Principles of a Marxist Approach to Criminology – Third Draft

Hi, after a year or so here is the third draft of my ideas of what the main principles of a Marxist criminology. Thanks to everyone who has commented on these ideas already. I think I've got them pretty much sorted now and I think my aim after hopefully reading lots of interesting comments from my readers on these will be to write it up into some sort of manifesto. (If you want to see the previous draft please click the first tag at the bottom).
Like around Christmas I'm going to be away for about a week or so, so you'll have to make do with some of the posts below for that period.

1) A Marxist approach to Criminology is not a separate theory of crime. Rather it is the use of Marxist ideas to study the phenomena studied by criminologists as part of an integrated study of society as a whole. Such an approach should draw on already existing Marxist concepts such as the State, Alienation etc.

2) Crime and criminal justice system should be understood in a criminal historical materialist context, we should look at their development to their present conditions. Allied to this would be an understanding that the economic context of a situation would have an impact on what types of crime are prevalent and how these will be responded to.

3) A marxist approach is moreover a class approach and sees crime to an extent as an expression of the conflict between classes in society. This is important in several important ways. Firstly, the ruling class in any each will have more power to define what is crime and to manage responses to crime in their interest. Due to this, crime will affect different classes differently as will the responses to crime.

4) As in the discipline of Criminology, a Marxist approach to Criminology would not just limit itself to studying crime as it is defined at the current moment. It would seek to take a definition of crime which is aligned with the interests of the working class and other oppressed layers in society.

5) A marxist approach is also an internationalist approach. However, crime and laws differ from country to country. Crime needs to be understood on various levels, from the local, to the regional, the national and the international.

6) As well as studying crime in ‘normal’ capitalist society, we should also seek to study what happened to crime and criminal justice during revolutionary periods and also in states that have claimed to be socialist.

7) We should seek to review how the workers movement has addressed the question in the past, as well as various intellectuals who have tried to put across arguments from a similar perspective (ie. Foucault, Jock Young etc.) and build upon these bases. We also need to keep abreast of ‘bourgeois’ criminologists and evaluate their ideas too.

8) As Marx says in his theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, point is to change it". We should analyse crime and the criminal justice system from the point of the working class. We should put forward ideas of how a socialist/communist society would attempt to solve these problems, and fight for these to be adopted in the here and now.

9) We should seek to encourage debate and discussion between Marxists (and others) on issues related to criminology.

Comments on ‘Praxis Made Perfect’ by David Downes in Understanding Deviance

This piece under discussion, written in 1978, was an attempt at a critique of the Critical Criminology of Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young as defined in their books The New Criminology and Critical Criminology. Given that they had described their criminology as Marxist and these texts were some of the most important of works emanating from the National Deviancy Symposium, it is well worth a look at this critique.
Downes’ central argument is that they (Taylor, Walton and Young) criticise capitalist society but fail to discuss what the alternative is, just naming it socialism and leaving it at that. Furthermore, Downes is quite right when he says that they don’t analyse crime in the Stalinist countries (he calls them socialist). Indeed I think we should agree with Downes on these two points that these are two things that a Marxist criminology should address.
But Downes’ own ideas are not ones we should adopt. He makes several fundamental errors in his critique, which I will now try and highlight – some are more than likely due to the ‘new left’ circles which Critical Criminology moved in counterpoising the earlier ‘humanistic’ Marx with the later Marx, and other such muddles.
Firstly after firstly correctly saying, of critical criminology “…the entire intellectual construction rests on the postulates that capitalist society is essentially criminogenic,” he goes on to add “…and that only by the total repudiation of the ethic of possessive individualism on which it rests can ‘true’ equality and ‘socialist diversity’ – the prerequisites for a ‘crime-free’ society – be attained” (pg 5-6) No, capitalist society rests on a particular stage of economic development, not individualism – and again it is a higher economic development that is the prerequisite for drastically reducing crime.
Later on he attacks, a rather loose phrase of Young’s about the working class having control over policing in their communities – and says that it means only members of one class should be able to police that class – leading to a caste type policing system where only the rich will get properly policed (because , of course, workers can’t do anything for themselves). Of course, Young’s depiction is rather vague, but it would cover the democratic control over local policing which socialists should argue for.
Although this isn’t it, a Marxist critique of the history, work and development of the National Deviancy Symposium would be incredibly useful for the development of a Marxist approach to criminology.

The Question of Human Rights

Is there such a thing as inalienable universal human rights? Are they just a distraction of the capitalists from class struggle? These are questions I’ve been grappling with over the last few weeks whilst I’ve been trying to write an essay.

The most important human rights document is probably the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although this recognises such things as rights to medical care, asylum, and so on, it also includes the right to own private property. Although I agree if this were to be limited to personal property, I don’t this should extend to the right to own the means of production – not only because of being a Marxist and arguing for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, but also because without the aforementioned measure you can’t provide the facilities to guarantee the initial rights.

I think it’s a damning indictment of capitalism that 60 years after declaring ‘so-called’ inalienable human rights it hasn’t put them in place – indeed it seems to be threatening them ever more and more. Human rights as capitalism has presented them are just a fig-leaf to the oppressed masses around the world. Indeed, the UN is effectively a toothless body when it tries to act to curb the interests of the major capitalist powers. For them human rights are fine so long as they don’t interfere with their interests, and if they do then human rights get thrown out of the picture.

So should the working classes support the idea of human rights, or is it just a capitalist sham? As Marxist have always noted; the most advantageous capitalist regime for workers in the bourgeois democratic state – this of course is opposed to fascist or military-police bonapartist dictatorships which restrict civil liberties and human rights. So we should for my mind be fairly supportive. In the works of Marx and Trotsky, the idea of universal morality (to which the idea of human rights is derived from) is rejected, as it cannot exist in a class ridden society. To paraphrase Lenin (from State and Revolution) it is only possible to talk of real universal rights when class divisions exist no more.

In conclusion, answering my own questions I don’t think human rights are a tool of capitalists, I think they are in general an aspiration of the oppressed everywhere to live a decent life. To that extent they are actually in contradiction to the capitalist system that cannot sustain such rights – just take a look at the advanced capitalist countries where in theory they should be most obtainable but they aren’t. Thus the establishment of inalienable human rights is something Marxists should be fighting for, however, we need a system that can provide the necessary infrastructure to guarantee them, a socialist world.

The Role of the Individual in History

nA look at the Chapter – ‘From Lenin to Castro’ in George Novack’s Understanding History.

I’ve been meaning to blog on this topic for a while. The question of how much individuals can alter history is an important one. Why? Well, if an individual can have no influence over the course of history then why be an activist? Or if they have a controlling influence over the course of history, then why bother with collective action?

