THE PENAL QUESTION IN "CAPITAL"

Author(s): DARIO MELOSSI

Source: Crime and Social Justice, No. 5 (spring-summer 1976), pp. 26-33
Published by: Social Justice/Global Options
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THE PENAL QUESTION INCAPITAL*

DARIO MELOSSl"

In the last few years, dissatisfaction has been felt in the criminal and the person as a worker ismade clear. There,
ranks of what could be called the "juridical left." This has Marx's concept of a punishment-free society which appears
been due to the need to take a political position on in The Holy Family is connected to the scientific analysis
situations of struggle or parliamentary confrontations, of the repressive and training functions of the state's penal
while moving from a solid theoretical base. This, in part, apparatus.
has been caused by insufficient elaboration of a Marxist
vision of law and of the state, and in particular, of the penal The process, therefore, that clears the way for the

question.1 There is a need for extensive research,with the capitalist system, can be none other than the process

principal objective of understanding the particular transi? that takes away from the laborer the possession of his
tions that the social structure, and therefore, the state means of production; a process that transforms, on
the one the social means of subsistence and of
structure, is going through in thismoment. Although I do hand,
into capital, on the other, the immediate
not believe that the exploration of Marxian thought can in production
producers into wage-laborers. The so-called primitive
any way take the place of such a historical and factual is nothing else than the
accumulation, therefore,
analysis, I do believe that there is a need to bring to light historical process of divorcing the producer from the
material found inMarx's work that is often overlooked. But means of production. It appears as primitive, because
above all, what we can derive fromMarx is a lesson on it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the
method. This lesson lets us develop a trulyMarxist analysis mode of production corresponding with it.3
of phenomena such as crime and punishment, which is still
in touch with our own reality. Thus, Marx summarized the essence of the long gestation
Marx dealt with crime and punishment neither as period of capitalist dominated society. Part of the social
disconnected from the whole of the social structure,nor as and economic transition process which took place in the
severed objects of intellectual inquiry. He considered them more advanced parts of Europe between the 15th and 18th
to be expressions of man's condition under capitalist centuries was the massive expulsion of farmers from the
domination. Adopting this perspective makes it possible to land and their transformation intoworkers. By thisprocess,
study them in a scientificway. That iswhy I preferhere to those farmers-turned-workerswere denied access to the
focus on Capital more than others of Marx's writings, even means of survival which had existed for them in earlier
though he deals more specifically with the problems of times. This certainly served to control them insofar as they
crime and punishment in other works. These include the found themselves in a situation created and controlled by
articles in the Rheinische Zeitung or in laterNew York the rising bourgeoisie, and without means of preventing the
Daily Tribune pieces, some passages in the Early Manu? developments which were changing their very mode of
scripts, and that littlemasterpiece of social, philosophical existence. Throughout thisperiod, the function of the state
and literary critique, the eighth chapter of The Holy is shown to have been inextricably connected with
Family.2 economic spontaneity. That is, the priorities of the state
However, it is inCapital only that the social phenome? were dictated by the priorities of primitive accumulation as
non of criminality is looked at in the context of the general they arose.
Marxian scientific theory. This is where Marx investigates In Capital, Marx does not concern himself ex-professo
the problem of the origins of capitalist society, the with the penal question. However, his analysis provides us
"primitive accumulation" that is shown to be the specific the means of understanding the intervention of the
capitalist matrix of the penal question. By followingMarx's repressive, or preventive actions of the state. It iswith this
analysis, in the historical context where primitive accumu? tool that we can analyze the historical and present problem
lation plays a central role, we can identify both the classic of crime and punishment.
elements of the penal question in the nineteenth century as In one of his early writings, Marx shows how the
well as the fundamental and directing imperatives of unrestricted gathering of fallenwood in the forestswas one
bourgeois criminal policy. It is in the making of the of the last survivals of the medieval relations of property
proletariat that the relationship between the person as a and of the collective use of common lands. He shows how
*
The author provided a rough English translation of his paper from
bourgeois state power took on the task of legally
the original Italian. Further editorial work was done on the paper by prohibiting what had been a definite right of the "poor
Virginia Grabiner and Michael Hannigan of the Journal staff.
masses."4 In The Holy Family, Marx shows that reduction
** of the person to something-other-than-himselfis at the base
Dario Melossi is an Italian sociologist teaching in Bologna, Italy.
He is associated with the journal, La Questione Criminale; Rivista di of rebellion, of the desire for re-appropriation. This has its
ricerca e dibattito su devianza e controllo sociale.
clearest expression in the introduction of a life-system

