Is gender subordinate to class? An empirical assessment of Colvin and Pauly's structural Marxist theory of delinquency.

• Author: Simpson, Sally S.
• Position: Mark Colvin, John Pauly

1. INTRODUCTION

   For Karl Marx, the problem of crime in capitalist societies was linked to the material forces of capitalism and class domination.(1) Although Marx did not extensively discuss the problem, he did remark that criminality seemed to be concentrated in the dangerous classes.(2) The lumenproletariat, or "parasitic class" of criminals, consisted of unproductive, unorganized labor whose criminal activity victimized capitalists and productive labor alike.(3) Neither Marx nor Friedrich Engels noted the gender regularity of criminality. Over the years, Marxist and neo-Marxist scholars have replicated this omission, and it appears to have become a legacy of criminological Marxism.

   Scholars have noted racial differences among the criminal population. For instance, David Gordon contends that crime is a rational response to the pressures of class, society, and the competition manifest in capitalist systems.(4) Racial division in the working class benefits capitalism, because the competition between excluded minorities and employed labor depresses wages. Although Gordon's study analyzed the reasonableness of a crime as a response to joblessness and the lack of economic opportunity in urban poverty areas, it did not consider the relationship between these pressures and gender.

   Similarly, Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, and Roberts note the ways in which race modifies class consciousness and ideology, and, consequently, criminality.(5) However, the circumstances and conditions they describe, along with their criminogenic consequences, primarily reflect upon the black male experience. Patterns of crime by gender in the black laboring classes and the way in which crime may reflect different class experiences by males and females are ignored.

   To the extent that inequalities, other than class, are thought to permeate and divide society, Marxist scholars credit these power differences to a more "fundamental" division (i.e., the organization of production).(6) In criminology, this approach is obvious in Colvin and Pauly's recent presentation of an "integrated structural Marxist theory of delinquency production."(7) As characterized by the theory, workplace experience, regardless of sex or race, subjects workers to distinct processes of discipline and control by the capitalist. These experiences, in turn, produce particular bonds to authority that are reproduced within the workers' familial relationships with their children. Colvin and Pauly go on to discuss how these control structures and initial bonds to authority are reinforced through education and peer influences. However, they do not discuss how experiences in the labor force, family, and school may differ by gender.

   Although scholars have criticized the breadth and scope of Colvin and Pauly's theory (eg., Paternoster and Tittle suggest that it would be more appropriate to characterize it as a "sensitizing idea system"), few have explicitly tested the key relationships proposed by the theory.(8) Thus, one research goal of this article is to subject the basic relationship between class, family, peers, and educational experiences, and serious patterned delinquency to empirical testing. A second task, however, is to determine whether the implicit assumption of gender neutrality in Colvin and Pauly's theory is, in fact, warranted.

2. COLVIN AND PAULY

   1. A STATEMENT OF THE THEORY

      Colvin and Pauly rely on the neo-Marxist theory developed by Marxist economists and sociologists to describe advanced capitalist societies, to distinguish between traditional Marxian class categories (e.g., capitalist, working class, and petty bourgeoisie), and also to point out differences within these categories.(9) Colvin and Pauly's theory of delinquency production rests on the way in which different control structures within certain fractions of the working class "solicit and compel certain types of behavior from individuals and shape an ideological orientation for the individual in relation to the agents and apparatuses of social control."(10)

      Fraction I, which is primarily composed of workers who labor in competitive capitalist industries and are subject to the vicissitudes of supply and demand, is characterized by "simple control."(11) These workers are relatively unskilled and non-unionized, and are employed in service, agriculture, small-scale manufacturing, and low-level clerical and sales positions.(12) Borrowing from Amitai Etzioni's compliance theory,(13) Colvin and Pauly suggest that "simple control" is coercive and produces intense negative bonds (i.e., alienative involvement) toward the employer and the workplace.(14)