Novack explains that Marxism gives primacy to objective factors in the development of history, for example, the development of the forces of production. But it also recognises there is also the subjective factor of human interaction with these events. Depending on objective factors, the human interaction can have a huge or no effect, or even somewhere in between those two poles. It is of course at the high point of events where the actions of individuals are of the greatest influence.

If we look at the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution, as Novack does, we see that the actions of one individual, Lenin, was quite decisive. Not because Lenin in himself was especially important, but because of the social position of Lenin as the authorative figure within the Bolshevik party, armed with the theoretical ideas to lead such a party. Novack also discusses the role of Trotsky. In my opinion, although Trotsky was more theoretically accurate in the development of the revolution (ie. his theory of the Permanent Revolution), he could not have fulfilled this role because he’d rejected the need for a centralised revolutionary party until he became convinced during the course of the revolution. This is not to say that we want only one person to be decisive. For myself, the value in belonging to a revolutionary party is studying the lessons of history and leading struggles so that when the time comes we have hundreds and thousands of individuals who could play a decisive role.

This can be seen in the development of political, organisations and campaigns. Any of these things has one or several main activists who play the leading roles in these groups, with many other people following their lead. Hopefully some of these other people will gradually get more and more involved, and new activists become created. (Okay that’s a bit simplified but you get the jist). In any campaign, it doesn’t necessarily need to be that individual at the beginning, but especially as they gain people’s confidence specific individuals become more and more important, indeed to an extent they become identified with certain issues or groups.

Novack also discusses Cuba. Here I disagree with him when he says that Castro and the July 26th Movement created the missing revolutionary conditions in the country. The revolutionary conditions already existed, what was missing was a correct leadership. The leadership that Castro and his comrades gave did influence the direction of the struggle in Cuba dramatically, leading to an overturn of the dominance of capitalism in that country, but a movement led by the workers in that country would have been even more dramatic and fruitful.

Principles of a Marxist Approach to Criminology (Second Draft)

I will be away this weekend at the Socialist Party Wales Conference in Swansea, so my next post won't probably be until Monday.

Okay, thanks for responses on the previous post, it’s been quite helpful. Below I’ve tried to reformulate the various principles and I’ve also added some that I missed off before. Hopefully you should be able to see I’ve tried to tackle some of these to a great or lesser extent over the past year or so.

1) There should be no seperate marxist theory of crime, rather marxist theory is applied to it. For example we would explain the aetiology (cause) of crime through ideas such as alienation, relative deprivation or as the normal workings of the capitalist system rather than any special causal mechanism.

2) Crime and criminal justice system should be understood in a criminal historical materialist context, we should look at their development to their present conditions. Allied to this would be an understanding that the economic context of a situation would have an impact on what types of crime are prevalent and how these will be responded to.

3) A marxist approach is moreover a class approach and sees crime to an extent as an expression of the conflict between classes in society. This is important in several important ways. Firstly, the ruling class in any each will have more power to define what is crime and to manage responses to crime in their interest. Secondly, crime disprortionately affects the working class, and they are disproportionately punished for this.

4) A marxist approach is also an internationalist approach. We should understand crime ot just in one country, but across the increasingly globalised world.

5) We should attempt to understand the effect of crime and the operation of the criminal justice system, not just on the working class, but on the rest of the oppressed layers in society.

6) As well as studying crime in ‘normal’ capitalist society, we should also seek to study what happened to crime and criminal justice during revolutionary periods and also in states that have claimed to be socialist.

7) The role of the state, which the criminal justice system is part of needs to be examined thoroughly. It’s contradictory aims of upholding the rule of capitalism but also in having to legitimate itself through doing something about crime needs to be explored.

8) We should seek to review how the workers movement has addressed the question in the past, as well as various intellectuals who have tried to put across arguments from a similar perspective (ie. Foucault, Jock Young etc.)

9) As Marx says in his theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, point is to change it". We should analyse crime and the criminal justice system from the point of the working class. We should put forward ideas of how a socialist/communist society would aim to solve these problems, and fight for these to be adopted.

Utopia or Reality? Can we create the Perfect Criminal Justice System?

This was an essay I had to submit for my course on the criminal justice system, I post it here because it raises several things I discussed in my post Draft Prinicples of a Marxist Criminology and should be of interest to all readers ps. there's more after the references

