Union membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent, the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that the movement as we have known it for the last 100 years is effectively dead. And he explains how this death has been a long time coming-the organizing and political principles adopted by US unions at mid-century have taken a terrible toll. In the 1950s, Aronowitz was a factory metalworker....

Using an innovative framework, this reader examines the most important and influential writings on modern class relations.Uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines scholarship from political economy, social history, and cultural studiesBrings together more than 50 selections rich in theory and empirical detail that span the working, middle, and capitalist classesAnalyzes class within the larger context of labor, particularly as it relates to conflic...

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's book Empire has been hailed as a latter day Communist Manifesto. Its ability to develop a theoretical framework relevant to the current period of global neo-liberalism and international capitalism captured the imagination of the growing anti-capitalist movement and has been claimed as a turning point for the left.As much as it has seduced and delighted some, however, it has enraged and frustrated others. In this collection, a serie...

Most accounts of the current financial crisis tell a story of deregulation, out-of-control markets and irresponsible speculation. But few of those works have done more than regurgitate the newspaper coverage. In contrast, The Great Credit Crash digs deeper, drawing on some of the most prominent radical analysts of the modern market to foreground the key questions that are still waiting to be answered.This volume presents a more complete and convincing analysis of the recent...

In our media-saturated culture, momentous events occur quickly, as news and images are broadcast around the country and the world. We are often riveted by the news and our everyday reality is suddenly changed. Yet, almost as quickly, that critical event is replaced by a new story. The old event fades from memory, and we move on to the next thing before understanding why it commanded our attention and how our world was changed.On April 16, 2007, such an event occurred on the Virgini...

Over the past several years, while visible protests against the World Bank and the I.M.F. made front-page news, there has been a growing field of scholarship that looks at the role of globalization for national and international state identities. The first truism of globalization -- that we live in an increasingly interconnected world, one in which it is impossible to separate the fate of one nation from that of the others -- was dramatically illustrated on September 11, 2001, when the see...

In The Politics of Identity, Stanley Aronowitz offers provocative analysis of the complex interactions of class, politics, and culture. Beginning with the premise that culture is constitutive of class identities, he demonstrates that while feminist analyses of both racial and gay movements have discussed these components of culture, class contributions to cultural identity have yet to be fully examined. In these essays, he uses class as a category for cultural ana...

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was a pathbreaking intellectual who transformed the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s. Often challenging the established ideologies and approaches of fellow leftist thinkers, Mills was central to creating and developing the idea of the "public intellectual" in postwar America and laid the political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. Written by Stanley Aronowitz, a leading sociologist and critic of American culture and politics,...

The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism differentiates the "Social Justice Left" from "Cultural Radicalism" and the various social movements for individual freedom.In The Death and Rebirth of**American Radicalism, Stanley Aronowitz asks the question, "Is there anything left of the Left?" With the rise of Newt Gingrich and his "Contract With America," how is it that conservativism staged such a remarkable recovery after being discounted in the turbulent 1960s?...

First Published in 2001. In this collection of essays and interviews, Mark Poster examines theoretical approaches and develops his own position on our information based society. He contends that new communications media disrupt and transfigure the way identities are constituted in cultural exchanges. He looks in detail at several aspects of what might be called "internet culture", including virtuality and democracy. Poster advocates an awareness of the Internet and other new forms of commu...

In Against Schooling, Stanley Aronowitz passionately raises an alarm about the current state of education in our country. Discipline and control over students, Aronowitz argues, are now the primary criteria of success, and genuine learning is sacrificed to a new educational militarism. In an age where school districts have imposed testing, teachers must teach to test, and both teacher and student are robbed of their autonomy and creativity. The crisis extends to higher education, where all...

Building a new platform for change, prominent social critic Stanley Aronowitz diagnoses America's crisis of democracy and the dangers of the new authoritarianism. Aronowitz draws on his vast knowledge of history and political theory and from currents of political change around the globe, from the traditions of the European left to the newest political trends in Latin America that have challenged the "death of socialism. Demonstrating why Democrats lose when they cling to centrism and compr...