261 Crime and SocialJustice

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 4e*

ThPadrrfyTeoVnRsebrh

based on capitalist social relationships, particularly in the surprise, since the lawmakers and judges were among those
workers' condition. All these points find clarification and "acquiring" property in thismanner. Thus, the new legal
their historical context in Marx's analysis of original code became the negation of the legal legitimacy that had
accumulation. been represented by the customary rightsof the oppressed
The expulsion from the land was a concrete forerunner classes. At the same time, as we shall see, the legal code
of Proudhon's famous motto: "Property is theft." Marx provided negative sanction of those "criminal" behaviors
demonstrates that it was in fact, theft, violence, and which were brought about by the same transformation.
murder. The means by which "original expropriation" was What happens to these men, to these farmer-masses,
carried out are listed by Marx in the beginning of the 27th transformed into labor-power, made "free," that is,
chapter of Capital. In part, the absolute monarchy "without anything" except the ability to labor?
provoked the process by the "dissolution of bands of feudal
retainers." Additionally, the great landlords expelled The proletariat created by the breaking up of the
farmers from the land entitled to the farmers and peasants bands of feudal retainers and by the forceable
of the people from the soil, this "free"
under the feudal system of land tenure. They also usurped expropriation

the common lands. Finally, the forced expropriation proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the
nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon
process was given new force during the Reformation when the world. On the other these men,
hand, suddenly
the bourgeoisie accomplished the "colossal theft of from their wonted
dragged mode of life, could not as
ecclesiastical wealth." With thewidespread expropriation of
suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their
the vast land and property holdings of the Catholic church, new condition. They were turned en masse into
those who had lived and worked in the convents and other beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination,
religious institutions were also thrown out to join the in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at
the end of the 15th and during thewhole of the 16th
growingmass which became the proletariat. Thus, by 1601,
during Elizabeth's reign, pauperism was already such an century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legisla
tion against The fathers of the present
extensive reality that the complex charity system known as vagabondage.
class were chastised for their forced trans
the Old Poor Law had to be introduced.5 In the 18th working
formation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation
century, the transformation was Private owners
completed. treated them as "voluntary" criminals, and assumed
had stolen all the land, or nearly so. The state, through the
that it depended on their own good will to go on
"laws for fencing-off common lands," supported the
working under the old conditions that no longer
appropriation of the farmer-masses' "common property." existed .6
In reality, these were the infamous "decrees of expropri
ation of the people." Penal law shows itselfhere, assuring Thus the circle is closed. The emerging bourgeois society
absolute immunity to the usurpers. This should come as no produced widespread vagrancy, and the bourgeois state

Spring-Summer 1976 /27

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 this em?
proceeded to criminalize it. The notion of freewill reveals manufacture. For the still-emergingproletariat,
itselfhere, not as a criterion for the determination of guilt, brace is neither voluntary nor in any way pleasant. They
but rather as ametaphysical premise to justify the lightness must adjust to seclusion, lack of light and air, loss of that
of punishment. But what should the goal of punishment relative independence of work in the fields, placing
be? At that time,punishment consisted of the useless effort themselves under the unconditional authority of the
and
of making "vagabonds" return to the land fromwhich they capitalist, the ugliest and most tiring monotony
had been expelled. Marx says clearly, in the above-cited Not by chance are the historical origins of
repetitiveness.9
passage, that punishment must consist of training in "the manufacture and prisons unified and interdependent. It is
discipline of their new condition." Thus we return to The not necessary here to recall the poignancy of Marx's
to note
Holy Family and theManuscripts; being a worker is seen as writings on manufacture. It is important,however,
unnatural under such circumstances. It has that in them is the transposition of certain themes thathad
absolutely
become a state of emasculation and pain made historically appeared in theManuscripts.
concrete only by the violent process of expelling the farmer
from the land and reducing his labor power to that of Manufacture cripples the worker and makes a
alienated labor typical of capitalistic society, and conse? monster of him, cultivating, as in a greenhouse, his
characteristic of ability for details, by suppressing a whole world of
quently, of the general social relationships and productive tendencies, in the same way
it. impulses
that in the states of La Plata an entire animal is
The person of The Holy FamUy and theManuscripts,
slaughtered for its skin and fat.
now becomes the "free" worker of Capital. His suffering,
which comes from his alienation, now becomes the With laws
against vagrancy, laws that lengthen theworking
historically determined suffering of a class which was day, sanction the attempts at association, fix maximum
forcibly expelled from the land. Instead, it has been salaries, etc., the bourgeoisie obliges the newborn working
transformed into the working class. Marx sees the person, class to work on its terms.Here, as a matter of fact, penal
no longer as a species-being, but as a single individual law could boast great usefulness for capital. In the
belonging to a class, now reduced and socialized to the mercantile epoch, state violence was one of the easiest ways
worker's condition. In this history of his social existence, of bolstering the still-fragileonset of private initiative.
the individual enters into a relationshipwith theworld of The **wayof the cross" walked for some time by the
production and suffers his condition as a worker. The v
proletariat, "punished" for a social transition that they did
concept of human existence in theManuscripts, was already not initiate or understand and which they opposed with all
founded on materialism, on the necessity of existence. This their force, is in a more developed moment, walked by the
is certainly not derived from metaphysical premises or
rebel, the criminal, by the ones Marx numbers among the
vulgarmaterialism; even defining it as anthropological could "lumpenproletariat."
be deceiving. Marx, already in theManuscripts, puts the
accent on the historicism of man-nature relationships, on Thus the rural population, expropriated by force,
the education to which the senses have been subjected, as expelled from its land and made vagabond, was
well as on their distortion in a society build upon private pushed by grotesque and terroristic laws to submit,
property and exploitation.7 by force of whip, branding, torture, to that discipline
"The human being is a social being,"8 Marx states several which was necessary to thewage-labor system.
times in theManuscripts; and stillmore clearly in theSixth
Thesis on Feuerbach, "... the human essence is not Further:

