made it the target of repression. The ALP did so poorly in subsequent electionsthat it lost official party status and, in 1956, disbanded.

Vito Marcantonio was one of the few third-party candidates to win election tothe U.S. Congress during the twentieth century, and his unapologetic left-wingpolitics made him especially unusual. Although some members of Congress havehad friendly relations with the Democratic Socialists of America, there were nomore independent socialists elected to Congress until 1991, when BernardSanders was elected as Vermont’s sole representative.

Suggested Reading Salvatore LaGumina, Vito Marcantonio, The People’s Politician, 1969; Vito Marcantonio,“I Vote My Conscience”: Debates, Speeches and Writings of Vito Marcantonio, ed. Annette T.Rubinstein et al., 1956; Gerald Meyer, Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902–1954, 1989.

MARRIAGE

CHRISTINE W. HEILMAN

Marriage is a legal union between two adult partners that is sanctioned by the state.Partners must purchase a marriage license from the state in order to marry, andthey often must submit to a blood test for health reasons. Often, the partnerschoose to have a religious ceremony and a celebration with family and friends tomark the beginning of the marriage, but the ceremony can be performed by a judge.Although marriage is romanticized in American popular culture, roughly half of allmarriages end in divorce in the United States.

Marriage for those in the working and lower middle classes is strongly linked toeconomics. In contrast to cultural practices during the period after World War II,when early marriage and low divorce levels were the norm, the majority of marriagesand remarriages today begin as cohabitation, which is considered the modal path tomarriage. However, marriage decisions after cohabitation are often based on eco-nomic factors, including earnings, occupation, or educational attainment of the part-ner, and failure to meet financial goals may keep the partners from marrying. Whencohabitation ends, the economic effect on women is devastating, leaving a substantialportion of the women in poverty, particularly African American and Hispanic women.

Although big weddings are very expensive and often beyond their reach, manycohabiting men and women in the working class and lower middle class do not wantto settle for a marriage ceremony performed by a judge in a downtown courthouse.The financial goals for those of a lower socioeconomic status (SES) may includesaving money for a big wedding that the partners will pay for themselves or obtainingeducational credentials such as a GED (General Educational Development) diploma.

Also, some working-class and lower-middle-class women believe it is the malepartner’s responsibility to support the family. However, in 1999 the U.S. CensusBureau reported that the median income for families in which only the husbandworked was $37,616, whereas the median income for families in which both spousesworked was $63,751. The economic reality is that most married women with young

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children will be in the workforce. In 1950 only one in three women participated inthe labor force, whereas in 1998 three in five women participated in the labor force.The participation of women is expected to increase more rapidly than that of menby the year 2008, by which time women will make up 48 percent of the labor force.In addition, young women with children have increasingly become part of the laborforce; in fact, between 1960 and 1987, the participation rate of women twenty-fiveto thirty-four years of age doubled. The conflict that young mothers working out-side the home encounter comes from the patriarchal tradition, which holds thatthe public domain belongs to men, whereas wives and their services belong to hus-bands, who expect that family life will be the responsibility of women. Only jobflexibility makes it possible for women with small children to work. In addition, thecost of day care must be factored into their working lives.

Entering the labor force is primarily determined by three factors: the level ofany non-labor income available to women, the age of children in the home, andeducation. Also, women who are married are less likely to work outside the homethan single, separated, or divorced women, although the Bureau of Labor Statisticsreports that more than 60 percent of married women with children under the ageof six also work outside the home. Among both male and female workers, employ-ment opportunities and pay scales are generally affected by education. More edu-cated women can earn more in the workforce, and they are more likely to be in theworkforce in better-paid, more prestigious jobs, possibly because of self-selectionresulting from the motivation for career orientation.

Working-class women are less likely to attend college, and they often feel pres-sure from their mothers to marry up in social class, though this is unlikely. Just aspeople of higher socioeconomic status have greater access to higher education, sotoo partners from the same economic class tend to marry each other instead ofsomeone from a different social class. Wealth accumulation varies by gender andfamily type, which affects the pressure on singles to marry, particularly singlewomen. There are significant differences in the wealth between households headedby single females and households led by married couples. In addition, singlewomen’s wealth accumulation is substantially lower than that of single men. Over-all, women’s education and career plans are significantly related to the balance ofpower in the relationship with a significant other.

The issue of women and economics in marriage was addressed by CharlottePerkins Gilman in Women and Economics (1898). She argued that middle-classwomen had been made more feminine and less human by their financial depend-ence on men. She advocated for an equal economic partnership, which wouldaddress the inequalities and social behavior of both sexes. Alas, many aspects ofGilman’s work remain relevant.

Suggested Reading Sarah Avellar and Pamela Smock, “The Economic Consequences of the Dissolu-tion of Cohabiting Unions,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 67 (May 2005), pp.315–327; Paula England, “More Mercenary Mate Selection?” Journal of Marriageand Family, 66 (November 2004), pp. 1034–1037; Lucie Schmidt and Purvi Sevak,Feminist Economics, 12 (January–April 2006), pp. 139–166; Pamela J. Smock, Wendy

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D. Manning, and Meredith Porter, “Everything’s There Except Money”: HowMoney Shapes Decisions to Marry among Cohabitors, Journal of Marriage andFamily, 67 (August 2005), pp. 680–696.

MARXISM/MARXISTS

CHUCK BARONE

The Marxist view of class defines class in terms of hierarchical power relationshipswithin the structure of production. This view is in contrast to those who view classin gradational terms based on income or status hierarchies or relational theoriesthat focus on the technical division of labor.

The contemporary Marxist view of class is based on the nineteenth-century ideasof Karl Marx, who viewed class in terms of antagonistic relations of domination andexploitation. Marx viewed history as a series of different modes of production (eco-nomic systems), each with their own particular exploitative social relations of pro-duction. It was these social relationships that defined the class structures of societyin Marx’s view. In the capitalist mode of production, Marx identified two primaryclasses, the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) who owned the means of production(capital goods) and the proletariat, or working class, who possessed only their laborpower. The dominant position of the capitalists allowed them to exploit subordinateworkers, which in Marx’s view generated conflict and class struggle. Class conflictand struggle play important roles in Marx’s historical materialism theory of the evo-lution of human societies, which he saw as a series of stages from slavery to feudal-ism to capitalism, each with their own exploitative class structures. Each successivemode of production allowed for greater advancement of the forces of production,but each was limited by the existing social relations of production that made up classstructures. Marx predicted that eventually, class conflict and struggle over the con-tradictions of capitalism would lead to state-directed socialism and then commu-nism, wherein classes and class domination would no longer exist.

Subsequent Marxist scholars have developed a theoretical analysis that, althoughfaithful to Marx, captures much more of the complexity of the class structures ofadvanced capitalist societies. These scholars began by noting significant groups ofpeople who occupied contradictory class locations between the bourgeoisie andproletariat and who were neither one nor the other. The result was the identificationof a middle class of small business owners who own their own means of production,but do not rely significantly on wage labor. Although Marx noted the existence ofwhat he called the petty bourgeoisie, this class was not well integrated into his over-all theory of the capitalist class structures. Marxist scholars note that although thisclass occupies an important position, it is not one that plays a significant role relativeto labor, and its interests are usually subordinate to the interests of big business.

Marxist scholars have also identified what is sometimes referred to as a newmiddle class of middle managers, technocrats, and supervisors who do not ownthe means of production but have a great deal of (delegated) authority and controlover the working class. Also sometimes included in this class are teachers, police,social workers, and others whose role is the reproduction of capitalist social rela-

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