Karl Marx Causes Of Deviance

As a conflict theorist, Karl Marx believed in two groups: the ruling class and the subject class. Theorists like Marx believe that the cause of deviance can be traced to the exploitative nature of capitalism. Capitalists only interest is to make a profit, causing them to exploit their workers. Capitalism produces crimes such as: robbery, assault, rape, and murder. Capitalism pressures people to commit crimes and become deviant by making them poor in the first place. The ruling class has power over the subject class, causing the subject class to turn to deviant behavior such as alcoholism in order to deal with the way they are being treated. The subject class also commits crimes as a way to rebel against their poor working conditions. The capitalistic
pressure to commit crime and other forms of deviance is not confined to the lower classes, but reaches upward to affect the higher classes as well. As capitalists accumulate more money, capitalism creates powerful empires of monopoly and oligopoly in the economy. This ensures that they always stay in power, making it impossible for the lower class to move up in society.