Class Politics

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.

President Obama's goal is to create a two-class society: the poor and the super-rich. Decades of liberals - and even a few supposed "Republicans" - have helped push America toward this goal, and President Obama hopes to finish their work. Why? Because this two-class society cements the crony capitalism that feeds big government and keeps corrupt big shots like Obama and his friends in power, permanently enshrined as the ruling class. Meanwhile, it keeps everyone else hooked on the government like a drug that's impossible to quit.

It's OK to be angry about capitalism. It's OK to want something better. Bernie Sanders takes on the 1% and speaks blunt truths about a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed, and rigged against ordinary people. Where a handful of oligarchs have never had it so good, with more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes, and the vast majority struggle to survive. Where a decent standard of living for all seems like an impossible dream.

In most accounts of the origins of money, we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. In this groundbreaking study David McNally reveals the true story of money's origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money's emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war.

There's a college affordability crisis happening in the US right now. Tuition rates have soared, while increases in blue collar wages have slowed to a crawl. This adds up to a painful realization for lower-income young people desperately hoping to go to college: there's no way to pay for it. Bobbi Dempsey shares her brutally honest first-person account of the struggle to pay for her children's and her own education on a working-class salary.

Since the eviction of Occupy protestors from encampments in many cities throughout the world, smaller and more targeted occupations have continued. Workers in a Chicago factory occupied - with the support of their union - to protest layoffs. Teachers and students in Tucson staged a walkout to protest the removal of Chicano history books from the curriculum. Home foreclosures were disrupted, even avoided, by direct community action. But what does it all mean? What do we talk about when we talk about "revolution", if we talk about it at all?

In a wide-ranging narrative that takes us from a downsized marketing executive in Massachusetts, to a father of three in Appalachia finding purpose and meaning working in a convenience-store chain, to an unemployed autoworker retraining in "advanced manufacturing", Shell reveals how work is essential to our flourishing and pyschological well-being - and how so many of the avenues to well-paid and meaningful work will be challenged in the years ahead.

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century; and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.

London is a plutocrat's paradise, with more resident billionaires than New York, Hong Kong or Moscow. Far from trickling down, their wealth is burning up the environment and swallowing up the city. But what do we really know about London's super rich, and the lives they lead? To find out more about this secretive, security-heavy elite, sociologist Caroline Knowles walks the streets of London from the City to suburban Surrey, via Kensington, Notting Hill, Mayfair and elsewhere.

En este ensayo global se ponen de presente temas de una actualidad apabullante. Los propagandistas de este capitalismo tardío nos quieren hacer creer que no tenemos alternativas para él, lo cual es un embuste visto desde la perspectiva histórica. Todo sistema, toda cultura, toda civilización ha tenido un fin y de sus propias entrañas ha surgido un nuevo mundo. El colapso de una civilización no significa el colapso de la humanidad. En las entrañas de todo viejo sistema germinan las simientes de aquellos fenómenos que alumbrarán el futuro.

The mainstream media and ultra-liberal Democrats can't understand why white voters, especially white men, are so angry. Wayne Allyn Root is an angry white male, and he knows why. This is his story, his testimony, and a look at what's happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, middle-class people. They're being targeted, silenced, intimidated, persecuted - virtually wiped off the planet.

The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. In this incisive and provocative book, Evan Osnos offers an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power.

From education to work to dating, this inspirational, honest and provocative book recognises and celebrates the strides black women have already made, while providing practical advice for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future. Illustrated with stories from best friends Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke’s own lives, and using interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain.

The best educated and most prosperous have the most stable families, while working class families have seen the greatest increase in relationship instability. Why? The book provides the answer: greater economic inequality has profoundly changed marriage markets, the way men and women match up when they search for a life partner. It has produced a larger group of high-income men than women; written off the men at the bottom; and left a larger group of women with a smaller group of comparable men...

The United States is the richest country on earth, yet has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. One in seven Americans live below the poverty line, a line which hasn't shifted over the last fifty years, despite the efforts of successive governments and extensive relief programs. Why is there so much scarcity in this land of dollars? In Poverty, by America, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond examines the nature of American poverty today and the stories we tell ourselves about it.

Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy - but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged.

What does working class mean in today's America? Today's workers don't just man the assembly lines. They watch our children and aging parents, park our cars, screen our luggage, clean our offices and hotel rooms, cook our take-out meals, and stock our store shelves. And they are blacker, browner, and more female than the old working class. They are not as organized in terms of their unions and political clout, but they are demographically powerful and are awakening to that power.

Catherine Lius Streitschrift ist eine scharfe Polemik, die die Grundlagen der Klassenbildung und des Klassenkampfes in den gegenwärtigen liberalen Einflusssphären der Vereinigten Staaten ohne Umschweife angreift.

When racist curriculum "goes viral" on social media, it is typically dismissed as an isolated incident from a "bad" teacher. Educator Bree Picower, however, holds that racist curriculum isn't an anomaly. It's a systemic problem that reflects how Whiteness is embedded and reproduced in education. In Reading, Writing, and Racism, Picower argues that White teachers must reframe their understanding about race in order to advance racial justice and that this must begin in teacher education programs.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the country, more than six million people earned their living as tipped workers in the service industry. These workers, unsurprisingly, were among the most vulnerable workers during the pandemic. As in many other areas, the pandemic exposed the inadequacies of the nation's social safety net and minimum-wage standards. In her new book, One Fair Wage, Jayaraman shines a light on these workers, illustrating how the people left out of the fight for a fair minimum wage are society's most marginalized.