Conflict Theory

CONFLICT THEORY and Marxism attempt to explain the exploitative dynamics of the Industrial Revolution that led to the mass production goods and the loss of the workers' control over their own creativity. Conflict theory primarily argues that it is the economic system of capitalism itself that produces crime.

Specifically, the Industrial Revolution primarily benefited the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, while exploiting the land and the common worker, or the proletariat. Workers and the environment became tools or resources used to expand the wealth of the elite classes. Conflict theory hypothesizes that society is structured based upon the relationship of people to the production of material goods. In other words, those who own the means of production also control the workers, politicians, and development of criminal and civil law. Thus, the wealthy exploit the animals, the natural resources, other people, and the environment in order to increase their power and wealth. According to conflict theory, the exploitation of the work force is a crime of economic domination in that it creates high levels of economic inequality, or gross disparities in income between the owners of the means of production and the proletariat or workers.

This inequality is result of the bourgeoisie's attempts to maximize their profits while minimizing their costs, specifically the wages of workers as well as the costs of maintaining the workplace. However, the workers sometimes strive to gain more control over their labor by improving their working conditions, their wages, and sharing in the profits from their labor. Thus, this relationship between the bourgeoisie (the owners) and the proletariat (the workers) is characterized by conflict. This antagonistic relationship, characterized by exploitation, alienation, domination, and inequality also explains crimes of resistance committed by the working class. These include workers' strikes, protests, walkouts, and labor stoppages.

Conflict theory also explains crimes of repression committed by the wealthy, in conjunction with the state, in the development of criminal and civil laws that favor the elite classes and disfavor the working class and the poor. Crimes of repression include the violations of civil rights of workers, repression of union activity, the differential treatment of non-citizen workers from citizen workers, corporate welfare, and subsidies from the government, while welfare for poor families is characterized by politicians and the elite as the roots of all evil. Only two percent of the federal budget includes cash benefits for the poor while the subsidies for industry have cost taxpayers millions of dollars more.

Some criminologists might also argue today that crimes of repression violate the human rights of the working class all over the globe, including unfair wages, unsafe workplaces, air and water pollution, and a legal system that remains accessible only to those with sizable bank accounts. Finally, conflict theory also explains crimes committed by the working class against other members of the working class. This includes what are referred to as typical street crimes. However, because the wealthy control the culture or the media, they create an ideology that misrepresents the truth about corporate crime, that is, that street crime is more harmful and more deadly than corporate crime when the opposite is true. Moreover, the elite convince the workers that[Page 194] the greatest threat to their jobs and income are from immigrants or other minority members who will “steal” their jobs. In fact, it is the bourgeoisie who exploit the labor of immigrants and minorities by paying them less than white workers in order to, once again, improve their profit margins.

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