Marx and criminology

This article aims to address the work of the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in order to analyze their contributions to the study and the approach of the criminal matter, a social problem of great importance and in which the Marxist perspective analysis and approach remains unexplored.

The objective pursued is to combine the theoretical bases of marxism that are necessary to support the construction of a systematization, absetn until now, of the Marxist tradition about the "criminal matter" in order to reconstruct, a definition of criminal act and the underlying conflict from the historical materialism approach, to analyze the link between production systems and the control –conflict pair, and to report a Marxist theory of criminal law, with the final aim of map out guidelines for a transforming criminal programme.

The report will highlight the traditional law on deprivation of basic needs of workers (1842), the critique of the ideology of private law (1843), questioning the penalty in response to a free will of those who make a crime (1853), assessment of crime and creation of the bourgeoisie (1859), the functionality of the offense for the preservation of the capitalist social structure (1862), the original appropriation of communal lands in the beginning of the capitalist system (1867) and formal and uneven character of law as proposed equal treatment in unequal conditions (1875). In Engels, are relevant reflections on the impact of the demoralization of the popular sectors in the way tort in England in the nineteenth century (1845) and the laws against subversion (1895), among others.