ECONOMICS is the branch of political economy in which the household is managed in order to increase the use value of productive resources.

...Aristotle

INTRODUCTION: The propositions in this Lecture explain the major ideas which a Socialist theory uses to explain crime. In general, social conditions determine crime rates. In this historical era, it is the social relations of capitalism which tend to promote most kinds of economic crime and some kinds of violent crime in the USA.

Here are the central propositions of a socialist theory of crime:

1. Crime varies with mode of production [There are three modes of production which create the most crime: slavery, feudalism and capitalism]

2. Capitalism tends to separate production and distribution.

3. Capitalism requires non-profit and parallel economic systems by which to reunite production and distribution.

4. Capitalism tends to promote five kinds of crime:

a. corporate crime

b. street crime

c. organized crime

d. white collar crime

e. political crime

5. Crime tends to renew and redeem capitalism by renewing demand and by justifying oppression.

6. Capitalism requires several parallel and unequal systems of justice in order to maintain inequality.

7. Capitalism tends to disemploy workers.

8. Capitalism has economic cycles which promote crime.

9. Capitalism tends to create false needs which motivate criminal behavior.

10. Capitalism requires the private accumulation of wealth for social security.

11. Capitalism tends to destroy community and emphasize possessive individualism.

12. Capitalism tends toward fascism: the capitalist state gets bigger and bigger and controls more and more of private life.

13. Social Justice works better than criminal justice to produce a low crime society.

In the pages below, you can look at the reasoning behind each of the propositions.

PROPOSITION 1. Crime Rates and the Forms of crime vary with Mode of Production.

This is the central organizing principle of a Socialist theory of crime.

In societies where the relations of production is organized to exclude persons from either the production of material and ideological culture or from the means of distribution of resources essential to the creation of culture, one can expect crime rates to increase.

Parts of the Mode: A mode of production has two parts:

1. The means of production (tools and techniques)

2. The relations of production (ways in which people are connected to work and to resources).

KINDS OF MODES OF PRODUCTION. There have been five generic modes of production in human history. Each has its own forms of crime and its own rates of crime.

The five political economies and their forms of production which develops are:

1. PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM:  Hunting, gathering and herding are done co-operatively.  Sharing is based upon kinship and tribal bonds. Primitive Communism survives into Horticultural economies but fades away with settled agrarian economics.

2. SLAVERY: With skilled farming techniques, food production requires large families; In China, Norway, Greece and other agrarian societies, some low level slavery begins. 

3. FEUDALISM: Irrigation brings about great increases in food, in population and in the inequalities of power, status and wealth that Weber warned about.  Feudalism, empire and great waves of warfare come along with irrigated agrarian societies.  Slavery becomes institutionalized.

4. COMMODITY CAPITALISM: Colonialism emerges in commodity capitalism as raw materials, markets and cheap labor become essential.  Commodity capitalism begins as cottage production but ends with large factories and farms on which people labor for wages.  Slavery becomes international business as coffee, tea, sugar and cotton farming requires large numbers of cheap labor...far more than mere peasantry or feudality can offer.

 5. INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM emerges out of Commodity Capitalism.  Feudalism is overthrow by the capitalist class: kings, princes and tribal chieftains interfere with both production and distribution and are relegated to the 'dustbin of history.'

6. SOCIALISM.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM In this mode of production, each person has a good relationship to the system of distribution of essential goods and services. Each person takes part in the production of goods and services.

In communal societies, the means of production are collectively owned or there is no concept of private ownership of the means of production. Therefore there is no concept of theft.

In many hunting, gathering, herding and horticultural bands and tribes as well as all families of the world, the notion of theft does not exist. A child is not a thief if it takes food without permission nor is a friend a thief if a rake or a spear is 'borrowed' without permission. As Chief Seattle said, Who can own the sky, or the sun? Who can own the forests and lakes? Who can own the animals and the meadows?

EXAMPLES: The Inuit, Yurok, Ifugao, and Semai are among the most primitive in terms of technology; they see themselves as part of nature rather than the owners of it. The Hutterites of North America have a much more developed technology, hold productive resources in common and have very low crime rates.

Property crime between members is nonexistent because the relations of production are such that their use must contribute to the good of the social unit of which the individual is an indivisible part.

Forms of Crime. There is, within the society, occasional assault, murder and violation of sexual rules as well as heresy but organized, career criminality is unknown.

White collar or organized crime are unknown. Political crime is rare. There is absolutely no organized crime. Communal societies are low crime societies.

To the extent that members of other tribes are viewed as nonhuman, there is predatory warfare raids with theft, murder and rape against outsiders but only rarely within the membership of that community.

Forms of Control. In communal societies, the policing function is located broadly among all persons defined as adults. Social control is produced by socialization which combines the idea of the person and the idea of the community in the same concept. The idea of the single individual is discouraged. The language system makes it difficult to speak of an "I" and a "they" except for outsiders.