something abstract which is immanent in the single It is not enough forwork conditions to be presented
individual. In its reality, it is the set of social relationships."
as capital at one end and men with nothing more to
Thus forMarx, it is not a question of any idealistic or
sell than theirown labor-power at the other end. And
materialistic a priori; he refers to the complex web of
relationships which link person to person, and person to
nature. The needs which develop historically are not, in any
way, premises for the social being, but are created and
become real within him. This understanding is to be found
both in theManuscripts and inCapital What changes then?
In what respect is Capital different, richer, than the
Manuscripts? In Capital, Marx presents his analysis of our
present concern, the state's use of violence and thus of
penal law and punishment. Here Marx shows how these
function to guarantee control over labor-power, and
consequently guarantee surplus value, exploitation. Whereas
in theManuscripts and in The Holy Family, repressionwas
still connected to bourgeois society in a rather intuitiveand
analogical way, in Capital the specific mechanism and
function of the process of containment and reduction of
"essential human forces" is described.
Coming from the ruins of feudalism, capital and "free"
workers come face to face and are materially united in Andover Union Workhouse ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, 1846

28 /Crime and Social Justice

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 neitheris it enough to make these men sell themselves Marx sees this link between the "ideal" workhouse and
As a
voluntarily. capitalist production proceeds, the factory as particularly significant, especially since
class tradition
working develops which, by education, workhouses in 1770 were not at all ideal institutions.
and the needs of that mode of
Rather, they were ideal in the sense of material productiv?
habit, recognizes
production as obvious natural laws. The organization
of the developed capitalist production process breaks ity only. They furnished the model for the methodist
every resistance; constant production of a relative system of cell-type prisons that has become the modern
overpopulation keeps the law of supply-and-demand, bourgeois form of punishment.14 During the 17th and 18th
and thus labor salaries, on a track which corresponds centuries, in fact, (that is, parallel to the rise and
to the needs of capital accumulation. The silent of manufacture) "workhouses" and "houses
development
compulsion of economical relations affixes the seal to of correction" opened in all themost developed countries
capitalist rule over the worker. It is true that the of theWestern world, while forms of corporal punishment
progressively disappeared. These new formswere unknown
immediate extra-economic force is still used, but only
as an exception.10 . . .
Things go differently during in the preceding period. They were based on an ascetic and
the historical of capitalist production. The
productive vision of life which was completely foreign to
genesis
bourgeoisie, at its birth, needs State power, and uses
earlier places of confinement. It is the re-educative value of
it, to "regulate" salaries, that is to restrict them
within limits convenient to the extraction of surplus work, in fact, which was emphasized in this period and
which determined both the ideological and practical
value, to lengthen the working day and to keep the
worker himself at a normal degree of dependence. novelty of these new institutions.The mystery of discipline
This is an essential moment of so-called original thus becomes less and less obscure; this particular discipline
accumulation.11 that the lumpenproletariat (still, for themost part, future
proletariat) must learn, is the discipline which rules the very
Therefore, for both the worker-criminal of the 16th heart of bourgeois society. But the heart of this society is
century and the delinquent tout court of a well-developed
capital, that is the extraction of surplus-value which, as
capitalist system, it is imperative to learn the discipline of Marx says,
the capitalist mode of production. But exactly what is that
discipline? To answer this question, on which I believe the is fulfilled outside the market, that is, in the sphere of
character of the structure of administering punishment in circulation. . . . The sphere of circulation, that is, the
within the limits of which
developed bourgeois society is based and depends, it is exchange of commodities,

