The book’s title poses a daunting question; Can the Working Class Change the World? Then in a tidy volume of just over 200 pages it proceeds to answer that question in the affirmative. When I was coming up as a young radical pup and asking that question, we were sat down in Marxist study groups where we poured over original Marxist classics like Capital or Anti-Duhring and later political tracts from Lenin and Mao like What is To Be Done and On Contradiction.

I am sure that Michael Yates would not argue that his work is a substitute for a reading of the classics, but he does the new generation a service of distilling much of Marxist theory into very manageable bites.  So as a starter/primer this is an excellent read. Its six chapters give us a survey of Marxist theoretical concepts and some hard-nosed numbers and analysis of the working class, both worldwide and in the USA.

Chapter I, entitled simply The Working Class, presents a quantitative portrait of different sectors of the proletariat. Yates nicely debunks any illusions that all work in the United States is performed by highly skilled technical workers and points out that: “hundreds of millions work in occupations that do not require such skills or education (as in the new tech fields, PO). If you were asked how many people in the US are automobile workers; secretaries; administrative assistants, and office support personnel; clerks; restaurant workers; security employees; custodians; and medical workers, the chances are good you would understate the numbers. In 2015, there were 65 million in these jobs, out of a total national employment of a little over 140 million. That is 45 percent.”

Yates consistently reverts to the hard numbers rather than falling prey to myths of an exaggerated precariat or inflated myths of the “Gig” economy. British academic Kevin Doogan of the University of Bristol has characterized these inflated characterizations as “Left wing harmonies in a neo-liberal chorus” as they obscure real employment relations that remain predominantly of the traditional sort–direct employment by a capitalist enterprise. As one of my mentors in the movement used to say, you have to make a “F….ing concrete analysis of f…ing concrete conditions.” Yates delivers on this score in his descriptions of the working class. He deftly manages the class and income conundrum by discussing professional athletes, who sell their labor power as workers, but are paid at extravagant levels. He anticipates the progressive role of NBA players like LeBron James by discussing their backgrounds and their sympathies with the oppressed.

Chapter 2 delves into Theoretical Considerations simply explaining the Marxist theory of the exploitation of wage labor. The chapter makes an important point of debunking education as the great leveler that somehow class conflict is alleviated by education. “Interestingly, despite ample evidence that education has little effect on the many injustices the system causes, the claim for the efficacy of schooling lives on, which is proof that education serves to reinforce capital’s power.”

On labor’s political activity, Yates advances a strictly independent political action position, a reasonable outlook with which I happen to disagree. 

Chapters 3 and 4 Nothing to Lose but Chains and What hath the Working Class Wrought? explore two important themes for present day organizers and socialist activists in the United States and worldwide: the role of labor unions and political parties. Yates provides theoretical grounding on the inherent weakness of unions as revolutionary organizations, given that their function is primarily to band workers together to deal with their immediate economic needs on the job. Working class political parties evolved historically because trade unions were limited in their power over the state and in broader society to advocate for the needs and interests of all workers as a class. Yates explores the failings and shortcomings of unions and political parties.

Again in Chapter 5, The Power of Capital is Still Intact, Yates redelivers a critique of the failure of unions and working class parties to transform the world. He examines not only the United States, but various countries around the world.

In his final prescriptive chapter entitled, Can the Working Class Radically Change the World, Yates offers three important observations:

1) The need for a positive and radical working class program with demands on economics, race and the environment
2) A rank and file strategy for democratization of the unions and the replacing of old tired and collaborationist leadership with new democratic leaders
3) The creation of independent working class parties.

I can find little to disagree with on the programmatic Statement of Principles and Commitments, although as Yates knows in every real political situation the details and the rough edges have to be hashed out and rounded out. On the issue of rank and file strategy, it is important to look at the actual existing movement in labor. The recent wave of teachers’ strikes certainly is rooted in rank and file efforts at reform and in fact the victorious strikes in Chicago in 2012 and most recently in Los Angeles are the result of reform slates coming to power. However, not all successful and important battles with capital are the simple product of reform movements. The recent winning national multi-city strike against the giant corporation Marriott conducted by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) does not fit neatly into the rank and file model. A level of sophistication in analysis of the various forces in the labor movement at top and bottom is necessary to navigate those waters and build a strong trade union movement. Not all progressive initiatives in labor are the product of a rank and file upsurge. Often the existing leadership has been schooled in an honest trade union experience that leads them to do the right thing by the working class and the members they represent. They too can be part of the configurations that lead to radical social transformation.

On labor’s political activity, Yates advances a strictly independent political action position, a reasonable outlook with which I happen to disagree.  Yates argues that “unions shunned Bernie Sanders [in 2016], a left liberal who actively courted those who do society’s work.”  This was true of many unions, but not all.  In fact, six national unions supported Sanders in the primaries along with 100 union locals and 55,000 union members who joined Labor for Bernie.  13 million votes for Sanders in the primaries and the subsequent uprising within the Democratic Party have sent shock waves through the American political terrain.  Now President Trump feels obliged to denounce socialism in the State of the Union address.  Who would have thunk it?  I would contend that we must confront the present political dynamic, and I suggest that there is a viable inside/outside strategy for the working class and its unions in relationship to the Democratic Party.  I fear that pure independent political action at this moment will be very independent of the action, particularly in the Democratic primaries in 2020.  Yates mentions the wisdom of Mao and his present-day followers several times in the book.  So I would therefore characterize this disagreement on labor politics as Mao did in On Contradiction, as “contradictions among the people.”  This issue is certainly worthy of friendly debate and resolution within the working class.

On balance this a great read and a great introduction for young folks. I wish I had it handy back in 1974 when I was the Chief Steward at a machine shop in Roxbury, Massachusetts. At that time, when many of us were discovering the working class by “salting” or “industrializing” in factories and warehouses and hospitals, our readings of the classics outside of time, place and condition often led us to some humorous actions.  One night in my Marxist cell we discussed the aforementioned work of Lenin, What is To be Done, written in 1901 before the 1906 failed Russian uprising. This political tract is about the need for the working class to go beyond economic struggles and defend the interests all classes against the Tsarist bourgeoisie. I went to work the next day, and the company fired a supervisor. The supervisor was popular with the workforce, but that was not my consideration. I had a Leninist wet dream and decided that it was important to walk the workforce to protest the firing of this man from “another class” as Lenin had instructed me. The factory was shut down and I called the union’s representative at the hall on a pay phone to tell him we were on strike. He asked why, and I said we were out defending the job of a supervisor. He said, “What the f… and get back to work!”

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Can the Working Class Change the World?  Michael D. Yates.  Monthly Review Press 2018

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