The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions

by Jack Barnes

This is a Handbook for the generations of workers coming into the factories, mines, and mills--workers who will react to the uncertain life, ceaseless turmoil, and brutality that will accompany the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873487850
• ISBN13: 9780873487856
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Pathfinder Press (NY)
• Length: 459 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Working people really can change the world...a guide

You want to fight but your union's too weak and buddy-buddy with management...everyone sits in their own language groupings in the cafeteria - will people ever get together?...how can we get out of the mess that lay-offs and soaring cutbacks in social services are making of our lives? This book is a fantastic handbook for those of us who want to figure out what step to take next. It isn't an easy recipe for bandaids. It lays out that we have to be worldly-wise strategists who understand that unity forged through struggle is key. The prize: taking political power like working people did in Cuba over 40 years ago. We have to use the tools we have - the unions, for example, exasperating though they may be -- to reach each other and create a political party, a real fighting communist party, that can lead us to help transform all of society. Thought-provoking and concrete. A real treat.

Fighters For REAL Social Change Need This Book !

The face of the social class that produces the wealth changed forever in the US thanks to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.We work side by side : Black and white and Latino, etc., men and women, immigrant and 'native-born.' This is what scares the daylights out of the big-boss class - the multimillionaire and billionaire families- about affirmative action and other such gains.We spend so much time working, and sweating, and facing the same enemy side by side that stereotypes collapse. If we fight back, we have to be brothers and sisters in action to win. That's why these gains are under such fierce attack.This is one subject of this book.Another is the birth and survival - yes, even today ! -of the Vietnam Syndrome. Working people know the US government lies as a habit.In our millions we will relearn in all our generations that this government in war or 'peace' serves the superrich.We will be forced to resist, yes, this war, and the next one.Millions will cast off the blinders this society tries to force on us.In the process we will transform our unions into fighting machines for all working people.And change ourselves. This book is based on the experience of revolutionary socialist industrial workers active in their unions, and in social movements, and against the Empire's wars from the late 70s into the 90s.Any fighter for serious social change today and tommorow : you need to read this book !

A necessary book for any revolutionary!!!

"This is a handbook for the generations of workers coming into the factories, mines, and mills - workers who will react to the uncertain life, ceaseless turmoil, and brutality that will accompany the arrival of the twenty-first century. It is a handbook for young people who, in growing numbers, are repelled by the racism, women's inequality, and other intolerable social relations reproduced daily by capitalism on a world scale. It is a book for fighters who sense that this social system, if not replaced, will lead to economic devastation, fascist tyranny, and world war. Above all, it aims to show why only the working class can lead humanity out of the social crisis endemic to capitalism in its decline. It shows how millions of workers, as political resistance grows, will revolutionize themselves, their unions, and all of society" (from the back cover).

An excellent handbook for socialists.

"Changing Face" is a good explanation of what communists should be doing in todays trade unions. It explains the role of socialism and industry, our roots as militant workers in the unions, and the way modern industry can be used to build the communist movement.