as to the buying and selling of the labor-power takes place,

necessary to return to some of Marx's concepts as well
was in reality a true Eden of man's innate rights.
the basic themes of penal history inWestern society.
There only Freedom, Equality, Property and Ben
Marx says that after the enactment of England's Poor
Law in 1601, various English landowners proposed "a
clever project for eliminating any confusion in executing
Thus there ruled law and the Hegelian theory of
the Act" and that was "to construct a prison in the parish.
punishment. But if we go into the "secret laboratory of
Every poor person who does not want to be thrown into at the
this prison will not be given assistance."12 Later, during the production," equality and Enlightment stop; there,
very heart of capitalist development where lurks the
struggle of the English ruling classes to lengthen the essential condition for its existence (i.e., exploitation), the
working day, the anonymous author of "An Essay on Trade
and Observations on Taxation, etc."
principles of hierarchy and subordination dominate. These
the capitalist
principles appear in the discipline which
Commerce, Containing
which appeared in 1770, said the same thing as Marx who
imposes upon the worker. This discipline is the basic
observes:
condition for the extraction of surplus-value, and is thus
To this end, as for "rooting out laziness, corruption the only real lesson that bourgeois society has to propose to
and romantic nonsense about freedom," and "for the proletariat. If legal ideology rules outside production,
lessening the plight of the poor, furthering the spirit within it reign servitude and inequality.16 But the place of
production is the factory. Thus, the institutional function
of industry and lowering the price of labor in
our faithful Eckart the
industry," capitalist proposes of the workhouses and later of the prisons was to teach the
tested system of closing those workers who become
on public in a word, the needy, proletariat factory discipline.
dependent welfare,
It is not surprising then, that in the very developed
into an "ideal workhouse." "Such a house should be
made a house of terror." In this "house of terror," in
mercantile capitalism of 17th century Holland,1' in the
cradle of strictest as in Quaker Pennsylvania,
such an "ideal workhouse," men should work for "14 protestantism,
hours a day including, however, periods necessary for the next and decisive step could be taken, the transforma?
meals, so that twelve full work-hours remain." Twelve tion of "welfare institutions" in the form of workhouses,
work-hours a day in the "ideal workhouse," in the into "places for punishment," or prisons. Thus rose the
house of terror of 1770! Sixty-three years later, in "Methodist system of cell-type prisons" to which Marx
1833, when the English parliament lessened the refers in The Holy Family. The founder of an American
of 13 to adolescents to 12 full
workday 18-year-old state himself,William Penn, had foreseen this development,
workhours in 4 groups of it seemed as
crystallized about a century later in the first modern
factories,
though the last judgement had come for the English!
. . . The "house of terror" for the needy, which was penitentiary in Philadelphia (1790), when he said, in 1682,
still a dream for capital's soul in 1770 rose very few
"All prisons shall be workhouses for felons, vagrants and
later as a "workhouse" for the
loose and idle persons." But in the year that the first
years gigantic
industrial worker: it is called the factory. And this modern prison was inaugurated, the bourgeoisie in France,
time the ideal paled beside reality.13 with inevitable historical force, was placing its heavy

