The study of Marxism in turn began to revel a much more fruitful ideology to why behaviors were being defined as criminal, why certain groups participated in specific genres of crime, and why there was a focus on crime committed by the lower class-status. Marx believed that for any current socio-economic system to exist, it must exist because of two variables; social class and history. Historically classes emerge due to a conflict relation between groups. Marx believed that for any current political power to be sustained, it has only due to developmental factors. That is, these powers are self-supporting through what may be unconscious efforts, or the basic premise of survival. He began a deduction of these powers to determine political and/or economical correlation to class-structure including the relations. Marx defined the capitalistic societies specifically contained two classes, bourgeoisies and proletariats, owner and working class respectively. These classes had characteristics of rich and poor, power and powerless. But, these characteristics were not independent but rather existed in a relationship of one-an-other (lynch, 20). Basically Marx claimed one characteristic was manifested by the opposite, and by no means could one exist without the other, they held a duality. Through contact with struggle, tolerance of status emerged and was adopted, which later became to be known as a false consciousness, resulting in promotion through religion, education, and employment. Marx labeled this effect to give birth to a hegemonic culture.
Application to Criminology .
From a definition perspective Marx showed how capitalism maintained class divisions, specifically that are dependent on the power structure involved. Every society creates different power relations, in this case crime control as a method. The crime controls help support the interests of the "well-to-do" and the power elites, disregarding any policies the might negatively affect them.