Although are no police, courts, laws, prisons or social workers in communal societies, were and are well instituted practices for assessing guilt and fixing penalty in every society. E. A. Hoebel, University of Minnesota, has surveyed legal practices among communal societies:

--Among the Yuroks of the Pacific coast, each party to a dispute appointed 2 to 4 'crossers' from outside the kinship group to act as jury and judge. They passed judgment and sentence. Each culpable act such as murder had a fixed penalty; it was the bride-price paid for one's mother.

--Among the Inuit [Eskimo], most offenses are cleansed by public confession. With the aid of a Shaman, a person confesses to tabu violations in communal gatherings and is forgiven in a point and counterpoint chanting between Shaman and listeners. For murder, blood revenge by relatives is expected. For adultery, rare in that society, song duels are sung to win communal judgment. Such duels are expected to settle disputes and restore normal relations between offender and offended. Social opinion decides in favor of one or the other singers and that is enough to satisfy the Eskimo concept of justice.

--Among the Ifugao, of Northern Luzon, there are no criminal acts by virtue of the social organization of the Ifugao (Hoebel: 113). When there are offenses, the offender must persuade a neutral party to act in the general, communal interest in social peace and just action. He is called a monlakalun who acts with considerable social power on behalf of society. He is not a judge nor a lawyer; more an ombudsman. There are customary payments for damages; the richer the offender, the higher the payment. For theft, the rich might return the article stolen and pay four times the value to the owner...for the poor, returning the article might satisfy the sense of justice.

--The Comanche settled disputes in private. Offenses centered on harm done to one's image as a male. If there were adultery, the husband tried to get restitutive damages or payment. The offended would confront the offender personally and set demands high. After haggling, the offender usually paid up and social peace restored. The more outside help a person sought, the more face he lost. Physical power determined most torts. Sometimes a champion would be asked to help obtain justice as determined by social morality.

--The Cheyenne had a much stronger sense of social solidarity than did the Comanche and instituted a finely tuned legal system. Tribal councils composed of elected chiefs heard complaints and rendered decisions..with greater authority than the soldier societies of the Cheyenne. The council treated offenses against the clan as the primal offense rather than offense against the masculinity of the individual male. Compliance and restitution rather than punishment and vengeance marks the spirit of Cheyenne codes. A man who shot another in the arm with an arrow in anger was beaten until he was as sore as the arm was. He then was ordered to amputate the infected arm and to sit with his victim until the victim healed.

--The Kiowa used the bearer of a peace pipe as a peace maker between parties in dispute. If, after four pipe bearers came, one refused to make peace, he was expected to die soon. Usually, the dispute was settled by an offer of restitution with the aid of the first pipe bearer. It was a simple yet effective system for securing justice most of the time.

--Among the Ashanti in West Africa, inter-familial disputes were settled by an elder who was thought to represent the will of the ancestors of the family. Disputes between outsiders were settled either by a priest who suggested solutions or by any neutral elder. The clan elders expelled the murderer for disturbing the spirit of the clan. The tribal elders elected a chief who could be removed from office. Although the Chief enforced decisions, they had to conform to the central organizing principle of the tribe which was the primacy of the matriarchy: a woman and her children were the core of Ashanti society. Offenses against the social organization were violations of the ancestors and carried a death penalty although a person could 'buy his head.'

SLAVERY Throughout history, tribes have used predatory economics to appropriate the labor of one tribe to use of another. Sometimes this entails raiding parties as in the case of the Vikings and sometimes it entails the taking of slaves as in the case of Turks, Greeks, Spaniards, Arabs as well as Jewish tribes. Race has little to do with slavery.

In slavery, human beings become the private property of a slaveowner. Having property rights over other human beings, the slaveowner has the right to use, to abuse, and to take the labor of the person defined as a slave.

Both slave and slavemaster have secure and significant relationships to the means of production of material culture. However this relationship had great inequality in the distribution of resources. However from birth 'til death the slave usually had access to the necessities for the reproduction of labor power since all wealth came from the labor of slaves.

EXAMPLES: Most know of slavery in North America but African societies also took slaves as did the Norse, the Roman, the Turks, and the Chinese at some time in their history.  But the cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations in the New World turned Slavery into a global industry.

Most slaves were European or Chinese until the slave trade between England, Africa and the American colonies developed with the advent of great trading and shipping enterprises in the 17th and 18th Centuries..

Forms of crime. The slavemaster cannot steal the means of production. Land, tools, clothing, buildings, livestock and artifacts are the property of the slavemaster even as they are used by the slave.

The slavemaster takes what he wishes at will. Within the logics of slavery, the slavemaster cannot commit crime even if he murders or rapes slaves because they are defined as 'property.' They have no social standing as persons in law. Offenses between people defined as slaves were settled by slave overseer and usually just in local terms.

