Best of
Labor

1975

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution


Dan Georgakas - 1975
    This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic--along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past threee decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa


Jacques E. Levy - 1975
    . . Against a background of motels and all-night cafés and strikes, the high relief in which the characters stand out is truly fascinating. Jacques Levy’s biography of Chavez has unforgettable descriptive passages and fine photographs.” —The NationMexican-American civil rights and labor activist Cesar Chavez (1927–1993), comes to life in this vivid portrait of the charismatic and influential fighter who boycotted supermarkets and took on corporations, the government, and the powerful Teamsters Union. Jacques E. Levy gained unprecedented access to Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union in writing this account of one of the most successful labor movements in history which can also serve as a guidebook for social and political change.“[The] definitive work. The book’s major contribution lies in its portrait of the man himself—deeply religious in an almost mystical fashion; a dedicated battler, but not a dedicated hater; a leader who not only will not ask, but will not allow his followers to make the sacrifices he has made.” —Publishers Weekly“One of the heroic figures of our time.” —Senator Robert F. KennedyJacques E. Levy (1927–2004), a prize-winning journalist, spent six years with Cesar Chavez researching and writing this book.Fred Ross Jr. is a spokesperson for the Service Employees’ International Union and the son of Fred Ross, Chavez’s mentor.Jacqueline Levy is the daughter of Jacques E. Levy and a high school science teacher in Sonoma County, California.

For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question


Harry Haywood - 1975
    Haywood stood against the "liquidationist line" of integration and insisted on a national revolutionary movement based on the principle of self-determination for the Black Belt South as still relevant and imperative for liberation of African Americans. This piece is relevant today as an important document in the history of the CPUSA, the New Communist Movement, the struggle against revisionism in Marxism-Leninism, and the struggle for a correct political line regarding the African American National Question.

Teamster Politics


Farrell Dobbs - 1975
    Written by a leader of the communist movement in the U.S. and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and trade union strategy.How rank-and-file Teamsters led the fight against antiunion frame-ups and assaults by fascist goons; the battle for jobs for all; and efforts to advance independent labor political action.

The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936–1939: A Study in Class and Culture


Peter Friedlander - 1975
    Blending oral history based on personal interviews with a keen analysis of the worker's class structure and widely varied cultural backgrounds, Freidlander describes the transformation of a working-class community by its own actions and the ensuing stratification and factionalizing within that union. The result is a firsthand account of the experience of unionization in personal and social terms.

Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920


Daniel Nelson - 1975
    The volume also incorporates the best scholarship of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, some of it stimulated by Managers and Workers, and includes a new chapter on the role of organized labor in the early twentieth-century factory. The focus of the work, however, remains the individual managers and workers who created the twentieth-century factory system.    The preeminent historian of the American business firm, Alfred D. Chandler Jr. reviewed the first edition of Managers and Workers in The Journal of Economic History, predicting that this book would “long remain the standard work on the origins of the American factory.” The second edition will make that prediction true for the 1990s and beyond.

The Angry Brigade: A History of Britain's First Urban Guerilla Group


Gordon Carr - 1975
    An avalanche of police raids followed, culminating in the "Stoke Newington 8" conspiracy trial—the longest criminal trial in British legal history—which is throughly discussed in this volume. Updated with a comprehensive chronology of the "Angry Decade" and new illustrations, this new edition also adds introductions by Stuart Christie and John Barker, two of the defendants, who discuss the political and social context of the movement and its long-term significance.