• The Blighted Groves of Academe

      The more I read about the state of our colleges and universities, the more thankful I am that I quit my job at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in 2001, after thirty-two years of teaching.  I wrote the following essay a dozen years ago, and since then, matters have gotten progressively worse, […]

  • Michael Steele Is a Nitwit and Wolf Blitzer Is a Jackass

      Economic ignorance is widespread in the United States. People think they know something about the subject, but few do.  My mother is convinced that China is the cause of all our economic problems.  When I challenge her, she doesn’t think it matters that I have spent forty years studying and teaching the dismal science.  […]

  • Tombstone

      “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

  • Paul Krugman on Race

      In a June 9 New York Times column, economist Paul Krugman tells us that “Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago.  It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.”  He attributes this to Bill Clinton, […]

  • Sacco and Vanzetti

    “If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men.  I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure.  Now we are not a failure.  This is our career and our triumph.  Never in our full life can we hope to do such work […]

  • All the Economics You Need to Know in One Lesson

      CHEAP MOTELS AND A HOTPLATE: An Economist’s Travelogue by Michael D. Yates ORDER THIS BOOK This essay complements my forthcoming book: Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: an Economist’s Travelogue (Monthly Review Press). We Meet an Economist Karen and I were hiking in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the Atalaya Mountain Trail, which begins […]

  • Preface to the Turkish Edition of Naming the System

      I am honored to write this preface to the Turkish edition of my book, Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy.  I thank Neset Kutlug and everyone else who helped bring this edition to fruition.  I wrote the book with an international audience in mind, so it is gratifying to see […]

  • Interview with Paul LeBlanc

      Paul LeBlanc Paul LeBlanc is what I have called an “organic intellectual,” a scholar and activist who has risen directly out of the working class.  Paul is the author of many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Humanity Books, 1999) and Black Liberation and the American Dream (Humanity Books 2003), […]

  • Taking Back the Workers’ Law: An Interview with Ellen Dannin

      Ellen Dannin TAKING BACK THE WORKERS’ LAW: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights by Ellen Dannin BUY THIS BOOK Ellen Dannin is one of the most eminent labor law scholars in the United States.  A former National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attorney and currently professor of labor law at the Pennsylvania State […]

  • Race Track

      Working people like to gamble.  It adds excitement to life and allows us to dream that we might be able to live without working at jobs we detest.  As a boy, I played poker, shot nine-ball, pot bowled, bet the ponies, and even hit the bingo tables once.  “Hap,” the man who ran the […]

  • What’s the Matter with U.S. Organized Labor? An Interview with Robert Fitch

      SOLIDARITY FOR SALE: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise by ROBERT FITCH AUTHOR’S NOTE READ EXCERPT BUY THIS BOOK Michael D. Yates: Robert, let’s start off with a question not directly connected to your book Solidarity for Sale.  Some commentators say that today labor unions and labor movements are irrelevant […]

  • Right-Wing Attack Dogs Go after a Colorado High School Teacher

      A high school geography teacher here in Colorado — Jay Bennish who teaches at Overland High School in Aurora — is in trouble, attacked by the right, for things he said in an honors geography class after Bush’s State of the Union address.  A student in the class taped the teacher’s comments (about twenty […]

  • A Union Is Not a “Movement”(19 November 1977)

      [The Los Angeles Times recently ran a series of investigative articles by Miriam Pawel on the problems of the United Farm Workers:  “Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots” (8 January 2006); “Linked Charities Bank on the Chavez Name” (9 January 2006); “Decisions of Long Ago Shape the Union Today” (10 January […]

  • Bowling Alley

      Michael D. Yates, “Revelation” (29 October 2005); and “Mobilization” (13 November 2005) It was a mid-Sunday afternoon in late Winter.  We had just finished our match, and I was disappointed with my poor performance.  For some reason I could not prevent my left wrist from turning over when I released my bowling bowl, and […]

  • Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Seven

      Michael D. Yates, “Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 The reason why work is so unsatisfying is simple.  Work cannot be fulfilling; it cannot allow us to fully use our uniquely human capacities; it cannot be anything but […]

  • Mobilization

      For the most part, we go along living without thinking much about the world around us. Things just seem to happen without rhyme or reason. My parents knew that people like themselves were not quite the same as people who had a lot more money, but they didn’t reflect very deeply as to why […]

  • Do Unions Still Matter?

      Listen to Michael D. Yates’ keynote speech (mp3) at the conference “How Unions Matter in the New Economy” in Toronto, 28-29 October 2005. Excerpt First, working people want and need good jobs and benefits, but the vision worthy of a struggle to achieve, they need that, too.  People are likely to do great things, […]

  • Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Five

    [Author’s note: Let me repeat my invitation at the end of Part Four of this series. Readers are invited to submit short essays, about 1,000 words, about their work. What do you do? In what ways is your work satisfying? In what ways is it not? How could it be made better? Send your essays […]

  • Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Four

      [Author’s note: Let me repeat my invitation at the end of Part Three of this series. Readers are invited to submit short essays, about 1,000 words, about their work. What do you do? In what ways is your work satisfying? In what ways is it not? How could it be made better? Send your […]

  • Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Three

      In Part Two, we examined the rapidly changing nature of post-secondary teaching, one of the two reasonably skilled  jobs among the top ten jobs estimated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to show the highest job growth between 2002 and 2012. The other job is nursing. Job experts claim that there is a […]