Slaves may commit some forms of petty theft from the slavemaster and from other slaves, some flight from slavery as well as occasional violence within the slave population occurs but the amount and kind of crime found in capitalist societies is not present.

From the point of view of democratic socialism, slavery...as a mode of production...is the central crime. It is not that the individual slavemaster or the overseers are criminals to be punished. The location of the crime is in the economic system; not in the individual.

Forms of Control. As with all exploitive modes of production, relationships are defined and preserved by the system of law. Policing of slavery is done by the slavemaster or his overseers who use brutal and preemptory justice to enforce the whims of the slavemaster.

BOTH CRIME, LAW AND PUNISHMENT ARISE IN CONFLICT RELATIONS AS ONE GROUP EXPLOITS ANOTHER; AND THE OTHER RESISTS

The system of slavery is maintained primarily by force but, as time goes by, ideological justifications arise. Most often these justifications are said to be supernatural in origin. The claim is often made that the gods ordain slavery.

FEUDALISM Feudalism began with violence and survived by violence. It is a system of political and predatory crime in which an elite claims ownership to whole towns, provinces and peoples. It has an ancient history.

In feudalism, one predatory tribe imposed its hegemony upon communal society and extracted surplus value (profit) from communities for a privileged life style for the feudal elite. Whoever says feudalism says political and economic crime.

Feudalism spread to Europe with the Roman conquests at the time of Christ and continued until the wars of capitalist liberation between 1640 and 1789.

The lord of the land claims ownership of both the land and the peasants who work it. The peasants (called serfs) may not leave the land therefore their relation to the land is secure. Since the land lord claims the right of ownership to both land and serfs, the serfs must give up their labor when told to by the lord and must give up the food they grow on the land to the lord or to his agent.

The lord of the land had to swear an oath of loyalty to the King. Part of the oath required the lord to protect the rights of the serfs to graze their animals on the 'common' land and to collect firewood...rights that went back to primitive communism. Serfs were also allowed land for their family use but often had to pay the lord 'in kind' for that right.

Forms of Crime. The kinds of crime defined by feudal lords include withholding of feudal fees and services, leaving the land or hiding animals and crops from the "shire reeve" or hunting animals in the feudal domain.

Note: The shire reeve later became the sheriff of the capitalist system. The duties of the two were the same...to protect the property rights of the landlord of the county.

One must bow and scrape, salute and look away in such a society. One must accept degradations, pass them on to one's children. As time went by, Kings and emperors were anointed by high religious functionaries. The Divine Right of Kings became major source of justification for feudal relations.

Forms of Control. In feudalism, as in slavery, formal law arose to displace communal folkways and mores in the distribution of wealth (surplus value). Laws, police, judges and prisons expanded greatly. For disputes within a fief...a feudal unit, the feudal lord renders absolute judgment. Between feudal units, the King renders judgment. Since fiefs are bestowed to feudal subjects, the King could take back the land and office; thus one had to defer to the kingship.

Law and police are used to enforce an exploitative system of production and distribution that creates and sustains feudal relations.

The law-making apparatus is personal and the law enforcing apparatus is private to the feudal lords but were often held in mute contempt by the subjects of feudal rule.

Feudalism lasted until another economic system destroyed it. Capitalism was a better system on two counts: it freed people from both slavery and feudalism and it made profit dependent upon improvements in technology. Thus it improved both the relations of production and the means of production.

CAPITALISM The central organizing principle in capitalism is the private ownership of the means to produce essential goods and services.

When property rights are instituted, theft becomes possible. When private accumulation of wealth becomes the central organizing principle, a vast system of police, courts, prisons, and people supervisors is set in place.

Forms of Crime The heart of this series of lectures is an explanation of five kinds of crime. Each form of crime below has two Lectures devoted to helping you understand its origins in the structures of privilege and oppression: class, gender, racial, bureaucratic authority and age grade degradations. Here is the list again:

1. Corporate crime

2. Street crime

3. Organized crime

4. White collar crime

5. Political crime

Forms of Control In capitalist societies, a great many social control systems arise. Most of these control systems are located in the private sector. Management science, private police and security forces, electronic surveillance, psychological counseling, labor market dynamics such as competition for jobs and disemployment all tend to keep workers under control.

Capitalist societies have the most formal control systems and the most technological sophisticated control systems of all preceding political economies.  The conflict relations between capitalist and customer; between worker and owner, between rich and poor drive expansion all forms of social control.

In the public sector, there are several control systems. Each system polices different kinds of crime and is informed by different kinds of justice. You will learn more about these control systems in later Lectures, but here is the short list:

1. The Criminal Justice System

2. The Administrative Justice System

3. The Private Security System

4. The Peer Review System

5. The Medical Justice System

6. The Religious Justice System

7. The State Welfare System

Together with the very extensive system of private control in industry, commerce, and finance, these public systems of social control monitor, judge, and punish the behavior of workers, students, the disemployed as well as those who commit the five kinds of crime endemic to capitalism.

