Marxism

1489 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: History of science and technilogy

Marxism Marxist criticism is inherently existentialist. One cannot know anything without having been exposed to it as some sort of life experience. There is no knowledge a priori, as some of the ancient philosophers would have us believe. Rather, knowledge is accumulated a posteriori, through actual experience. Therefore, there is almost nothing that is inherent and absolute in our knowledge. It can never be purely objective, as knowledge is absorbed through the grid of our own perceptions, and that grid is in turn formed through our youthful socialization within our particular culture. For this reason, Marxist analysis does not allow gut-feeling or individual bias to play too great a role in the debate. It is more important to determine how exactly these "common sense" reactions are formed. In this essay, I will attempt to analyze law and crime through the lens of Marxist analysis. "Common sense" tells us that police officers are the "good guys" attempting to preserve society against the chaos and disorder that the criminals represent. Nobody will agree that this general rule is universally true, as the incidents in the Rampart Division of the LAPD illustrate. The Rampart division shot unarmed people point blank and then put guns in their hands. They behaved much like gang members, with their own hazing rituals of "beating people into the gang." Another telling example is the Louima incident, wherein a Haitian immigrant was anally raped by a NYPD police officer with a plunger. Obviously, all cops are not saints, and some are worse than some criminals. Even though the line between cops and criminals may blur, it is the oversimplified division between "good and bad" that shapes the way we treat cops and crimi... ... middle of paper ... ...n different neighborhoods, and how one is ideologically shaped by one's surroundings, it seems that complete freedom of will must be an illusion. A major reason why the ideology of free will exerts such a stranglehold on American thought is because it is essential to our system of reward and punishment, which would otherwise seem chaotic and meaningless. Thus, the ideology of "good and bad" and "free will" serve to regulate the beliefs and activities of American citizens, as well as to generalize between certain classes, such as cops and criminals. Such ideological concepts are not based upon some sort of inherent preexisting "truth." Rather, they are the cultural coordinates by which we plot our lives. They give meaning and purpose to our lives, but they may also be limiting and work to disparage certain peoples. The difficulty is in telling the difference.

Show More
Related

  • Litigation of R. v. Buhay

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    As taught in the lectures, it is impossible for police officers to win the war against crime without bending the rules, however when the rules are bent so much that it starts to violate t...

    Read More

  • Police Corruption in LA Confidential and Training Day

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    For years police corruption has been a major problem in American society but where is the line between moral and unethical police corruption, many modern movies address this vary issue. Some films portray how types of police corruption can have a positive influence on society, while others show the dark side of police corruption. Many law enforcement agents join the criminal justice with the basic idea of “justice for all,” however, most of them do not realize that the nice guy doesn’t always win. Even though there are vast amounts of movies which specifically address police corruption we will use three main movies for our argument today, mostly LA Confidential, however, also Training Day.

    Read More

  • Unleashing the Cops to Reduce Crime Rates

    965 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the fifth chapter of Walker’s book, he discusses the idea that we can reduce crime rates if we “unleash” cops and give them more capabilities, deter future crimes through more severe punishments, and that we should lock up more criminals and for longer terms. The author of 14 books on issues of crime, policing, and policies surrounding those issues, Walker holds the title of Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he taught for many years, even though he has not taught there since 2005. Before this, in 1973, he acquired a Ph.D. in American History at Ohio State University which is his highest degree to date. Walker has written and done research on numerous subjects involving the criminal justice system and because of this has keen insight into the world of law and policing.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography On Police Brutality

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book, the author inform how effective is the lawsuit or criminal prosecution to help resolve police brutality. As a failure, it has been explained about how it wo...

    Read More

  • Criminological Conflict Theory

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    Quinney subscribed in part to Marxist ideology (Mutchnick et al., 1990). Quinney’s views on criminality and social inequality are rooted in the belief that class conflict creates an environment favoring those with greater means of accumulation over those with lesser means of accumulation. The resultant interpretation by Quinney followers is greater means to wealth equates to lesser involvement in criminal activities. This thought is well told in Quinney’s works on white-collar crime. It is the writer’s assertion that minority communities seem largely superficially impacted by white-collar crime as a means of exploitation upon them, rather than originating within them. Ruddell and Thomas (2010) state policing agencies within in areas with larger populations of minorities employ more law enforcement officers and spend more of their annual budgets on enforcement activities. This is largely a representative of Quinney’s theoretical examination on social conflicts using Marxist theory to explain how social structural impacts on crime leads to the eventuality of developing systemic support by way of law and policy used to oppress the poor to keep class divisions structurally intact (Mutchnick et al., 1990). The law serves to benefit the interests of one group over another. Policing’s role as an instrument of the system, is

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Free Will

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many modern day scientists argue that humans construct the concept of free will rather than free will actually existing. The dialogue on this matter will likely continue for more years. While these scientists devote time attempting to prove their theories on the issue, other scientists research the effect on people when they believe their decisions are pre-determined for them. These studies prove that, regardless of the validity of the idea, people who call free will an illusion have lower moral standards than those with a belief in free will.

    Read More

  • Libertarianism

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    For centuries philosophers have debated over the presence of free will. As a result of these often-heated arguments, many factions have evolved, the two most prominent being the schools of Libertarianism and of Determinism. Within these two schools of thought lies another debate, that of compatibilism, or whether or not the two believes can co-exist. In his essay, Has the Self “Free Will”?, C.A. Campbell, a staunch non-compatiblist and libertarian, attempts to explain the Libertarian argument.

