Tag: Labor

Decriminalize the “underclass”

Decriminalize the “underclass”

February 20, 2024

The goal of this event is to emphasize the importance of uniting the working class to fight for equal rights for all in order to raise working and living conditions beyond mere survival. Participants are encouraged to join the discussion and contribute their own experiences in how the declining conditions for workers of all trades have impacted their lives, what they see as the limits of reformism, and how the underclass and super-exploited can play an important role in leading the fight to end exploitation.

“Can We Re-Invent Work?” Work Work Work reviewed in ‘The Bullet’)

“Can We Re-Invent Work?” Work Work Work reviewed in ‘The Bullet’)

February 20, 2024

Most of what Yates writes about in these essays reflects a deep understanding of Marxism and its application to an understanding of working-class strategy and necessary agendas. His critique of social democracy, as practiced both by elements within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the classical so-called Labour parties, is the kind of thinking that is absolutely necessary to help guide a future working-class strategy.

Labor can be used to create wealth for others…or to create life (Work Work Work in ‘Truthout’)

Labor can be used to create wealth for others…or to create life (Work Work Work in ‘Truthout’)

February 20, 2024

On this Labor Day, perhaps it is time for all members of the world’s working class, to ask themselves, why is work so often a “torment,” an “affliction,” done under “compulsion”? Why does it feel as if our bosses are “persecuting” us? Why does it wreck our bodies? Why does it seem so meaningless? It certainly doesn’t have to be and was not for most of our time on Earth….

Work could be different (Yates featured in ‘Labor Notes’)

Work could be different (Yates featured in ‘Labor Notes’)

February 20, 2024

…From the employer’s point of view, our labor power is simply a commodity, no different than the inanimate buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials purchased by businesses. Given our circumstances, we must sell this commodity to survive. But after we do, the employer has no guarantee that our capacity to toil will be converted into actual work effort. Workers have always resisted their commodity status…

“In Seattle, for a time, they did things differently…” (HISR reviews Cal Winslow)

“In Seattle, for a time, they did things differently…” (HISR reviews Cal Winslow)

February 20, 2024

Winslow studied at Warwick University under E. P. Thompson, the undisputed pioneer in this approach, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In his Introduction he cites another founder of the new labor history, Herbert Gutman, to the effect that ‘Studying a single event cannot answer the basic questions, not even the general strike … We need the background, of the discontent of working people in the Pacific Northwest as well as of the Seattle social and economic structure.’ This Winslow provides in considerable detail…

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