculture carriers abandon activities that are so highly prized within the subculture with such haste. This desistance is especially perplexing in anomie or opportunity theories (Merton, 1957; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960) because the problem assumed to cause delinquency, namely the anticipation of failure in achieving socially inculcated success goals through legitimate means, does not disappear at the end of adolescence. At the onset of adulthood, few lower and working class youths are close to conventionally defined "success," and their realization that opportunities for upward mobility are drastically limited can only be more acute. Students can perhaps entertain fantasies about their future prospects, but graduates or dropouts must come to terms with their chances. Cloward and Ohlin do note that many delinquents desist, but explain this in ad hoc terms unrelated to the main body of their theory. Writing of neighborhoods where violence is common . they assert: As adolescents near adulthood. excellence in the manipulation of violence no

longer brings status. Quite the contrary, it generally evokes extremely negative sanctions. What was defined as permissible or tolerable behavior during adolescence tends to be sharply proscribed in adulthood. New expectations

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are imposed, expectations of "growing up," of taking on adult responsibilities in the economic, familial, and community spheres. The effectiveness with which these definitions are imposed is attested by the tendency among fighting gangs to decide that conflict is, in the final analysis, simply "kid stuff." ... In other words, powerlul community expectations emerge which have the consequence of closing off access to previously useful means of overcoming status deprivation ICloward and Ohlin, 1960:185). In view of Cloward and Ohlin's characterization of neighborhoods where gang violence is prevalent as so disorganized that no informal social controls limiting violence can be exercised (1960:174-75), one can only wonder whose age-specific expectations are being described. Cloward and Ohlin do not say. This explanation, for which Cloward and Ohlin produce no supporting evidence, is inconsistent with their own larger theory of delinquent subcultures. In addition, it seems inconsistent with the slowness of the decline in the violence offense categories. In a departure from the emphasis placed on social class membership in most motivational theories of delinquency, Bloch and Niederhoffer (1958) interpret such forms of delinquency as adolescent drinking, sexual experimentation, and "wild automobile rides" as responses to the age status problems of adolescence. Denied the prerogatives of adulthood, but encouraged to aspire to adulthood and told to "act like adults," teenagers find in these activities a symbolic substitute which presumably is abandoned as soon as the genuine article is available. As an explanation for joy-riding and some status offenses, this explanation has manifest plausibility. For other categories it is more problematic, since it assumes that delinquents interpret activities engaged in largely by adolescents as evidence of adult stature. When Bloch and Niederhoffer turn to more serious teenage crime, their explanations are vague and difficult to interpret, but in any event seem to depend less on the structural position of the juvenile. In Delinquency and Drift, Matza (1964) provides an alternative approach to the explanation of desistance. His assumption that many delinquents fully embrace neither delinquent nor conventional norms and values, but instead allow themselves to be easily influenced without deep commitment, makes desistance possible when the delinquent discovers that his companions are no more committed to delinquency than he is. This discovery is facilitated by a reduction in masculinity anxiety that accompanies the attainment of adulthood. There are valuable insights in this account, but unresolved questions as well. Insofar as the discovery of a shared misunderstanding depends on chance events, as Matza suggests (1964:54-58), systematic differences in desistance remain unexplained. Why does desistance from violence offenses occur later and more slowly than for theft offenses? Why are some juveniles so much more extensively involved in delinquency than others? Matza's remarkable presentation of the subjective elements in delinquency must be supplemented by an analysis of the objective, structural elements in causation, if such questions are to be answered.

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That is the approach I will take. I will present an analysis of the position of juveniles in American society and elaborate the implications of that position for juvenile involvement in crime. The explanation of high levels of juvenile involvement in crime will have two major components. The first, a theory of motivation, locates sources of motivation toward criminal involvement in the structural position of juveniles in American society. The second, derived from control theory, suggests that the willingness to act on the basis of criminal motivation is distributed unequally among age groups because the cost of being apprehended are different for persons of different ages. Although some of the theoretical ideas (e.g. control theory) on which I will be drawing have already appeared in the delinquency literature, each by itself is inadequate as a full theory of delinquency. When put together with some new ideas, however, a very plausible account of age and other systematic sources of variation in delinquent involvement emerges.

ANOMIE AND THE JUVENILE LABOR MARKET Robert Merton's discussion of anomie has provided a framework for a large volume of research on the etiology of crime. Although Merton observed that a disjunction between socially inculcated goals and legitimate means for attaining them would produce a strain toward deviance, whatever the goal (Merton, 1957:166), specific application of the perspective to delinquency has been restricted to an assessment of the contribution to delinquency causation of the one cultural goal Merton considered in depth, namely occupational success. Cloward and Ohlin for example, attribute lower class male delinquency to the anticipation of failure in achieving occupational goals as adults. These youths' involvement in theft is interpreted as a strategy for gaining admission to professional theft and organized crime circles, that is, a way of obtaining the tutelage and organizational affiliations necessary for the successful pursuit of career crime, rather than for immediate financial return. Crime is thus seen as a means toward the attainment ofJuture goals rather than present goals. The assumption that delinquency is instrumentally related to the attainment of adult goals is plausible only for limited categories of delinquency, however; e.g. students who cheat on exams in the face of keen competition for admission to college or graduate school, and youths who save what they earn as pimps or drug merchants to capitalize investment in conventional business enterprises. For other forms of delinquency this assumption is less tenable. Delinquents would have to be stupid indeed to suppose that shoplifting, joy-riding, burglary, robbery or drug use could bring the prestige or pecuniary rewards associated with high status lawful occupation. Nor is there evidence that most delinquents seek careers in professional theft or organized crime. In the face of Cohen's characterization of delinquents as short-run hedonists (1955:25), and the difficulty parents and

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teachers encounter in attempting to engage delinquent youths in activities which could improve chances of occupational success (like school homework), the future orientation assumed in opportunity theory is especially farfetched. The potential explanatory power of anomie theory, is, however, not exhausted by Cloward and Ohlin's formulation, because delinquency can be a response to a discrepancy between aspirations and expectations for the attainment of goals other than occupational ones. Most people have a multiplicity of goals, and only some of them are occupational. As the salience of different life goals can vary with stages of the life-cycle, our understanding of delinquency may be advanced more by examining those goals given a high priority by adolescents than by considering the importance attached to different goals in American culture generally. The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by a heightened sensitivity to the expectations of peers and a reduced concern with fulfilling parental expectations (BIos, 1941; Bowerman and Kinch, 1959; Tuma and Livsen, 1960; Conger, 1973:286-92). Popularity with peers becomes highly valued, and exclusion from the most popular cliques leads to acute psychological distress. Adolescent peer groups and orientation to the expectations of peers are found in many societies (Eisenstadt, 1956; Bloch and Neiderhoffer, 1958); but the natural tendency of those who share common experiences and problems to prefer one another's company is accentuated in American society by the importance that parents and school attach to popularity and to developing social skills assumed to be necessary for later occupational success (Mussen et aI., 1969). In addition, the exclusion of young people from adult work and leisure activity forces adolescents into virtually exclusive association with one another, cutting them offfrom alternative sources of validation for the self (as well as reducing the degree of adult supervision). A long-run trend toward increased age segregation created by changing patterns of work and education has increased the vulnerability of teenagers to the expectations and evaluations of their peers (Panel on Youth, 1974). This dependence on peers for approval is not itself criminogenic. In many tribal societies, age-homogeneous bands of youths are functionally integrated into the economic and social life of the tribe and are not considered deviant (Mead, 1939; Eisenstadt, 1956:56-92). In America, too, many teenage clubs and cliques are not delinquent. Participation in teenage social life, however, requires resources. In addition to personal assets and skills (having an attractive appearance and "good personality," being a skilled conversationalist, being able to memorize song lyrics and learn dance steps, and in some circles, being able to fight), money is needed for buying clothes, cosmetics, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, narcotics, phonograph records, transistor radios, gasoline for cars and motorcycles, tickets to films and concerts, meals in restaurants, and for gambling. The progressive detachment of teenage social life from that of the family and the emergence of advertising directed toward a teenage market (this being a creation of post-

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war affluence and the "baby boom ") have increased the importance of these goods to teenagers and hence have inflated the costs of their social activities. When parents are unable or unwilling to subsidize their children's social life at the level required by local convention, when children want to prevent their parents from learning of their expenditures, or when they are reluctant to incur the obligations created by taking money from their parents, alternative sources of funds must be sought. Full or part-time employment once constituted such an alternative, but the long-run, persistent decline in teenage employment and labor force participation has progressively eliminated this alternative. During the period from 1870 to 1920, many states passed laws restricting child labor and establishing compulsory education. Therefore, despite a quadrupling of the "gainfully employed" population from 1870 to 1930, the number of gainfully employed workers in the 10- to 15year-old age bracket declined. The Great Depression resulted in a further contraction of the teenage labor force and :increased the school-leaving age (Panel on Youth, 1974:36-38). In 1940 the U.S. government finally stopped counting all persons over the age of 10 as part of the labor force (Tomson and Fiedler, 1975)! In recent years, teenage labor market deterioration has been experienced mainly by black teenagers. From 1950 to 1973, black teenage labor force participation declined from 67.8% to 34.7%, while white teenage labor force participation remained stable at about 63%. The current recession has increased teenage unemployment in the Hi- to 19-year-old age bracket to about 20%, with the rate for black teenagers being twice as high. This process has left teenagers less and less capable of financing an increasingly costly social life whose importance is enhanced as the age segregation of society grows. Adolescent theft then occurs as a response to the disjunction between the desire to participate in social activities with peers and the absence of legitimate sources of funds needed to finance this participation. Qualitative evidence supporting this explanation of adolescent theft is found in those delinquency studies that describe the social life of delinquent groups. Sherif and Sherif noted in their study of adolescent groups that theft was often instrumentally related to the group's leisure-time social activities: In several groups ... stealing was not the incidental activity that it was in others. It was regarded as an acceptable and necessaIY means of getting needed possessions, or, more usually, cash. Members of the aforementioned groups frequently engaged in theft when they were broke, usually selling articles other than clothing, and often using the money for group entertainment and treats. (1964:174)

Similarly, Werthman (1967) reports that among San Francisco delinquents, shoplifting ... was viewed as a more instrumental activity, as was the practice of stealing coin changers from temporarily evacuated buses parked in a nearby

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public depot. In the case of shoplifting, most of the boys wanted and wore the various items of clothing they stole: and when buses were robbed, either the money was divided among the boys, or it was used to buy supplies for a party being given by the club. Studies of urban delinquent gangs or individuals in England (Fyvel, 1962; Parker, 1974), Israel and Sweden (Toby, 1967), Taiwan (Lin, 1959), Holland (Bauer, 1964), and Argentina (DeFleur, 1970) present the same uniform picture: unemployed or employed-but-poorly-paid male youths steal to support their leisure-time, group-centered social activities. Only to a very limited extent are the proceeds of theft used for biological smvival (e.g., food). Where parents subsidize their children adequately, the incentive to steal is obviously reduced. Because the cost of social life can increase with class position, a strong correlation between social class membership and involvement in theft is not necessarily predicted. Insofar as self-reporting studies suggest that the correlation between participation in nonviolent forms of property acquisition and parental socioeconomic status is not very high, this may be a strong point for my theory. By contrast, the theories of Cohen, Miller, and Cloward and Ohlin all clash with the self-reporting studies. In view of recent suggestions that increases in female crime and delinquency are linked with changing gender roles (of which the women's liberation movement is taken either as a cause or a manifestion), it is of interest to note that the explanation of adolescent theft presented here is applicable to boys and girls, and in particular, allows for female delinquency in support of traditional gender roles related to peer involvement in crime. The recent increases in female crime have occurred largely in those forms of theft where female involvement has traditionally been high, such as larceny (Simon, 1975), and are thus more plausibly attributed to the same deteriorating economic position that males confront then to changes in gender role. As teenagers get older, their vulnerability to the expectations of peers is reduced by institutional involvements that provide alternative sources of self-esteem; moreover, opportunities for acquiring money legitimately expand. Both processes reduce the motivation to engage in acquisitive forms of delinquent behavior. Consequently, involvement in theft should fall off rapidly with age, and it does. DELINQUENCY AND THE SCHOOL To explain juvenile theft in terms of structural obstacles to legitimate sources of money at a time when peer-oriented leisure activities require it is implicitly to assume that money and goods are stolen because they are useful. Acts of vandalism, thefts in which stolen objects are abandoned or destroyed, and interpersonal violence not necessary to accomplish a theft

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cannot be explained in this way. These are the activities that led Albert Cohen to maintain that much delinquency is "malicious" and "nonutilitarian" (1955:25) and to argue that the content of the delinquent subculture arose in the lower class male's reaction to failure in schools run according to middle class standards. Although Cohen can be criticized for not indicating the criteria used for assessing rationality-indeed, for failure to find out from delinquents themselves what they perceived the goals of their destructive acts to be-and though details of Cohen's theory (to be noted below) appear to be inaccurate, his observation that delinquency may be a response to school problems need not be abandoned. Indeed, the literature proposing a connection between one or another aspect of school and delinquency is voluminous (see for example, Polk and Schafer, 1972). I believe that two features of the school experience, its denial of student autonomy, and its subjection of some students to the embarrasment of pUlblic degradation, are especially important in causing "non-utilitarian" delinquency. In all spheres of life outside the school, and particularly within the family, children more or less steadily acquire larger measures of personal autonomy as they mature. Over time, the "democratization" of the family has reduced the age at which given levels of autonomy are acquired. The gradual extension of freedom that normally takes place in the family (not without struggle!) is not accompanied by parallel deregulation at school. Authoritarian styles of teaching, and rules concerning such matters as smoking, hair styles, manner of dress, going to the bathroom, and attendance, come into conflict with expectations students derive from the relaxation of controls in the family.3 The delegitimation of hierarchical authority structures brought about by the radical movements of the 1960s has sharpened student awareness of this contradiction. The symbolic significance attached to autonomy exacerbates the inherently onerous burden of school restrictions. Parents and other adults invest age-specific rights and expectations with moral significance by disapproving "childish" behavior and by using privileges to reward behavior they label "mature." Because of this association, the deprivation of autonomy is experienced as "being treated like a baby," that is, as a member of a disvalued age-status. All students are exposed to these restrictions, and to some degree, all probably resent them. For students who are at least moderately successful at their schoolwork, who excel at sports, participate in extracurricular school activities, or are members of popular cliques, this resentment is likely to be more than compensated for by rewards associated with school attendance. These students tend to conform to school regulations most of the time, rarely collide with school officials, and are unlikely to feel overtly hostile to school or teachers. Students who are unpopUlar, and whose academic record, whether from inability or disinterest, is poor, receive no comparable compensation. For them, school can only be a frustrating experience: it brings no current gratification and no promise of future payoff. Why then