Is there such a thing as a perfect criminal justice system and, moreover, what would such a criminal justice system look like? In this essay we will examine these questions. We shall first discuss what a criminal justice system is, before contemplating what the aim and purpose of a criminal justice system is. We will then discuss if and how these systems may be perfected, before discussing the implications of this on individual branches of the criminal justice system and concluding the essay.
The first question that we are presented with is that of definition, what is a criminal justice system? The Sage Dictionary of Criminology (2001:66) defines Criminal Justice as “The process through which the state responds to behaviour that it deems unacceptable. Criminal justice is delivered through a series of stages: charge, prosecution, trial; sentence; appeal; punishment. These processes and the agencies which carry them out are referred to collectively as the criminal justice system”. Cavadino & Dignan (2002:1) note that the criminal justice system consist of the “police, prosecution authorities and courts” in addition to the penal system “the system that exists to punish and otherwise deal with people that have (usually) been convicted of a criminal offence” (most importantly the prison and probation services).
The entry in the Sage Dictionary of Criminology later states “… crime control, or crime reduction, is obviously the overall aim of criminal justice…” (2001:67). But this answer does not yet solve our question; instead we must ask what would the aim and purpose be of a perfect criminal justice system? Given as we have seen crime control and crime reduction are the aims of a criminal justice system, then a perfect criminal justice system would reduce crime to non-existence. However, such an aim is quite contradictory; if such an aim was achieved there would be no need for a criminal justice system to exist any more as there would be no further criminal offending. Here we have our answer, the perfect criminal justice exists when it has served its purpose, when it is no longer necessary and thus no longer exists.
If we consider Lenin’s (1987) notion with regards to the state as a whole withering away when it is of no further use, then the idea of a criminal justice system ceasing to exist when crime is no longer occurring is very similar. In discussing democracy in the state Lenin (1987:339) says “… the more complete it is the more quickly it will become unnecessary…”, we could similarly say the more complete and effective a criminal justice system is in reducing crime (by lowering recidivism for example), the less need there is for it.
One may ask how relevant it is to be talking about the state in relation to the criminal justice system. As Taaffe et al. (1983:25-6) point out that “In the last analysis – as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out - the state consists of armed bodies of men and their material appendages ie. prisons etc.” Are not these the main constituents of the criminal justice system – the police and prisons – alongside the judiciary?
It would also be wrong to consider Lenin’s argument on the withering away of the state without noting that there is another criminological tendency which posits the lack of or severe reduction of a criminal justice system. Abolitionism to some would seem a not too dissimilar approach to the one just outlined above. Indeed, in an article outlining the relationship of abolitionism to crime control, Willem de Haan talks of “popular or socialist forms of penality” (de Haan, 1991:214), and the abolition “of the repressive capitalist system part by part or step by step” (de Haan, 1991:213).
However, abolitionism, according to de Haan, (1991:203) “is based on the moral conviction that social life should not and, in fact, cannot be regulated effectively by criminal law and that, therefore, the role of the criminal justice system should be drastically reduced while other ways of dealing with problematic situations, behaviours and events are being developed and put into practice.” Unlike the Marxism of Lenin, its starting point is not class struggle that necessitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, but moral conviction instead. Whereas the eventual ‘withering away’ of the state and criminal justice system is only possible in a post-capitalist situation for Lenin, Abolitionists want the criminal justice system gone without any pre-conditions.
This difference then leads on to differences of a more practical nature. As de Haan (1991:207) goes on to state “…the criminal justice system is part of the crime problem rather than its solution… Therefore there is no point in trying to make the criminal justice system more effective or more just.” And later “Instead of the panacea which the criminal justice system pretends to provide for problems of crime control, abolitionism seeks to remedy social problems… Abolitionism assumes that social problems or conflicts are unavoidable as they are inherent to social life…” (de Haan, 1991:211) In contrast, as Taaffe et al. (1983:14) point out “It would be absurd for socialists in present day society to stand aside and declare that we cannot support the police in taking action to prevent crime and arrest criminals.” However, Marxists would agree that social problems need remedying too, and it is to this that we now turn.
As Jock Young (1981) discusses, aetiology, or the causes of crime is a pivotal issue in criminology and in how one deals with crime. This is influential, because as he exposes “If, for instance, we view crime as a voluntary act of the individual, we would tend towards a policy of punishing him or her, whereas, if she/he is seen as acting under the compulsion of individual or social forces, the treatment of the criminal might seem to be inappropriate.” (Young, 1981:252)
Indeed, Lenin (1987:340) suggests that with the removal of “the fundamental social cause of excesses”, which he holds to be “the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty”, “excesses will inevitably begin to “wither away”… with their withering away, the state (or in our case the criminal justice system) will also wither away”.
From this passage we can see that Lenin suggests two main causes of crime (or excesses); ‘want and poverty’ (deprivation/relative deprivation) as well as ‘exploitation of the masses’ (alienation). These factors are not new, indeed, Lenin being a Marxist drew these concepts from Marx, who exposed them several times in his works, most accessibly in Wage, Labour and Capital (Marx, 1996).
Marx’s theory of alienation can be summed up nicely in the sentences “… the exercise of labour power, labour is the worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as a part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” (Marx, 1996:25) Sell (2006:28) adds to this by commenting “Instead of making life easier, the increase in automation has reduced ever more jobs to mind-numbing repetition and boredom”.
Marx’s explanation of relative deprivation is similarly summed up well by his words “A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.” (Marx, 1996:39) He concludes, “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx, 1996:39)
But how does this relate to crime? Sell (2006:30) argues that “The result [of increases in alienation and relative deprivation] has been an increase in street crime and robbery, almost all of it carried out against people who are also living in poverty. There is an increase in drug addiction… The reasons for drug use are wide and varied. Nonetheless, the increase in drug addiction and dependency, both legal and illegal, is primarily the result of a more alienated society.”
She goes on to illustrate this, pointing out “…the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country… the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction.” (Sell, 2006:30)
Young (1991:154) correctly states that based on this “To reduce crime we must reduce relative deprivation by ensuring meaningful work is provided at fair wages, by providing decent housing in which people are proud to live in, by ensuring that leisure facilities are available on a universal basis…”
However, as Taylor (1981:79) recognises “A welfare state which works on the principle that woman is naturally dependent on man and also currently depends on the expulsion of large numbers of youths into worklessness is not meeting the real needs of women and young people to be self-generating members of the human species.” The problem being that attempting to solve the problem of relative deprivation via a redistributive welfare state doesn’t solve the problem of alienation. It, as Taylor (1981) later notes adds because this is carried out by a layer of professionals which he argues act in lieu of people, rather than under their control.
Engels (1971:32) similarly discusses how “Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head is the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society.”
To overcome alienation, it is necessary to overcome the fact that most people have no control over a large portion of their life, whether in the workplace, or outside it. Taylor (1981:101) argues that a “thoroughgoing democratisation” is necessary for these interests to be met. What would this look like you may ask?
Engels (1971:33) commenting on the Paris Commune suggests that “In the first place it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers… In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up…”
As Johnstone (2000) points out there are critics who would suggest that such a manner of operation of society as a whole, and the criminal justice system in particular, could not operate. Johnstone (2000:165) goes on to explain “even if it were concluded that today there is widespread and increasing support for a less tolerant and more punitive penal policy, it would not follow that increased public participation in the making of penal policy would automatically result in a harsher penal system.”
He continues “With regard to penal policy, the suggestion that people should be excluded from its making because they do not have the necessary qualities – such as knowledge, active interest and restraint – is easily countered. Through participation in making penal policy, people will develop these qualities. To the extent that they lack such qualities, this is due precisely to the over-centralization and over-professionalization of governance in general and penal policy making in particular. As decisions about the use of the social power to punish are historically removed from ordinary people and placed in the hands of a small elite, people lose the attributes required to make those decisions well. The only way they can recover these qualities is by having these decisions returned to them.” (Johnstone, 2000:158)
And tying this back in with the ideas developed so far, Lenin (1987:339) comments “…the diffusion of democracy among such an overwhelming majority of the population [means] that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear”, by special machine Lenin means the state (or for our purposes the criminal justice system). Of course such a thing will not happen overnight, as Lenin (1987:334) notes “there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future withering away – the more so since it must obviously be a rather lengthy process”. Greater and greater participation can only come with time being freed from other areas; in particular the working day must be gradually shortened to allow for “removing the antithesis between mental and physical labor” (Lenin, 1987:344). Additionally, other institutions outside the criminal justice system would also be used to help in this process, most notably the media and the education system would be inherently useful to help people become more informed about crime and the criminal justice system.
As mentioned above, informed journalism could play a role in this. Wacquant (2007:39) gives us an example of how this may look “A rational public debate on crime would differentiate between offences and rigorously measure their incidence and effects. It would eschew the short-term perspective and emotional cast of daily journalism to make a clear cut differentiation between blips and groundswells, incidental variations from year-to-year and long-term trends. It would not confuse the rising fear of crime, intolerance of crime, or concern over crime with an increase in law-breaking itself.”
However, as Feilzer & Young (2006) demonstrate, such journalism cannot be limited to just one columnist in one newspaper. It must become a standard for newspapers and other media to place crimes in their social context, and to be written in a manner that explains the processes behind the topic being reported on. A basic grasp of the workings of the criminal justice system taught to all school pupils would also assist in this manner.
Now that we have a brief outline of what is necessary to achieve such a state of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps worth looking at what the first steps towards this may be in each of it’s branches. Although the comments here are focussed on the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, the general thrust should be applicable to a greater or lesser extent in other countries too.
Policing is perhaps the most visible part of the criminal justice system. For our purposes it is perhaps useful to look in particular at the disputes in the early 1980’s to do with the accountability of the police. This centred around several issues, from the 1980 Police Authorities (Powers) Bill proposed by Jack Straw MP, the inner city riots of 1980 and 1981 (particularly in Toxteth and Brixton) and conflicts over the role of police authorities, and later the deployment of the police during the 1984-5 miner’s strike (Scraton, 1985).
The link between all these issues was the attempt to subordinate the priorities of local policing to the wishes of the local populace. Kinsey et al. (1986) argue that police are dependent upon the local community for information to help them apprehend offenders and that the pursuance of policy contrary to the wishes of the community (such as operations like Swamp 81 which provoked the 1981 Brixton riots) merely serve to alienate the community further from the police, and thus reducing this flow of information. As they note “People have little incentive to participate in a process over which they have little control” (Kinsey et al., 1986:133) Instead they advocate increasing the powers of police authorities and giving them the responsibility to encourage debate over crime and conducting local crime surveys. This could however be extend to even more local democratic bodies for certain areas or long lasting cases or series of crimes.
Prisons have been said to have been in an almost perpetual state of crisis recently (Cavadino & Dignan, 2003), the most important of which is crisis of resources. This has manifested itself recently with a record prison populations leading to massive overcrowding across the 139 prisons in England and Wales (Dalton, 2007a).
Overcrowding has led to a poor standard of accommodation, which Cavadino and Dignan (2002:189) suggest is ‘a byword for squalor’ with lack of access to adequate toilet facilities, lack of time outside cells and cell sharing. Similary a record 91 self-inflicted deaths in prison was recorded in 1999 (Cullen and Minchin, 2000) and Morgan (2002) notes that about a quarter of all prisons are Victorian buildings, most of these older prisons are local prisons which suffer the most overcrowding. As Dalton (2007b) notes at present the strategy is to release some prisoners early and attempt to build the way out of the problem, creating 9,500 extra places by 2014, but estimates suggest that cells will run out then too.
Fundamentally, a change in policy is necessary here. Cavadino & Dignan (2002) suggest that the judiciary is the ‘crux of the [penal] crisis’ and suggest a list of reforms including empowering bodies to create enforceable guidelines for sentencing to make it more consistent, in addition to other measures to encourage the judiciary to be more lenient. However, why leave the same people running the system if they have been too punitive, and why stick to sentences given out by them if they too are too punitive. As Dalton (2007b) argues, the judiciary should be elected and democratically elected tribunals should review existing sentences.
Overcrowded prisons also don’t help reduce crime either. As government figures show six out of every ten released from prison end up back inside within two years, this cannot be improved by a situation which has seen prisoners being locked up for longer in their cells, rather than tackling some prisoner’s underlying problems such as illiteracy or innumeracy. As Dalton (2007b) points out, a reduction in the prison population would free up resources which could be used towards the rehabilitation of those it is still deemed necessary to detain.
In conclusion, the perfect criminal justice system is both possible and impossible in that on reaching its stated aim it will have fulfilled its purpose and fall into disuse. In the opinion of the author of these words most other approaches tend to keep crime down to manageable levels rather than rid us of it. This solves no-ones problems; people still get victimised, offenders get stigmatised for life and the public foots the millions and billions necessary to make the system work.
This essay has thus taken a distinctly Marxist position, drawing in particular on Lenin’s notion of the withering away of the state. We have discussed what this position would put forward as the reasons for crime and how this influences how the criminal justice system should operate to help alleviate these problems. We have then discussed how to implement these ideas within several branches of the criminal justice system. From this we have shown that perfecting the criminal justice system to the point where it is no longer needed, will take a long time and will generally consist of increasing democratisation. Wider changes in society will also be needed to supplement these processes. Crime breeds inequality, so it seems only apt that achieving real equality is the solution to this problem.

