In 1979 British trade unions had 13.2 million members, and 29,474,000 working days were lost to strikes. A workplace survey the next year counted 328,000 shop stewards. By 2025, union density was 22.4 per cent, and nobody counts workplace representatives any more: the last survey was in 2011.What the revolutionary left did next is usually explained as a sequence. Rank-and-file organisation is what a rising level of struggle produces, so it cannot be built in a downturn, and revolut...

Why are unions weaker in the US than in Canada, two otherwise similar countries? This difference has shaped politics, policy, and levels of inequality. Conventional wisdom points to differences in political cultures, party systems, and labor laws. But Barry Eidlin's systematic analysis of archival and statistical data shows the limits of conventional wisdom, and presents a novel explanation for the cross-border difference. He shows that it resulted from different ruling party responses to ...

Rethinking Class and Social Difference brings together contributions from scholars developing new social scientific and theoretical approaches to a wide range of differing forms of social difference and inequality, especially as they are rooted in and informed by the political economy of capitalism. These include race, nationalism, sexuality, professional classes, domestic employment, digital communication and uneven economic development. The volume is brought together by a focus ...