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mortgage on the political management of society. It was a ordinary criminals to be treated like beasts, and
moment when, in the more advanced situations, the new especially that there is no desire to deprive them of
class' economic and social hegemony was about to receive their sole means of betterment, productive labor. This
was the least one from
themantle of state power. According toMarx's interpreta? surely might expect
socialists.20
tion, this also meant that the new way of lifewas becoming
habitualized for the working class. This, of course, was
It is clear that productive work can be a real way of
guaranteed by the force of economic relationships (general?
ly expressed by the condition of the labor market) more correcting criminals in the same dialectical way it is for the
than by the force of the state. The state by then seemed to worker in general. It is necessary to negate and overcome
have become a useless, inhuman and tyrannical instrument, alienated work and the society which corresponds to it.But
unworthy of the new era, at least in English laissez-faire first, it is "corrective," in the sense that it transforms the
terms. But with its fierceness and itspolitical servitude, the lumpenproletariat into proletariat, removing it from the
state of absolute monarchy had prepared the way for the disturbed and irrational, individualistic conception of itself
fierceness and economic servitude engendered by the liberal and leading it to unity, to association with other workers
state. The system of producing labor engendered by the for a conscious, common program. This brings about a
radical crisis of the institution. The prison as such has, in
whip of economic privation was by then useless. The
workhouse was to become more and more an instrument fact, its own specific features which make it different from
for receiving the poor masses who could not find any other the factory. As has been shown here, it tries to embody the
work. Rebellion, refusal, and free will found theirmost bourgeois idea of punishment, to construct an institution of
confinement as an abstract model of the factory-centered
adept adversary in the institution of the modern prison.
There, as Marx says in The Holy Family, morality way of life. Paradoxically, it is this very effort which
dominated. The institution,made perfect by the Quakers, creates the difference between factory and prison. Prison
was a model of the life-style imposed by the religion of life excludes the very things which workers struggle for
outside of the deadening work they do during production.
pious businessmen. The exploitation process, the axis of
Cell isolation, subordination extended to every hour of the
capitalist society, becomes the central axis of the prison
reformatory process.18 The Enlightenment battle for sure day instead of only working-time, imposed silence, com?
punishment provides the value created by the forced labor plete sexual (or ratherheterosexual) abstinence; in sum, a
with an exact measure, proportional to the value of the complete authoritative and hierarchical structure is what
makes the prison an extreme model and what thus
safeguarded wealth.19 After the factory had been recog?
nized as an ideal workhouse, then prisons became ideal excludes those possibilities of consciousness and struggle
factories; punishment finallyacquired the double character? offered by the factory. This is the reason why Marx wanted
istic of a tangible representation of the dominant social to put into a "general workers' program" the compensation
for prison work; tomake it "productive," so that, "for fear
ideology. It was merely its extreme and radical expression,
and simultaneously, it was the place for repression and of competition," prisoners would "not be treated like
re-education. Furthermore, it served as a clear and animals." That is, work conditions should be as much as
convincing lesson for those outside who refused to adapt possible like those of free workers.21 Focussing on the
or, (and here it is the same thing), could not adapt. struggle against forced work creates the conditions by
If the mystery of modern prisons is discovered in the which the entire prison becomes more and more a factory
factory, and the criminal is condemned to the destiny of and less and less a place for punishment. We must look
worker, then the way to redemption and freedom is the dialectically at the development of the institution along the
very same for both criminal and worker. Marx shows inhis lines that the bourgeoisie wanted. In so doing, we can see
writing on the Paris Commune how in exceptional periods that in this case too, it becomes an integral part of the
of revolutionary tension, when the noose of bourgeois proletarian program. Inasmuch as the prison gets nearer to
relationships is loosened, the lumpenproletariat is able to the factory, that real factory imposed by the workers'
participate in the common struggle,overcoming its indivi? movement, not that "ideal house of terror" imagined by
dualism, and placing itself under the direction of the the bourgeoisie, "punishment" tends to disappear and the
proletariat. But the factory, in the same way that it is the possibility of "correction" appears. This comes about
greatest representation of the workers' degradation and through a transition of the anarchic lumpenproletariat,
enslavement, is also the birthplace of solidarity, conscious? subject to the individualist ruling ideology, into a worker
ness of common interests, who knows how tomake the conditions for liberation from
planning and struggling for
freedom. Similarly, the prison really becomes like the his own exploitation. From his own chains he forges the
factory. The Hegelian ideal of consciousness-forming, even instrument for transformingnot the prison within society,
though a critical, negative, antagonistic consciousness, is but society itself.
nearly reached. A last suggestive contribution, strictly Very few elements have been added by Marxist thought
linked to Marx's analysis in Capital, is his critique of the to those described here. Recently, however, in connection
vindication, in the Gotha program, of the German Social with a crisis in the management of deviance in mature
Democrat Party (1875) entitled, "Regulation of Prison capitalist countries, a reconciliation ofMarxism with what I
Labor." Marx comments: defined as the penal question seems possible. The United
States, England, and capitalist continental Europe, have
A petty demand in a general workers' program. In been under the pressure of the illness which has afflicted
any case, it should have been clearly stated that there the so-called "total institutions" for decades, but which
is no intention from fear of competition to allow only in the last few years has become evident. The need for