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should they put up with these restrictions? These students often get into trouble, and feel intense hostility to the school. Social class differences must of course be taken into account. Preadolescent and early adolescent middle and upper class children are supervised more closely than their working class counterparts, and thus come to expect and accept adult authority, while working class youths, who enter an unsupervised street life among peers at an early age, have more autonomy to protect, and guard their prerogatives jealously (Psathas, 1957; Kobrin, 1962; Werthman, 1967: Rainwater, 1970:211-34; Ladner, 1971:61-63). To the extent that they see in the school's denial of their autonomy, preparation for a future in occupations that also deny autonomy, and see in their parents' lives the psychic costs of that denial, they may be more prone to rebel than middle class students, who can generally anticipate entering jobs that allow more discretion and autonomy. Middle class youths also have more to gain by accepting adult authority than their working class counterparts. Comparatively affluent parents can control their children better because they have more resources they can withhold and are in a better position to secure advantages for their children. Children who believe that their future chances depend on school success are likely to conform even if they resent the school's attempt to regulate their lives. On the other hand, where returns on school success are reduced by class or racial discrimination (or the belief that these will be obstacles, even if the belief is counter to fact), the school loses this source of social control. For similar reasons, it loses control over upper class children, since their inherited class position frees them from the necessity of doing well in school to guarantee their future economic status. Only a few decades ago, few working class youths-or school failures with middle class family backgrounds-would have been exposed to a contradiction between their expectations of autonomy and the school's attempts to control them, because a high proportion of students, especially working class students, left school at an early age. However, compUlsory school attendance, low wages and high unemployment rates for teenagers, along with increased educational requirements for entry-level jobs, have greatly reduced dropout rates. Thus in 1920, 16.8% ofthe 17-year-old population were high school graduates; and in 1956, 62.3% (Toby, 1967). In consequence, a greater proportion of students, especially those who benefit least from school, is exposed to this contradiction.4 Common psychological responses to the irritation of the school's denial of autonomy range from affective disengagement ("tuning out" the teacher) to smouldering resentment, and at the behavioral level responses range from truancy to self-assertion through the flouting of rules. Such activities as getting drunk, using drugs, joy-riding, truanting, and adopting eccentric styles of dress, apart from any intrinsic gratification these activities may provide, can be seen as forms of what Gouldner has called "conflictual validation of the self" (1970:221- 22). By helping students establish independence from authority (school, parents, etc.), these activities contribute to

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self-regard. Their attraction lies in their being forbidden. As a status system, the school makes further contributions to the causation of delinquency. Almost by definition, status systems embody invidious distinctions. Where standards of evaluation are shared, and position is believed to reflect personal merit, occupants of lower statuses are likely to suffer blows to their self-esteem (Cohen, 1955:112-13; Sennett and Cobb, 1972), The problem is somewhat alleviated by a strong tendency to restrict intimate association to persons of similar status. If one's associates are at roughly the same level as oneself, they provide the standards for self-evaluation (Hyman, 1968). In addition, "democratic" norms of modesty discourage the flaunting of success and boasting of personal merit, thereby insulating the less successful from an implied attribution of their failures to their own deficiencies. These niceties are not, however, universal in applicability. In our society, certification as a full-fledged social member is provided those whose commitment to the value of work and family is documented by spouse, home, car and job (for women, children have traditionally substituted for job). Institutional affiliations are thus taken as a mark of virtue, or positive stigma. Those who meet these social criteria are accorded standards of respect in face-to-face interaction not similarly accorded members of unworthy or suspect categories (e.g., prison and psychiatric hospital inmates, skid row bums, the mentally retarded). In particular, these fullfledged members of society are permitted to sustain self-presentations as dignified, worthy persons, regardless of what may be thought or said of them in private. Students, especially failing students, and those with lower class or minority origins, are accorded no comparable degree of respect. As they lack the appropriate institutional affiliations, their moral commitment to the dominant institutions of society is suspect. In this sense, they are social strangers; we don't quite know what we can expect from them. They are, moreover, relatively powerless. In consequence, they are exposed to evaluations from which adults are ordinarily shielded. School personnel continuously communicate their evaluations of students through grades, honor rolls, track positions, privileges, and praise for academic achievement and proper deportment. On occasion, the negative evaluation of students conveyed by the school's ranking systems is supplemented by explicit criticism and denunciation on the part of teachers who act as if the academic performance of failing students could be elevated by telling them they are stupid, or lazy, or both. Only the most extreme failures in the adult world are subjected to degradation ceremonies of this kind. Cohen (1955) has argued that working class youths faced with this situation protect their self-esteem by rejecting conventional norms and values. Seeking out one another for mutual SUpp0I1, they create a delinquent subculture of opposition to middle class norms in which they can achieve status. This subculture is seen as supporting the non-utilitarian acts of destructiveness that alleviate frustration. There is little difficulty in finding evi-

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dence of adolescent destructiveness, but the choice of target may be more rational (or less non-utilitarian) than Cohen allows. If the school is a major source of the juvenile's frustration, then the large and growing volume of school vandalism and assaults on teachers may, in the perpetrator's own frame of reference, not be irrational at all, even though it may be targeted on those who themselves are not necessarily to blame for what the school does. Other targets may be chosen because of their symbolic value, such as members of a despised racial group or class stratum, or adults, who represent repressive authority. Even random violence, though comparatively rare, can be a way of experiencing the potency and autonomy that institutions-the school among them-fail to provide (Silberman, 1978). Self-reporting studies of delinquency indicate the association between class and most forms of delinquency to be weaker than Cohen supposed. School failure, though class-linked, is not the monopoly of any class, and the self-esteem problems of middle class youths who fail are not necessarily any less than those of working class schoolmates; indeed since parental expectation for academic achievement may be higher in middle class families, and since school failure may auger downward mobility, their problems could conceivably be worse. If delinquency restores self-esteem lost through school failure, it may selVe this function for students of all class backgrounds. The impact of school degradation ceremonies is not limited to their effect on students' self-esteem. When a student is humiliated by a teacher the student's attempt to present a favorable self to schoolmates is undercut. Even students whose prior psychological disengagement from the value system of the school leaves their self-esteem untouched by a teacher's disparagement may react with anger at being embarrassed before peers. It is the situation of being in the company of others whose approval is needed for self-esteem that makes it difficult for teenagers to ignore humiliation that older individuals, with alternative sources of self-esteem, could readily ignore. Visible displays of independence from, or rejections of, authority can be understood as attempts to re-establish moral character in the face of affronts. This can be accomplished by direct attacks on teachers or school, or through daring illegal performances elsewhere. These responses mayor may not reflect anger at treatment perceived to be unjust, mayor may not defend the student against threats to self-esteem, mayor may not reflect a repudiation of conventional conduct norms. What is crucial is that these activities demonstrate retaliation for injury and the rejection of official values to an audience of peers whose own resentment of constituted authority causes it to be appreciative of rebels whom it would not necessarily dare to imitate. Secret delinquency and acts that entailed no risk would not selVe this function. Field research on the interaction between teachers and delinquent students (Werthman, 1967), and the responses of delinquent youths to challenges to their honor (Short and Strodtbeck, 1965; Horowitz and Schwartz,

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1974), support this dramaturgical interpretation of delinquency. Most gang violence seems not to erupt spontaneously out of anger, but is chosen and manipulated for its ability to impress others. Non-utilitarian forms of theft, property destruction and violence may well be understood as quite utilitarian if their purpose is the establishment or preseIvation of the claim to be a certain sort of person, rather than the acquisition of property. Goffman (1974) has called attention to the common features of other, mainly non-criminal activities in which participants establish moral character through risk-taking. Such activities as dueling, bull fighting, sky diving, mountain climbing, big game hunting, and gambling for high stakes are undertaken for the opportunity they provide to calVe out a valued social identity by exhibiting courage, daring, pluck and composure. These qualities are those the industrial system (factory and school) tend to disvalue or ignore: the concept of seeking out risks and "showing off" is antithetical to the traditional ethos of capitalism, where the emphasis has been placed on minimizing risk, using time productively, and suppressing the self to demonstrate moral character. Consequently, those who seek prestige through risk-taking traditionally come from classes not subject to the discipline and self-denial of industriall production, e.g. the European nobility, bohemian populations, and the unemployed poor. More recently, as production has come to require less sacrifice and selfdenial from large sectors of the work force, and to require the steady expansion of stimulated consumption for its growth, the more affluent sectors of the labor force are increasingly encouraged to seek an escape from the routine of daily life through mild forms of risk-taking (e.g., gambling and skiing) as well as through the leisure use of drugs and sex. The similarity between the subculture of delinquency and that of the leisurely affluent, noted by Matza and Sykes (1961), makes sense in view of the position of the delinquent vis it vis the school. Like the factory, the school frequently requires monotonous and meaningless work. Regimentation is the rule. Expressions of originality and spontaneity are not only discouraged, but may be punished. Sociability among students is prohibited by the discipline of the classroom. Students who reap no present rewards from their schoolwork or who anticipate only the most limited occupational returns as a compensation for their adherence to the onerousness of school discipline are free to cultivate the self-expressive traits which the school fails to reward, because they will lose nothing that is important to them by doing so. As Downes (1966) points out, they may come to regard adults who work as defeated and lifeless because of their subordination to a routine that necessitates self-suppression, and hence try to avoid work because of the cost in self-alienation. Traditionally this has been especially true of students with lower class backgrounds; however, when the political and economic institutions of sectors of society lose their legitimacy, students of other classes may find the prospect of entering conventional careers in those sectors so repugnant that they lose the motivation to achieve in school, and also cultivate life-

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styles based on self-expression or politically motivated risk-taking. The bright hippies and radicals from white middle class backgrounds in the late 1960s are a case in point. The similarity between delinquent and non-criminal recreational risktaking warns us that the pursuit of status through risk-taking does not necessarily arise from problems in self-esteem. Once a status system rewarding delinquent activity exists, students may act with reference to it in order to increase prestige in the group, not only to prevent prestige from falling. Thus teachers may be provoked (Werthman, 1967), gang rivals taunted, and daring thefts and assaults perpetrated, even in the absence of humiliation. When students drop out or graduate from high school, they enter a world that, while sometimes inhospitable, does not restrict their autonomy and assault their dignity in the same way the school does. The need to engage in crime to establish a sense of an autonomous self and to preserve moral character through risk-taking is thus reduced. In addition, the sympathetic audience of other students of the same age is taken away. Thus schoolleaving eliminates major sources of motivation toward delinquency. Indeed, American studies indicate that the self-esteem of dropouts rises after they leave school (Bachman et al., 1972) and that dropping out produces an immediate decline in delinquency involvement (Mukherjee, 1971; Elliot and Voss, 1974). In England, when the school-leaving age was raised by one year, the peak age for delInquency rose simultaneously by one year (McClean and Wood, 1969). These findings are especially ironic, in that nineteenth-century reformers touted the extension of public schooling as a way of reducing delinquency; and present-day delinquency prevention programs have involved campaigns to keep delinquents in school.5

MASCULINE STATUS ANXIETY AND DELINQUENCY

Many observers have remarked on the disproportionate involvement of males in delinquency, and the exaggerated masculine posturing that characterizes their involvement, particularly where violence offenses are concerned. This behavior pattern has been explained as a "masculine protest" against maternal domination and identification, especially in the female-based households of the lower class (Parsons, 1947; Cohen, 1955:162-69; Miller, 1958). In such households, the argument goes, boys will tend to identify with the mother, and hence will experience uncertainty and anxiety in later years in connection with their identification as a male. To allay this anxiety, they reject the" good" values of the mother and engage in "masculine" forms of delinquency. Application of the theory to delinquency in the United States has not been entirely successful. Male delinquency does appear to be associated with what has been interpreted as anxiety over masculinity, but it is independent of whether the household in which the child is raised lacks an adult male (Monahan, 1957; Tennyson, 1967; Rosen, 1969). This finding

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points to the need for a revision in the argument. Hannerz (1969) has pointed out that children raised in homes without fathers may still have alternative male role models. Indeed, children raised in a community where adult male unemployment rates are high may spend more of their time in the company of adult males who could seIVe as role models than their middle class peers. Males who are not in doubt about their identity as males may nevertheless feel anxiety in connection with anticipated or actual inability to fulfill traditional sex role expectations concerning work and support of family. This masculine status anxiety can be generated by a father who is present but ineffectual, and by living in a neighborhood where, for social-structural reasons, many men are unemployed-regardless of whether one's own father is present in the household. Men who experience such anxiety because they are prevented from fulfilling conventional male role expectations may attempt to alleviate their anxiety by exaggerating those traditionally male traits that can be expressed. Attempts to dominate women (including rape) and patterns of interpersonal violence can be seen in these terms. In other words, crime can be a response to masculine status anxiety no less than to anxiety over male identity; it can provide a sense of potency that :is expected and desired but not achieved in other spheres of life. In this interpretation, a compulsive concern with toughness and masculinity arises not from a hermetically sealed lower-class subculture "with an integrity of its own" nor from the psychodynamics of a female-headed household (Miller, 1958), but as a response to a contradiction between structural economic-political constraints on male status attainment and the cultural expectations for men that permeate American society. The role of the subculture Miller describes is to make available the behavioral adaptations that previous generations have developed in response to this contradiction. If I am correct in assuming that delinquents in the last years of elementary school and early years of high school are not excessively preoccupied with their occupational prospects, but become more concerned with their futures toward the end of high school, then masculine anxiety during these early years must stem from other sources. One plausible source lies in the contradiction between the school's expectations of docility and submission to authority, and more widely communicated social expectations of masculinity. While the school represses both boys and girls, the message that girls get is consistent with society's message; the message boys receive is contradictory. This difference would help to explain sex differences in delinquency in early adolescence. Most of the male behavior that can be explained plaUSibly in this way-smoking, sexual conquests, joy-riding, vandalism, fighting-is fairly trivial, and either becomes legal in mid to late adolescence or abates rapidly. Anxiety over inability to fulfill traditional male occupational roles would be expected to show up late in adolescence. One would expect masculine status anxiety to appear with greatest in-

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tensity and to decline most slowly in those segments of the population in which adult male unemployment is exceptionally high. This conforms to the general pattern of arrests for violent offenses such as homicide, forcible rape and assaults-offenses often unconnected with the pursuit of material gain, and hence most plausibly interpreted as a response to masculine status anxiety. Rates of arrest for these offenses peak in the immediate post -high school age brackets (several years later than for the property offenses) and the decline is slower than for property offenses. Moreover, blacks are overrepresented in violence offense arrests to a much greater degree than in arrests for property offenses.

COSTS OF DELINQUENCY

So far, some possible sources of age-linked variation in motivation to participate in criminal activity have been identified, but this is only half the story, for one may wish to engage in some form of behavior but nevertheless decide not to do so because its potential costs are deemed unacceptably high. Costs can be a consequence of delinquency, and must be taken into account. Control theorists have begun to do so (Briar and Piliavin, 1965; Hirschi, 1969; Piliavin et al. 1969). In early adolescence the potential costs of all but the most serious forms of delinquency are relatively slight. Parents and teachers are generally willing to write off a certain amount of misbehavior as "childish mischief," while enormous caseloads have forced juvenile courts in large cities to adopt a policy that comes very close to what Schur (1973) has called "radical nonintelVention." Given the slight risk of apprehension for any single delinquent act, the prevalence of motivations to violate the law, and the low cost of lesser violations, we should expect minor infractions to be common among juveniles, and the self-reporting studies generally suggest that they are. As teenagers get older, the potential costs of apprehension increase: victims may be more prone to file a complaint, and police to make an arrest. Juvenile court judges are more likely to take a serious view of an older offender, especially one with a prior record. Older offenders risk prosecution in criminal court, where penalties tend to be harsher, and where an official record will have more serious consequences for later job opportunities. Delinquents are acutely sensitive to these considerations. According to several youthful offenders testi(ying before the New York State Select Committee at a hearing on assault and robbery against the elderly, "If you're 15 and under you won't go to jail .... That's why when we do a "Rush and Crib"-which means you rush the victim and push him or her into their apartment, you let the youngest member do any beatings. See, we know if they arrest him, he'll be back on the street in no time" (Williams, 1976). Thus the leniency of the juvenile court contributes to high levels of juvenile crime.

