Labor’s Partisans

Nelson Lichtenstein is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, and a biography of Walter Reuther. The New Press published his edited collection, Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism and also Labor’s Partisans: Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today (co-edited with Samir Sonti). He lives in Santa Barbara.Samir Sonti is an organizer and assistant professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. He is the co-editor (with Nelson Lichtenstein) of Labor’s Partisans (The New Press) and is writing a book on the historical politics of inflation in the United States. He lives in New York.

Praise for Labor's Partisans:"[Labor’s Partisans] provides readers with a sense of how organized labor has evolved and how writing and thought about the topic has evolved as well. . . . An excellent addition to collections."—Library Journal"Seventy years of reporting capture the ebb and flow of American labor power in this robust collection. . . . The result is an impressive retrospective with a forward-looking feel."—Publishers Weekly"[Labor’s Partisans] explores the major issues that union organizers have faced, from the Cold War to the current environmental crisis. . . . An honest tribute to dissenting voices, and a plea for a better world for everyone—‘not just the rich or white.’"—Kirkus Reviews"Knowing our history is important and so too is understanding how people make sense of their present moment. Labor’s Partisans, covering such an important period in working-class struggle, showcases how analysis and interpretation are shaped by the moments in which the writers live. They help root us in our history as we chart a bolder path forward."—Gwen Mills, International Union President of UNITE HERE "Labor’s Partisans provides a keen look at the labor movement and class relations since World War II though the eyes of some of the country’s shrewdest intellectuals. Union supporters all, they nonetheless pull no punches in their frank appraisals of labor’s failings as well as its successes. I can think of no better way to understand how we got to where we are and how labor might move forward than this lively collection."—Joshua Freeman, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York, and author of Behemoth and Working-Class New York "Over the past seventy years, as the fortunes of American workers and their unions have waxed (briefly) and waned (not so briefly), no magazine has covered the labor scene with such brilliance, rigor and sympathy as Dissent. In the best Dissent tradition, this anthology offers a probing portrait of American capitalism since the mid-20th century, and workers’ ongoing struggles, if not to socialize it, then at least to make it more bearably humane."—Harold Meyerson, editor at large, The American Prospect "The working class built America, but workers and their unions have long struggled to win rights in a system that’s put the rights of capital over those of labor. Labor’s Partisans is a marvelous collection of writing that captures our finest intellectuals and organizers grappling with the past and future of the labor movement during moments of tremendous change."—Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin, president of The Nation, and author of The Socialist Manifesto