    Read More

  • Marxism Isn't Dead

    3750 Words  | 8 Pages

    ABSTRACT: I defend the continued viability of Marx's critique of capitalism against Ronald Aronson's recent claim that because Marxists are 'unable to point to a social class or movement' away from capitalism, Marxism is 'over' 'as a project of historical transformation.' First, Marx's account of the forced extraction of surplus labor remains true. It constitutes an indictment of the process of capital accumulation because defenses of capitalism's right to profit based on productive contribution are weak. If generalized, the current cooperative movement, well advanced in many nations, can displace capitalism and thus counts as the movement Aronson challenges Marxists to point to. It will do this, I argue, by stopping capitalist exploitation, blocking capital accumulation, and narrowing class divisions. But in defending Marx by pointing to the cooperative movement, we have diverged from Marx's essentially political strategy for bringing about socialism onto an economic one of support for tendencies toward workplace democracy worldwide.

    Read More

  • Free Will Essay

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... we traditionally understand it is an illusion. But despite this, I maintain that whether this is true or not is completely irrelevant to our daily lives. Our experience of free will is undeniable whether it is an illusion or not, and to retract this and embrace some kind of determinism would shake civilization to it’s very core. The logistical scale alone of reforming the criminal justice system is not only daunting but also highly impractical. Until presented with sufficient convincing evidence to the contrary, I firmly believe societies should continue to behave as they are; assuming absolute free will as reality and acting accordingly regardless of whether it actually is or not. And if there ever comes a time when the popular notions of freedom are challenged and rejected by the scientific community based on good evidence, the world will never be the same again.

    Read More

  • The Rise Of Police Brutality On The Rise

    1263 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to The Global Research News, in the last decade alone the number of people murdered by police has reached 5,000. This humanitarian crisis in the United States has become an alarming reality. Police officers have the capability to arrest, confiscate property, and use deadly force. Yet, many have abused their powers. Police brutality is on the rise whether society believes it or not because of the advancement in technology, low education and experience, racial profiling, and people’s refusal to obey.

    Read More

  • Police Culture

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many of the citizens never had a one on one altercation with the law they only base their opinions on experiences with the police influence from other citizens, and that where they get their general image of the police. Many study indicates that police courteousness/friendliness in the direction of the citizen in a recent contact with police exerts the most powerful influence on the citizen’s general assessment of the police. However more studies have indicated that people’s previous overall views of police have sturdier influence on their evaluation of a succeeding specific contact than their evaluation of a specific contact has on subsequent overall views of police. The majority of the American public has not had face-to-face contact with a police officer. Most people respect the mass media as their primary source of information about the many crimes that go on around them, and crime news is the background for most mass media interpretations of police work. The implied message of much crime news is the lack of ability to catch offenders. A trend that is rising in a major way is in the news media. They are using it to focus their attention on a few

    Read More

  • Marxism and Leninism

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    Marxism is a philosophy coined by Karl Marx with the help of Friedrich Engles in the early nineteenth century. Marx’s writings inspired many progressive thinkers throughout the European continent and the United States. The Marxist doctrine stated that first a bourgeoisie revolution, which will ignite a capitalist fire. The political philosopher believed that communism could only thrive in a society distressed by “the political and economic circumstances created by a fully developed capitalism” With industry and capitalism growing a working class develops and begins to be exploited. According to Marx, the exploiting class essentially is at fault for their demise, and the exploited class eventually comes to power through the failure of capitalism:

    Read More

  • Karl Marx and Marxism

    1770 Words  | 4 Pages

    In East Marx is no longer reffered to as he is held responsible for the totalitarian catastrophe. In West he is still disputed but, almost always, his views are no longer connected to all that they have determined. Some read Marx particularly for the “evil� he is assumed with, for the horrors of communism. Others, read him just for political reasons. I read Marx so as to be completely able to demonstrate that Marxism may still represent an adequate way of dealing with some of today’s “social superstructures�, as Marx himself named them: literature, religion, law etc. That Marxism as an intellectual perspective may still provide a wholesome counterbalance to our propensity too see ourselves and the writers that we read as completely divorced from socio-economic circumstances. That Marxism may also counterbalance the related tendency to read the books and poems we read as originating in an autonomous mental realm, as the free products of free and independent minds…

    Read More

  • Negative and Positive Freedom

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nonetheless, negative freedom does not mean that individuals should have absolute and unrestricted freedom. Classical liberals, such as J.S. Mill, believe that if freedom is unlimited it can lead to “license”, namely the right to harm others or to infringe their “natural” rights to “life, liberty and property”. In this way, Classical Liberals often support minimal restrictions on the individual so as to prevent individuals from inflicting harm upon each other. However, it should be borne in mind that Classical Liberals do not accept any constraints upon the individual that prevent him from damaging himself, physically or mentally, since the individual still remains sovereign. Such a view of freedom means that classical liberals generally advocate the establishment of a minimal or “nightwatch” state, whose role is limited to the protection of individuals from other individuals.

    Read More

  • Marxism And Marxism

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    Politics and many aspects of society today have been heavily influenced by political thinkers and scholars from ages before our time. Whether their ideas were implemented or avoided, society today has learned and grown from these influenced; there has been societal adaptions and changes with every success and failure. One important philosopher that is still widely talked about today is Karl Marx. His theories and ideas are still studies, discussed and utilized today. Some aspects of Marxism is relevant to modern day but there are still some major critiques to his opinions that prove there in inconsistencies with the relevance of Marxism. This is a result of his failure to predict how advanced and revolutionized society would be in modern day.

    Read More

More about Marxism

Open Document