References

Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2002) The Penal System, 3rd ed. London: SAGE
Cullen, C. & Minchin, M. (2000) The Prison Population in 1999, Home Office Research Findings No. 118, London: Home Office
de Haan, W. (1991) ‘Abolitionism and Crime Control: A Contradiction in Terms’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE
Dalton, I. (2007a) ‘Reid’s prison disaster’, The Socialist, 1st-7th February pg.5
Dalton, I. (2007b) ‘Overcrowded prisons, overworked staff’, The Socialist, 13th-19th September pg.4
Engels, F. (1971) ‘Introduction to the Civil War in France’ In: Marx, K. & Engels, F. On the Paris Commune, Moscow: Progress Publishers
Feilzer, M. & Young, R. (2006) ‘Crime Scene Oxford’: The impact of a factual newspaper column on readers of a local newspaper – Final Report to the Nuffield Foundation, Oxford: Centre for Criminology
Johnstone, G. (2000) ‘Penal Policy Making: Elitist, Populist or Participatory?’, Punishment & Society, 2(2): pp.161-180
Kinsey, R., Lea, J. & Young, J. (1986) Losing the Fight Against Crime, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Lea, J. & Young, J. (1996) ‘Relative Deprivation’ In: Muncie, J., McLaughlin, E. & Langan, M. eds. Criminological Perspectives: A Readers, London: SAGE
Lenin, V. I. (1987) ‘The State and Revolution’, In: Christman, H. M. eds. Essential Works of Lenin: “What is to be done?” and Other Writings, Mineola: Dover
Marx, K. (1996) ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ In: Marx, K. Wage Labour and Capital & Wages, Price and Profit, London: Bookmarks
McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. eds. (2001) The Sage Dictionary of Criminology, London: SAGE
Morgan, R. (2002) ‘Imprisonment’ In: Maguire, M., Morgan, R. & Reiner, R.. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP
Scraton, P. (1985) The State of the Police, London: Pluto Press
Sell, H. (2006) Socialism in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. London: Socialist Publications
Taaffe, P., Grant, E. & Walsh, L. (1983) The State… A Warning to the Labour Movement, London: Militant
Taylor, I. (1981) Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, London: Macmillan
Wacquant, L. (2007) ‘How to Escape the Law and Order Trap’, Criminal Justice Matters, 70 pp.39-40
Young, J. (1981) ‘Thinking seriously about crime: some models of criminology’ In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. eds. Crime & Society: Readings in History and Theory, London: Routledge
Young, J. (1991) ‘Left Realism and the Priorities of Crime Control’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE

Upcoming Posts

As you have seen i've posted on some of the things touched on in this post before (ie left realist criminology, media and crime, and crime and alienation) expect over the next few weeks/months/whenever i get around to it:-

A review of the State of the Police with some commentary on the 'left idealist' branch of critical criminology
A post on relative deprivation as a 'cause' of crime
A post on the criminal justice system and the paris commune
A post on The State and Revolution and the criminal justice system
A review of The State: A warning to the Labour Movement
A post on political economy and crime
A review(s) of Cavadino & Dignan's arguements about the penal system

Review - The Prison and the Factory (1981) by Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini

this is the version translated by Glynis Cousin and published by Macmillan

This book is a useful study in the development of the forms of punishment under capitalism. For marxist criminologists, how punishment and other methods of crime control cam into existence and developed is an important question, particularly given as marxists would theorise that the forms of the criminal justice system depend on the stages of economic development to an extent.
Others have studied the development of prisons as punishment too, and Melossi and Pavarini draw on both Rusche and Kircheimer as well as on Foucault in their analysis.

They start with asking why imprisonment is the dominant form of penalty under capitalism. pretty much every punishment under modern capitalism is either imprisonment, or non-compliance is backed up by it (which is the case for probation, home detention curfews, fines, community sentences etc.) The only major exception being the death penalty, but even this requires imprisonment to hold people on death row.

They also point out thatunder feudal regimes prisons were only used to hold debtors and not as punishments themselves which in those times, Foucault points out in Discipline and Punish, were corporal rather than carceral. This they link to life, physical condition and money being of more value to a person, than "human labour measured in time" (pg3)

Another theme running through this work is the influence of religion. The authors note the existence of a distinction between 'good poor' and 'bad poor'. Both were out of work, but the 'bad poor' were wicked because they'd been forced to resort to crime and had to be forced to work, whereas the 'good poor' hadn't and should be given assistance.

The work then goes on to argue that the development of prisons and workhouses were places "for the teaching the discipline of production" (pg 21) and thus are closely realted to the formation fo the proletariat from the landless, workless ex-peasant masses created by the enclosure of pastures. Indeed, they also speculate that the intensity of repression depended on the availability of labour during the period.

The development of the prison in Italy is then discussed, considering the specific economic development of that country. There is one question that they tunr to that deserves special mention, social banditry. This occurs becuase of the explusion of peasants from the land, some trun to banditry to survive. The authors view it as a form of class rebellion, and to them some sort of proto-revolutionary action. However, whilst I recognise the class nature of the banditry, their actions were incredibly destructive, either robbery or destruction of property, and thus it is a backwards looking, reactionary course of action. For me, it's like rioting, whilst we understand that social conditions have caused it, such acts will get the oppressed carrying them out nowhere.

Similarly, the development of prison in the early USA is examined. One of the interesting things that the authors note is the introduction of the 'Philadelphia model' of prisons (which was based on the strict isolation and observation of prisoners - like Bentham's panopticon) happened at a time when prison labour was uneconomical. When this changed due to a shortage of labour, gradually the 'Auburn model' was adopted which saw inmates working communally during the day.

The final chapter of the book is a sort of conclusion to the book. In it they state their central thesis - that when there is high unemployment prison takes on a destructive punitiveness, but when unemployment is low it takes on a re-educative, rehabilitative form, partially to lower wages. Personally, I think this simplifies things too much and certainly makes little sense when applied to Britain and other neo-liberal countries over the last 20 years or so. Furthermore I'd question what they mean by discipline - I could see prison having a physically controlling/coercive effect but they seem to mean some sort of mental effect to produce 'disciplined proletarians' or un-thinking slaves. the prisoners rights movements that developed around the 1960's and 1970's show this as being inaccurate. Moreover if prison is supposed to be this wonderful invention for creating 'disciplined proletarians' how come recidivism is so high (above 60%). Melossi and Pavarini's theory is an interesting one, but it's full of holes.

Rejecting the ‘All Police Officers Are Reactionary’ Theory

I think there is a tendency amongst those on the left to view the police and other bodies of the state as one reactionary mass. This however is a crude point of view. It neither takes into account the different strata in these organisations nor explains in any way why they are or become one reactionary mass.

It is impossible to deny that the police organised as they are at present are no real friends of the workers and socialist movements. There are countless documentations of police brutality towards working class people, protesters and strikers. Such behaviour is reactionary there is no doubt, but just because a group carries out reactionary behaviour does not mean they are reactionary through and through. Nor does it mean that all members of such a group are reactionary. Such broad generalisations are not the method of Marxists, rather they are those of the like of the capitalist media whose broad brush will take incidents and whip them up into moral panics. (Such as associating all blacks with ‘mugging’ etc.)

One of the main suggestions of why the police act thus is said to be due to their ‘canteen culture’. This idea suggests that those who join the police are integrated through their fellow officers into a pre-existing police subculture which is racist, anti-working class etc. Whilst I do not doubt that being around a group that consistently holds these attitudes will no doubt have an impact upon a person, with either some of these ideas being accepted or repulsed, I would hold that the activities police officers play a large role in shaping this too. If most of your interactions with a group of people are arresting them for vandalism or another crime, then that will impact on how you view that group (this could be an ethnic group or people from a particular area for example). The question I would put to this idea though is when is someone integrated into this subculture? Obviously such a process would take time before it embedded itself into the officers consciousness, how long would that be?

Another suggestion, that would answer the previous question too, is that those who join the police have an authoritarian personality. Such a personality pre-disposes them to want to be able to control others and hold racist and supremacist viewpoints. It is contended that the selection process favours these types of people, and naturally they fit perfectly into the canteen culture and do not really need integrating. However, we are left again with the question of where does this authoritarian personality come from? Are people born with it or what? I actually think this idea is fairly stupid, as I’ve pointed out in reality it doesn’t really explain anything as we don’t know why they hold these views, plus having met people who were joining the police at the end of my previous course I feel I’m in a good position to say that they certainly didn’t have authoritarian personalities. Which is not to say that racists etc. don’t join the police, just that all who join the police aren’t racists.

A Marxist analysis of the police would first point to the position of the police in capitalist society. The police are one of the ‘armed bodies of men’ that make up the coercive apparatus of capitalist society. Like all of the ‘armed bodies of men’, they are in the most part recruited from amongst the working class, thus one could assume that they would at time of recruitment have a similar outlook to other working class people.

