Why don’t people always act in their own collective self-interest? This classic puzzle in sociological analysis led us to question why so many workers – even the most precarious among them – were so disinterested in unions as a means to achieve higher pay and better working conditions.  If the benefits of unionization are [...] Source ..read more

Value did not destroy slavery, human actions did. My point is that those actions were mediated by value relations. It is high time to see capital in history again both in past and present. Perhaps all the more so now, that the combined crises of world democracy, world governance and global ecology demand collective action, but collective action seems insufficient to resolve them on its own. Source ..read more

Du Bois's scholarship and political commitments were not fixed. Rather, his scholarship was always informed by his engagement with politics, and his politics was always informed by his sharp, sociological mind. Source ..read more

Happy New Year! It is time to share the 10 most read posts on the Marxist Sociology Blog published in 2022. If you missed these posts the first time around, now would be a great time to give them a quick read. Thank you to all of the contributors who have helped make MSB [...] Source ..read more

Labor scholars and organizers need to consider workplace aesthetics including the design of technology to better understand the micro-mechanisms that facilitate capital’s domination of labor, eliciting effort at work and affective attachment to capitalism and other exploitative institutions. Source ..read more

In our new book, we theorise the political economy of marketization in Europe, based on hundreds of interviews with policymakers, businesses, trade unionists, administrators, and more, from various countries and industries. Our central argument is that attempts to extend and intensify principles of market competition in 21st century Europe have tended to shift the balance of power in workplaces away from labour and towards capital, while also shielding market governance from democratic oversight. Source ..read more

In March 2020, New York City became the U.S. epicenter of the emerging Covid-19 crisis. Yet neither city leaders, nor school district officials, nor teacher union leadership provided a meaningful response to a mounting public health crisis. Instead, the city’s fledgling social justice teachers’ union caucus, MORE, rose to the call. At the beginning [...] Source ..read more

The story of military sites contributing to environmental injustices in Las Vegas offer us an important lesson of accountability on the U.S. Military for environmental injustices. Those on the frontlines, including nearby civilians and lower-rank military personnel, are more likely to experience detrimental health and environmental impacts from defense-related operations. Therefore, when thinking about contributors to environmental injustices, we must include the military into the equation. Source ..read more

When he first arrived at Eastern Correctional Facility, in the spring of 2010, Juan wasn’t too concerned about his personal finances. After all, he thought, wasn’t the prison system going to provide him with “three hots and a cot”, if nothing else? It only took him a few days and several trips to the [...] Source ..read more

Just as the profit imperative coldly choreographs the economic encounter, the test score imperative subtracts autonomy from the educational equation. The process of producing test scores deprofessionalizes teachers, disengages students, and mechanicalizes the art of teaching and learning. Teachers are tasked with transforming disimpassioned pupils into rote learners. Instruction becomes a means to the end of testing like the production of goods and services is a means to the end of profiting. Source ..read more