Economic Disaster, Crime and Society

Who is responsible?

Society has been divided by capitalism, and as a result, there is a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.  Therefore, social inequality and economic disasters, stemming from capitalism, are the causes of crime, thus supporting the claim that the law operates to serve the interests of the ruling class. 

Capitalism is an exploitative system whereby the bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat because it is a system that espouses the extraordinary belief that the nastiest men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.  Crime is the result of poverty which is generated by the capitalist system.  People steal because

they are materially deprived and this deprivation results from the poverty wages paid by the ruling class.  Even the minimum wage does not protect against wage slavery.  Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz makes $9,637 an hour, yet is unwilling / does not want to pay his employees $15 an hour.  Reiner has noted that working class people are under pressure to find alternative routes to success because they cannot achieve using legal institutional means, thus undermining the idea of a meritocratic society.  This is why many statistics show that the working class engage in criminal behaviour.  The ruling class have little motivation, as they already have the essential elements of success.  Therefore, as Gordon suggested, society is now a ‘dog-eat-dog’ place in which everyone is in it for themselves.  This is corroborated by Chambliss, who said that the capitalist system fosters crime at all levels within the system.  Everyone is exposed to ideology and crime occurs even in the corporate boardrooms where millions can be gained.  People have different methods of attaining wealth, but they are all motivated by an insatiable desire for it, and so crime is built into capitalist societies. 

This is substantiated by Owen Jones, who has succinctly summed up this argument: “Who is responsible for the mess this country is in?  Is it the Polish fruit picker?  Is it the Nigerian cleaner?  Is it the Indian nurse?  Or is it the bankers who plunged it into economic disaster?  Is it the tax dodgers who are hoarding £25billion each and every year?  Is it the poverty-paying bosses who have left people languishing, unable to look after themselves?  Is it the private landlords who are milking the system and charging rip off rents?”

The creation of laws further serves to operate the ideology of the bourgeoisie as a consequence of exploitation.  Bonger and Chambliss pointed out that the majority of the population are exploited by the government and owners and big businesses, hence, as Pearce noted, exploitation from capitalism leads to the creation of laws which appear to benefit the proletariat, but truly benefit the ruling class.  This is due to the lack of consensus between the upper and lower classes.  Crime is natural in this situation because capitalism and society’s laws fuel greed, avarice, hostility and self-interest. 

Moreover, the creation of bourgeois laws means that the ruling class has the power to define and criminalise the crimes of the working class and ignore the crime of the rich.  Miliband highlighted how the judiciary are from the same background as the ruling class, and so are likely to favour them, and give white-collar crimes lenient sentences, if any at all.  This has been commented on by sociologists such as Snider, who researched and found that the effects of robberies and petty theft (working class crimes) are much smaller than the losses created by big businesses engaging in corporate crime.  Hence, this is why the capitalist state is reluctant to give the bourgeoisie criminal records because it could threaten their profitability.  This is corroborated by Karstedt, Farrell and Radford who noted that white-collar crime is increasingly common, and costs around £14billion per annum, which is five times the cost of burglary.

Large corporations are holding us to ransom, leaving millions of people wide awake at night due to their ever growing debt and inability to pay the mortgage or utility bills.  These corporations work for the government, whom are wasting the taxpayer’s money to subsidise the poverty wage-paying, tax-avoiding bosses that epitomise the capitalistic nature of this country. 

The British government claims it wants to listen to its people.  When its people speak up in response to proposals and changes, they are shut down and dismissed.  Yet they question why we are so afraid to stand up to those at the top of society and express our discontentment with the way we’re told to act?  Do we honestly believe that these people are better than us?  That they are worth more than the people they claim to work for?  They are no better than us.  They simply have more money, and consequently more power, which has reinforced their capitalistic mind-set of greed, avarice and hostility.  The difference between them and us is that we know the truth.  We know how difficult life can be without the support of an old-boys’ network.  We know what it is like to be on the breadline.  We are forced to succumb to and accept the spurious choices a government we elected to serve us because we were fooled into the illusion of choice.  And what a great job they’re doing at ruining us as a nation.  We have lost so much, but they have gained at our expense.  Is this the society we want to live in? 

The current system is not working, it is not a system where people can live the way they are meant to live; because even those who are on the favoured side of the corporate machine are not able to find true fulfilment, happiness and contentment - this is not a system created by the people nor for them, but it is a system created by the untamed machine that operates on the power of money and greed alone.