Class Consciousness

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Connexions Library

Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why
Gatto, John Taylor
Article
2003
An essay by a retired teacher on the infantilization of children by the public school system. This intellectual history of US public school curiculum reveals that it was conceived as a democratic mea...
Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth in Saskatchewan: A Study in Political Sociology
Lipset, Seymour Martin
Book
1950
A study of the social background of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, which in 1944 became to first government with avowed socialist goals to be elected to office in Canada. The...
The American Working Class in Historical Persepctive
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1973
A review of Jeremy Brecher's Strike! (See CX6590)
Before the White Race Was Invented: Review of The Invention of the White Race
Scott, Jonathan
Article
1998
With white racial oppression in place, the ruling class could promote poor and propertyless European-Americans into the "middle class," the same way the British promoted "mulattos" in the Caribbean, b...
Beyond a Boundary
James, C.L.R.
Book
1963
Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founders of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of the game of cricket, this book raises serious questions about race, class, po...
Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers-Councils Movement
Bologna, Sergio
Article
1972
Re-examines a crucial segment of labour history, the German workers' council experience, which bridges the classical socialist phase of the Second and Third Internationals, and the post-Keynesian peri...
Class consciousness: Connexipedia Article
Article
Consciousness of one's social class or economic rank in society.
Class Consciousness
Lukacs, Georg
Article
1920
Class Is in Session
Guastella, Dustin
Article
2016
Millennials are better educated than ever. They also overwhelmingly identify as working class.
Class is More Intersectional than Intersectionality
Article
2016
The Left as it exists currently is often ashamed of and apologetic for its class struggle orientation, chasing after demographic-specific oppression issues. An approach that leans toward greater empha...
Class Struggle at the Waistline
Schwalbe, Michael
Article
2013
The obesity rate has soared not because lower income earners lack the knowledge to eat wisely, but because they have lost power over the economic conditions of their lives.
Common Sense for Hard Times: The Power of the Powerless to Cope with Everyday life and Transform Society in The Nineteen Seventies
Brecher, Jeremy; Costello, Tim
Book
1976
Presents a vision of society as it is and as it could be. Putting the problems of contemporary daily life in historical perspective, it reveals that they have their roots in the way our society is org...
Connexions Library: Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Multiculturalism Focus
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on race, racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, identity.
Consumption: Domestic Imperialism
Gilbert, Dave
Article
This article deals with the social organization of production under modern American capitalism. The author considers the impact of technological development on labour and its potential for liberation ...
Democracy Against Capitalism
Wood, Ellen Meiksins
Book
1995
Wood provides a brilliant explication and defense of the key theoretical concepts relevant to socialism, understood to be the most radical social and economic democracy.
A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Bottomore, Tom
Book
1983
Down To Earth People: Beyond Class Reductionism and Postmodernism
Secombe, Wallace; Livingstone, David W.
Book
1999
Working class women and men offer their analysis of the world today and its multi-dimensional inequalities.
Gramsci's Marxism
Boggs, Carl
Book
1976
Carl Boggs introduces Gramsci as one of the first marxist theorists to grapple with the problems of revolutionary change in advanced capitalist society and as the first to identify the importance of t...
The Hidden Injuries of Class
Sennett, Richard; Cobb, Jonathon
Book
1966
Sennett and Cobb look at human relations between people of different classes and analyze everyday life and ordinary situations to identify class signals that make people feel inadequate.
How Inequality Kills
Nasser, Alan
Article
2017
The Global March of Neoliberalism: The World Inequality Report 2018
How The Oligarchy Gets Politicized: A Short History of Elite Responses To Political-Economic Crisis
Nasser, Alan
Article
2011
The political activism of the elite is striking in times of crisis, when the latter takes the form either of severe economic contraction or of working-class militancy, or both.
Jai Bhim Comrade
Patwardhan, Anand
Film/Video
2011
India’s Dalit (oppressed) castes were abhorred as “untouchables”. The film, shot over 14 years follows the music of protest of Maharashtra's Dalits. In an age of increasing bigotry and superstition, i...
Karl Marx: Essential Writings
Bender, Frederic L.
Book
1972
A selection of Marx's writings ranging from his early works on philosophy, religion, alienation, and Hegelianism, through the materialist conception of history, the theoretical analysis of capitalism,...
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume I: State and Bureaucracy
Draper, Hal
Book
1977
A wide-ranging and thorough exposition of Marx's views on democracy.
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper, Hal
Book
1978
Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
Know Thy Enemy
Logue, Christopher
Article
1976
A poem.
Labor on the Ropes: Against The Current vol. 135
Leyshon, Traven
Article
2008
In U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, Kim Moody focuses on why the organized labor movement went into decline and points to potential signs of revival. The author’s explanation begins with the wors...
Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About the NDP
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1989
Canadian socialists are terribly reluctant to give up their illusions about the NDP.
Manual for Revolutionary Leaders
Michael Velli. Compiled and edited by Lorraine and Fredy Perlman
Book
1972
A devious satire aimed at Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists, and vanguardists of all stripes.
Marxism.ca
Website
2016
A gateway to resources about Marxism compiled by Connexions.
Marxist Theories of the State Played out in Venezuela
Ellner, Steve
Article
2017
The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Reich, Wilhelm
Book
1933
Wilhelm Reich's class study, written during the years of the German crisis. Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or any ethnic or ...
The Meaning of Socialism
Cardan, Paul (Cornelius Castoriadis)
Article
1961
Paul Cardan's 1961 discussion of modern conceptions of socialism, and the future of socialist movements.
The Meaning of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution: Against The Current vol. 113
Albo, Greg
Article
2004
A feature of revolutions is that they keep coming around in unexpected ways and in unexpected places. Who would have dared predict the eruption that was Seattle in November 1999, when the powers behi...
The Myth of the Labor Aristocracy, Part 1: Against The Current vol. 123
Post, Charles
Article
2006
The persistence of reformism and outright conservatism among workers, especially in the imperialist centers of North America, Western Europe and Japan, has long confounded revolutionary socialists. Th...
Myths of Cultural Dysfunction: Against The Current vol. 132
Farber, Samuel
Article
2008
This is another “blame the victim” book faulting Latino immigrants for not being as prosperous as other ethnic and racial groups, such as the Asians, in the United States. According to the author, the...
The new socialist revolution: An introduction to its theory and strategy
Lerner, Michael P.
Article
1973
Chapter 6 - Strategy and Tactics. The first task of the revolutionary movement, its most important task within the next few years, is to destroy bourgeois hegemony and develop a radical consciousness ...
The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste & Hierarchies
Seabrook, Jeremy
Book
2002