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Just as the costs of crime are escalating, new opportunities in the form of jobs, marriage, or enlistment in the armed forces create stakes in conformity and, as Matza points out (1964:55), may also relieve problems of masculine status anxiety. Toward the end of high school, when student concern about the future increases, the anticipation of new opportunities is manifested in desistance from delinquency and avoidance of those who do not similarly desist. Consistent with this interpretation is the fact that in both England and the United States, the peak year for delinquent involvement is the year before school-leaving. Those whose opportunities for lucrative employment are limited by obstacles associated with racial and/or class membership, however, will have far less reason to desist from illegal activity than those whose careers are not similarly blocked. The jobs available to young members of the lower strata of the working class tend to be limited, tedious, and low paying. Marriage may appear less appealing to young men whose limited prospects promise inability to fulfill traditional male expectations as breadwinner. Even an army career may be precluded by an arrest record, low intelligence test scores, physical disability, or illiteracy. Thus the legitimate opportunity structure, even if relatively useless for understanding entrance into delinquency, may still be helpful in understanding patterns of desistance. The same may be said of the illegal opportunity structure. Those few delinquents who are recruited into organized crime or professional theft face larger rewards and less risk of serious penalty than those not so recruited, and their personal relationships with partners may be more satisfying. They should be less likely to desist from crime, but their offense patterns can be expected to change. This reasoning suggests that the association between criminal involvement on the one hand and race and class on the other should be stronger for adults than for juveniles. If this is so, arrest rates in a given offense category should decline more rapidly for whites and youths with middle class backgrounds than for blacks and youths with working class and lower class backgrounds, and they do (Wolfgang et al., 1972).

DELINQUENCY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE JUVENILE Among the structural sources of adolescent crime identified here, the exclusion of juveniles from the world of adult work plays a crucial role. It is this exclusion that simultaneously exaggerates teenagers' dependence on peers for approval and eliminates the possibility of their obtaining funds to support their intensive, leisure-time social activities. The disrespectful treatment students receive in school depends on their low social status, which in turn reflects their lack of employment and income. In late adolescence and early adulthood, their fear that this lack of employment will persist into adulthood evokes anxiety over achievement of traditional male gender role

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expectations, especially among males in the lower levels of the working class, thus contributing to a high level of violence. Institutionalized leniency to juvenile offenders, which reduces the potential costs of delinquency, stems from the belief that teenagers are not as responsible for their actions as adults. The conception of juveniles as impulsive and irresponsible gained currency around the turn of the century, when organized labor and Progressive reformers campaigned for child labor laws to save jobs for adults, a goal given high priority after the Depression of 1893. This conception was, in a sense, self-fulfilling. Freed from ties to conventional institutions, teenagers have become more impulsive and irresponsible. The exclusion of teenagers from serious work is not characteristic of all societies. Peasant and tribal societies could not afford to keep their young idle as long as we do. In such societies, juvenile crime rates were low. Under feudalism, too, children participated in farming and handicraft production as part of the family unit beginning at a very early age. In depriving masses of serfs and tenant farmers of access to the means of production (land), European capitalism in its early stages of development generated a great deal of crime, but in a manner that cut across age boundaries. Little of the literature on crime in Elizabethan and Tudor England singles out juveniles as a special category. The industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century similarly brought with it a great deal of misery, but its effect on crime was not restricted to juveniles. Children of the working class in that period held jobs at an early age and in some sectors of the economy were given preference. Only middle and upper class children were exempt from the need to work, and they were supervised much more closely than they are nowadays. As far as can be judged, juvenile crime in that period was a much smaller fraction of the total than at present, and was more confined to the lower classes than it is now. In modern capitalist societies, children of all classes share, for a limited period, a common relationship to the means of production (namely exclusion) which is distinct from that of most adults, and they respond to their common structural position in fairly similar ways. Although there are class differences in the extent and nature of delinquency, especially violent delinquency, they are less pronounced than for adults, for whom occupational differentiation is much sharper. The deteriorating position of juveniles in the labor market in recent years has been ascribed to a variety of causes, among them the inclusion of juveniles under minimum wage laws; changes in the structure of the economy (less farm employment); teenage preference for part-time work (to permit longer periods of education), which makes teenage labor less attractive to employers; and the explosion in the teenage labor supply, created by the baby boom, at a time when women were entering the labor market in substantial numbers (Kalacheck, 1973). \Nhatever contribution these circumstances may have made to shifting teenage employment patterns in the

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short run, the exclusion of juveniles from the labor market has been going on for more than a century, and may more plausibly be explained in terms of the failure of the oligopoly-capitalist economy to generate sufficient demand for labor than to these recent developments (Carson, 1972; Bowers, 1975).6

In both the United States and England, the prolongation of education has historically been associated with the contraction of the labor market, casting doubt on the view that more education is something that the general population has wanted for its own sake. Had this been true, the schoolleaving age would have jumped upward in periods of prosperity, when a larger proportion of the population could afford more education, not during depressions. Moreover, the functionalist argument that increased education is necessary as technology becomes more complex would apply at best to a small minority of students, and rests on the dubious assumption that fulltime schooling is pedagogically superior to alternative modes of organizing the education of adolescents. The present social organization of education, which I have argued contributes to delinquency, has also been plausibly attributed to the functional requirement of a capitalist economy for a docile, disciplined and stratified labor force, as well as to the need to keep juveniles out of the labor market. Thus the high and increasing level of juvenile crime we are seeing in present-day United States and in other Western countries originates in the structural position of juveniles in an advanced capitalist economy. Delinquency is not, however, a problem of capitalism alone. Although there are many differences between crime patterns in the United States and the Soviet Union, the limited information available indicates that delinquency in the Soviet Union is often associated with leisure-time consumption activities on the part of youths who are academic failures, and who either are not working or studying, or are working at or preparing for unrewarding jobs (Connor, 1970; Polk, 1972). This suggests that some of the processes described here may be at work in the Soviet Union. Since Soviet society is based on hierarchical domination and requires a docile, disciplined and stratified labor force, this parallel is not surprising. Yet it must not be forgotten that the parallel is only partial. The Soviet economy, for example, does not generate unemployment the way the capitalist economies of the West do. Insofar as can be learned from Soviet sources, juvenile delinquency has declined in recent decades, whereas it has increased rapidly in most of the capitalist nations.

DISCUSSION

For decades, criminologists have proposed such reforms as eliminating poverty and racial discrimination to solve the crime problem (see, Silberman, 1978, for the latest of this genre). None of them seriously addresses how the serious obstacles to achieving this task are to be overcome within

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the framework of a capitalist society. To suppose that the writing of an article or a book calling for an end to poverty and racism will actually contribute to ending poverty and racism is to betray a whimsical bit of utopianism. Marxist theorists tend to see these problems as largely produced by a class society, and insoluble within it. Efforts to tackle these problems may certainly be worthwhile, but not because they can be expected to achieve full success. My analysis of delinquency suggests that most proposed "solutions" to the delinquency problem would have limited impact. Thoroughly integrating teenagers into the labor force, on at least a part-time basis, would go far toward reducing delinquency. But the jobs for adolescents are not there; and the drastic restructuring of education that would be required is hardly to be expected in the foreseeable future. If young people had a good understanding of the structural sources of their frustration and oppression, their response might well be different. Instead of individualistic and predatory adaptations, we might see collective, politicized, and non-predatory challenges to their exclusion. It seems unlikely that such a radical transformation in consciousness would develop spontaneously, but in the context of a mass socialist movement, it could well occur.

Notes 1 Arrest rates broken down by age can be found in any recent edition of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. 2 See, for example, Christiansen 11960), Toby 11967), DeFleur 11970), and Christie 11978). 3 These expectations are derived from young peoples' knowledge of family arrangements in

our society generally, not from their own family circumstances alone. When controls in their own family are not relaxed, this can provide an additional source of conflict. 4 The emphasis given to school problems as a cause of delinquency in the criminological Iiterature of the 1950s and 1960s was probably due at least in part to there being more delinquents in school then than in earlier decades. 5 Although this evidence confirms that the school does contribute to delinquency, it is hardly necessary. In Argentina, patterns of delinquency are fairly similar to those in the U.S., even though the school-leaving age for working class children is 10, and delinquents report favorable attitudes toward school IDe Fleur, 19701. In the United States, unsatisfactory school experiences simply add to the economic motivations created by the exclusion of juveniles from the labor market. 6 The theory of supply and demand in economics demonstrates that with a given demand for a product, profits will be maximized at a lower level of production if the producing firm is a monopoly than if it is faced with competition. Thus the demand for labor has declined relative to the volume of production as American business has become more concentrated in a small number of giant corporations. The replacement of workers by machinery further reduces employment. Monopolization speeds up this process because large firms can more easily afford large investments in machinery. Large corporations can also relocate in other parts of the country or overseas to reduce costs of production, generating unemployment where disinvestment occurs. Since the labor market is not fully competitive, wages do not fall to a level that would permit full employment; such factors as minimum wage laws, labor

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unions, welfare for the unemployed, and illegal income all help to maintain wages above the competitive level.

References Bachman, J. G., S. Green and I. Wirtanen 119721. Droppi'ng Out: Problem or Symptom. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research. Bauer, E. J. 119641. "The Trend of Juvenile Offenses in the Netherlands and the United States." Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 55:359-69. Bloch, H.A., and A. Niederhoffer (1958). The Gang. New York: Philosophical Society. BIos, P. 119411. The Adolescent Personality: A Study ofj'ndividual Behavior. New York: Appleton. Bowerman, C. E., and J. W. Kinch 119591. "Changes in Family and Peer Orientation of Children between the Fourth and Tenth Grades." Social Forces 37:206. Bowers, N. (1975). "Youth and the Crisis of Monopoly Capitalism." In Radical Perspectives on the Economic Crisis in Monopoly Capitalism. New York: UniDn £If Radical PDlitical Economics. Briar, S., and I. Piliavin 119651. "Delinquency SituatiDnal Inducements, and CDmmitment tD CDnfDrmity." Social Problems 13:35-45. CarsDn, R. B. (1972). "Youthful Labor Surplus in DisaccumulatiDnist Capitalism." Socialist Revo-

lution 9:15-44. Christiansen, K. 119601. "IndustrializatiDn and UrbanizatiDn in RelatiDn tD Crime and Juvenile Delinquency." International Review of Criminal Policy 16:3. Christie, N. 11978). "YDuth as a Crime-Generating PhenomenDn." In Bany Krisberg and James Austin leds.), The Children of Ishmael. PaID AltD, Calif.: Mayfield. Clark, J. P., and E. W. Haurek 11966). "Age and Sex RDles £If AdDlescents and Their InvDlvement in MiscDnduct: A Reappraisal." SDciolDgy and Social Research 50:495-503. ClDward, R., and L. Ohlin 119601. Delinquency and Opportunity. New YOlk Fnle Press. CDhen, A. (1955). Delinquent Boys. New YDrk: Free Press. CDnger, J. J. (1973). "A WDrld They Never Knew: The Family and SDcial Change." Daedalus 100:1105-38. CDnnDr, W. 11970). Deviance in SDviet SDciety. New York: Columbia University Press. DeFleur, L. 119701. Delinquency in Argentina. Pullman: WashingtDn State University Press. DDwnes, D. M. (1966). The Delinquent SDlution: A Study in Subcultural Theory. New York: Free Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. 119561. FrDm Generation tD Generation: Age Groups and Social Structures. New York: Free Press. Elliot, D. S., and H. L. VDSS (1974). Delinquency and Dropout. Lexington: D.C. Heath. Fyvel, T. R. (1962). Troublemakers. New York: Schocken Books. Goffman, E. (1974). "Where the Action Is." In Interaction Ritual. Garden City: AnchDr BDDks. GDuldner, A. 11970). The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology. New YDrk: Basic Books. Hannerz, U. (1969).Soulside: Inquiries intD Ghetto Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Hirschi, T. (1969). The Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Horowitz, R., and G. Schwartz 119741. "Honor, Normative Ambiguity and Gang Violence." Ameri-

can Sociological Review 39:238-51. Hyman, H. H. (1968). "The Psychology £If Status." In H. H. Hyman and E. Singer leds.l, Readings in Reference Group Theory and Research. New York: Free Press.

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Kalacheck, E. 11973). "The Changing Economic Status of the Young." Journal of Youth and Adolescence 2:125-32. Kobrin, S. 119621. 'The Impact of Cultural Factors in Selected Problems of Adolescent Development in the Middle and Lower Class." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 33:387-90. Ladner, J. 11971). Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman. Garden City: Doubleday. Lin, T. 119591. "Two Types of Delinquent Youth in Chinese Society." In Martin K. Opler led.l, Culture and Mental Health. New York: Macmillan. McClean, J. D., and J. C. Wood 119691. Criminal Justice and the Treatment ofQffenders. London: Sweet and Maxwell. Matza, D. 119641. Delinquency and Dr(ft. New York: Wiley. - - - and G. Sykes 119611. "Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values." American Sociological Review 26:712-19. Mead, M. 119391. From the South Seas: Part III. Se}( and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: Morrow. Merton, R. K. 119571. Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. New York: Free Press. Miller, W. B. 119581. "Lower Class Subculture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency." Journal of Social Issues 14:5-19. Monahan, T. P. 119571. "Family Status and the Delinquent Child: A Reappraisal and Some New Findings." Social Forces 35:251-58. Mukherjee, S. K. 11971I.A Typological Study of School Status and Delinquency. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms. Mussen, P. H., J. J. Conger and J. Kagan 119691. Child Development and Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Panel on Youth of the President's Science Advisory Committee 119741. Youth: Transition to Adulthood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Parker, H. H. 119741. View from the Boys. North Pomfret, VI.: David and Charles. Parsons, T. 119471. "Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World." Psychiatry 10:167-81. Piliavin, I. M., A. C. Vadum and J. A. Hardyck 119691. "Delinquency, Personal Costs and Parental Treatment: A Test of a Reward-Cost Model of Juvenile Criminality." Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 60:165-72. Polk, K. 119721. "Social Class and the Bureaucratic Response to Youthful Deviance." Paper presented to the American Sociological Association. Polk, K., and W. E. Schafer (1972).Schools and Delinquency. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Psathas, G. (19571. "Ethnicity, Social Class, and Adolescent Independence from Parental Control." American Sociological Review 22:415-23. Rainwater, L. 119701. Behind Ghetto Walls. Chicago: Aldine. Rosen, L. (19691. "Matriarchy and Lower Class Negro Male Delinquency." Social Problems 17:175-89.

Schur, E. M. (19731. Radical Non-Intervention: Rethinking the Delinquency Problem. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Sennett, R., and J. Cobb (19721. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York:

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A. Knopf.

Sherif, M., and C. W. Sherif (1964). Reference Groups: E](ploration into Conformity and Deviation of Adolescents. New York: Harper and Row. Short, J. F., and F. L. Strodtbeck (1965). Group Process and Gang Delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Silberman, C. (1978). Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice. New York: Random House.

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Simon, R. J. 119751. Women and Crime. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books. Tennyson, R. A. 11967). "Family Structure and Delinquent Behavior." In M. W. Klein led,), Juvenile Gangs in ContelCt. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Toby, J. 119671. "Affluence and Adolescent Crime." In Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime, pp. 132-44. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Tomson, B., and E. R. Fiedler 119751. "Gangs: A Response to the Urban World," Part II. In D. S. Cartwright, Barbara Tomson, and Herschey Schwartz leds.), Gang Delinquency. Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole. Tuma, E., and N. Livson 119601. "Family Socioeconomic Status and Altitudes toward Authority."

