Political Nonfiction
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
peopleWhy identity politics, while important, must not overshadow the fight
against capitalismThe 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
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.
EXCERPT
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.
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.
https://independent.academia.edu/ChrisWright82