Concentrates mainly on the history of social hierarchy in Western civilization, and particularly the struggles of the working class.
On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness
Allen, Theodore, W.
Article
2002
An extended discussion and critique of David Roediger's book Wages of Whiteness. Allen writes: "David Roediger's Wages of Whiteness, because of its almost universal acceptance for use in colleges and ...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - February 12, 2017: Race and Class
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
Class conflict - first and foremost, the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class -- is the fundamental contradiction that defines capitalist society. Class is a reality which s...
Our Generation: Volume 5 Number 1
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1967
Preface to Martin Glaberman's Four Essays on the Working Class
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1975
Glaberman insists that the working class is not merely a victim of capitalism. Working people are active participants in creating their own consciousness, their methods of struggle and their own histo...
Propaganda and Consciousness: The Future of Big Flame Newspaper
Article
A political dicussion of the strategy and practice of Big Flame, written in the early 1970s.
Race and Class in Civil War Mississippi
Spritzler, John
Article
2009
The poor whites of Mississippi who fought the Confederacy alongside slaves did so because of working class values that they shared with slaves. The fact that poor whites may have believed some racist ...
Ragpicking Through History: Class Memory, Class Struggle and its Archivists
Bhattacharya, Tithi
Article
2017
Our current conjuncture invites a renewed rethinking of two historical imaginaries: first, what is class memory? To ask this question is really to reopen a discussion on what is class struggle – and, ...
Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936
Endicott, Stephen L.
Book
2012
A history of the Workers' Unity League, the Canadian affiliate of the Communist Red International of Labour Unions.
Red Menace #4: Volume 3, Number 1 - Winter 1979
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
A Libertarian Socialist Newsletter
A Reluctant Memoir of the '50s and '60s: Against The Current vol. 134
Le Blanc, Paul
Article
2008
I have been asked to write a memoir that would give a sense of the old left/new left realities of the 1950s and ‘60s. That seems quite odd to me (why would I be writing such a thing?), until I look in...
Rosa Luxemburg: Abridged Edition
Nettl, Peter
Book
1966
A biography of Luxemburg by a British academic.
Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution
Dunayevskaya, Raya
Book
1981
Part I - Rosa Luxemburg as Theoretician, as Activist, as Internationalist. Part II - The Women's Liberation Movement as Revolutionary Force and Reason. Part III - Karl Marx: From Critic of Hegel to Au...
Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Gramsci, Antonio
Book
1951
Gramsci's Notebooks cover a wide range of subjects including history, culture, politics, and philosophy.
Sex-Pol: Essays 1929-1934
Reich, Wilhelm; (Baxandall, Lee, ed.)
Book
1934
Wilhelm Reich's writings from his Marxist period, outlining his thoughts about sexual and political liberation.
Social and Sexual Revolution: Essays on Marx and Reich
Ollman, Bertell
Book
1979
A collection of essays by Bertell Ollman. Ollman tackles issues such as Karl Marx's concepts of class, class consciousness, and communism; he argues for the absorption of Wilhelm Reich's insights abou...
Socialism and Revolution
Gorz, Andre
Book
1967
Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and...
The Socialist Register 1979: Volume 16: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
A series of essays on the state of the global economy.
The Socialist Register 1989: Volume 25: Revolution Today. Aspirations and Realities
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1989
Socialist Register 1995: Volume 31: Why Not Capitalism?
Panitch, Leo (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1995
Strike!: The True History of Mass Insurgence from 1877 to the Present
Brecher, Jeremy
Book
1972
A history-from-below that brings to light strikes as authentic revolutionary movements against the establishments of state, capital, and trade unionism.
The Struggle of the 'Mill Girls': Class Consciousness in Early 19th Century New England
Schlom, Ian
Article
2014
This article traces the development of class consciousness of and the antagonism between capitalists and the Lowell and Lawrence "Mill Girls" in the earlier half of the 19th Century in New England.
Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History
Palmer, Bryan D.; Heroux, Gaetan
Book
2016
Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food an...
Toward Class Consciousness Next Time: Marx and the Working Class: Published in Politics & society, volume 3, Number 1, Fall 1972
Ollman, Bertell
Article
1972
Ollman asks what stands in the way of working people becoming class conscious.
Understanding Class and Species: A Lesson From Thaddeus Russell
Hribal, Jason
Article
2011
University remains a rigidly class-based institution—not only in what it teaches but also in how it operates.
Unity brings strength
Huggett, Howard
Article
1989
The NDP puts too much emphasis on electioneering and not enough on economic action.
The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism Since Lenin
Howard, Dick, Klare, Karl E.
Book
1972
The radical intellectual tradition of European post-Leninist Marxism, so different from the dogma of the orthodox leftist parties, is an unknowwn dimension. This anthology sets out to recover this Mar...
Vanguard, Vanguard, Who's Got the Vanguard?
Schneider, Michael
Article
1972
A critique of Leninist vanguard-party theories and practice, especially as manifested in the new left groups of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Published in the May 1972 and August 1972 issues of Libe...
The War after the War
Maclean, John
Book
1918
What Do We Do Now? Building a Social Movement in the Aftermath of Free Trade
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1989
We have the potential to create a social movement in this country that goes beyond single-issue organizing to work toward an integrated vision of a more just and caring society.
What is Class Consciousness?
Reich, Wilhelm
Book
1934
Critical of what he saw as Marxism's overly materialistic explanations, Reich proposes the perspectives of psychology and psychotherapy could revitalise radical political thought and the socialist mo...
What Is Important?
Castoriadis, Cornelius
Article
1979
It is necessary to demolish the monstrously false idea that the problems that workers see are not important, that there are more important ones which only "theorists" and politicians can speak about.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Class
Schwalbe, Michael
Article
2016
Professor of sociology at North Carolina State, Michael Schwalbe, reflects on the intrinsic contradiction of teaching and researching about class in the United States while benefiting from his own cla...
Who Advocates Spontaneity?
Brecher, Jeremy
Article
1973
The working class can come to understand its power to act only by acting.
Woman's Consciousness, Man's World
Rowbotham, Sheila
Book
1973
The cultural and economic liberation of women is inseparable from the creation of a society in which all people no longer have their lives stolen from them, and in which the conditions of their produc...
Workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1997
I think self-activity is the response of working people to the nature of their lives and work. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's quiet. Part of the reality is that we're going th...
Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991
Palmer, Bryan D.
Book
1983
From nineteenth-century tavern life to late twentieth-century cinema, from rough canallers and the first stirrings of craft unionism to contemporary public-sector strikes, this books provides a sweepi...
The Writings of David Roediger
Horowitz, Roger
Article
1997
Roediger criticizes Marxists for too often reducing racial discrimination to conflicts over resources, such as jobs or housing, that are manipulated by a society's upper classes in order to divert att...

Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites

Labour/Le Travail
A bilingual journal holding no rigid position on the definition of labour. The editorial board hopes to foster imaginative approaches to both teaching and research in labour studies through an open ex...
Marxism.ca
A gateway to resources about Marxism compiled by Connexions.
Marxismo Libertario
Lecturas para la Emancipacion del Proletariado.
Marxists Internet Archive
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
An organization of Marxist-Humanists standing for the abolition of capitalism, both in its private property form and ins its state property form. We stand for the deveopment of new human relations; wh...
Red Menace, The
The online archive of the libertarian socialist newsletter The Red Menace. Articles on socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, h...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

Sources Library

Building Identify Through Struggle - Book Review
Against The Current vol. 158
Post, Charlie
2012
Socialists seeking to win support among working people in the United States today face twin obstacles. A conservative, pro-business officialdom, tied to the capitalist Democratic Party and opposed to ...

From the Connexions Archives

Marxists Internet Archive
Website
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
Organizing for Workers' Power!
Engler, Allan
Article
Allan Engler, author of Economic Democracy, critiques segments of the left for largely ignoring working class power. Recognizing that social change can only be carried through by the working class, En...
The Red Menace
A libertarian socialist newsletter
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1975
Articles on topics such as socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, jargon, prostitution, obscenity, science fiction, ...
The Theory of Social Classes in Marx
Armstrong, Hugh
Article
Armstrong attempts to synthesize various portions of Marx's writing to shed light on social class.