Child Development 31. Werthman, C. 119671. "The Function of Social Definilions in the Development of Delinquent Careers," pp. 155-70. In Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Williams, L. 119761. "Three Youths Call Mugging the Elderly Profitable and Safe." New York Times, December 8, p. B2. Wolfgang, M. E., R. M. Figlio and T. Sellin 119721. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Editor's Notes 1 Since this essay was published, Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson have taken exception to its claim that the relationship between age and crime has undergone historical change ("Age and the Explanation of Crime," American Journal ofSociology 89 [1983]: 552-841. The relationship is, they contend, historically and cross-culturally invariant. A careful examination of the evidence, however, shows that there has been appreciable historical change, and that there are cross-naltional differences (David F. Greenberg, "Age, Crime and Social Explanation," American Journal ofSociology 91 [1985]: 1-21; Darrell J. Steffensmeier, Emilie Andersen Allan, Miles D. Harer, and Cathy Streufel, "Age and the Distribution of Crime," American Journal ofSociology 94 [1989]: 803-31. In an unpublished master's thesis done at National Taiwan University, Annie Lee found that official crosssectional rates of Taiwanese women's involvement in crime did not decline until after age 65. This pattern is radically different from that found in contemporary North American and European societies. 2 Partial confirmation that employment variables are important for understanding youthful crime comes from Emilie A. Allan and Darrell J. Steffensmeier, "Youth Underemployment and Property Crime: Differential Effects of Job Availability and Job Quality on Juvenile and Young Adult Arrest Rates," American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 107-23, who found that youthful property crime rates, as measured by arrests, are higher where unemployment, underemployment, and low wages are more prevalent. Randy L. LaGrange and Helene Raskin White, "Age Differences in Delinquency: A Test of Theory," Criminology 23:19--45, examine age-specific contributions of control theory to the explanation of juvenile delinquency. 3 The present essay has been criticized in Piers Beirne and James Messerschmidt, Criminology (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), p. 572, for paying too little attention to race and class differences in delinquency. The criticism is probably valid, though we still have very little sure knowledge of what the relationship between these background variables and delinquency actually is (Charles Tittle and Robert F. Meier, "Specnying the SES/Delinquency Relationship," Criminology 28 [1990]: 271-991. Several theories of delinquency that draw on Marxism and other strands of criminologi-

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cal thought attach greater importance to social class than I did (Mark Colvin and John Pauly, "A Critique of Criminology: Toward an Integrated Structural-Marxist Theory of Delinquency Production," American Journal ofSociology 89 [1983]: 513-51; John Hagan, A. R. Gillis, and John Simpson, "The Class Structure of Gender and Delinquency: Toward a Power-Control Theory of Common Delinquent Behavior," American Journal ofSociology 90 [1985]: 1151-78; Hagan, Simpson, and Gillis, "ClarifYing and Extending PowerControl Theory," American Journal ofSociology 95 [1990]: 1024-37; Hagan, Simpson, and Gillis, "Class in the Household: A Power-Control Theory of Gender and Delinquency," American Journal ofSociology 92 [1987]: 788-816). Some elements of these theories have received empirical confirmation, while others have not (Gary F. Jensen and Kevin Thompson, "What's Class Got to Do With It? A Further Examination of Power-Control Theory," American Journal of Sociology 95 [1990]: 1009-23; Robert Larzelere and Gerald R. Patterson, "Parental Management; Mediator of the Effect of Socioeconomic Status on Early Delinquency," Criminology 28 [1990]: 301-23; Steven F. Messner and Marvin D. Krohn, "Class, Compliance Structures, and Delinquency: Assessing Integrated Structuralist Marxist Theory," American Journal ofSociology 96 [1990]: 300-3481.

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Rape, Sexual Inequality, and Levels of Violence Julia Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger Adapted by permission from Julia and Herman Schwendinger, "Rape, Sexual Inequality and Levels of Violence," Crime and Social Justice 16 (19811; 3-32.

I. SEXUAL INEQUALITY AND MODE OF PRODUCTION Bring a group of knowledgeable anthropologists into one room for a serious discussion of violence against women, and the interchange begins with the realization that sexual inequality is entirely rooted in historical conditions (Caulfield, 1978). In light of the historical variations in sexual equality, the so-called "perpetual" battle between the sexes becomes a myth without substance. Women were not (as Brownmiller[1975] says) subjugated by men in the dawn of time. Anthropologist Eleanor Leacock describes numerous archaic societies in which the status of women was autonomous or equal to men. Her work on the Montagnais-Labradore tribes uses the chronicles vvritten by a seventeenth-century Jesuit priest, Father Paul Le Jeune, to show how the French colonials imposed sexual inequality and patriarchal family relationships on a society that had never known such relationships before (Leacock, 1975; Leacock and Goodman,1976). On the other hand, the use of rape as a mode of controlling women, in addition to other violent measures, has been reported by anthropological studies. In some societies, for example, rape is institutionalized to keep a woman in her place after other measures fail to restrict her sexual activities. In Mundugamor, says Margaret Mead (1963:219): "A woman of equal violence [to the excessively violent men] who continuously tries to attach new lovers and is insatiable in her demands, may in the end be handed over to another community to be communally raped." The Iatmul headhunters also call in their age mates to rape their wives into submission (Mead, 1969:76). Anthropologist Gayle Rubin (1975:163) generalizes: "In the Amazon valley of the New Guinea highlands, women are frequently kept in their place by gang rape when the ordinaIY mechanisms of masculine intimidation prove insufficient; 'We tame our women with the banana,' said one Mundurucu man."

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We notice, however, that this form of rape exists in societies that are violent in other respects. Among the Mundugamor, according to Mead, the punishment for a man who exceeds the norms of violence is death; he may be killed treacherously during an intertribal battle or a member of his tribe may kill him directly (Mead, 1963:219). The Mundurucu and Iatmul provide further evidence that institutionalized rape is usually embedded historically in supremacist, warlike cultures (Mead, 1969:77, 115, 117; Bateson, 1958:59-72, 138-41). Consequently it is possible that the adoption of rape is partly determined by the general level of violence in these societies. The economies of such male supremacist tribes figure importantly, though not universally, in creating the level of violence. Often the tribes are distinguished by patrilineal estates or individual male property ownership. While, allegedly, tribes like the headhunting Mundurucu were extremely violent traditionally (Murphy, 1960), in other tribes, violence may be a function of their production for exchange which, in some cases, includes production for capitalist markets. Furthermore, while some of these tribes may not be internally divided by social classes or characterized by private property ownership, their relations with neighboring groups may be antagonistic. They engage in raids and militaIY campaigns, and at times, their violence is directed toward capturing wealth, tribute, natural resources, or children, or toward the abduction of slaves, especially women. In this context, wars are, at least in part, economic policy. Further, some societies with sexual inequality are based on "lineage systems" which concentrate economic resources and surplus goods in the hands of male elders. Even though they are not yet class societies, exploitative developments move them in this direction !Dupre and Rey, 1980; Meillasoux, 1980J. The appreciation of the effects of socioeconomic relations on sexual inequality directs our attention to a comparative study by Karen Sacks 11975), an anthropologist. Sacks contends that sexual inequality varies greatly depending upon socioeconomic relations. (We will describe her study in the first section of this chapter.) Her thesis will be extended to suggest that within the context of modes of production and their articulation, both property relations and a woman's participation in social production affect her status in differing degrees.1 Furthermore, we will hypothesize that the general level of violence in the societies studied is also associated with their modes of production and degree of sexual inequality, although this association is not necessarily invariant. 2 In the second part of this article, we will test our hypothesis by examining evidence of violence in the same four African societies studied by Sacks. We will be particularly interested in demonstrating that exploitative modes of production culminating in precapitalist class societies produce sexual inequality along with the production or intensification of violence in general,3 Finally, the third and concluding part of our discussion will

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deal with the social mechanisms, operating in societies dominated by commodity relationships, that make violence against women appear to be derived spontaneously from the nature of men. The four tribes: modes of production and iilutonomy

As indicated, sexual inequality varies depending upon the dominant mode of production within a society. Sacks prepared a fascinating account of changes in sexual relations ranging from enviable equality to the subjugation of women in four African societies. She selected the four from anthropological writings on East and South Africa, ensuring that the sexual, economic and political data were adequate and comparable. The societies ranged from the highly egalitarian Mbuti of Zaire to the inegalitarian class society of the Baganda in Uganda. She included the Lovedu and Mpondo of South Africa because their egalitarianism falls between the others. Sacks analyzed each of these societies, modifying but keeping in mind Engels's theory of sexual inequality and class relations. (Engels [1975J attributed the emergence of sexual inequality to the rise of social classes and their institutions, the family, private property, and the state.) The Mbuti are a simple forest people who, like prehistoric societies, survive chiefly by hunting and gathering the necessities of life. They live communally in family households, but both sexes collect and process necessities for direct use by the entire band. Thus they have an "economy of use," according to Sacks (1975:221). The Mbuti sexual relations are completely egalitarian. There are no sexist standards, and the Mbuti marriage, for instance, does not restrict a woman's authority over her work, her children, or her socializing. Woman's labor is "public labor": it is not confined to the immediate family household but contributes to the entire band's survival. The Lovedu, on the other hand, illustrate a contradictory set of relations. Because of their patrilineal organization, women are discriminated against in domestic life, especially in relation to property ownership and transfer of family resources. Also, women are subject to some restrictions based on their reproductive capacity, on menstruation, pregnancy, and adultery. However, women are not wards of men and even within the household they enjoy some degree of independence. The relations outside the home scene deny extensive patrilineal discrimination. Lovedu women are powerful in tribal political life. They hold political office, officiate at certain religious rituals, and participate in political decisions and settlement of disputes. And, like the Mbuti, both sexes among the Lovedu give and receive food, an activity that is the material basis for exercising political power. Lovedu women have personal autonomy outside of domestic life. One measure of their freedom and independence is that women and men regularly participate in most of the same social activities. Women exercise

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independent choice with regard to marital and extramarital sex and divorce. Regarding extramarital affairs, the Lovedu, like the Mbuti, have a single, not a double standard. Significantly, unlike the Mbuti, the Lovedu society is organized around patrilineal family estates and male ownership of property. On the other hand, like the Mbuti, the Lovedu have an economy of use. Furthermore, the existing sexual and social restrictions on women's activities are weakly enforced or limited. Despite their patrilineal restrictions, the Lovedu, Sacks concludes, are predominantly egalitarian (Sacks, 1975:222-23). The Mpondo is a male supremacist society with deep antagonisms. For example, Mpondo men view their own extramarital affairs as right and proper; yet, they define the women's affairs as immoral. The women have an adult status outside the home although their domestic status is that of a ward. Thus, with regard to domestic authority and inheritance of the marital estate, the Mpondo men actively discriminate against women in domestic life. But it should be noted that this discrimination is limited. It does not extend to divorce, socializing by women, or a woman's right to represent herself in legal proceedings. Notably, the Mpondo women work in a use economy. Their labor is social because they produce for persons outside their immediate family group. The men, on the other hand, while working in the agricultural-use economy, also raise cattle, make war, and raid other communities for livestock. Most of their warlike activity is based on conflicts over cattle and grazing land. Like the Lovedu, patrilineal estates are characteristic of the Mpondo, but, unlike the Lovedu, Mpondo men are partly engaged in an early form of production for commodity exchange centered around cattle, according to Sacks. Now, let us turn to the fourth tribe. Compared with the Mpondo, commodity relations among the Baganda are far more developed. Organized as a patrilineal class society where both men and women are exploited, the Baganda subsist on hoe agriculture, but they primarily produce for exchange (Roscoe, 1965). Economic individualism is also very important because a man's economic interests are less subordinated to family obligations than they are in the other tribes. Sexism among the Baganda prevails everywhere. The Baganda woman's status is strictly that of wife and ward. Women are unequivocally subordinated to husbands in marital and extramarital relations. A man can kill his wife for adultery, but she has little recourse if the situation is reversed. Nor can women represent themselves in legal proceedings. A male guardian brings a woman's case to court; moreover, since he is held responsible for her conduct, he receives compensation for wrongs done to her. With the Baganda, moreover, "women's work" is individual production for household use. Women do not engage in social labor that extends

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outside the immediate household. Also, women are excluded from a major portion of social activities given by patrons or state officials. When Roscoe's observations were made, the Baganda tribe was organized as a kingdom where the king's wives, sisters, and daughters had privileges, such as economic power and freedom from work, which distinguished them from peasant women; but even they were subordinated to the men of their station. Peasant women, of course, were exposed to class as well as sexual oppression, and they had no access to political positions which were available to their husbands. At the opposite end of the scale from the Mbuti, the Baganda have individual male ownership of private property, domestication of women's labor, an economy based on production for exchange, social class relations, and sexual discrimination in every sphere oflife.

Social labor, private property, and mode Ilf production With this capsule portrait of the four tribes, we can return to Sacks's analysis. Her study seeks the causes of sexual inequality in the different types of socioeconomic formations. Her work is extremely valuable because it clearly demonstrates that sexual discrimination cannot be understood simply as a monolithic and universal phenomenon. Sexual discrimination may be nonexistent, it may be restricted to certain spheres of life, or it may extensively permeate every aspect of a society. Analyzing this variation, Sacks focuses sharply on discrete socioeconomic conditions. In this research, she finds that sexual discrimination is correlated with commodity exchange. The Baganda's economy is based chiefly on commodity e((change, and as a result, women are sharply restricted everywhere in life. The Mpondo men engage mostly in commodity relations and to a lesser extent in production for use. While they actively discriminate in domestic affairs, there is less discrimination outside the home. The Mbuti and Lovedu, however, whose economic lives focus for the most part on production for use, are predominantly egalitarian. Sacks emphasizes another discrete relation. Participation in production for use for a social unit larger than the immediate members of the family seems especially significant to women's autonomy. The Mbuti and Lovedu women engage in this extended form of social production and they have an independent adult status. This production among Mpondo women also supports some degree of independence outside the domestic sphere. Among the Baganda, however, women's labor is totally restricted to the private household, and their status reflects this. They do not have autonomy but are only wards ofthe men. On the other hand, private property is less important to Sacks's intertribal analysis. Although she agrees with Engels that, in general,

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women in nonclass societies stand in a more equal relation to men, she stresses the exclusion of women from social production beyond the immediate family as being more important than private property for determining their independence. She says, "It follows that a society would have to exclude women from public labor or in some way denigrate women's performance of such labor in order to deny them social adulthood for any length of time (Sacks, 1975:229). Here for the first time, on the issue of private property, we diverge somewhat from Sacks's explanation. We feel that a mode of production cannot be completely defined by such concepts as "production for use" or "exchange," because these concepts refer to commodity circulation and consumption relations and do not directly denote the social aspects of production relations. The question of how goods are produced must also be addressed. For instance, in later English feudalism, an "independent mode of production was expanded among small farmers and artisans, and it involved both production for household use and petty commodity exchange. This mode was supported by private property relations because small farmers and artisans owned their own farms, tools, and workshops. Nevertheless, since its social production relations were organized primarily around the cooperative labor of household members, this mode of production was not necessarily exploitative. Furthermore, more than one mode of production may exist in a socioeconomic formation, and one of them is often dominant. In addition to the independent mode, the dominant "feudal mode of production in Western Europe entailed the extraction of the agricultural surplus (in the form of labor or rent) directly from peasant producers by landlords. Moreover, that extraction did not occur through commodity exchange but rather as a result of the authority-political, ideological, and legal-which the ruling class was able to exercise over its subject class. Political authority was backed by a military caste, ideological authority emphasized the serfs oath of fealty, and legal authority was founded in the private ownership of land. We suggest that private property relations, under certain circumstances, may actually outweigh women's role in social production. However, first we note that the concept of private property cannot stand alone in our analysis, because the effects of property relations on women depend on the mode of production. A comparison of property relations within the four tribes will make this clear. For instance, the Mpondo and Bagandas, but not the Mbuti and Lovedu, have private property relations linked to exploitative modes of production. They exploit others through raiding and warring or by their class relations. Even though the Mpondo may not now be internally divided by social classes, their raiding and warring over cattle are extensions of economic life that represent one of the earliest forms of exploitation. 4 Along with class exploitation, this II

