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made it the target of repression. The ALP did so poorly in subsequent elections that it lost official party status and, in 1956, disbanded. Vito Marcantonio was one of the few third-party candidates to win election to the U.S. Congress during the twentieth century, and his unapologetic left-wing politics made him especially unusual. Although some members of Congress have had friendly relations with the Democratic Socialists of America, there were no more independent socialists elected to Congress until 1991, when Bernard Sanders was elected as Vermonts sole representative. Suggested Reading Salvatore LaGumina, Vito Marcantonio, The Peoples 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, 19021954, 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, and they often must submit to a blood test for health reasons. Often, the partners choose to have a religious ceremony and a celebration with family and friends to mark 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 all marriages end in divorce in the United States. Marriage for those in the working and lower middle classes is strongly linked to economics. 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 marriages and remarriages today begin as cohabitation, which is considered the modal path to marriage. However, marriage decisions after cohabitation are often based on economic factors, including earnings, occupation, or educational attainment of the partner, and failure to meet nancial goals may keep the partners from marrying. When cohabitation ends, the economic effect on women is devastating, leaving a substantial portion of the women in poverty, particularly African American and Hispanic women. Although big weddings are very expensive and often beyond their reach, many cohabiting men and women in the working class and lower middle class do not want to settle for a marriage ceremony performed by a judge in a downtown courthouse. The nancial goals for those of a lower socioeconomic status (SES) may include saving money for a big wedding that the partners will pay for themselves or obtaining educational credentials such as a GED (General Educational Development) diploma. Also, some working-class and lower-middle-class women believe it is the male partners responsibility to support the family. However, in 1999 the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the median income for families in which only the husband worked was $37,616, whereas the median income for families in which both spouses worked 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 in the labor force, whereas in 1998 three in ve women participated in the labor force. The participation of women is expected to increase more rapidly than that of men by 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 labor force; in fact, between 1960 and 1987, the participation rate of women twenty-ve to thirty-four years of age doubled. The conict that young mothers working outside the home encounter comes from the patriarchal tradition, which holds that the public domain belongs to men, whereas wives and their services belong to husbands, who expect that family life will be the responsibility of women. Only job exibility makes it possible for women with small children to work. In addition, the cost of day care must be factored into their working lives. Entering the labor force is primarily determined by three factors: the level of any non-labor income available to women, the age of children in the home, and education. Also, women who are married are less likely to work outside the home than single, separated, or divorced women, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that more than 60 percent of married women with children under the age of six also work outside the home. Among both male and female workers, employment opportunities and pay scales are generally affected by education. More educated women can earn more in the workforce, and they are more likely to be in the workforce in better-paid, more prestigious jobs, possibly because of self-selection resulting from the motivation for career orientation. Working-class women are less likely to attend college, and they often feel pressure from their mothers to marry up in social class, though this is unlikely. Just as people of higher socioeconomic status have greater access to higher education, so too partners from the same economic class tend to marry each other instead of someone from a different social class. Wealth accumulation varies by gender and family type, which affects the pressure on singles to marry, particularly single women. There are signicant differences in the wealth between households headed by single females and households led by married couples. In addition, single womens wealth accumulation is substantially lower than that of single men. Overall, womens education and career plans are signicantly related to the balance of power in the relationship with a signicant other. The issue of women and economics in marriage was addressed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Women and Economics (1898). She argued that middle-class women had been made more feminine and less human by their nancial dependence on men. She advocated for an equal economic partnership, which would address the inequalities and social behavior of both sexes. Alas, many aspects of Gilmans work remain relevant.

Suggested Reading Sarah Avellar and Pamela Smock, The Economic Consequences of the Dissolution of Cohabiting Unions, Journal of Marriage and Family, 67 (May 2005), pp. 315327; Paula England, More Mercenary Mate Selection? Journal of Marriage and Family, 66 (November 2004), pp. 10341037; Lucie Schmidt and Purvi Sevak, Feminist Economics, 12 (JanuaryApril 2006), pp. 139166; Pamela J. Smock, Wendy

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D. Manning, and Meredith Porter, Everythings There Except Money: How Money Shapes Decisions to Marry among Cohabitors, Journal of Marriage and Family, 67 (August 2005), pp. 680696.

MARXISM/MARXISTS
CHUCK BARONE The Marxist view of class denes class in terms of hierarchical power relationships within the structure of production. This view is in contrast to those who view class in gradational terms based on income or status hierarchies or relational theories that focus on the technical division of labor. The contemporary Marxist view of class is based on the nineteenth-century ideas of Karl Marx, who viewed class in terms of antagonistic relations of domination and exploitation. Marx viewed history as a series of different modes of production (economic systems), each with their own particular exploitative social relations of production. It was these social relationships that dened the class structures of society in Marxs view. In the capitalist mode of production, Marx identied two primary classes, the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) who owned the means of production (capital goods) and the proletariat, or working class, who possessed only their labor power. The dominant position of the capitalists allowed them to exploit subordinate workers, which in Marxs view generated conict and class struggle. Class conict and struggle play important roles in Marxs historical materialism theory of the evolution of human societies, which he saw as a series of stages from slavery to feudalism to capitalism, each with their own exploitative class structures. Each successive mode 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 class structures. Marx predicted that eventually, class conict and struggle over the contradictions of capitalism would lead to state-directed socialism and then communism, wherein classes and class domination would no longer exist. Subsequent Marxist scholars have developed a theoretical analysis that, although faithful to Marx, captures much more of the complexity of the class structures of advanced capitalist societies. These scholars began by noting signicant groups of people who occupied contradictory class locations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat and who were neither one nor the other. The result was the identication of a middle class of small business owners who own their own means of production, but do not rely signicantly on wage labor. Although Marx noted the existence of what he called the petty bourgeoisie, this class was not well integrated into his overall theory of the capitalist class structures. Marxist scholars note that although this class occupies an important position, it is not one that plays a signicant role relative to 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 new middle class of middle managers, technocrats, and supervisors who do not own the means of production but have a great deal of (delegated) authority and control over 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-