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 a critical analysis of deviance with a Marxist inspiration is
becoming more and more imperative.22 The analysis must
be radical in the sense that, followingMarx, itmust, "grasp
things at their roots." But the roots of deviance are in the
very essence of the society which produces it, in the
particular forms which capitalist production relationships
have assumed in this epoch of their development. Beyond
the specifics of Marx's thoughts on the subject and beyond
what I have tried to describe here, we must note how
Marx's analysis gives us a lesson on method. The history of
ideas or institutions, in itself,has no life; it does not exist.
It can only be a particular display ofmore general processes
which produce and form it.
In conclusion, I think itwould be of some interest for us
to recall the polemics arrayed against the Marxist,
P. Hirst.23 That occurred precisely because Hirst's argument
ismade on the grounds of method. Refusing the proposal
of a "Marxist theory of deviance," he argues that, "The
objects of Marxist theory are specified by its own
concepts." And then he lists, "the means of production,
class struggle, the State, ideology, etc."24 It is proabably
semantically correct to reject expressions such as "Marxist
theory of deviance," but the problem is restricted to the
word "theory" only. Instead we could say, for instance, a
working class (or a Marxist) point of view on deviance. I do
not believe that the New Criminology theoristswanted to
build a complete and definite theory. It is evident that our
task is not to formulate an eclectic social theorymade up
of some Marxism mixed with some sociology. Rather, our
task is to widen the hegemony of Marxism and its unique
social scientific theory on thewhole array of objects of the
The Cog by Franz Kupka
so-called "social sciences." In thisway we tend to eliminate
separate conceptions of sociology, law, psychology, eco?
nomics, and so on. It is evident, too, that from a theoretical us this is true, both with respect to an incessantly
moving
point of view, many of these "objects" will be completely social structure and to the new fields not yet covered by
transformed. original Marxist doctrine. When we analyse the present
If "Historical Materialism is ... a scientific general situation of segregating institutions in the context of the
theory of modes of production," it is not only reductive social structure,we must recognize that deep changes have
but thoroughly anti-Marxist to conceive of this theory as come about. Since the "classic" situation of the first
dealing with its own fundamental object-concepts only.25 volume of Capital, both "spheres," production and circula?
The Marxian partiality for these concepts comes from a tion, have been modified greatly. In the first sphere,
basic theoretical judgement that places them at the core of labor-power rebelled against being a commodity and
the whole social universe. If this were not true,Marxism imposed bargaining for the consumption of its own
would be a particular economic theory or a kind of use-value; this is truer and truer in the last few years. In the
sociology of labor and nothing else. Neither is it strange second sphere, capital succeeded in recoveringwhat it lost
that bourgeois ideologists often try to show it in such a inside the factory. It completely eradicated anarchy and the
way. They know that the scientific hegemony of Marxism freedom-of-competition system. Consumption, (and con?
proceeds together with the increasing social hegemony of sensus), organization, and oligopoly agreement predeter?
theworking class. On the other hand, they know that one mine change on the broadest level. In this way, capital
of the weapons against the working class is to limit the extended its authority from the productive sphere to the
general theoretical capacity ofMarxism. social one. If the crisis of a determined kind of authority
When Marxism takes possession of new fields of principle is the grounds of the present malaise of criminal
knowledge, such as criminology, it destroys criminology as policies, as I think it is, then socialization of capital is the
such, while it enriches its own basic concepts; capital and grounds on which the answer to themalaise will be built.26
labor, class struggle and so on. So the problem of A similar kind of consideration must be made about the
criminality, or of "deviance," in a given situation, becomes other main point of the polemics between Taylor and
the problem of primitive accumulation; the problems of Walton, the "New Criminology theorists" and Hirst. That is
prisons becomes that of training proletarians to factory the question of a so-called crime-free society.27 By refusing
discipline, etc. to propose a Marxist point of view on the themes of crime
All this requires a continuous creative application of and punishment, Hirst appears to come to a position
Marxism. Of course, from Luxemburg to Gramsci, from subordinate to bourgeois ideology, or, more precisely, an
Lenin toMao, all the greatestMarxist theoristshave
taught old-bourgeois one. He even speaks of the necessity of

Spring-Summer 1976/31

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punishment, prisons, police and so on, making use of the legitimacy of customary rights of poor masses against the new
bourgeois partial law.
penal concepts of the last century, of laissez-faire capitalism
in fact.28 But a crime-free or rather, a punishment
society, 5. The law of 1601 is nothing more than the last act in the
free society, is already present when late capitalist society construction of the normative complex of the Elizabethan Old Poor
has replaced a certain kind of practice and theory of social Law. Regarding this point, see the fundamental work by S. and
B. Webb, English Poor Law History: Part I, "The Old Poor Law,"
control with a new one, where in the ideological content
London, 1927; also F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, London,
and the real phenomena of prisons, punishment, etc.,
1928; and finally, the interesting volume, full of information and
become obsolete; where, on the other hand, in the society with a good bibliography, by J. D. Marshall, The Old Poor Law
as a whole, activity, extra-institutional social (1795-1834), London, Melbourne, Toronto, 1968 (which mainly
preventive
talks about the crisis of the OPL). See also the writing of F. Engels
control, and treatment, are continuing to develop and
about the conditions of the working class in England (1845).
appear ever more frequently. Furthermore, I agree with
Hirst ifhe intended simply to state that for a long timeyet, 6. See K. Marx, loc. ci v ,Bloody legislation against the expropriated
even in a society in transition to socialism, phenomena now ... On the social character of the problems of vagabondage and
defined as crimes will continue to exist. But we must brigandage and its repression, there is a very thorough bibliography.
I shall refer here to several particular well-known and meaningful
recognize too that it is our political and scientific task as texts. The classic A. Vexliard, Introduction a la sociologie du
Marxists to fight for a different order where those analysis of what he
vagabondage, 1956, p. 42; E. J. Hobsbawm's
phenomena decrease as the society changes in the direction calls social banditism in Bandits, London, 1969, and the chapter
of socialism, and communism. dedicated to this topic in the more general Primitive Rebels,
Manchester, 1959; the first two chapters of G. Lefebvre, Lagrande
On the other under human conditions peur de 1789, Paris, 1932; on France again see C. Paultre, De la
hand, punish? sous
repression de la mendicite et du vagabondage en France
ment will really be nothing but the sentence passed
Fanden regime, Paris, 1906; about England see the works
by the culprit on himself. No one will want to
mentioned above in note (5) and overall, G. Rusche & O. Kirch
convince him that violence from without, done to and Social Structure, New York, 1968, the first
heimer, Punishment
him by others, is violence which he had done to two chapters; lastly the very well-known work by F. Molfese, on
himself. On the
contrary, he will see in other men his southern in post-unity times in Italy, Storia del
brigandage
natural saviors from the punishment he has imposed brigantaggio dopo I'Unita, Milano, 1972.
on himself; in other words, the relation will be
reversed.29
7. See the third 1844 Manuscript: "Private property and commu?
nism," in K. Marx, "Early Writings," London, 1963, p. 145.