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forcible appropriation of property, and thereby the exploitation of others, influences the difference in degree of sexual equality between the former and the latter tribes. By comparison, where the mode of production is nonexploitative, private property relations may be limited and may have little effect on women's status. Lovedu production, for example, is not exploitative. The Lovedu breed cattle, but uses of this property are not what one might expect. Cattle are not raised for trade but for such family use as doW!)'. Moreover, women as well as men own the cattle that bind the family groups into a network of reciprocal relations through marriage. E. 1. Krige and 1. D. Krige (1943), the anthropological husband-and-wife team who spent more than a decade studying the Lovedu, note, "Cattle are individually owned by both men and women, but the kind of ownership, except in the case of some 15 percent, is entirely different from what we understand by the word. For the vast majority of cattle are linked to the chain of munywalo (bride-price) exchanges and as such the individual's rights over them are subject to many restrictions. The primary value to the Natives of cattle is not economic, but social."5 It is not surprising, therefore, that the Lovedu property relations are not strictly governed by patrilineal norms and that certain aspects of these property relations as well as the dominant mode of production support women's authority in most spheres oflife.6 Let us speculate for a moment, however, on the interrelations that might increase the small degree of sexual inequality among the Lovedu. First, inequality might be extended if two new factors were to evolve in the patrilineal estates. These factors are (1) a mode of production based mainly on the exploitation of individual Lovedu or neighboring people, and (2) the kind of private property relations that safeguard this mode of production. (As evidence that inequality might increase, we note that among the Mpondo males, where the economy was partly based on these relations, the amount of sexual discrimination was greater.) Second, if these economic changes were to occur, the emergence of a state based on exploitative class relations would then also be possible; moreover, it would be controlled by the wealthier estates as the Baganda situation implies. Under such conditions, male supremacy would become generalized to the remaining spheres of Lovedu liife? Furthermore, such speculation is not unrelated to evolving socioeconomic realities. Originally, the traditional Lovedu sexual division of labor was not uneven. The Kriges say, "Both men and women hoed, weeded and reaped. Only men cleared the forest but against this only women cultivated certain crops, such as groundnuts. The old pattern is still more or less maintained at least in principle." But, and more to the point, the Kriges observed in the early 1940s that economic life among the Lovedu was beginning to change. The men were becoming engaged in plough

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agriculture for cash crops and in work as laborers in nearby settlements, while the women were maintaining the agrarian production for use based on hoe agriculture. The Kriges (1943:37-38) point to results of these departures from tradition: "Crops specially planted by women tend to fall behind in the race. Women do most of the hoeing today, and their labour, valuable as it is on the steep slopes and among the stones, cannot keep pace with the plough. Moreover, men make the modem gardens by the sides of streams [where fuITOWS can be irrigated and the plough can cut more easily], and the mong beans, groundnuts, and native potatoes which the women planted disappear before the advance of European vegetables. This is as yet not a great change, because there are very few of these gardens, and it is far beyond present resources to construct irrigation furrows." The pace of economic change among the Lovedu, therefore, depend upon numerous factors-the availability of forces of production, of animals, implements, and wage labor, and the development of markets for the new European crops. Yet, if these changes should increase, the division oflaborbetween the sexes may grow more uneven (with women performing a greater share of the traditional labor), especially with the decline of other male work activities, such as hunting, because of South African government restrictions. In addition, the women are still subject to monotonous labor, but the younger men are beginning to feel that hoeing is women's work and that the men pull their weight if they go out periodically to earn wages, plough the field, and build the huts. Finally, an important change is that some of the Lovedu have converted to Christianity and have migrated to the towns. The Kriges (1943:58) say, "The Christians are notable ... because ... they have eagerly accepted whatever differentiates them from their heathen brothers. They are competitive, money conscious; they exploit their brothers." The Christians are squarely integrated into the South African-capitalistmode of production. In short, numerous factors are changing because of the articulation between a capitalist mode of production and the precapitalist mode that tradition characterized Lovedu society. The Lovedu mode appears to have been somewhat preserved, yet it is undergoing very gradual decay in the face of South African economic developments. 8 Eventually the traditional mode of production among the Lovedu may disappear entirely. Consequently, one can conclude from the direction of these developments that the effects of property relations cannot be evaluated without reference to the differences and changes in precapitalist modes of production and how they are articulated with capitalist relations. Now, another part of Sacks's analysis may be modified. We would point out that these differences in modes of production must also be consid-

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ered in evaluating women's participation in labor for people beyond the immediate family (i.e., sociallaborl. In a "use economy," which is based on primitive communism, as in the case of the Mbuti, there is a direct relation between women's social labor and their autonomy. However, under other modes of production, social labor hardly affects their status. For instance, in slave modes of production, enslaved women labor in the fields alongside men, but this labor does not make them independent. They remain the slave owner's property, and their participation in social production is itself a condition of their servitude. Consequently, if property relations refer to who owns the means of production, the products of labor, labor power, or even who owns the laborer, then private property relations enter into the determination of women's status despite their participation in productive activities extending beyond the family. Furthermore, in pre capitalist and capitalist societies, property relations need not affect women's status negatively. In fact, where individual women are able to own the means of production, in addition to the products of their labor, their status is usually increased. For example, wherever precapitalist forms of commodity production prevail, women's independence is heightened by their ability to own and sell as well as produce cash crops, by their owning, selling, and processing foodstuffs, and by their merchandising other commodities that they have not produced at allY Also, under capitalism, Ithe independence that workingclass women achieve from employment may stem more from their status as private owners of labor power (a commodity salable for cash) and the earnings from the exchange of this power, than from their participation in commodity production per se.lO When we compare some of the characteristics of the two variables, ownership of commodities and participation in production, we can see why one contributes more to status than the other. The sale of commodities results in money income, a readily observable value contributing to autonomy, while the underlying values of social production activities are hidden from view due to the complicated and indirect social relations on which they are based. These indirect relations are experienced by people only as relations between people on the one hand and salable things on the other.!1 Since status appears to be based merely on commodity ownership and money, a worker's contribution to production cannot usually be observed in terms other than money earnings. Therefore, the fact of participation in social production alone does not have the same social psychological effect that property relations have. In other words, depending upon the mode of production or its articulation with other modes, both property relations and a woman's participation in social production affect her status in society, in differing degrees. They may support either sexual equality or inequality depend-

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ing upon the concrete modes of production within which they operate. Usually it is the mode of production that informs us about who owns or controls women's ability to labor. It determines both the products of their labor and the means of production that are used to create these products. And it is the mode of production that informs us of how independence is dynamically related to the nature of property relations as well as woman's participation in social production outside of her immediate family.

II. LEVELS OF VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL FORMATIONS In Part I we suggested a positive correspondence between sexual inequality and violence in certain socioeconomic formations. 12 We were also interested in determining whether expoitative modes of production, culminating in precapitalist class societies, have produced or intensified violence while increasing sexual inequality. Before our hypotheses are tested, however, let us first discuss some theoretical issues. These issues emerge because the theories stimulated by Engels's work do not invariably unlock the secrets of sexual inequality. Also, we shall see that attempts to deal with these issues relate to rape and other forms of violence. The problems with the evolutionary theories are evident. Since they are highly general explanations of sexual inequality, such theories are conceived abstractly and independently of countervailing influences. They can only shed light on general social changes and are not meant to cover every historical instance. Consequently, although these theories seem to deal well with global changes, contradictory instances still remain. Further, even the critics of anthropologists like Leacock, recognize that egalitarian societies deteriorated much more rapidly than inegalitarian societies under the destructive impact of colonialism (Godelier, 1981:8-9). After contact with the world economic systems created by class societies, few social systems with a high degree of sexual equality remain. Since male domination is the rule today, tribal societies that contradict evolutionary theories are easy to find, while positive examples are, by now, relatively rare. Thus, there are inegalitarian tribes and bands that seem to have none of the characteristics that Engels felt were necessary to the original development of sexual inequality. For instance, the Mundurucu, who lived in the savannas of the Amazon basin, engaged in horticulture and hunting during the contact period. They had no private property in the means of production and no social classes or state apparatus. The Mundurucu relations of production were organized communally, and

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food was distributed to each according to need. Finally, Mundurucu women participated in production beyond their immediate households; yet, contemporary anthropology implies that they were still dominated by men. Reports about the traditional culture of the Mundurucu men suggest that they were male supremacists despite the apparent absence of virtually every economic relations important to evolutionary interpretations of sexual inequality. Maurice Godelier (1981) has made such contradictions the basis for discounting the importance of Leacock's obseIVations of societies where women have autonomy. He states (Godelier,1981:10) that "men have so far dominated power in the last analysis," and their dominant position is due to several causes. First, men were more mobile in hunting and gathering societies than women, and this difference encouraged men to become hunters. The sexual division of labor led men to adopt a "differential value system" which set "a higher value on men's activity insofar as it involved greater risks of losing one's life and greater glory in taking life." Cooking, by comparison, was not valued so highly since "both sexes can perform" it (12). Second, men assumed a dominating position in order to force women to "reproduce the life that maintains the group," that is, by bearing and raising children who become productive social beings. They also required dominance to force women to marry into and live with another group (patrilocality), thereby establishing reciprocal relations among families (12-14). There are other parts of Godelier's theory that might be mentioned; for example, the ban on incest allegedly exists because it aids survival (by compelling families to establish reciprocal relations), and the ideology of male supremacy is based partly on ego defense mechanisms. Men compensate for their inability to bear children by elevating their roles as hunters and warriors and by denigrating the roles of women. In sum, Godelier's functionalist theory regards male domination as a means for optimizing the chances for social survival when natural resources are scarce.13 Sexual inequality, therefore, arises to preseIVe the lives and well-being of humankind. A "society" is thus able to "survive" because men dominate women with regard to childbearing (the creation of "living labor") and with regard to the establishment of supportive joint-family relations. Presumably, women are unable or indisposed to engage wholeheartedly in the reproduction of producers and kinship relations without male domination. Besides having to force women to reproduce and raise children, male violence against women appears, in this context, because women resist being controlled. Violence also arises, according to Godelier, when solidary kinship relations disintegrate. Out of this social disorganization there emerges "raiding, rape, war and expropriation" (Godelier, 1981:15).

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Even though Godelier considers himself a Marxist, in our opinion his theory is composed of a melange of Durkheimian and Freudian ideas which, besides having factual shortcomings, are susceptible to the same kinds of criticism that plague other structural-functional theories.1 4 First, this criticism refers to "equifunctional alternatives" that are egalitarian and that would have enabled a given "society" to survive equally well. Second, the alternatives posed by such questions undermine the facile structural-functional assumptions that certain relations, such as prostitution, monogamy, male supremacy, social classes, or the state, are necessary for the survival of society. Inquiring into equifunctional alternatives, one would ask whether Mundurucu women really needed to be dominated by men to reproduce tribal existence. Why couldn't the women easily achieve the same results by ensuring cooperation among their own sex? After all, most women are just as intelligent, capable, and interested as most men in conceiving of the need for establishing mutual aid among families and ensuring the survival of their tribe, their children, and their kin. Second, why should any violence, male or female, be pitted against women to achieve this purpose? Intratribal violence is exceptional among tribes like the Mbuti or Lovedu. Couldn't female persuasion, ridicule, shame, and even banishment perform the same social control function? After such questions are asked, Godelier's theory seems extremely unconvincing and hopelessly androcentric. Furthermore, Godelier, for all practical purposes, virtually ignores the extent to which the world economic system, introduced by early mercantile and capitalist developments, transformed tribal societies. True, he mentions that colonialism affected egalitarian societies adversely, but this awareness plays no role in his theory. Certainly, with regard to the Mundurucu, one should inquire whether it was perhaps the European penetration of the Amazon valley that produced inequality rather than any general necessity to control the fertility of women. What were the effects of the colonial penetration of the Amazon valley? As indicated, conventional accounts of the Mundurucu suggest that they have always been warlike; yet this impression seems to have originated mainly from their furious attacks, in 1770, against Portuguese settlements along the shores of the Amazon. Robert Murphy (1960:29) writes that this period also witnessed an epic attack by the Mundurucu into the State of Maranhao, an amazing five hundred miles away. These attacks would suggest that some extraordinmy events had provoked the Mundurucu either by offending their sense of justice or their need for survival; but unfortunately, curiosity about these possibilities is nowhere expressed by Murphy. (Such possible events will be suggested shortly.! We are informed, however, that a short twenty-five years later, in 1795, the governor of Para, using superior weapons, directed a successful military counter-

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expedition against the Mundurucu, thus establishing colonial supremacy by force; and this was followed by contact with Jesuit missionaries. As they migrated closer to "civilized settlements" for trade, the Mundurucu continued, for a time, to engage in warfare with other tribes. Other decisive turning points in the relations with the Portuguese took place when the Mundurucu were enlisted by the colonizers to help quell other Indian tribes. Recognizing the militmy superiority of the Europeans, the Mundurucu joined them and became mercenaries throughout the nineteenth century. Their military activities waned, however, as the area was pacified and as the Amazon valley became progressively assimilated into a more developed, capitalist, colonial economy. By 1852, as this assimilation proceeded, the Mundurucu in the lower Tapajos River region lost their cohesiveness and became fragmented. From the last half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth cenhlry, through trade in farinha and through the penetration of capitalist rubber-gathering enterprises, the upper river Mundurucu were also assimilated. Rubber companies, expanding rapidly, as early as 1860 in the lower parts of the Tapajos River, eventually overran all resistance to their domination of the regional economy. (There is even a case of the dismissal of a Jesuit priest whose mission was shut down, because he urged the Indians to monopolize their rubber production in order to avoid exploitation by Brazilian business interests [Murphy, 1960:41].) By the twentieth century the Mundurucu in the upper river region had become integrated into plantation networks headed by patrones who were part of the economic system established by Brazilian descendants of the Portuguese ruling class. During this entire period, the Mundurucu went through momentous changes. They were fragmented and decimated by war and European diseases. Their traditional kinship relations disintegrated and changed from patrilocal to matrilocal living arrangements to facilitate farinha production, which was centered in the hands of women, when farinha became an important commodity for trade with Jesuit missions and other colonial settlements. According to Yolanda Murphy, women's status was somewhat improved by these developments, but this improvement may have ended with the rise of nuclear family relations brought about by the rise of rubber plantations. Such developments reinforce the argument that sexual relations are strongly affected by economic and political changes. This argument is buttressed by scrutinizing the precious little bit of information that exists about the Indian tribes in the Amazon basin before the Mundurucu attacked the Portuguese settlements. In this context, Leacock touches on the early contacts with Europeans in an observation about a group of Yanoama, who lived on the borders of the basin. This observation may be extremely significant because the description ofthe Yanoama bears certain similaritiies to the Mundurucu.

