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Considering the two perspectives together, we make the following comparisons and contrasts. Epistemologically, we note that both perspectives emphasize the relational and its role in shaping the self. The labeling emphasis on interactionism, however, emphasizes more the drama of everyday interaction, while Marxism is more concerned with the ways in broad structures and practices of class power shape the self.
The divergence on the nature of interaction can be seen more to play a role in their theoretical divergences. For labeling scholars, the emphasis is on secondary deviance, the response of individuals to prior social response. Marxist scholars have an investment in explaining primary deviance: the ways in which class structure or class strategies pressures the poor into deviant acts. Thus while labeling scholars focus on seemingly trivial "moral" offenses, Marxist scholars focus on more serious offences. Labeling scholars have tended to focus their study of rule-making and enforcing by stressing the work of "moral entrepreneurs" from outside the political system; Marxist scholars emphasize the rule-making power of those within the system. Similarly, labeling scholars by necessity emphasize deviance already labeled as such, while Marxist scholars attempt to create new understandings of criminality among the powerful. While "power" remains acknowledged but undertheorized by labeling theorists, it is strongly theorized in Marxist work. While labeling theorists seem to imply a more decentralized view of social power and authority, Marxists remain committed to a more rigid view of class control. Finally, while labeling theorists take a empathetic stance towards the deviant, they do not necessarily criticize part or all of social structure, viewing Marxists as unnecessarily radical; Marxists, in contrast, view labeling theorists as at best co-opted, and at worst providing ideological props for an unjust social order.
Nevertheless, one suspects that there are grounds for convergence between the two perspectives. Dario Melossi suggests that: "The question of the relation between the study of those 'microsociological' mechanisms which are at work in defining the decision and the study of the 'macrosociological' determinants of the power to define, is crucial to critical criminology," suggesting possible grounds for integration of the two approaches. However, rather than this strict division of labor between the labeling perspective's emphasis on "process" and Marxism's emphasis on "structure," there is evidence that some Marxist theorists are moving into symbolic interactionism's domain: those thinkers who, as noted earlier, emphasize informal and everyday forms of social control, the power of everyday practices, and the subtle ways in which ideologies acquire hegemonic power.