The tops of state agencies however, are not composed similarly. They are drawn from the ruling layers of society, or those lower layers who have come to see life their way, in the case of senior appointments, this is done by the Home Secretary. It is those in the upper echelons who decide how and where the police are deployed, what their priorities are, control information within the force etc. Going back to our original question of what makes the police engage in the behaviours already described, although an individual officer has some degree of choice over what they do, they are put in a given situation by their superiors, they are briefed about a situation by their superiors, their objectives are assigned by their superiors and so forth.

I am not attempting to justify such behaviour, rather I am attempting to explain in general why such actions occur. I would suggest it is similar to troops carrying out atrocities in wars.

Is there anything we can do about this? I would suggest there is. In the UK at present the police are in dispute with the government over pay. There is discussion about having the right to trade unions and strike action. This is reminiscent of the 1970’s where the police were in dispute over pay again. Their consciousness touched by the other disputes of those time, they strove for trade union rights. Whilst opposing the repressive use of force, Marxists should support these demands and work to bring rank and file police into the orbit of the labour movement. In revolutionary upswings the police have refused to repress the working class (ie. France 1968) or have even gone on strike (Britain 1919), it is towards this and the ‘suspension in mid-air’ of the capitalist states coercive apparatus Marxists should work towards.

Principles of a Marxist Approach to Criminology (A First Draft)

Below I've bullet pointed some of what I think would be key points to a marxist approach to crime. I would very much appreciate comments on what people think about these points, whether they agree with them, whether i've missed anything out at all either etc.

1) There is no seperate marxist theory of crime, rather marxist theory is applied to it, so we for example explain the aetiology (cause) of crime through ideas such as alienation, relative deprivation or as the normal workings of the capitalist system

2) The economic character of a period determines what crime is possible and what types of crime are likely to be prevelant.

3) Crime is however, defined in law, thus what is defined as crime is mostly what the ruling class of that period defines it as.

4) Crime disproportionately affects working class people, and brutalises them (a sort of double victimisation really)

5) The upper classes also have better means of protecting themselves, through private security, burglar alarms etc.

6) Class and other biases in the criminal justice system need to be analysed and responded to

7) The role of the state in both upholding bourgoise rule as well as responding to crime needs to be addressed.

8) Crime and responses to it should be analysed both in 'normal' times as well as in revolutionary changes when more progressive responses may emerge

9) As Marx says in his theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, point is to change it"

New Book - Science, Marxism and The Big Bang

The Socialist party has recently published a new book, Science, Marxism and The Big Bang, which is a critical review of Woods and Grants Reason in Revolt. In it the book charts the developement of modern cosmology and it's relation to philosophy and marxism. It's a very good read.
The review points out some major flaws in Reason in Revolt, including not understanding how water boils, confusing Galileo and Einstein's relativity and most bizarely confusing the use of the term 'observer' in scientific literature (which means a point of reference) with there having to be an actual observer there (and thus Woods and Grant go on to say that modern science suffers from subjective idealism).
Those most alert may notice my name in the acknowledgements, for their information i proof read the draft for spelling errors and also spent some time discussing the problems of everyday life with the author.
Below I publish the introduction, but it can be read online here http://www.marxist.net/sciphil/reasoninrevolt/index.html or bought here
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/books/thatbookframe.htm?bkno=247

Introduction
Einstein was determined to re-write the laws of physics… From the standpoint of relativity, steady motion on a straight line is indistinguishable from being at rest.
― Woods and Grant, Reason in Revolt, 1995

First Law of Motion: Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.
― Isaac Newton, Principia, 1687

Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, written by Ted Grant and Alan Woods (hereafter abbreviated to Woods), attempts a Marxist critique of science.
A Marxist critique of science is a laudable project. But such a critique requires not only an understanding of Marxist theory, but also a thorough comprehension of scientific theories and their historical development. Marxism does not provide a ready-made key for making judgements about scientific ideas. It cannot substitute for a detailed knowledge of the appropriate scientific material. Unfortunately, Woods’ analysis, as we will show, reveals a poor understanding of the science he seeks to elucidate.
The past century has seen a transformation of the world through scientific development, whether for good or bad. There has also been a transformation of science itself, many times over, since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began the development of what they termed ‘scientific socialism’, which came to be known as Marxism. Marx and Engels often exchanged correspondence about scientific matters and they were close friends with Carl Schorlemmer, a member of the Royal Society (the UK's national academy of science), who advised them on the latest advances in chemistry.
Engels highlighted the role of scientists in human history. The "immortal work" of Nicolaus Copernicus showed that the earth revolved around the sun. Engels describes its publication as a "revolutionary act". Copernicus "shows theology the door" at the dawn of the Enlightenment, but Isaac Newton closes the period with his "divine first impulse". (Dialectics of Nature, Introduction) Engels endorses Immanuel Kant’s realisation, at that time unproven, that all "celestial bodies" originated from swirling clouds of gas. Engels calls this conception, "the greatest advance made by astronomy since Copernicus". For the first time, Engels comments, "the conception that nature had no history in time began to be shaken. Until then the celestial bodies were believed to have been always, from the very beginning, in the same states." (Anti-Dühring, p72)
Marx and Engels particularly admired Charles Darwin, a revolutionary, iconoclastic scientist in his own modest and hesitant way. Darwin showed how species developed and changed, discovering the secret of life’s evolution on our planet. Engels emphasises that "nature does not just exist, but comes into being and passes away".
One of the cornerstones of scientific socialism is usually termed ‘dialectical materialism’, although Marx and Engels never used the term themselves. Marx and Engels took the dialectical method of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and used it as a tool to understand the historical development of human society, once they had placed his philosophical method on a materialist basis.
In the last century, Marxists debated the revolutionary work of Albert Einstein and the Big Bang theory of the universe, with its origins in the observations of Edwin Hubble. Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Big Bang theory combined to overturn every last remnant of the old Newtonian science, which was saturated with the belief in the "absolute immutability of nature", as Engels emphasises. It is these two revolutionary theories, the theory of relativity and the Big Bang, with which the first half of Reason in Revolt (first published in 1995) is chiefly concerned.
For this reason our study of the relationship between Marxism and science will focus on the historical development of cosmology and in particular the contribution of Einstein and the Big Bang. We know that our universe exists, but did it come into being and will it pass away?
* * *
"Einstein was determined to re-write the laws of physics," writes Woods. "From the standpoint of relativity, steady motion on a straight line is indistinguishable from being at rest." (Reason in Revolt, p161) But, as we will show, this is not just the standpoint of relativity – it is not a re-write of the laws of physics by Einstein. It is the principle enshrined in Newton’s first law of motion. Einstein based his relativity on this law, or more specifically on the principle of relativity expounded by Galileo Galilei, dating back four centuries, on which it is based.
After discussing dialectics, Woods moves on to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Big Bang theory, the origin of life, of mind and matter, and other universal matters. Reason in Revolt attempts to discuss ‘life, the universe and everything’. The jacket cover asks whether this "encounter" between Marxist philosophy and science will "provide the basis for a new and exciting breakthrough in the methodology of science?"
Woods attempts to make philosophical judgements about scientific ideas based on what he believes to be the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels. But as Hegel, to whom Woods often appeals in Reason in Revolt, wrote nearly two centuries ago, "Truth is concrete". Hegel explains that without a concrete grasp of the subject under study, no clarity can be found. Following Hegel, many other Marxists – Vladimir Lenin in particular – have emphasised that truth is always concrete.
Reason in Revolt’s representation of dialectics is rigid and abstract. Lenin’s first "element" of dialectics (of which we find no mention in Reason in Revolt) is that every thing must be considered "in its relations and in its development". (Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel's Book, The Science of Logic, Collected Works, volume 38, pp221-2) By comparison, Woods approaches scientific theories too narrowly, and with insufficient knowledge or consideration of their overall historical development.
Woods tells us: "Decades ago, Ted Grant, using the method of dialectical materialism, showed the unsoundness… of the big bang theory." (Reason in Revolt, p189) Woods argues: "From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, it is arrant nonsense to talk about the ‘beginning of time,’ or the ‘creation of matter’." (Reason in Revolt, pp198-9) Grant and Woods believe that their knowledge of dialectical materialism bestows on them an ability to make decisive judgements on the correctness of science with little need to grapple with the evidence and its scientific interpretations. This is a misunderstanding of dialectical materialism, a misrepresentation of the method of Marx and Engels and of the materialist dialectics they developed.
In our discussion of cosmology, unlike that of Woods, we entertain no illusions that we, as Marxists, have, on the basis of materialist dialectics, ready-made criteria by which we can judge scientific theories. Science is, in any case, always incomplete. The solving of apparent contradictions which perturb scientific theories is the life-blood of scientific endeavour. A minority of scientists do not accept the current theories about the origins of the universe. The Big Bang theory itself began as no more than a curiosity supported by a minority – presenting a solution to Einstein’s equations which appeared to fit the observational evidence, but which had little support.
Nevertheless, beginning with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation – the ‘fossil evidence’ of the Big Bang – in 1965, there has developed a very broad degree of agreement with ‘four pillars’ of evidence for a hot dense origin to our universe. We intend to demonstrate the historical path along which mainstream science passed until it reached that astonishing cosmological viewpoint – the Big Bang theory of the universe – which Woods incorrectly believes to be incompatible with the philosophy of Marxism. We intend to test Woods’ grasp of the subject, his methods, and the criticisms he makes.
* * *
Reason in Revolt accuses modern physics of a retreat into "mysticism", a "mediaeval view", and is appalled at the "Creation Myth" of the Big Bang theory. Yet it is Woods who retreats to the standpoint of Newton, a standpoint which was overthrown a hundred years ago, as it came increasingly into conflict with scientific experiments. In fact, Newton himself was aware of contradictions in his theories of the universe. He admitted he had no idea, for example, on what basis gravity, his greatest discovery, perpetrated its mysterious instantaneous ‘action at a distance’ – the effect that binds planets in the vastness of space to their orbits round the sun.
Reason in Revolt claims: "Dialectical materialism conceives of the universe as infinite." (Reason in Revolt, p189) We will attempt to refute this claim. Viewed historically, it was Newton who argued that god is infinite and that therefore space and time must be infinite. Newton was also concerned that his ‘universal gravitation’ should have caused all the stars in the universe to have attracted each other – they should have all fallen into "one great spherical mass". Newton’s solution was to summon the hand of god to set an infinite universe in perfect balance.
Newton’s infinite universe, as embraced by Woods, is essentially a product of religious ideology. The physicist Brian Greene says: "Experimenters never measure an infinite amount of anything. Dials never spin round to infinity." (The Fabric of the Cosmos, p335) Infinity is a key concept in the history of philosophy and science, and anyone serious about the subject must be clear on the issues involved. This is no quibble over terminology but a crucial discussion of ideas.
In the fourth century BCE, (BCE – “Before the common Era”, a secular alternative term for BC, “Before Christ”) the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle drew a distinction between ‘potential’ infinity, where any number, no matter how big, can always be increased by adding more numbers, and what he called "actual infinity". He pointed out that a potentially infinite series of numbers never reaches actual infinity and, in fact, never leaves the finite. The ‘actual’ infinite, Aristotle argued, does not exist.
Despite his references to Aristotle, Woods makes no direct mention of this seminal and essentially materialist position. Of course, the study of the concept of infinity has developed over the millennia. But as the physicist Lee Smolin recently wrote, in nature, "we have yet to encounter anything measurable that has an infinite value". Infinities which occur in scientific theories are not likely to be reflecting natural phenomena but errors or limits within the theory itself. Infinites in scientific theories are most likely to be "the way that nature punishes impudent theorists". (Smolin, The Trouble with Physics, p5)
Woods takes the opposite view. The universe, he repeats, "as Nicolas of Cusa and others thought, is infinite" (Reason in Revolt, p184) and, "The universe has existed for all time." (Reason in Revolt, p199) Woods claims support from Hegel and Engels but we will show that Woods has turned some of their central views upside down.
Einstein’s elegant general theory of relativity, published in 1916, solved the mysterious ‘action at a distance’ of gravity which so puzzled Newton. Einstein showed that gravity and motion are "intimately related to each other and to the geometry of space and time". (Smolin, The Trouble with Physics, p4) In 1929, Hubble famously discovered that the universe was rapidly expanding. This strongly inferred that the universe had issued from a hot dense origin and this expansion presented a real solution to Einstein’s equations.
In this way twentieth century science removed from cosmology the paradoxes arising from Newtonian notions of infinite time and space. It removed the need for the "divine first impulse". Far from leading to ‘creationism’, once very tangible evidence of the Big Bang arrived in the form of the discovery of cosmic background radiation, science soon began investigating what we here term the material ‘substratum’ from which the universe emerged in the Big Bang.
Of course, these new discoveries have not eliminated contradictions from science – there is always a dialectical interplay between theory and data. Our understanding of the universe will continue to advance and change. As we write, particle physicists are nervously awaiting the first results from the Large Hadron Collider, the latest and most powerful particle collider, now expected to be operational in early 2008. Many guess the findings will cause upsets and pose new challenges to the current attempts to unify quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity – one of the great unsolved problems of physics.
Yet Woods scorns Einstein’s general relativity. He describes it as "mediaeval". Yet, to take one example, the pinpoint accuracy of GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation is achieved by continually recalculating the satellite data using Einstein’s equations. Without Einstein’s theory, GPS navigation would be less accurate by tens of metres. Woods desires to defend the "fundamental ideas" of Marxism by endorsing the fundamental concepts of the Newtonian universe – in the name of dialectical materialism, moreover. Woods says science has been set back "400 years", yet he wishes to set the clock back to the publication of Newton’s Principia in 1687.
* * *
Woods neither properly represents nor understands the last century of discoveries that have so completely changed the scientific conception of the universe. He misunderstands both dialectical materialism and its approach to science. In his obituary to Ted Grant, Woods claims that Reason in Revolt defends "the fundamental ideas of the movement". This review argues that, on the contrary, Reason in Revolt misrepresents the fundamental ideas of the movement. Grant, who died in July 2006, undoubtedly contributed much to Marxist thought, but he was not a scientist. With the appearance in the summer of 2007 of a second English edition of Reason in Revolt we felt it necessary to attempt to set things to rights. (Page references are to the first edition.) We wish, in the course of this discussion, to defend the genuine ideas of Marxism and suggest that Marxism takes quite a different approach to modern science.
In addition to our scientific survey of the last few centuries of revolutions in cosmology, we will argue that Engels was essentially antagonistic to the idea that our universe is infinite. Almost a hundred years before the Big Bang theory was accepted, Engels discussed both the birth and the death of our universe. We find no mention of this in Reason in Revolt. Woods confidently predicts that the infinite universe contains only "galaxies and more galaxies stretching out to infinity". (Preface to the 2001 Spanish edition of Reason in Revolt) But Engels refers the reader to Hegel who says that such predictions are merely a "tedious" repetition of known phenomena (in this case galaxies), which never leaves the finite. Support for an infinite universe in this form is a failure of imagination, rather than its triumph.
For two-and-a-half millennia, many philosophers have supported the view that infinity is an imaginary concept which has no actual existence. Hegel arrived at a dialectical proposition which can be expressed like this: you can always imagine an unending series of galaxies following one after another, but in concrete reality, at a certain point, quantity turns into quality and a new phenomenon emerges. Whatever existed before is negated. From this point of view there may be many galaxies undiscovered, or many universes beyond our own – it is speculation – but at some point, some other property will arise that ends the tedious repetition, whether of galaxies or universes, the conception of which is beyond our current scientific horizons.
A comment on the preface to the second English edition of Reason in Revolt
In May 2007 the publication of a second English edition of Reason in Revolt was announced. In the Preface to the new edition, Woods tells us that when Ted Grant and he were writing Reason in Revolt in 1995:
… we were still unsure about the existence of black holes. (Preface to the second edition of Reason in Revolt)
Ted Grant was scathing about the science of black holes, at least until 1990, and whilst Reason in Revolt takes a more equivocal stance in part, Woods was certain, in 1995, that the modern physics of the black hole was quite wrong. Woods says:
Singularities, black holes where time stands still, multiverses…These senseless and arbitrary speculations are the best proof that the theoretical framework of modern physics is in need of a complete overhaul. (Reason in Revolt, p174)
Now Woods appears to unreservedly embrace the science of "black holes where time stands still". In the 2007 preface to the second edition he states:
They are present at the centre of every galaxy and serve to hold galaxies together, giving them the cohesion without which life, and ourselves, would be impossible. Thus, what appeared to be the most destructive force in the universe turns out to have colossal creative powers. The dialectical conception of the unity of opposites thus received powerful confirmation from a most unexpected source!
Yet black holes are not proven. They "remain largely theoretical" and even problematic, as the New Scientist pointed out its recent cover story, ‘The Truth About Black Holes’. (6 October 2007) Woods’ original scathing condemnation of the modern science of black holes has been replaced by a contrary position which just as surely misrepresents modern science. Black holes are not by any means known to be – or even generally regarded to be – at the centre of "every" galaxy. Black holes are thought to be at the centre of a certain type of galaxy (including our own), at least in most cases, according to a study which Woods came across and misreports in the preface to the 2001 Spanish edition of Reason in Revolt.
Reason in Revolt reaches the pinnacle of its ridicule of modern science in its condemnation of the modern science of black holes and the Big Bang theory. Yet there is no direct mention of this in the 2007 preface. Instead, Woods comments on the correct method by which to apply dialectical materialism. Woods quotes Engels, who criticises the idealism of Hegel. Engels says:
The mistake lies in the fact that [the laws of dialectics] are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. (Dialectics of Nature, Chapter 2)
In our critique we ask: Does not Woods make the same type of mistake? Does not Woods attempt to foist on cosmology what he believes are the laws of dialectical materialism? Reviewing, with complete incomprehension, the modern science of the Big Bang in relation to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Woods cries, "Here the study of philosophy becomes indispensable." (Reason in Revolt, p216)
Reason in Revolt tells us that science has regressed to:
…the world of the Creation Myth (the "Big bang"), complete with its inseparable companion, the Day of the final Judgement (the "big crunch"). (Reason in Revolt p183)
Yet only seven years later, in the 2002 USA edition of Reason in Revolt, Woods offers his support to a mainstream re-working of the old speculative cyclical Big Bang theory, complete with its infinite Big Bangs and Big Crunches.