Positivities of Capitalism A fair analysis of any economic system must look at both the positivities and the negativities of it. Even though you have heard about the positivities of capitalism all your life, let's list them systematically, so you can balance them off against the negativities about which you will read in these the rest of the book.

1. Capitalism helped overthrow feudalism, slavery and 'the idiocy of primitive communism' (as Marx put it).

2. Capitalism is the most productive system so far developed in human history.

3. Capitalism is the most flexible economic system, moving capital [profits] around the world to meet market demand.

4. Capitalism tends to improve the means of production by its need to expand markets and to beat its competitors.

5. Capitalism tends to encourage private freedoms of speech, of travel, of trade and of investment.

6. Capitalism tends to promote education and scientific research. The first to meet its labor needs and the second to improve its ability to control all aspects of production and economic life.

7. Capitalism tends to destroy all of the most alienating social divisions in human history: gender, tribal, racial, age, and religious divisions tend to fall under the press for lower wages, more customers, and bigger markets by the owner of factories, stores and banks.

But the Negativities of Capitalism...especially as they relate to crime, control and punishment wash away most of the benefits listed above.  Great material wealth is of small moment if more and more of our children are engaged in theft, drugs, prostitution, violence and prison.

The question we must answer for future generations is whether it is possible to design a society which has the advantages of both capitalism, socialism, and communism without the disadvantages of the present forms of these economies.

SOCIALISM In socialist formations, the state holds title to the means of production and guarantees the distribution of those supplies necessary to the production and reproduction of cultural life.

Sometimes socialist economies are called centrally planned economies or more simply, planned economies to distinguish them from liberal capitalist societies which run on the 'free' market system. Planning is done by state bureaus which control both the means of production and the relations of production.

Socialist modes of production have achieved remarkable results in providing a significant, secure and adequate relationship to the production and distribution of essential material resources, as well as an improved relationship to the means of production of all forms of culture for the majority of people in a fairly short time.

The relations of production improve dramatically, but alas, there is no corresponding motive to improve the means of production and the economy tends to stagnate.

Since most socialist economies are run by central bureaucracies, we will call this mode of production Bureaucratic Socialism.

Forms of Crime Bureaucratic socialist formations tend to have an excess of political crime. Political crime grows as the state apparatus:

1. represses counterrevolutions launched by the privileged groups which existed before the revolution and who want to return to power.

2. represses any who object to the decisions made by a bureaucratic elite.

3. represses all who object to privileges such elite provide themselves.

4. represses those who steal from the collective to benefit themselves and their family.

Street crime tends to be very low in socialist societies. Organized crime is usually centered around currency exchange and scarce goods. Prostitution, and crimes against women are low even if these societies still have serious gender problems. Illegal Corporate crime is lower than in West, but still occurs as state corporations exploit workers, consumers, and the environment in order to meet unrealistic quotas. There is white collar crime as some bureaucrats use their office for personal gain.

Forms of Control The socialist state is the central agent of social control with a wide ranging police force, an extensive secret police apparatus as well as a crude management system. Neighbors volunteer to patrol streets so cities are usually quite safe. There is a parallel monitoring structure comprised of the 3-4 million members of the Communist Party who act as informal police, judge and jury.

So you see, a democratic socialist approach to crime would tend to concentrate on mode of production as a major variable in explaining crime across time and across societies. Traditional theories about which you learned in the last Lecture tend to use personal variables to explain crime and tend to ignore the larger structures of society.

But economic variables are combined with other structures by socialist feminists and cultural socialists to generate a wider view of crime. Patriarchy is, thus, a major source of crime. Racism, age group discrimination as well as bureaucratic authority contribute to crime. Structures of domination explain the kinds of crime and variation in rates of crime.

So look for all five social sources of crime in the pages which follow:

1. Class relations

2. Gender relations

3. Race relations

4. Age relation

5. Inequitable Authority relations and

6. national chauvinism in the world capitalist system.

Crime is now being internationalized as you will see clearly in the sections on corporate crime and organized crime.

Remember, the first principle of a socialist theory of crime is that the concept of crime, the amount of crime and the ways that crime is controlled is determined, in large part, by the mode of production.

Now, you can look more closely at Capitalism, the mode of production in which you will, most probably, live out your life. You will find that there are some very unique features of it which promote a wide variety of crime. The remaining propositions you must learn explain how the major features of capitalism promote different kinds of crime.

PROPOSITION 2. Capitalism separates production and distribution.

Owners produce a lot of goods and services but won't distribute them unless they can cover costs and make a personal profit in addition to the costs of production, including the value of their own labor...if any.

PROFIT IS THE WEDGE THAT SEPARATES PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION INTO TWO DIFFERENT PROCESSES.

Much crime is committed by rich and poor alike in the attempt to reunite production and distribution.

