Political Nonfiction
For nearly fifty years, America’s working and middle classes have
been under relentless attack. Wages have stagnated, inequality has soared, and
the vast majority now lives paycheck to paycheck—while trillions of
dollars flow upward into the pockets of the wealthiest few. Class War, Then
and Now is both a searing indictment of this economic and political order and
an impassioned call to arms for a new left rooted in class struggle,
solidarity, and socialist values.
Drawing on a decade of essays and articles originally published in outlets
such as Dissent, New Politics, CounterPunch, Socialist Forum, Truthout, and
Common Dreams, historian Chris Wright examines the deep roots of
capitalism’s crises and the failures of the contemporary left to
confront them. In sharp, accessible prose, Wright tackles:
The centrality of class struggle in building a movement that can unite working
people
Why identity politics, while important, must not overshadow the fight
against capitalism
The overlooked necessity of nuclear power in addressing climate change
Lessons from labor history, from Jimmy Hoffa to modern union battles
The catastrophic consequences of American imperialism and endless war
How organized labor remains humanity’s most universal force for
justice
With the urgency of a manifesto and the depth of historical scholarship,
Wright argues that only a rational, international, and truly Marxist left can
stop the United States—and the world—from sliding into neofascism
and ecological collapse.
If you care about economic justice, social reform, and the future of
democracy, Class War, Then and Now will challenge your thinking, sharpen your
arguments, and inspire action.
Preface
It
isn’t a secret that the world is in trouble, most ominously from ecological
collapse and the ever-present possibility of nuclear war. Stated in the
simplest terms, the reason is that capitalism is running amok and the left has
almost no power across most of the world. Capitalism cares only about making
profit; values such as environmental conservation, preservation of human and
animal life, the ending of war, abolition of nuclear weapons, and human
well-being count for little or nothing. The only way such values can rise to
prominence is if popular movements fighting against
capitalism force them onto the political agenda. But popular movements,
including the labor movement, perennially lack sufficient resources to halt or
reverse capitalism’s misanthropic tendencies. In the neoliberal era, this
perennial problem has become more serious than ever. Hence the prospect of
civilization’s collapse in our century.
The
only hope, it seems, is that the world’s descent into multidimensional crisis
will itself generate the conditions for the popular majority to effectually
fight back. For the sake of survival and out of disgust with the political and
economic status quo, people will be compelled to join together to build
oppositional movements and cultures and institutions, in fact even new modes of
material production and distribution on the basis of which, eventually, a new
kind of politics may arise. As the old world suffers its torturously protracted
collapse, a new world might be born amidst its ashes. I have discussed the
“historical logic” of this process, as well as speculated on some of the
possibilities, in a book called Worker
Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States (2014),
using a revision of the Marxist theory of revolution to illuminate how the
whole gigantic transition between modes of production, from capitalist to
cooperative, might unfold. I present a summary in two essays below, “The
Significance and Shortcomings of Karl Marx” and “Eleven Theses on Socialist
Revolution.” The ideas may be too optimistic, but in that case humanity’s
future will be very grim indeed.
This
book, to quote the Port Huron Statement of 1962, “is guided by the sense that
we may be the last generation in the experiment with living.” In essence, it is
an elaboration of what I take to be a consistent Marxist philosophy, the sort
of philosophy that must be realized on a large scale if humanity is to have a
decent future. Not all leftists will agree with everything in the book. For
example, I criticize identity politics from a Marxist point of view, and I
argue that feminism should prioritize materialist issues over certain
“culturalist” ones (in addition to the very common, and very doctrinaire,social
constructionist theorizing of gender) fashionable under the influence of
postmodern academia. I also defend nuclear energy as an essential component of
a transition to clean energy, a stance that isn’t popular on the left. Nor will
most Marxists appreciate the revisions I’ve made to the Marxian conception of
revolution. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that rationality, respect for evidence,
and open-mindedness should guide our thinking. We shouldn’t remain perpetually
chained to old theories, old analyses, and old prophecies that history has
proved wrong. I like the slogan of the young Marx: “For a ruthless criticism of
everything existing!” Leftists are hardly infallible.