8. ibid.

9. See K. Marx, Capital, First Book Chapter XIV: "The Division of

NOTES AND REFERENCES Labour and Manufacture."

that is, in the of

10. The sphere of penal repression, sphere
except sons. The italics are mine.
1. The class struggle in Italy has again been taken up with renewed
energy since 1967 and 1968. This has resulted in a profound crisis
which had held up the country since 1945
11. See K. Marx, op. cit., Ch. XXVIII.
of the state institutions
through a more or less obvious continuation of the Fascist state's
12. See K. Marx, op. cit., Ch. XXVIII. These proposals cited by
basic structures while scorning many constitutional norms. Within
Marx are only some of the many which were presented by
the Italian crisis, some struggles have contributed to a radical
authoritative of the English bourgeoisie to complete?
of the social crisis by focussing on the one hand representatives
precipatation
ly eliminate "outdoor relief," assistance for the able poor which did
against capitalist backwardness and on the other hand, towards the
not include internment, in the two centuries of the life of the OPL.
construction of a more advanced society. Not only capital's forces,
but also those of the left have shown themselves ill-prepared for the Finally, with the reform of 1834, this was the prevailing hypothesis.
crisis. This is true, not only in Italy, but in general in areas in which "The
13. See K.Marx, op. cit., Ch. X ("The working day"):
there is a lack of Marxist analysis. The two international meetings
held in Santiago, the first in 1971, "On the transition to socialism struggle for a normal working day," etc.
and the Chilean experience," and the second, in 1973, on "State
14. On this, and what follows about prisons, see G. Rusche and
and law in a transitional period," now seem extremely significant.
O. Kirchheimer, op. cit., Ch. Ill: "Mercantilism and the Rise of
See the writings of Italian Marxist Lelio Basso on those occasions,
p. 24. M. Pavarini & D. Melossi are carrying out a
L 'utilizzazione della legalit? nella fase di transizione al socialismo, Imprisonment,"
research, in Bologna, on hypotheses of prison history pointed out
("The use of Legality in the Phase of Transition to Socialism" in
e Societ? nella hereinafter.
Problemi del Socialismo, n. 5/6, 1971 and "Stato
Dottrina di Marx" ("State and Society in Marx's Doctrine") in
15. See K. Marx, op. cit., Ch. VI: "Buying and selling of
Problemi del Socialismo, n. 14/15, 1973.
labour-power."
2. This paper is a part of a much wider work that will soon be
16. In the principal institutions of social control: schools, army,
published in Italian and in English versions. I refer to that longer
institutes of reclusion, and so
sanitary or criminal alms-houses,
work for an almost complete review of Marx's passages on crime and and above all
forth, the link which unites these places to each other
punishment. See D. Melossi, for a
to the factory is not casual. "Hypotheses
research about the historical role and the present development
3. Here we are considering Chapter XXVI of the first volume of
trends of segregating institutions in connection with the evolution
Capital, first paragraph, "The Mystery of Primitive Accumulation,"
of capitalist paper presented to the second
see M. Dobb's fundamental production process,"
also, regarding primitive accumulation, and
conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance
text, Studies in the Development of Capitalism.
Social Control (Essex, 1974).
4. That was in the articles, in "Rheinische Zeitung," on the law
against gathering of fallen wood in the forests. There, Marx held the