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Leacock (1981:198) points out that these particular Indians are characterized in Marvin Harris's (1975) widely read anthropology textbook as having a culture that is entirely dominated by incessant quarreling) raiding) dueling, beating) and killing. According to Harris, this culture is "regarded as among the world's fiercest and most male-centered cultures." Yanoama men, Harris says) are as tyrannical with their women as Oriental monarchs with their slaves. To explain this male domination, Harris employs the usual liberal-functionalist scheme for explaining war and interpersonal violence, namely, neo-Malthusian propositions· about population density and the struggle over scarce natural resources. But Leacock (1981:98-99) challenges Harris's explanation. She points out that "in a study of another Yanoama group ... one reads that these people may have first gained their reputation for fierceness when they fought off a Spanish exploring party in 1758. In that period, Spanish and Portuguese adventurers were ranging throughout the Amazon area searching for slaves. The author of the account worked with a relatively peaceful highland group, and he suggested that the exaggerated fierceness of the lowland Yanoama is not typical) but may have been developed for self-protection. In the village he studied, elder women, like elder men, are highly respected. When collective decisions are made, mature women 'often speak up) loudly, to express their views.' Younger men, like younger women, 'have little influence' " (our emphasis). Now, it is quite possible that the Mundurucu gained their reputation as fierce warriors after attacking Portuguese settlements, but it may also be that their attack was a response to prior contact with European slavers. On the other hand) slaveIY does not have to be the only basis for conflict: there are numerous accounts of European contacts with North American Indian tribes that justifY their attacks against white settlers. Evelywhere, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, tribal societies waged fierce struggles against slavery and colonialism. Also, the number of Indians in the Amazon basin does not at all suggest that population density was a critical factor for the development of warfare or sexual inequality. Only 1,500,000 lived in the vast Amazon basin and this figure dropped drastically to 75,000 after the conquest and assimilationist periods ended. True) the Mundurucu were among the most ferocious headhunters in the Amazon valley, and they were noted for attacking neighboring tribes) killing the adults and incorporating the children into their own families. But their warlike culture may be due primarily to Portuguese influence, and the Mundurucu may have captured children because of the drastic diminution of their own population resulting from disease and warfare. It may have had nothing whatsoever to do with high population density and scarce resources. On the other hand, the effects of such changes alone cannot tell us anything about their relation to male domination unless the effects of war,

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Jesuit mIssIOnaries, and other colonial-induced factors on the social organization of male activities encouraged sexual inequality. That the Jesuits steadfastly encouraged male domination is a certainty. Also, considering that men are its primary participants, wrufare in this context may have led to the male control of organized violence, the glorification of male warriors, and dominance relations headed by men. If the earliest engagements of wrufare against the colonial settlements did not encourage male domination, then the later ones at the behest of the Brazilian authorities and under the influence of the church may have. Certainly, if the tribal mode of production is not itself conducive to violence, then this violence has to emerge from external sources. And if the mode of production is not conducive to sexual inequality, then there would have to be mechanisms based on internal and external relations that engender inequality. In the preface to her new book of collected articles, Leacock (1981:4-5) comments on how egalitarian social relations are undermined. She notes that in societies which are otherwise egalitarian, "indications of male dominance tum out to be due to either (1) the effects of colonization and/or involvement in market relations . . . ; (2) the concomitant of developing inequality in a society, commonly referred to in anthropological writings as 'ranking,' when trade is encouraging specialization oflabor and production for exchange is accompanying production for use ... ; or (31 problems arising from interpretations of data in terms of western concepts or assumptions." Furthermore, it is possible to posit that in relation to sexual inequality, modes of production that establish such rankings, and wrufare that encourages the male monopoly of organized violence, though independent, have additive effects and that these effects converge in class societies. We entertained such a possibility when we hypothesized that the general level of violence--including violence against women-would correlate with socioeconomic formations that have greater sexual inequality. Data to test this hypothesis for the four African societies were obtained from the Human Relations Area Files, which index primary anthropological research on more than eight hundred precapitalist formations. 15 By classi1)ing economic, kinship, ecological and other relations, the files isolate information for comparative research. In light of such information, were our predictions substantiated or were they unfounded? First, however, it should be noted that violence in all four of these societies can be demonstrated in several ways. For example, it can be expressed by the state itself whenever legal codes are enforced by corporal punishment instead of persuasion. Furthermore, military activities and the treatment of prisoners or slaves are further indicators of violence. Finally, we learn much about the level of violence of a society from its childrearing practices and from other interpersonal relations. By carefully scrutinizing observations in the area files that are indexed by

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topics pertaining to war, social sanctions, childrearing, sexual relations, and so forth, we were able to evaluate the variations in violence between the societies for similar kinds of relationships.

Mbuti Examination of the Mbuti along these lines suggests that their violence is minimal compared with the violence in the other three tribes. The Mbuti have no police force, court, army, or permanent council that dispenses violence. On the other hand, they make reprisal raids against plantations of villagers who have treated a Mbuti tribe member violently. Intertribal conflicts over territorial claims may evoke threats of war, but they are usually settled peaceably, since the Mbuti are not a warlike people. Authority among the Mbuti is dispersed throughout the society because each area of band activity has its own leader. Furthermore, the Mbuti discourage individuals from aggressively assuming authority; when leadership is assumed, its exercise is restricted to persuasion alone. Colin Turnbull (1965:181), an anthropologist who studied the Mbuti in their forest environment, says, "Such adults as have respect in any particular field at any particular moment do not even have any authority; they can merely claim to be heard." What happens when a member offends another person? If there is a dispute regarding food, sex, territory, or anything else, it is usually settled quickly and quite painlessly. Retributive sanctions against an offending member are infrequent and even then sanctions are expressed by ridicule or criticism rather than a show of violence. Turnbull finds no evidence of blood payment of any kind for serious offenses. For even the most serious offenses such as incest, his field observations indicate the use of ostracism and ridicule rather than torture, imprisonment, or execution. Interpersonal violence is restricted to fighting between two or three people at most. Disputes over reciprocal duties and personal jealousies occasionally lead to fights; consequently, the daily routine of life is punctuated at times by squabbles and beatings involving a couple of youngsters, an unmarried couple, or a husband and wife. These conflicts, however, do not last long and may be reconciled by giftgiving or compensation. Moreover, intervention by other tribal members usually prevents these conflicts from becoming magnified. In addition, Turnbull could find no incidence of rape, even among the youth. He reports much sexual activity when youth are on the trail together and he mentions the fact that it sometimes degenerates into lusty orgies. However, Turnbull (1965:121) says, "A boy may rip off a girl's outer bark cloth, if he can catch her, but he may never have intercourse with her without her permission. I know of no case of rape, though boys often talk about their intentions of forcing reluctant maidens to their will."16

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Turnbull describes the sources of common disputes and the quick and equal method of arbitration. He writes: "A number of disputes arising over food indicate trivial domestic disagreements, and seldom reach major proportions. A wife is late in cooking her husband's food, or cooks it badly; he spills some precious oil or fails to catch any game on the hunt. Such disagreements are confined almost entirely to the younger married couples, and they usually settle them by beating each other. If the beating gets too severe then the older women intervene, slapping both boys and girls soundly" (Turnbull, 1965:201). Marital disputes not forced on the attention of the band are ignored, but they may evoke ridicule and complaints if they become noisy and keep people awake. Turnbull writes, "Certainly a fight going on between husband and wife inside the hut is followed with zest by all the youths and some of the younger married couples. These may even stand around watching the hut shake, ready to catch whoever comes flying out first and prevent further damage." Sometimes such a squabble is followed by the couple making up loudly so everyone will hear, and then they will walk hand in hand about the camp in ostentatious amity. Turnbull (1965:206-7) says, "This is considered a good thing." The Mbuti child is treated with much attention and affection, and a woman, if she is childless, is considered unfortunate. A birth, according to Turnbull, is looked upon as a happy event. He says, "After a few days, when the child is brought freely into the open, the hunters and elders will fondle it and compliment the parents. The father is as proud as the mother, and just as likely to carry the child around to show it off" (Turnbull,1965:129). Socialization of the child is shared by the entire band. Infants crawl everywhere, are fondled by anyone, are soundly slapped and brought back to the mother's hut if they get in the way or crawl into the fire. If they are too noisy in the children's play area, they are criticized. The parents are responsible for the child only until it is three or four years old, and then it is cared for and educated by its age peers, the band's youths, and the oldest of the elders. Children learn the ways of the band and forest through playing games with each other and with the youths. In these activities, the controls applied to them are mainly ridicule and ostracism. Turnbull (1965:125) describes a typical learning situation and the form of discipline used. He says, "Another important initiative game is the hunt, in which a youth or an elder pretends to be an antelope ... any child who fails to react properly is laughed out ofthe game." When little boys and girls play house, they hunt, fish, and gather, and thus contribute in a small way to the food economy of the band. Important behavior and personality patterns develop and carry over into the future. In highlighting the value ofthese children's activities, Turnbull

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(1965:125) says, "They also learn not only to rely on their fellow age mates for help in food-gathering activities, but to share with them. The sharing is largely left to the girl's decision." Lovedu

The traditional Lovedu mode of production is organized around communal production for use within the family estate and the reciprocal exchange of these use-values with kinship groups. This mode is being threatened by a growing money economy and the absorption, chiefly of the men, into agrarian commodity production. Nevertheless, the traditional mode of production was still dominant in the tribal communities when E. Jensen Krige and J. D. Krige (1943) wrote The Realm of a Rain Queen. Unlike the Mpondo, who raise cattle for cash and who speak of money as cattle, the Lovedu raise cattle but use them to integrate joint family relations. We have seen that cattle are used for dowry and thereby operate as a most significant means for establishing reciprocal links between kinship groups. On the other hand, both Lovedu and Mpondo are encompassed within the capitalist economy maintained by the South African government. They operate within the framework of a racist state apparatus which ruthlessly represses activities that threaten the safety of the white population. The white government also thwarts any and all developments that threaten such prerequisites for capital accumulation as labor, land, orderly commerce, and political conformity. Consequently, although native courts and customs deal with violations of tribal rules, a South African criminal justice system is imposed on the tribesP This system appears to restrict itself to violations of South African laws, including laws containing intertribal warfare and protecting the government and the white population. Imprisonment and execution are used as sanctions by the South African government. Engaging in sedentary agriculture, the Lovedu have developed a much more complicated mode of production and social structure than the Mbuti. However, the Lovedu are nonaggressive, even though they have experienced centuries of war with invading tribes and Europeans who finally pressed them into a mountainous region in South Africa. Although it is not a class society, authority relations among the Lovedu are partly consolidated in a royal family and district heads. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the royal family has been headed by a queen. The Kriges (1943:285) report, "Nowhere else are so many women heads of districts or in so many important political positions." Women generally have high status in Lovedu society. The Kriges (1943:198) obseJve, "Women are the strongest pillars of the social structure and without their support there can be no guarantee that the

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adjustments in the superstructure will be lasting or effective; and in a society that relies on compromise and not on coercion, this role becomes even more important." It is notable, too, that the men who sit in judgment in the khoro rely completely on voluntary compliance. The enforcement of their decisions is left to the disputing parties because the court cannot enforce its edicts violently. Therefore, the proceedings are aimed at compromise and conciliation (Krige and Krige, 1943:200-201). Clearly then, the principal mechanism of conflict resolution is compensation rather than violence. Gifts and compensatory fines reduce the strains in social life. For instance, in one case noted by the Kriges, a father intervened in a squabble between his son and his son's wife, and the son in anger stabbed the father. The incident was reconciled when the son provided his father with a goat and begged pardon (202). Other examples suggest a remarkable consistency in their nonviolent solutions for settling offenses. If an adulterer is discovered, he asks pardon by giving a goat or cattle as a gift to the offended husband. Even homicide is reconciled through compensation, although sometimes restitution is also made by converting the criminal into a kinsman. When this mechanism is invoked, the slayer m.akes restitution by assuming some of the obligations of the person he killed. Accounts of childrearing patterns indicate that discipline is achieved primarily through encouragement by parents and pressure from age mates. Punishment of children is infrequent, though threats are common (104). Parents are affectionate and gentle with their children (102-25). Since the Lovedu are not a warlike people, the foreign policy of the queen is appeasement rather than war, and this also affects childrearing. The Kriges observe, "There is no need to direct [initiation rites] towards hardening the youth or instilling manly courage, and military discipline and regimentation are of little or no importance." Because of these nonaggressive relations, the Europeans feel that Lovedu are cowardly and deceitful-lacking the manly qualities of the Shangana-Tonga, a neighboring society that is more commercially oriented and whose people have aggressive dispositions that make them favorable candidates for native South African police forces (284--85). Mpondo

On the other hand, for the Mpondo, commodity production centered around the individual ownership of cattle and wage labor in Europeanowned mines and plantations either was dominant or was rapidly becoming dominant when this tribe was studied by anthropologist Monica Hunter, author of Reaction to Conquest. Hunter's observations of the Mpondo indicate that they are more

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violent than the Mbuti and the Lovedu. The Mpondo engage in cattle raiding and armed conflicts with neighboring tribes even though these acts are suppressed by the South African government. Responding perhaps to the greater interpersonal violence, South African magistrates seem to be more active among the Mpondo than the Lovedu. Hunter reports that some warfare is caused by external attacks, but cattle raiding by the Mpondo themselves is probably the most frequent of all occasions for war (Hunter, 1961:412). Although the Mpondo economy is based on hoe agriculture and cattle exchange, Hunter reports that now more and more people in Mpondoland are using money for exchange and have adopted ploughs in their fields. Customary authority in Mpondo society is centered around male political leaders. Each headman, or chief, with the men under him, forms a court of the first instance. From this court a person can appeal to the court of the headman's immediate superior and thence to the court of the paramount chief. The sanctions administered for wrongs are usually fines, but in some cases an offender is punished by death (413). The suppression of raiding has had limited success, and it seems to have had almost no effect on traditional standards of masculine conduct. For example, young boys exhibit warrior traits at early ages. Hunter observes, "Small boys begin to carry sticks at about five years, and from that age are constantly fighting one another with sticks." She reports herd boys fighting each other in tournaments, and they continue into adolescence, fighting over grazing land and girls (410). Hunter (1961:410--11) says, "The boys of one ridge, of one subdistrict, fight those of another. Sometimes they dare not enter each other's territory .... Subdistricts fight over grazing, and over girls. Gatherings in the hut of a girl being initiated, weddings, and festivals are usual occasions for a fight. Fights at festivals between subdistrict and subdistrict often become serious. Older men join in, and sticks are exchanged for spears. Women give the war cry, and word goes out, ilizwe lifile [The country is at war!]. One such fight began at a beer drink which I attended at Ntontela .... As always the division was on territorial lines, each man fighting with his neighbors. Three men died of wounds received in that fight." Hunter adds that such local disputes sometimes envelop whole tribes. The headmen, according to Hunter (1961:427), report people involved in these violent encounters to the South African magistrates, who impose fines and imprisonment. Despite these sanctions, "fights between young men of different districts, in which sticks and occasionally spears or guns are used and individuals killed, are not unusual." Mpondo fathers are devoted to their children, carrying them about in their arms, fondling them, playing with them, and teaching them to dance. As children grow older, however, they are taught respect and

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obedience, which are particularly due their fathers because of the patriarchal traditions. These traditions also encourage the use of violence toward women. Hunter (1961:30) reports, for instance, that one man beat his brother's wife because she had beaten one of the children who was quarreling and not the others. She ran home, but a brother-in-law complained, "In the old days you beat another man's wife even more than your own, but now women say they will not be beaten except by their own husbands." Most of the quarrels between husband and wife tum on the double standards in sexual morality, according to Hunter (1961:42). Men can have as many wives as they can afford, but a wife is forbidden to have relations with any except her own husband. In actual practice very many of the married women have lovers even though their husbands make every effort to catch and prosecute the adulterer. Sometimes the jealousies between husbands and wives over adultery lead to beatings of the wife. The Mpondo are obviously more violent than the Lovedu or Mbuti, but for a quantum leap in violence beyond the others, we must examine the Baganda. 8aganda

The Baganda's dominant mode of production is based on the extraction of an agricultural surplus (in the form of labor, rent, or tribute through taxation) directly from peasant producers by landlords and political officials. The Baganda had their own judicial system at the time they were studied by Rev. John Roscoe (1965), an anthropologist and missionary who spent twenty-five years in Africa. I8 The Baganda belong to a class society where the juridical system headed by the king's court enforces the law and administers punishment. When fines are used as punishment, the state typically takes a lion's share and gives the rest as compensation to the injured party. In addition to fines, the king's court administers justice through imprisonment in stocks, agonizing torture, and execution. Roscoe (1965:259) notes, "The King often brought a spurious charge against a chief who was becoming rich, and fined him heavily, or sent him to prison, intimating to him that he must pay a handsome sum if he wished to be freed; failing that, he would be cast into the stocks, where he would be so much ill used, that he would be glad to pay any fine to escape the torture and the danger of being put to death." In the "lower courts," petty theft and disobedience on the part of a child are offen punished by burning the child's hand or cutting off his ear. "The punishment of children was usually far in excess of the fault; and little mercy was shown when the child was a slave or an orphan. Adults often have their hands cut off for theft," says Roscoe (1965:267).