The
book consists of essays and articles written between 2014 and 2024, which were
published in CounterPunch, Socialist Forum, Dissent, New Politics, ROAR Magazine, Common Dreams, Dissident
Voice, Sublation, Compact, and Class, Race and Corporate Power. I’ve tried to impose an order on
the material by arranging it in four parts according to thematic content. Such
content, too, implicitly links successive chapters. Inevitably, there is some
repetition between essays, but I’ve lightly revised them to try to minimize
that.
Not
all the essays are directly political. The first one, for instance, on the
value of the humanities, might seem out of place in a book devoted to
critiquing capitalism and defending a leftist philosophy. I’ve included it
because art and the humanities are fighting an existential battle today, and in
the end they represent the human spirit facing off against the spirit of
commercial gain. If the former can’t find some way to put shackles on the
latter, our descendants may inherit a world of ashes.
Likewise, the inclusion of
seemingly random pieces on Beethoven, classical music, Jimmy Hoffa, the
authoritarianism of the U.S.’s “founding fathers,” the implicit radicalism of
most working people, and other topics might be faulted, but I think it is
justified by the book’s general themes of class struggle and building a left
grounded in rationality and human dignity rather than woke dogmas, academic
groupthink, and pop cultural mediocrity. For example, historically the left had
great respect for high culture, from Bach to Balzac, the Enlightenment to
modern science. The postmodern left’s scorn for the past achievements of genius
(“they’re white supremacist, patriarchal, misogynistic, heteronormative,
colonialist, Eurocentric!”) is but another manifestation of the left’s
degeneration due to the influence of academia, post-1960s social movements,
neoliberal evisceration of the labor movement, and neoliberal culture. The old
left had plenty of flaws, but it also had strengths that have been lost.
The
writing in this book reflects my belief that, by and large, academic modes of
writing and thinking are not necessary in order to grasp truth. They are just
as likely to obscure as to illuminate. The greatest scholar in history, after
all—whose 150+ books encompass linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy,
evolutionary biology, history, contemporary politics, media analysis, the
history of science, and other areas—is Noam Chomsky, and he rejects academic
conventions in favor of clear writing, insightful thinking, and intellectual
honesty. One doesn’t need endless convoluted verbiage backed by scores of
citations in order, for example, to understand why gender relations are as they
are, as I try to show in the article on patriarchy. Straightforward reason
suffices. In fact, institutional
thinking and behavior are among the greatest threats to life today, and they
should be repudiated.
In
its “humanistic” philosophy expounded in a somewhat disjointed way, the book
amounts to a continuation of two others that are even more unconventional: Notes of an Underground Humanist (2013)
and Finding Our Compass: Reflections on a
World in Crisis (2014), both available for free online. My Journal of a Dissenter (2025) contains
countless summaries of good scholarship that is far too rarely read. Readers
interested, on the other hand, in a more arduous interrogation of social
history might enjoy a book entitled Popular
Radicalism and the Unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression (2022).
The present book reproduces ideas from these others, but hopefully in a more
concise and digestible way.
Nothing is more urgent today than for us to
collectively recover human values, learn from history, think critically about
our society, and build international social movements to save the future for
our children. I hope this book makes some small contribution to these colossal
tasks.
About the Author
Chris Wright is a U.S. historian, author, and lecturer at Hunter College, City
University of New York, specializing in labor history and radical political
theory. His work explores the history of capitalism and social movements, with
a focus on building an international left capable of confronting economic
inequality, rising authoritarianism, and ecological collapse.
Wright is the author of multiple works of political nonfiction, including
Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United
States and Popular Radicalism and the Unemployed in Chicago during the Great
Depression. His newest release, Class War, Then and Now: Essays toward a New
Left, compiles a decade of essays originally published in respected left-wing
and independent outlets such as Dissent, New Politics, CounterPunch, Socialist
Forum, Compact, and Common Dreams.
Over the years, his analysis and commentary have appeared in publications
ranging from the Washington Post to Truthout, earning him recognition for his
Marxist-informed, historically grounded critiques of capitalism and his
advocacy of a democratic socialist movement.
In addition to his academic work, Wright has written philosophical essays,
fiction, and poetry, reflecting a lifelong interest in art, music, and the
human condition. His current research and writing center on the labor
movement, anti-capitalist strategies, and the urgent need for systemic change
to address economic, political, and environmental crises.
Contact Links
Website
"X"
LinkedIn
https://independent.academia.edu/ChrisWright82
Purchase Link
Amazon