32 /Crime and Social Justice

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 17. This is not by chance, because to Dutch commercial greatness 25. P. Q. Hirst, A reply to Taylor and Walton, cit., p. 354.
corresponds the fact-as Marx observes-the "popular Dutch masses
were already more worn out by work in 1648, more impoverished 26. All this is developed in D. Melossi, Hypotheses for a research
and more brutally oppressed than those of the whole of Europe." . . . op. cit.
On the subject of the workhouse in Amsterdam, the Rasp-huis, see
the fine volume by T. Sellin, Pioneering in Penology, London, 1944. 27. See I. Taylor, P. Walton, J. Young, The New Criminology, cit.,
In this institution, which was to be the model for all the others on p. 212 and I.Taylor, Radical and
P.Walton, Deviancy Theory
the Continent, for many years, the structures of 17th century Marxism, a Reply . . . , cit., p. 233.
manufacture coincided with several phenomena that would be
characteristic of 19th century prisons. 28. See P. Q. Hirst, A reply to Taylor and Walton, cit., p. 353 and
"
The Marxism of the 'New Criminology, cit., p. 397.
18. Or, at least this is true of prison ideology, although we cannot
here go into the question. In this sense, above all, prisons took 29. In The Holy Family, section of
eighth chapter, 3, "Revelations
workhouses as their model. the Mysteries of Law."

19. The knowledge that the principle of proportionality of

punishment corresponds to a type of social relationship based on
the exchange of equivalent values, was clearly present in Enlighten?
ment penal culture. See Beccaria's paragraph on theft (retributive
principle shows itself evidently, here, as a form of compensation to
society) and paragraphs 77 and 101 in Hegel's Philosophy of Right.
The young radical-democrat Marx, in his work on the law against
wood thefts states:

If the concept of crime requires that of punishment, the

concrete crime requires a measure of punishment . . .The limits
of its punishment must thus be the limits of its action. The
actual content of the offense is also the limit of the actual crime,
Mary Timothy, Jury Woman, San Francisco: Glide
and thus the measure of the crime is given by the measure of this
content. This measure
Publications, 330 Ellis St., San Francisco 94102. $4.95
of property is its value. . . .Value is the
bourgeois way of property's existing, the logical term in which
plus .50 formailing.
only it reaches the possibility of social comprehension and
"A spellbinding book, full of important perceptions for
participation. lawyers how jurors think, and full of important truths
This idea was
to be expressed extremely clearly many years for everyone about how the legal system operated inone
later, in
1924, by the Soviet author, E. B. Pashukanis, who, in the General of the most important political trials (Angela Davis) of
Theory of Law and Marxism, states, our time." Anthony Amsterdam, Professor of Law,
Deprivation of freedom for a definite period indicated in Stanford University
advance in the sentence of the court is the specific form inwhich
modern-that is to say, the bourgeois-capitalist criminal law
effectuates the principle of equivalent requital. This method is
closely (though unconsciously) associated with the idea of the
abstract man and abstract human labour measured in terms of
time. ... A condition precedent to the appearance of the idea
that accounts in respect of crime could be settled by a
predetermined quantum of abstract freedom was the reduction
of all the concrete forms of social wealth to the simplest and
most abstract form of human toil measured in terms of time.
(Soviet Legal Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 218.)

20. In K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Little Marx

Library, International Publishers, New York, 1966.

21. The prison-factory is quite a bit more Complicated DT-A JOURNAL OF

r RADICAL
relationship
than what is presented here. In particular, as to the problem
prison labor, this historically depends quite a lot on the state of the
of
K THERAPYl
FORMERLY
labor-market in a given society. The worry that forced-labor could
lower the wage level in some branches of production by the beastly ROUGH TIMES and THE RADICAL THERAPIST
exploitation of prisoners prevailed for a long time in the workers' articles, poetry, analysis, ideas, and news of
movement. Here, Marx shows the right way in fighting not prison the growing mental health movement
labor tout court but the way in which it is practiced.
_working towards human liberation_
22. This effort is clearly present in I. Taylor, P. Walton, J. Young,
The New Criminology, London, 1973.
RT, PO. BOX 89, W.SOMERVILLE, MASS.
23. See P. Q. Hirst, Marx
and society,"
and Engels on law, crime and morality, in
02144
"Economy 1, 1, p. 28; I.Taylor, P. Walton, Radical
deviancy theory and marxism, a reply to P. Q. Hirst: Marx and
name,
Engels on crime, law and morality, in "Economy and Society," 1, 2,
p. 229; P. Q. Hirst, A reply to Taylor and Walton, in "Economy and street.
Society," 1, 3, p. 351; finally P. Hirst, The Marxism of the "New City
statP 7in
Criminology" and I. Taylor, P. Walton, J. Young, Rejoinder to the
Reviewers, in "The British Journal of Criminology," October 1973, O subscriptions (6 issues) $6 O foreign $10
p. 396 and p. 400. O current issue $1

24. P. Q. Hirst, Marx and Engels on law, crime and morality, cit.,
p. 29.

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