Marxist Interntet Archive

I just received this message today

Friends of the Marxists Internet Archive, This message is going out to all supporters and friends of the MIA. As many of you know, the MIA came under an intense "Denial of Service" attack, originating in China, in January. Since then we have had to reorganize to meet this attack. While the MIA continues to provide the texts of classic Marxism online, we have been unable to add new works. This will change, March 1, at which time our new server will go on line and we will be fully functioning again. We would like to thank you for all your support during this period,David WaltersMarxists Internet Archive

I can only say this is great news.
For those who haven't come across the Marxist Internet Archive, it is a brilliant resource with tons of texts, letter, speeches and other marxist goodies within from a huge range of authors. I've used it several times to get access to read various pamphlets written by marx, engels, lenin and trotsky.
If you've never used it before then you should, the address is

www.marxists.org

Socialist Alternative Radio

I have to admit I like good ideas, and what I'm going to describe is one of them. Comrades in the CWI in Boston, MA in the US have launched Socialist Alternative Radio, to spread the ideas of socialism and marxism across the airwaves. And it's a damn good listen.
Generally speaking the typical show has a look at the previous weeks news, an interview with an activist of some kind (has varied from the Green candidate for governor in Massachussets to other members of the CWI across the US to striking workers), various music, book and film reviews and solidarity anouncements for the local (Boston) area.
So if you're bored on a journey for a couple of hours (like I am a lot), download this to your MP3 player (if you're lucky enough to have one) and listen along. It can be downloaded from http://www.wmfo.org/index.html every week, or listened to live there (or in Boston of course). Just go to Schedule on the site menu and then find Socialist Alternative Radio and click last show.