From the point of view of the capitalist, it makes sense to withhold goods and services when there is human need. It makes sense to stop production when there is much to be done. It does not make sense within the logics of any other mode of production but it does in capitalism. In all other modes of production, goods are produced for the sole reason of human, social use.

Only capitalism withholds the resources by which human culture is produced...for purposes of profit.

In the section below, you will discover that capitalism is preserved from absolute ruin by the operations of parallel economic systems. You already noticed that one of these parallel systems used to reunite production and distribution is crime.

BUT REMEMBER, the only way to reunite production and distribution within the logics of capitalism is:

A. OWN the means of production

** In the USA, 1/2 of one percent own almost 40% of the vast wealth of the land: stocks and bonds of companies, mortgages of homes, federal treasury debt, and a lot of land.

** About 2% own another 10%. still a lot wealth.

** About 10% own enough property to live off of it without working for wages or a salary.

** There are some 30% of the population who own their own businesses, farms, or are self employed trades-persons...they live on the margins of economic security.

But most people do not own enough property to rightly call themselves capitalists...they have to:

B. SELL their labor power to someone who owns factories, hotels, stores, shops or restaurants.

Most of us have to sell our labor power. We are not capitalists. About 115 million people now work for wages. Another 100 million people have to depend upon parallel economic systems for the resources they want or need. The other 30+ million are owners.

Now you can look at four parallel systems which redistribute goods and services outside the logics of the capitalist system. Of the four, crime is the most important parallel economic system for purposes of the theory of crime developed here.

PROPOSITION 3. Capitalism requires parallel economic systems

The inadequacies of capitalism require several other means to get resources to people who are disconnected from the economic system. Capitalism dispossesses people of land and jobs as it works to concentrate ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer people; fewer and fewer companies. The major failing of capitalism is its tendency to disemploy people...to use only enough workers to achieve the profit goals of the private company.

1. THE FAMILY. First is, of course, the family relationship.

A great deal of production and distribution in all societies is within the communal system of family. Production is for use rather than for profit; use on the basis of need rather than profit. (That makes the family a communist system...to each according to need; from each according to ability).

But many families cannot supply all its members with all their wants and needs especially if the adult members are out of work. So many are forced, by economic necessity to make other connections to the system of distribution.

2. STATE WELFARE. In a politically responsive capitalist society, the state taxes workers. It redistributes on the basis of need.

In the 20 or so rich capitalist countries, the government buys essential goods and services from the capitalist and gives it away to those in the surplus population. Sometimes this is called LEMON SOCIALISM. The state takes over the 'lemons' of capitalism...those sectors of production and distribution where it is hard for private enterprize to make a profit.

In the USA, while redistribution is often meager and mean-spirited, it is important to the 37 millions (1989) of women, children and elderly people who must survive on the margins of the capitalist economy.

3. PRIVATE CHARITY also provides for redistribution outside capitalist dynamics of profit and market exchange. Church groups, private individuals and nonprofit organizations solicit gifts and make donations.

United Way, MS Fund (Jerry's Kids), Red Cross, Kiwanis, the Eagles, Rotary International, the Red Cross, the Heart Fund, and others are private groups which collect money to help others. The Salvation Army feeds a lot of people.

Many individuals give directly to those in need out of the goodness of their hearts. There are few adults who, sometime in their lives, have not helped a stranger in need. The story of the good Samaritan inspires and recaps the lives of millions of Americans.

The problem with charity is that it is unreliable: sporadic and only a tiny fraction of what is needed to care for those who are too young, too old, or too ill to work...as well as those disemployed from time to time. It often demeans recipients.

4. CRIME Finally, there is CRIME as a parallel, non-capitalist system of redistribution. Estimates vary but some say 8 to 25% of the gross national product involves crime.

Let's look at the five kinds of crime in a bit more depth now. Later on, there will be a separate Lectures for each one.

PROPOSITION 4. Capitalism promotes five kinds of crime.

1. There is predatory street crime in which the weaker are victim to the more greedy, violent, and individualistic. Muggings, burglary, auto theft, and arson are examples of property crimes.

Rape, assault, child abuse, murder, mugging, racial violence are some examples of crimes against the person.

2. Capitalism creates the conditions for corporate crime. Corporate crime is the use of harmful acts by a formal organization to solve its problems at the expense of other individuals or other organizations.

Corporate crime involves the acts of corporations as organizations...not the acts of individuals.

In the pursuit of profit and growth, the corporation routinely violates labor laws, worker safety laws, consumer protection laws, tax laws, currency regulations, campaign contribution laws, environmental protection laws, trade laws, price fixing laws, and laws which regulate the issuance of stocks and bonds.

3. Capitalism also provides the dynamics in which white collar crime thrives. White collar crime involves the exploitation of a position of trust by an individual.

Embezzlement, employee theft, tax cheating, unnecessary medical procedures, sexual harassment by bosses, as well as various kinds of mail and radio fraud are some examples.

