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THE CONTEMPORARY CRISES OF MARXIST CRIMINOLOGY
Author(s) -
KLOCKARS CARL B.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1979.tb01389.x
Subject(s) - marxist philosophy , scholarship , sociology , ideal (ethics) , criticism , epistemology , criminology , perspective (graphical) , class conflict , critical theory , order (exchange) , law , political science , politics , philosophy , economics , artificial intelligence , computer science , finance
Marxist theory gains its critical capacity by presenting itself as in the process of being realized through class conflict. By locating its critical and empirical reality in a ideal, unrepressive, unoppressive, relatively crime free future, it renders itself irresponsible for its own history and immune from empirical criticism. In order to sustain this vision in the absence of historical evidence. the chief promoters of a Marxist perspective in American criminology have found it necessary to invent untestable and irrefutable concepts whose principal function is to maintain a suspension of the relationship between history, social reality, and theory. Because such work is more akin to religious phophesy than criminology. it presently appears to be irreconcilable with all heretofore accepted standards of academic scholarship.