Criminality and economic conditionsBonger, Willem Adriaan
General
Criminality and economic conditions
Bonger, Willem Adriaan
Crime -- Economic aspects
In the chapter, “Die degenerirenden Einwirkungen des Kapitalismus”,
this author treats of the question of criminality and its relation with
present economic conditions.
“The property-holders, those who enjoy the benefits of all the
political and social institutions, alone have the right to exist. Those
without possessions do not have this right, despite the fiction of the
Prussian code with regard to the matter. The simple instinct of
self-preservation causes them to engage in a continual attack upon a
legal system that protects only the stronger. It is this attack which
those who are in possession of power, those who have drawn up the laws
for the purpose of protecting their power, characterize as a breach of
the law, as crime.... This is the simplest relationship between the
form of society and crime. Naturally, complications come in.... The
stronger those without property, the outlawed, themselves become
through some chance, the more do they modify the law that was set up by
those who were formerly stronger, the more do complications arise in
the primitively simple right of property, the right to the protection
of social institutions, and the law of marriage, and the greater and
more complicated becomes the circle of crimes.” [254]
After having next spoken briefly of free will, and having shown that it
is incorrect to connect criminality with a single social phenomenon
alone, since the social mechanism is too complicated, the author begins
to treat of the crimes against property. In the first place he gives
the following tables:
Germany. [255]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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