4. Organized crime produces and distributes forbidden, illegal or disapproved goods and services for which there is a market.

The main kinds of crime committed by organizations include production and distribution of goods and services such as drugs, gambling, pornography, protection, arson, fencing, violence, and hijacking to name a few of the more visible activities.

5. Capitalism tends to promote four kinds of political crime.

a. First, the crime of the state against its citizens, more or less openly, to maintain an inequitable relations of production.

Included here are the violations of human rights, murder, torture, exile, and imprisonment.

b. There is, as well, the crime of citizens against the state by resistance and rebellion.

c. There is the crime of one state against another. Feudalism and colonialism began this kind of political crime on large scale terms.

d. Genocide. In order to establish and maintain ownership of land, natural resources, jobs, and markets, one group will organize the systematic extermination of another.

Examples are the murder of the Dravidians by the Aryans in India; the extermination of North and South American Indians; the mass murder of Jews and gypsies by Nazis. There are contractors who murder Indians in Brazil today in order to create beef ranches and cut down the forests of the Amazon.

Not only does capitalism tend to promote these kinds of crime as you will learn in some detail later, but crime also helps capitalism work to stimulate demand and to satisfy the many layers of false needs that capitalism promotes through ads.

You will remember that the USSR committed the same kinds of crimes in Afghanistan, Poland and Czechoslovakia in order to gain control of their political economy. China did the same thing in Tibet, Korea and Cambodia. Bureaucratic socialism combined with nationalism does not eliminate political crime at all.

PROPOSITION 5. Crime tends to renew Capitalism.

Different kinds of crime do several things to renew and redeem capitalism. Most generally, crime renews demand. It also helps to create political legitimacy since crime justifies the police state.

A. Crime reunites production and distribution for millions of people in our economy.

A lot of people get resources directly or indirectly from crime. About 40 million economic crimes are committed each year in the USA. Millions of street criminals, white collar criminals, organized crime figures, stock owners as well as lawyers, police officers, guards, psychologists, construction workers, suppliers and transport workers get part or all of their income from their relationship to the criminal economy.

Crime is a pretheoretical effort to reunite production and distribution.

B. Crime also renews demand.

A theft of a car creates a demand for another as does the theft of a bicycle, television, stereo, or other goods. A lot of factories, shops, stores and loan companies can keep its workers employed by supplying replacements for stolen goods.

C. Crime provides flexibility in a system.

Blackmarketeering, bribery and smuggling get goods to where they are wanted outside of monopoly pricing or territorial agreements among capitalists and outside of work rules.

D. Crime employs tens of thousands in a vast underground economy. Organized crime employs a lot of the surplus population and offers additional income to those who police it.

The market for the goods and services of organized crime thrives in a society with high levels of alienated sexuality and alienated politics.

D. Street crime indirectly promotes solidarity.

In any society in which it appears, crime outrages those socialized to the norms of the society. The punishment of those caught creates a sense of satisfaction and the restoration of social harmony.

E. Crime provides legitimacy for oppressive policing practices.

When crime rates are high, the invasion of the privacy of everybody is justified. The policing and arbitrary actions of the state against theoretically informed resistance and rebellion is masked by the necessary repression of pretheoretical crime.

F. Crime accumulates wealth.

For a few, political, corporate and white collar crime pays extremely well. For most, it is a losing proposition. The general rule is that the higher the status of the criminal, the bigger the crime, the less the chance of detection, the better the pay, and the more the status.

Behind every Great Fortune, there is a great crime.

...Balzac

The great wealth of the few who do profit greatly by political, corporate, organized or occasionally by white collar crime and by street crime, they can invest in new enterprises; buy mass media; finance political campaigns or can give money to help a poor child get an operation.

Given high crime rates, social control systems tend to develop. In order to create and maintain class inequalities, parallel systems of social control develop.

PROPOSITION 6. Capitalism tends to create parallel but unequal systems of justice.

Just as parallel economic systems evolve, parallel justice systems develop which hide much injustice.

The parallel systems of justice include:

1a. a harsh and punitive criminal justice system for those who violate the laws of private ownership. Street criminals are processed through this system.

1b. A subsystem of the criminal justice system is the military justice system which polices and punishes the sons and daughters of the lower classes who join the military in search of decent living conditions, job training and some adventure.

2. Private corporations are treated gently for the many kinds of crime they commit. They are processed through an administrative justice system in the unlikely event they are policed, indicted or tried.

3. Middle class professionals demand exclusion from the criminal justice system for the kinds of crime they commit as professionals. They use a semi-private peer review system.

4. Middle class people prefer to create a medical justice system when they or their family members commit crime. Murder, rape, sex offenses and other crimes are medicalized.

5. For the poor there is also a meager and mean-spirited welfare system which judges people, uses welfare benefits to control them and thus, restores a little social justice.

Some 37 million people are below the poverty line (1988 figures). About 60 million people get some kind of government check. That includes social security checks.