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Adultery is punished severely. Roscoe (1965:261) writes, "Though death was usually the punishment inflicted for adultery, an offender's life would sometimes be spared, and he be [sic] fined two women, if he were able to pay them; the culprit was, however, maimed; he lost a limb, or had an eye gouged out, and showed by his maimed condition that he had been guilty of a crime. A slave taken in adultery with one of his master's wives was invariably put to death."19 Corporal punishment can also be inflicted by any man on his wives or slaves, but this is a private affair. Punishment might consist of cutting off a person's lips, ears or one hand, or gouging out an eye. Moreover, a husband is also allowed to torture his wife until she confesses if he suspects her of committing adultery. Roscoe (1965:263) indicates the following procedure for the torture: "The woman was stripped and made to lie down; her legs and arms were stretched out and tied to the posts of the house; she was flogged, and then left in this position for the whole night, or until she made confession. The husband would not be punished by law, even if he killed his wife under such circumstances; her relations might have the case tried, but if it was proved that she was in the wrong, no one would condemn the husband. If the husband was proved to have unjustly tortured or killed his wife, her relations would be satisfied with fining him." Women's roles among the Baganda are defined in terms of serving their husbands and supplying them with children. This is apparent in the differential socialization of boys and girls. Boys are allowed time for fun, while girls are put to work that is unremitting. Roscoe (1965:77) says, "Boys had a free and happy life while the time of herding lasted; they met together daily, and while the animals browsed, they had ample time for all kinds of games." He notes further, "Girls seldom played games; they were kept busy for the whole day, and were taught to make mats and baskets to occupy their leisure time; they also drew water and brought in fire-wood. From the time that a girl arrived at puberty, she was called Mulongo, a term used of a cow when it was old enough to have calves" (80-81). Girls learned their female roles early. Roscoe (1965:79) obseIVes, 'Girls were taught to cook and to cultivate as soon as they could hoe." The mother had charge of the child temporarily in its earliest years, but it would soon go to one of the father's relatives. Warm and caressing relations occurred only minimally. Roscoe (1965:61) says, "The language contains no word for tender affection such as love ... children as they grew up had some regard for their parents; the father was at least feared and respected, while there was something approaching love shown towards the mother .... She might hug it, and pat it, while it was small, when it was cross or had been hurt." In previous centuries, the ruling classes ofthe Baganda engaged in war and raids to capture people for the slave trade. In the first half of this

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century, the Baganda still attacked neighboring tribes and were known for their merciless treatment of conquered people. The acquisitions from war may have numbered hundreds of women and seIVants and more than a thousand cattle. Male prisoners taken in battle were speared or clubbed to death, while the women were enslaved and some of them awarded for valor to military personnel. If the army won a battle, the defeated enemy was made to suffer greatly, their wives, seIVants, cattle, goats, sheep, ivory, and anything else valuable they possessed being seized. All the men except the male children were put to death. It is not necessary to continue describing the Baganda to further confirm our hypothesis about the general relations among violence, sexual inequality, and socioeconomic formations. We grant that variations in violence are produced by historical conjunctures that affect the evolution of a mode of production or the class struggles and political institutions that secure a mode. 20 Nevertheless, the variation in violence that we have seen here and elsewhere on the face of the globe is not produced by the inherent nature of man. Clearly, this variation is socially determined and different modes of production are basic to this determination. Finally, the exploitative modes of production which have culminated in the formation of class societies have either produced or intensified sexual inequality and violence.

III. MECHANISMS AND FETISHISM OF VIOLENCE Rape, in its different forms, tumbles from the annals of class society. The conquering hordes of Genghis Khan raped and plundered populations from far and near during innumerable forays. European feudal mercenaries, when fighting in neighboring principalities, raped and looted towns and villages. Homecoming bands of sixteenth-century British soldiers, embittered by denial of pay and defeat abroad, raped and pillaged at will after they landed on English soil. The Force Publique of the Congo, a native colonial army, adopted the ethos of their imperial Belgian masters; they too raped and plundered Congolese people. Today, in the Philippines, thugs and bandits are hired by Christian settlers who covet the lands of neighboring tribes. These hirelings are employed to rape and terrorize the Philippine tribal communities.21 Furthermore, tribal societies in the New World, conquered by European colonizers, met force with force, adopting the new violent tactics of the conquerers along with their more sophisticated weapons. For example, early accounts of the Iroquois and other American seaboard tribes indicate that rape was not used in warfare before the Europeans arrived. To force the Indians from their land, the Europeans burned villages to the ground, scalped the men in punitive raids, raped the Indian women, and

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in some cases massacred entire tribes. In retaliation, rape and other tactics were used by the Indians who sought to match the Europeans' ruthlessness and ferocity. The connection between rape and socioeconomic relations is also apparent in societies based on slavery, where the reproduction of class relations is impossible without class-directed violence mediated by state power. In American slave states, black women were treated as objects with commercial value. Unprotected from slave owners and overseers, these women were raped with impunity. Gerda Lerner, author of Black Women in White America (1972:172), notes that from the slave period onward, the rape of black women by white rapists cannot be explained as the isolated acts of criminals. Whites were not punished at all, while blacks charged with raping white women faced a death penalty or a lynch mob. Furthermore, rape, in this context, expressed the relations between social classes as well as individual men and women. Angela Davis, the black philosopher and activist, writes, "Although the immediate victim of rape was the black woman-and it was she who endured the pain and anguish-rape served not only to further her oppression, but also as a means ofterrorizing the entire black community. It placed brutal emphasis on the fact that black slaves were indeed the property of the white master." Rapes by whites emphasized the special forms of racial oppression that support exploitative modes of production. Consequently, in an endless spiral of cruelty and violent counterreactions, numerous forms of violence, including rape, were conferred on the people of the world. Rape itself became associated with violent practices organized around broader aims: the subjugation of women, the exploitation oftribes, classes, and other social groups. Violence became the focus of a never-ending struggle by individuals, classes, and nations for power and property. Internal mechanisms of interpersonal violence

There were societies that exhibited both a high degree of violence and male domination before contact with European nations. However, for those that did not already have these characteristics, the internal social changes resulting from European contact contributed to violence within the societies themselves. Some of these changes are illustrated in an article by Leacock and Goodman (1976) referring to the seventeenthcentury chronicles of Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary. After wintering with Montagnais families, Le Jeune wrote, "They are very much attached to each other, and agree admirably. You do not see any disputes, quarrels, enmities, or reproaches among them" (82). But Le Jeune's admiration was outweighed by his mission to "improve" the level

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of native morality. He and his countrymen systematically instigated the changes that eventually destroyed this interpersonal amity. Le Jeune's chronicles show that French missionaries and troops pressured or cultivated social changes that were religious, familial, and political. For example, when some of the Montagnais converted to Christianity, they adopted the patriarchal family, and accepted a "system of permanent chiefs" that enforced religious and colonial mandates, violently when necessary. Economic changes were also imposed: the French encouraged fur trading with European class societies. As the Indians warred with each other over the gains from fur trapping, the Montagnais took delight in torturing their Iroquois prisoners. Furthermore, before the arrival of the French, the Montagnais abhorred corporal punishment. Three incidents will show how their outlook changed. At first, when the French introduced corporal punishment, it was rejected even when it was administered to a French boy who had wronged one of the Montagnais. In the chronicles, Le Jeune tells this story: "One of [the Montagnais] was looking very attentively at a little French boy who was beating a drum; and, going near to see him better, the little boy struck him a blow with one of his drumsticks and made his head bleed badly." Immediately all the tribal onlookers took offense and loudly demanded compensation. They cried, "Behold, one of thy people has wounded one of ours; thou knowest our custom well; give us presents [compensation] for this wound.' '22 Le Jeune, noting that "there is no government among the Savages," recorded the native mode of settling accounts. He said, "If one kills or wounds another, he is ... released from all punishment by making a few presents to the friends of the deceased or the wounded one." The French viewed the incident with the boy as an opportunity to teach the Montagnais an object lesson. The interpreter turned to the Indians and said, " 'Thou knowest our custom; when any of our number does wrong, we punish him. This child has wounded one of your people; he shall be whipped at once in thy presence.' As the Savages saw we were really in earnest ... they began to pray for his pardon, alleging he was only a child, that he had no mind, that he did not know what he was doing; but as our people were nevertheless going to punish him, one of the Savages stripped himself entirely, threw his blankets over the child and cried out to him who was going to do the whipping: 'Strike me if thou wilt but thou shalt not strike him.' And thus the little one escaped" (Leacock and Goodman, 1976:90). Later, however, the Montagnais's views of punishment changed as they were converting to Christianity. In one account, Le Jeune tells how a young Indian woman, who had separated from her husband, was chased,

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forcibly captured, and then threatened with imprisonment in a dungeon if she did not return to her husband's domicile. Imprisonment and other harsh measures were recommended by the Indian Christian converts who had learned that it was the custom in France to "proceed in that manner" with recalcitrant wives. But men also became objects of corporal punishment, sometimes self-inflicted. Once again, religious zeal was involved. In one such account, the punishment expressed the personal guilt, sexual obsession, and self-flagellation cultivated by Christianity. One can imagine the moralistic sentiments imposed by the French for this to happen. Le Jeune wrote, "A young savage, recently married, felt tempted to leave his wife, and the thought caused him deep sorrow. The Devil pictures to him the delight of changing a wife whom one hates for another whom one loves .... He remembers the word that he has plighted to God and to his wife; he wishes to be faithful, but nevertheless, he feels himself inclined toward infidelity. He goes to his Director.... The mere idea of changing his wife seems to him so great a crime that he entreats to be sent to prison and to be put into a dungeon or to be publicly flogged. Seeing his request refused, he slips into a room near the Chapel and, with a rope that he finds, he beats himself so hard allover the body that the noise reaches the ears of the Father, who runs in and forbids so severe a penance" (84). Spontaneous mechanisms of violence

While the Montagnais violence against women did not take hold until colonial domination occurred, this violence emerged within the great colonial powers such as France, England, and others under somewhat different circumstances. Violence against women has its own basis in each socioeconomic formation. In feudalism, the status of women as chattel justified the violence against women in family relations. However, in early capitalism, this chattel status was more complex than it might seem. It became intertwined with the personal dependencies based on class control of rents and income stemming from early capitalist, agrarian commodity relations rather than serfdom. For instance, H. Perkin (1969:37), author of The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880, writes; "In the small communities, the villages and tiny towns, of the old society ... the source of income itself, with the rest of the 'life chances' of the individual, was controlled by a paternal landlord, employer or patron .... In a world of personal dependency any breach of the 'great law of subordination,' between master and servant, squire and villager, husband and wife, father and child, was a sort of petty treason, to be ruthlessly suppressed.... Literally so in the case of women

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who murdered, or were accessory to the murder of their husbands, who were burned at the stake for their 'petty treason.' "23 Elsewhere, we have indicated that the dependency relations imposed on women have been grounded historically in the socioeconomic changes that have restricted most women to the continuous production of use-values in the home, and men to production for commodity exchange (Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1980:11-13). Because of these restrictions and dominant moral standards in capitalist societies, the dependency of women has been equated ideologically with inferior abilities and capacities. Such ideological equations also enter into the determination of the status relations that legitimate sexual inequality. Similar changes continue to occur today in developing nations. A study by Susan Draper (1975) dealing with the impact of modem African labor markets on village family relations illustrates these changes. Although they are taking place under more benign circumstances, the effects of capitalism on sexual relations and patriarchal violence, in this study, parallel the changes that occurred in Western societies. Draper's study is also significant because it contrasts aboriginal band sexual equality and relatively nonviolent family relations, on the one hand, with village inequality and greater family violence, on the other. Draper's field experiences focus on the !Kung Bushmen aboriginal bands that forage on the edges of the great Kalahari desert. However, she also details the changing patterns of life among those band members who have migrated into village settlements. In the villages the egalitarianism of the band is disappearing, yet this change does not appear to be imposed by any force from the outside. Importantly, from the standpoint of everyday life, it seems to arise spontaneously from the personal inclinations and the changing roles and relations of people inside the village itself. Draper's (1975:87-93) observations begin with the familiar correspondence between primitive communism and sexual equality. She notes that among the people living in bands, in the economic sphere, which is based on hunting and gathering, !Kung women have personal autonomy. Also, there is no rigid sex-typing for most adult activities, including domestic chores and raising children in their communal society. Finally, the !Kung nomads are gentle and they actively minimize any sign of harmful competition among males and violence between the sexes. The aboriginal bands are unquestionably characterized by sexual equality. All of this is changing, however, as the !Kung are relocating in villages where the economy is partly organized around commodity production. This commodity activity involves the private ownership of livestock on land surrounding a village and the exploitation of male wage labor in nearby Bantu or European settlements (100-03). In the villages themselves the authority of males is gradually increasing and the status of women is declining.