      Fraction II workers have much more protection from direct competition than workers in Fraction I.(15) Unionization and protective contracts insulate them from direct competition.(16) Employed in the steel, auto, mining, and other extractive and basic manufacturing industries, capitalist control over these workers is primarily technical. It is "machine paced and impersonal and relies on the worker calculating his or her material self-interest for pay raises and job security."(17) This kind of control structure produces calculative bonding to work and authority, a bonding which is precarious, because it depends on continual remuneration and job advancement.(18)

      Finally, Fraction Ill consists of self-paced laborers who work in an environment that allows a great amount of independence.(19) Fraction Ill workers can be either blue or white collar supervisors, technical staff, salaried professionals, or government workers.(20) Because their tasks are complex, greater work skills are required and replacement is difficult and costly.(21) In this kind of work environment, discipline and control take a bureaucratic, normative form.(22) Capitalism manipulates worker rewards through symbols and statuses.(23) Consequently, an ideological bond is formed toward work and the organization, which is intense and positive.(24)

      Worker bonds to authority in the workplace alienative, calculative, and moral) are reproduced in parent-child relationships in the home.(25) Colvin and Pauly expect that Fraction I workers will be inconsistent, coercive, and sporadic in disciplining their children, and that their offspring will develop initial alienative bonds toward authority.(26) The steady, consistent, calculating workers of Fraction Il will reproduce these tendencies in their children,(27) resulting in initial calculative bonds to authority.(28) For parents in Fraction III, who experience flexibility, self-direction, and positive bonds in the workplace, Colvin and Pauly expect that a more normative family compliance structure will be enforced, producing positive initial bonds between children and authority structures.(29)

      At school, children exhibit the initial bonds to authority which develop at home.(30) Teacher discipline and evaluation, school resources, rigid tracking systems, and other school characteristics, can strengthen and reinforce juvenile bonds to authority.(31) Colvin and Pauly also believe that school experiences promote like-group peer associations. Because alienated youths are often put in remedial tracks and are subject to coercion in school, they tend to associate with one another.(32) This is true for calculative and normative youths as well, but the theorists believe that delinquent outcomes for these students are less likely, or, in the case of the calculative youths, a function of subcultural influences and exposure to illegitimate opportunities.(33)

      Colvin and Pauly's theory posits two paths to delinquency: patterned violent delinquency in which alienated youths are expected to engage,(34) and the less apparent patterned instrumental delinquency in which youths who have formed calculative bonds to authority may, because of the strain between legitimate and illegitimate rewards, engage.(35)

   2. TESTS OF COLVIN AND PAULY

      Only two studies have empirically examined Colvin and Pauly's theory. One, by Messner and Krohn,(36) tests several of the key hypotheses delineated in Colvin and Pauly's theory by using the Richmond data set.(37) The other, by Paternoster and Tittle, evaluates the logic and veracity of the theory's predictions, using empirical evidence drawn from assorted sources.(38) It is important to note that Messner and Krohn, and Paternoster and Tittle recognize the potential for gender differences in how social control processes (whether in the workplace, family, or schools) affect juveniles' bonds to authority. For example, Paternoster and Tittle review evidence that parental controls/discipline over children vary by gender.(39) Messner and Krohn justify examining the theory separately for males and females because "previous research has suggested that some variables, including bonding measures, may operate differently for male and female adolescents."(40) On the whole, they find few differences between males and females except that the class effects on delinquency are somewhat larger for females than for males.(41) Neither study seems particularly concerned that race may also affect these relationships. Messner and Krohn exclude blacks from their analysis because of missing data and rationalize the exclusion by claiming that the theory "should not work any differently for blacks than for whites."(42) Paternoster and Tittle simply ignore the issue.

      Both studies are more supportive of the predicted relationships between intervening variables and delinquency than they are of social class effects on familial and educational control structures or of social class influences on delinquency.(43) In explaining their findings, Paternoster and Tittle suggest that Colvin and Pauly's theory rests on problematic assumptions, lacks a theoretical structure, and is not readily testable.(44) Messner and Krohn suggest that their own measures of social class (based in occupational classifications) do not capture truly Marxian conceptions of relational class...