6. And capitalists create a huge private security system under control of the various private corporations to watch employers, customers, and spy on competitors.

In this system, there is no due process, no trial by peers or presumption of innocence. Workers and customers are policed and disciplined. Competitors are destroyed.

7. In many societies and in parts of the USA, there is a religious justice system which controls and sanctions the sins and crimes of those who submit to it.

Other Justice Systems There are several other justice systems in the USA which attempt to control and to make right the abuses of the many forms of crime above. There is the civil justice system within which law suits are brought. It is growing as conflict grows.

There are the underground policing systems of the KKK, the White Citizens Army, the mafia and other secret policing agencies of the state. There is also a large and growing mediation and arbitration system in which people seek justice as well as an extensive for-profit court system emerging in America. All these are discussed in the Lectures on justice in the last section.

PROPOSITION 7. Capitalism Tends to Disemploy People.

The tendency to disemploy people derives from the fact that profit rates determine employment policy. Profit requires a reduction of the costs of production. You will learn in economics that there are three factors of production: a) raw materials, b) producer's goods (capital), and c) labor.

Of the 3 major factors of production, only labor costs can be reduced without immediate threat to other capitalist sectors.

Supplies and raw materials are owned by other capitalists who resist reduction of their own profits. The costs of land, buildings, and other producer's goods also are in the hands of capitalists. If a given capitalist tried to lower costs by squeezing other owners, there would be warfare between the sectors of the capitalist class and the system would collapse. (Capitalists in one country do exploit those in another country but that's another story which will have to wait until we get to the Lecture on political crime).

As long as there is a surplus labor pool, it is the labor of the working class which offers the greatest potential for reduction of costs and thus increase in profits.

But to eliminate workers is to eliminate those who producer wealth and to eliminate customers. Capitalism tends to kill the goose that lays and buys all golden eggs.

Disemploying Workers There are several ways to keep labor costs down. Whichever way is used, people lose jobs and purchasing power. The objective conditions which promote crime develop. Among the more common means to reduce labor costs are:

1. Automation. From the point of view of the capitalist, the best way seems to be automation. The tendency is to replace high cost labor with machines.

Machines don't strike, talk back, get pregnant, desire vacations and retirement benefits, take coffee breaks and require medical benefits. Machines don't want to control the labor process -- scheduling, speed, quality, quantity, and kind of goods produced. Machines do not need costly scientific management to watch and to push them as do alienated workers.

The Fortune 500 companies managed to reduce their labor force by 12% since 1980 while total employment grew by 8%. Most of the new jobs are in the low paying service sector.

2. Reserve labor pools. Another tactic to reduce labor cost is to use a reserve labor pool to replace workers who do want jobs at equitable pay and humane working conditions with those who demand less.

Children, women, Blacks, and other minority groups have been excluded for the job market. They can be used to drive down wages even more. Migrant workers, foreign workers, and part-time workers work for far less wage than do white, male, domestic, full-time workers.

Such use of alternative labor pools sets the stage for much racial violence and violence toward women.

3. Depressions. Depressions tend to drive out competitors, discipline workers, slow down production and bring the government in to help the capitalist class. A depression continues until new sources of demand refuel the marketplace.

Capitalism has had several severe depressions in the past 200 years (called Kondratieff cycles) and less severe recessions every 2 to 5 years. You will hear a lot more about these cycles. Skip ahead to Prop. 8 if you want to learn how these cycles fuel crime.

4. Disinvesting in America. Capitalist firms establish factories in third-world countries where labor costs, taxes, pollution controls and energy costs are lower; this also disemploys workers.

Workers in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other South American countries are begging for jobs. The capitalists in the U.S. are moving as many jobs as possible to take advantage of those low wages workers.

Bluestone and Harrison (1985) tell us that 10 millions jobs with good wages have been moved to the 3rd world in the past 10 years while 13 million low paying jobs have been created. More jobs but lower wages, higher prices and fewer programs of social justice combine to make a meaner and tougher America; it's hard for many to live on these mean streets.

5. Migrant Labor. Many capitalists hire legal and illegal migrants will work for less than workers in the States.

Better wages, better working conditions, fringe benefits, and good pension plans have been won by workers through the long history of labor struggle in America.

Workers from Central America, Haiti, Jamaica, the Philippine Islands and other third world countries follow the food and wealth from their homeland to the United States seeking work. They become part of a reserve labor force which lowers wages for the capitalist.

And then there is...

6. Third World Competition. The capture of U.S. markets by third world capitalists further disemploys U.S. workers and creates a surplus population of the disemployed.

Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and China produce goods which compete for world market share thus reducing demand for American goods...and disemploying workers in the USA. With low wages, they are unable to buy much from the USA.

20 million or more adults in the USA want a job with fair wages, job security, safe working conditions and some dignity. They can't find work. They are surplus to the needs of owners.

Capitalism tends to create an ever-growing underclass separated from the means to produce their own resources.

