Mariano Ciafardini's work is a critical theoretical book. In this case, the particular approach or what it generates as novel and justifies this new explanation is the object itself, but above all the method that the author adopts and that, at the same time, defines him as a materialistic, historical and historical criminologist. dialectical. That is, as a Marxist.

The object of this book is the criminal question, analyzed in its material effects and also in its superstructural products. And the method, therefore, cannot be other than that of historical materialism, dialectically conjugated in various theoretical interpretative forms (which are those of criminological thoughts).

The whole book, and not just the starting point, is mediated by the problems of periodization and its theoretical or explanatory justification. Ciafardini explains the emergence of different institutes and also schemes of criminological thought within the periods dominated by the logics of commercial capitalism (in which he especially follows Marx), those of imperialism (Lenin), and those of the difficult ones, for being above of them and not having a clear perspective or authors of reference, of what he calls financial globalism. In turn, the author divides these three stages into three others, which is better suited to the dialectical method. This is the greatest challenge and proposal of this book. The most complex, interesting, and unexplored is relative to contemporary globalization, defined as the third stage of capitalism (and as the final stage, too).