Class as Conceived by Marx and Dahrendorf: Effects on Income Inequality and Politics in the United States and Great Britain

Abstract

The class theories of Karl Marx and Ralf Dahrendorf, although subject to much theoretical analysis, largely have been ignored in the dominant lines of quantitative research on status attainment and the political consequences of social stratification. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by drawing out some of the implications of Marx's ownership of the means of production and Dahrendorf s authority for both income inequality and politics, by evaluating these implications empirically and by showing how these conceptions of class can be incorporated into the dominant Blau-Duncan model of status attainment. Using survey data from large national samples in the United States and Great Britain, we show that both Marx's and Dahrendorfs class models have important implications for men's income, increasing by almost half the variance explained by the conventional Blau-Duncan model. The income of American women, in contrast, is little influenced by class and this explains a substantial part of the male-female income gap.