VIOLENCE IS 40% HIGHER AND THEFT IS 80% HIGHER IN HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AREAS THAN IN LOW UNEMPLOYMENT AREAS

Sampson and Castellano

The USA is the only Advanced Industrialized Country which does not have a full employment program. In Europe, unemployment rates of youth is often below that of adult males in the USA. (Currie: 119)

The capitalist system is marked by two kinds of cycles, short term booms and busts called minicycles; long term cycles of prosperity and depression. The latter are called Kondratieff cycles. Remember the name for when we try to understand political crime.

Minicycles Every 2 to 5 years there is an economic down turn which creates problems for new companies, for those working on small margins or for those companies badly run.

You can see that official disemployment rates were higher in 1977; dropped in 1979 and then increased until 1983...then dropped again. There are two cycles in the figures above.

You can also see these minicycles in savings and loan losses of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.

PROFIT/LOSS RATES AND MINICYCLES

You can see two cycles in the data above but...notice that the two curves made by the numbers don't quite match. Bank losses come a couple of years after job losses; then people lose jobs a couple of years after banks fail.

Can people borrow money to build houses when banks are going broke? Can banks make money when people are out of work and can't pay their loans?

From the numbers above, you can see we are on the upside of a minicycle. But there are long economic waves in the capitalist system too. You need to know about both if you are to see how crime is connected to cycles of boom and bust.

Kondratieff Cycles Every 30 to 50 years, there is a more serious depression. In America, the downside of the cycle came in the 1840's, the 1870's, the 1930's, and now, in the 1980's.

On the downside of Kondratieff cycles, all sorts of bad things happen:

1. disemployment increases

2. poverty increases

3. racism increases

4. family violence increases

5. social justice programs are cut back

6. political unrest increases

7. the probability of war increases.

8. necessary goods and services aren't produced

and 9. crime increases.

You can see the Kondratieff cycles in the depression years below:

1970-1990 marks the latest downturn in the economy. You can see the downslope in the following facts:

1. Real take home wages have been declining since 1970.

2. The national debt has doubled since 1980.

3. The value of American exports has changed from the largest surplus in the capitalist world to the largest deficit.

4. Bank failures in 1987 (above) are greater than since 1930.

5. 9% of the few remaining farmers failed between 1982 and 1986. There are only 2.1 million farms left. Farm subsidies increased from $ 1 Billion to 18 Billion in the last 8 years or there would have been many, many more.

6. The stock market lost 502 points or 1/4 of its value on 29 October, 1987. That was the biggest loss since 1929.

7. More and more women have been forced to take low paying jobs to supplement family income. 52% of the workforce is now female.

8. Infant mortality rates are on the increase among poor families again.

9. The rate of home foreclosures is highest since the great depression of the '30's.

10. The middle class has shrunken by 15% in the past 8 years. 4% of them have entered higher income brackets while 11% have dropped into the lower economic brackets. The rich got richer and the middle class and working class got poorer during the Reagan years.

A LOT OF CAPITALIST CORPORATIONS AND SMALL BUSINESSES COMMIT CRIMES IN ORDER TO STAY IN BUSINESS DURING HARD TIMES.

In hard times, corporations violate labor laws, tax laws, price fixing laws, product safety laws, worker safety laws, and many other laws in order to stay out of bankruptcy.

With the Globalization of Capital, the USA benefits greatly and the economic problems of Capitalism are shifted from the Group of Seven to the poorest countries in the world.  National debt and foreign debt is at an all time high in the third world.  The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank join forces to make 3rd world nations pay interest and principle on loans to corrupt governments...those loans win up in personal bank accounts in the Bahamas, Switzerland or other off-shore hiding places...while taxpayers in the 3rd world are forced to pay off the loans.

PROPOSITION 9. Crime is stimulated when Advertizing creates false needs.

Perhaps one of the most dangerous condition tactics of consumer capitalism in the quest for profits is the creation of false needs.

CAPITALISM USES ADVERTIZING AS A MEANS TO COLONIZE THE DESIRE FOR LIFE OF AMERICANS AND RESETTLE IT ON DEAD GOODS AND COMMODIFIED SERVICES.

Layer upon layer of false needs are created in the human psyche by the 120 billion dollar advertising industry. In addition to the distortions of the economy created by advertising, in addition to the creation of hundreds of thousands of unproductive workers, in addition to the misuse of the media or the debasement of art forms, the creation of false needs increases crime.

Disemployed workers cannot buy the surplus product. Underpaid workers can't buy the surplus product. Some workers do have discretionary income. They could buy a lot more than they need. They do watch television and respond to the use of depth psychology and the manipulation of human anxieties with which to colonize the desire of people for friendship, status, identity, sexual acceptance, security, and joie d' vivre.

Street crime, white collar crime and corporate crime are stimulated by spurious desire created  by advertizing as the paid servant of capitalist enterprize.