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Why are these changes taking place? Partly it is because the desire for higher living standards encourages the men to leave the village, frequently for several days at a time, to work for Bantu employers. When they return, their authority is heightened by their control over goat and cattle raising and their mastery of the Bantu language and customs. These work experiences and the knowledge of Bantu also encourage male participation in political relations that are largely based on contacts with the other settlements. Village women themselves have become enmeshed in household economies whose material inventory is much richer than that of the nomadic bands. In the village, food preparation becomes more complicated. Furthermore Draper (1975:101) says, "Women do the greatest part of the cooking, and they also do most of the [food] drying and storing." Household possessions also require more energy to maintain. The women, therefore, spend more time and work harder at domestic tasks. In addition, village relations are being affected by severe economic and political constraints that operate behind the scenes. The village economy is organized around independent peasant households; and it is essentially based on a precapitalist mode of production in the process of being shaped by its articulation with a capitalist mode of production (Wolpe, 1980). Yet-unlike the Montagnais under seventeenth-century colonial rule-there is no military or religious institution blatantly imposing these changes in the village itself. Instead, in everyday life, the allocation of men to commodity production and women to household labor, outside of the economic constraints, appears to be based on spontaneous choices exercised freely by individuals. Along with their competition for status and material wealth, the men are becoming more aggressive and contemptuous of women. In the nomadic bands, a woman finding herself with an uncongenial husband quickly leaves his company and spends a year or two in casual flirtations before marrying again. In the village, however, couples are held together in fitful marriages by economic pressures. At the same time, public censure is addressed to the wife; and slander by boastful husbands in public settings deflects social criticism of marital conflicts away from the men (97). Simultaneously, the organization of space and privacy in the villages isolates marital conflicts. Village men spend more of their time in economic activities away from the village or on its periphery, while women are more restricted to the household economy centered around the residence. Moreover, in the bush, choice of residence is such that over time married couples live about equally-often simultaneously-with the kin of both the husband and wife. Consequently, a bush woman who is involved in a marital dispute usually has several of her kin to support her interests nearby. Village wives, however, live only with their husbands

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and they are more readily denied such support because the family is considered a private sphere. "In the bush," Draper (1975:107-108) says, "people can see each other and determine, on a variety of grounds, whether it is appropriate or timely to initiate social interaction. In the ... villages one heard such exchanges as 'So-and-so, are you at home?' and 'Shall I enter [your space)?' " These apparently spontaneous developments are also creating new patterns of violence among the men. After experiencing the gentleness of the nomadic bands and the joyful camaraderie shared by both sexes, Draper (1975:109) was chilled when she heard a !Kung woman say, " ... if a [village) man is angry with his wife he could put her in their house, bolt the door and beat her. No one could get in to separate them. They could only hear her screams." The same !Kung woman observed that this violence would not occur among the people in her nomadic band. First of all, the nomads would not even have their own houses with bolted doors and fences or customs that mark off an inviolate private space for domestic violence. Second, the band members move quickly to curb such aggression. If couples argue, people do not hesitate to intervene if either spouse loses self-control. "When we !Kung fight, other people get in-between," the woman said. The !Kung as well as the Mbuti actively intervene to control interpersonal violence so that it does not get out of hand. Sexual fetishism of violence

Though the capitalist mode of production did not invent male supremacy, it provides its own foundations for this supremacy. Draper's observations provide further evidence of the degree to which sexual inequality is promoted by the articulation between the capitalist mode of production and precapitalist types of production. Moreover, while capitalism has not invented violence, it gives birth to conditions that reproduce violence anew.. Capitalist conditions produce the personality developments that link masculinity with violence and femininity with nonviolence. For instance, the allocation of women to social production for use within the family is consequential for character formation. Under these conditions women undergo early childhood experiences that greatly restrict their engagement in violence and in many other antisocial forms of conduct. They act far less violently than men, whose character structures are more closely aligned with the exploitative requirements of the capitalist mode of production and the instrumental norms of its competitive market. Furthermore, men retain a monopoly over weapons and training for war. With respect to crimes based on personal victimization, such as robbery, assault, burglary, and rape, female criminality can hardly be compared to criminality among men.

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The synchronization between masculinity and violence, and femininity and nonviolence is cultivated ideologically. Everywhere in the United States, for instance, the mass media display the archetypal images of men whose innate violence is presumably acted out in myriad situations. These media portrayals also leave a lasting impression: male aggression, rather than socioeconomic relations, appears to be the fundamental source of violence in gereral. Furthermore, in everyday life this synchronization appears to be firmly rooted in biological differences. Two sets of conditions create this appearance. First, the relation between violence and gender is perceived firsthand within one's family relations, while the sociohistorical determinations of this relation are not experienced directly. That is, the face-toface relations are readily observable, but the historical relations are understandable only by theoretical reflection; they simply cannot be understood on the basis of daily life. Second, the weight of our cultural traditions favors biological explanations of social relations. This is true especially whenever sexual, racial, or other biological traits seem obviously correlated with social relations that are seen day after day-women and kitchens, blacks and menial jobs. Thus, the personal appearances of things are influenced by preexisting interpretations of reality and, under these conditions, it is not surprising that the relations between violence and gender seems to validate natural facts of life established from birth by genetic differences between men and women. Such relations underlie what we call the sexual fetishism of violence. Fetishism is a false and illusory notion about social or natural relations. People harbor the illusion that a type of person or thing such as a guru, idol, money, or natural object has secret properties it really does not have. At the earliest level of religious evolution, the fetish is an object of worship. Fetishism is therefore defined as the deification of various things or objects (fetishes) to which mysterious supernatural forces are then attributed. Vast powers of destruction were attributed to male idols, for instance, and female figures were associated with fertility and the force of life. Modem-day fetishes have similar qualities, although they do not necessarily involve religious symbols. In the case of the sexual fetishism of violence, the powers for determining war, crimes of violence, dictatorships, and colonial oppression are attributed to the nature of man, often in contrast to the nature of woman. Thus, from a theoretical point of view, human relations are fetishized when social facts are collapsed or converted into natural ones. Fetishism is involved when complex social relations are explained on the basis of natural or supernatural laws "governing" the power of people or things. When people take for granted that nature has made men predators

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toward women or, for that matter, made them predators toward all other living things, violence is itself fetishized sexually. Here, the category of gender substitutes for the real social determinations of violence in general, as well as sexual violence in particular. Finally, since people have fetishized violence sexually for thousands of years, their sexual stereotypes operate as archetypal reference points for self-identity. Today, many men actively represent themselves and are emotionally conditioned by these symbolic relations. Regulating their behavior stereotypically, they believe in ready-made axioms and other "essential truths" about sexual relations. They feel an obligation to act benevolently toward women who submit willingly to their "innate desire" for mastery, but they easily find justifications for violence when women are "ungrateful." They believe too, that when women submit willingly, it denotes a natural passivity, although, on occasion, women can be dangerous. And despite the logical contradictions, they are equally convinced that whenever women do become their enemies, the Machiavellian tendencies lurking deep in their feminine hearts are revealed. Such stereotypic notions characterize the fetishism of violence. But, again, since many forms of violence are fetishized sexually, the words "man," "masculinity," and "machismo" in everyday life stand for more than male domination of women. In the grammar of motives, these words seIVe as master symbols of male violence in general. In all sorts of circumstances, these words associate masculinity with violent power and domination: thus, they glorilY violent sports, glamorize war, and idealize ruthless businessmen. Violence is even separated ideologically from its myriad ends and conditions; and, in this context, it appears to validate masculine ideals, all by itself. This sexual fetishism helps us understand why some men also define sexual violence against men as an affirmation of "manhood." Alan J. Davis (1968:15-16), who studied homosexual rape in Philadelphia jails and prisons, for instance, says, "A primary goal of the sexual aggressor, it is clear, is the conquest and degradation of his victim. We repeatedly found that aggressors used such language as 'Fight or fuck,' 'We're going to take your manhood,' 'You'll have to give up sorne face,' and 'We're gonna make a girl out of you.' Some ofthe assaults were reminiscent of the custom in some ancient societies of castrating or buggering a defeated enemy." Davis (1968:16) suggests that these sexual assaults are not primarily caused by sexual deprivation. He concludes, "They are expressions of anger and aggression prompted by the same basic frustrations ... [which] can be summarized as an inability to achieve masculine identification through avenues other than sex." Denied other avenues for expressing their "manhood," male prisoners displace their frustration in rape. Davis's obseIVations, in our opinion, are valid, yet his psychoanalytic, causal explanation is not. Whatever its form, rape is mediated by socially

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acquired attitudes; and even though it can be catalyzed around personal frustration, it is vitally important to recognize that it occurs regardless of whether or not men are experiencing any deprivation at all. The validation of personal "manhood" through violence is conditioned by the social experiences underlying sexual inequality and by the sexual fetishism of violence. Its expression is not necessarily restricted to frustrating conditions and defense mechanisms. Furthermore, as we shall see, the degree to which this fetishism is actually used to justifY rape is strongly influenced by definable sets of class conditions.

IV. CLASS AND RAPE

In Part III, we have indicated that most men learn to fetishize violence sexually; however, this does not mean that they will engage in rape regardless of the circumstances. The fact is that most men do not rape, and this majority includes men from all classes, most of whom are imbued with patriarchal bourgeois attitudes. On the other side of this coin, let us be clear, there are men from all classes who do rape. Neither are we saying that the dominant ideologies in societies like the United States place no limits on violence. Even though they contain double standards and they are applied hypocritically, bourgeois ideologies do incorporate moral criteria when they evaluate violence. In bourgeois morality, the violent instincts associated with masculinity are regarded with ambivalence so that any sharp deviations from moral ideals are considered evil and unnatural peIVersions, presumably offending the laws of nature and God. Still, we also know that bourgeois sexual ideals are qualified by chauvinistic conceptions that hold certain kinds of women in contempt or that objectifY women instrumentally as mere things. Under certain circumstances these sexist conceptions are converted into "stereotypes of probable victims" (Schwendinger, 1963; Borges and Weis, 1973). In war, where male behavior is especially conditioned by high levels of violence, these stereotypes are buttressed by racial and national chauvinisms which generate enormous increases in sexual victimization by soldiers. Within the United States, the level of interpersonal violence among members of the relative surplus labor force and lump en proletariat is an important consideration. Their level of violence conditions instrumental relations between the sexes, especially among men whose main sources of income stem from secondruy labor markets or irregular economic activities. With persistent unemployment, some of these men go through a series of dependent relationships, relying for income and resources on family, other relatives, and friends. Some finally tum to thievery and hustling in illegal markets where the exploitation of sexuality has no bounds.

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Within these populations, women sometimes provide more stable sources of economic assets than men because of their own earnings, their access to welfare payments, or their role in extended family relations where they govern the redistribution of whatever resources are available among sisters, brothers, in-laws, and children. Under these conditions, the importance of manipulating and controlling women, by violence if necessary, is elevated among those men who accept capitalism's premises yet develop extremely cynical and parasitic adaptations to their class situation. A ramified instrumental ideology emerges among men who make these adaptations. The ideological importance of male chauvinism and its fetishism of violence to self-esteem also expands enormously under these material conditions, and it resonates with the cultural portrayal of the "Superstuds" and "Superflies" who rely on violence for more reasons than their economic and political disinheritance. This chauvinism and its fetishism resonate because the control of women, no matter how precarious it is, is one of the many substitutes that these men use for uncontrollable labor-market conditions. When we examine life in communities with these populations, we also find a greater proportion of peer groups that subscribe to violent macho ideals. Group sexual attacks by two or more males expand the incidence of rape by as much as 24 percent, according to a victimization study of twenty-six cities.24 Such expansion can largely be attributed to the long-term effects of adverse socioeconomic conditions and the effects of male supremacy on family, school, and community life. These violent peer groups develop prior to labor market engagement and are secondary products of class conditions; consequently, they are relatively impervious to short-term economic fluctuations. 25

NATURAL LAWS VERSUS SOCIAL LAWS

We have emphasized socioeconomic conditions because the theoretical significance of these conditions has generally been ignored, especially by bourgeois feminists who perceive the so-called community of men rather than social relations as the cause of violence against women. In this context, it is well to recall that the struggle for women's rights at the turn of the 1970s made rape a symbol for all the social harms generated by sexual inequality. Consequently, for many women, the response to this crime went beyond the harms done to rape victims alone. The response became infused with a moral outrage so intense that it flared up against every form of violence inflicted by men upon women. While this kind of outrage is very important, it cannot substitute for an adequate social theory. Without a realistic understanding of society, outrage invites utopianism and eventually disillusionment. Furthermore,

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without an emphasis on the socioeconomic factors contributing to violence, this outrage is easily captured by demogogic appeals for repressive crime control. It is readily absorbed by "law-and-order" movements that locate the fundamental causes of crime within individuals rather than in the social conditions under which individual criminals thrive. A prime example of a law-and-order rhetoric is Susan Brownmiller's (1975) Against Our Will, the most popular American work on rape today. The innumerable accounts of rape in this work shocked its readers and triggered their moral outrage. Yet these accounts also stimulated the belief that rape is due to the bestial nature of men. All men, according to Brownmiller, are innately brutish-killing, raping, or dominating others to satisfY their desire for power and property. Such a notion, as we indicate elsewhere (J. Schwendinger and H. Schwendinger, 1976), properly belongs to a "natural-law conception of man," because it attributes rape to natural tendencies, inherent in every man. 26 Natural-law conceptions have been proclaimed for a long time and they are frequently called upon to justifY highly repressive criminal justice policies. (Since men are beasts at heart, the repression of their antisocial actions is logically the fundamental answer to crime control.) Consequently, rapists can be controlled, Brownmiller (1975:379, 389-90) says, by putting more women into positions of power-equal numbers of women and men in the police and military forces; by redefining rape as assault, so that rapists can be convicted more frequently; and by repressing prostitution and pornography without qualification. Aside from the serious legal and social issues posed by the implementation of such policies with regard to pornography and prostitution, for instance, these policies by themselves cannot by any stretch of the imagination significantly reduce the incidence of rape. Thus, whether or not moral outrage catalyzes people around progressive crime-fighting policies depends upon how the causes of crime are interpreted. Is rape really a crime that erupts from the sordid nature of men in general? Or does it express complex causal patterns due to the nature of society rather than man? The answers to these questions are extremely important. If social relations are the fundamental causes, then the repression of individual rapists will never provide a long-term solution to the eradication of rape. For every imprisoned rapist there will be others created by society to take his place in the population at large. That rape is due to social causes rather than natural laws is suggested by victimization studies of rape and attempted rape. These studies are valuable because they are based on interviews of women and therefore measure the incidence of rape independently of the policeP If natural laws accounted for rape, we would expect rape to be a norm for male behavior; furthermore, since the population of men in our society is so

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high, rape should occur as frequently as other violent or property crimes, including robbery, assault, burglary, and larceny. Brownmiller's book itself sets up such expectations: it unfolds an apparently endless list of rapes that were reportedly committed with great frequency throughout the history of humankind. Fortunately, however, victimization studies go against such gloomy predictions. While no amount of this vile crime is justifiable, and while our incidence surpasses that of all other highly industrialized countries, rape is actually among the least frequent of all the serious index crimes. (Only homicide is less frequent.) Moreover, the relatively small magnitude of rape incidence does not depend on how the statistics are derived. According to police estimates, forcible rape comprises less than 1 percent of the crime index total and accounts for only 6 percent ofthe volume of violent crimes. Victimization studies have similar findings. The national survey Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1978, for example, showed that rape comprised less than 1 percent of the personal and household crimes found by the study and only 2.9 percent of the volume of violent crimes. Obviously, given these very low relative frequencies, it is extremely unlikely that this crime is due to universal characteristics of men or that it reflects the laws of nature. The relative infrequency of rape is not the only datum that contradicts natural-law theories. Just like other "common" violent crimes, rape is not committed equally in all parts of the population. It is committed primarily by older adolescents and young adults. In addition, the social class of both rapists and their victims is skewed toward one end of the income scale. Figure 1 contains information from four victimization surveys of American cities. Two surveys of the same eight cities conducted three years apart found that victims from low-income groups had the highest rape rates. The larger victimization studies demonstrate that the relation between family income and victimization is neither accidental nor due to unreliable responses in other studies.28 Figure 1. also illustrates findings from a 1973 survey ofthirteen large cities, and it shows a similar tendency found by a 1974-75 survey of twenty-six large cities. Finally, the most recent studies, based on nationwide samples in 1977 and 1978, discovered the same relation between rape victims and family income, and their findings are shown in Figure 2. (The national survey data has lower rates because in its average it includes rural, small urban, and suburban areas that have markedly fewer rapes.) Survey after survey has found that the overwhelming majority of women who experienced rape or attempted rape have had annual family incomes ofless than $10,000.29 This conclusion was based on a variety of 1973-78 victimization studies, but our opinion about low socioeconomic status and much higher rates of victimization have not changed since that time. Victimiza-

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-$3,000 $7,500 $15,000 $25,000+ Family Income of Victim

1974-7526 Cities 1974-75 e Cities 1973 13 Cities 1971-72 e Cities

Figure 1 Rape and Family Income of Vict:im: Four Surveys of Large Cit:ies Sources: The rates in Figures 1 to 3 are based on numbers of attempted and completed rapes per 100,000 females twelve years of age and older. The SUIVeys of cities included Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Newarl