Marx and Engels on prisons and capitalism

Authors

James Parisot, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-30-2024

Abstract

This paper rethinks Marx and Engels’ comments on imprisonment and capitalism. While there has been a tendency to suggest the authors’ comments on crime and punishment were peripheral and secondary to their major projects, such as Marx’s Capital, this paper claims, in fact, their writings on incarceration were guided by their shared theoretical project which included historicizing systems of punishment as correlating with modes of production. Also, while more has been written on their ideas of criminality, instead, this paper excavates their thoughts on prisons, which have often been neglected. Overall, it shows there has been a tendency to underestimate the ways the authors viewed prisons as an important disciplinary mechanism for class control, and a part of the capitalist state more generally. Their work provides an important conceptual foundation for critical sociological perspectives on incarceration.

Comments

© The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Recommended Citation

Parisot, James. "Marx and Engels on prisons and capitalism." Journal of Classical Sociology (2024): 1468795X241308818. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X241308818

Publication Title

Journal of Classical Sociology

DOI

10.1177/1468795X241308818