Reading list

Why does the left talk so much about work? Verso Reading on Labor and Marxism

Books on work and Marxist theory, from across 50 years of publishing at Verso!

 

Verso Books 2 January 2025

Why does the left talk so much about work? Verso Reading on Labor and Marxism

Why is every workplace tyrannical? Why must capitalists constantly intensify their exploitation of labour? And how can workers best fight today to gain power?

While the demands of workers continue to be scoffed at, these books will highlight how the labour movement has historically fought for victories.

Given that the basic social relations have not changed since the dawn of capitalism, studying the history of labor's victories in the past might provide clues to how gains can be won in the future.

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  • Breaking Things at Work
    In the Nineteenth-century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English country...
    Paperback
  • The Great Cowboy Strike
    Although later made an icon of “rugged individualism,” the American cowboy was a grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal worker, who waged a series of militant strikes in the generally isolated an...
    Hardback
  • The Enemy Within
    Margaret Thatcher branded the leaders of the 1984–85 miners' strike “the enemy within.”In this classic account, Seumas Milne reveals the astonishing lengths to which her government and its intell...
    Paperback
  • Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell)
    In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation’s largest labor federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than ...
    Paperback
  • Rebel Rank and File
    Often considered irredeemably conservative, the US working class actually has a rich history of revolt. Rebel Rank and File uncovers the hidden story of insurgency from below against employers and ...
    Paperback
  • Cyberboss
    Across the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasi...
  • Work

    Work

    Andrea Komlosy argues in this important intervention that, when we examine it closely, work changes its meanings according to different historical and regional contexts. Globalizing labour history ...
  • The New Spirit of Capitalism
    In this major work, sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello go to the heart of the changes in contemporary capitalism. Via an unprecedented analysis of the latest management texts that have fo...
    Paperback
  • Peasant-Citizen and Slave
    The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented ...
    Paperback
  • The Wages of Whiteness

    The Wages of Whiteness

    An enduring history of how race and class came together to mark the course of the antebellum US and our present crisis. Roediger shows that in a nation pledged to independence, but less and less ab...
    Paperback
  • The Death and Life of American Labor
    Union membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent, the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that...
    Paperback

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