In Defense of the Us Working Class

“Without understanding the devastation of the lives of working-class families in regions like West Virginia, and the vast increase in class inequality since the 2008 crisis, you can’t understand what’s happening in the United States.”

A giant has begun to stir. Hillary Clinton calls them “deplorables” who inhabit “backward” regions between New York and San Francisco. But tens of thousands of teachers and school employees from West Virginia, Oklahoma, and beyond set an example in 2018 with their victorious strikes. Working people across Florida mobilized and won restoration of voting rights to more than one million former prisoners.

Drawing on the best fighting traditions of the oppressed and exploited producers of all skin colors and national origins in the US, they fought for dignity and respect for themselves, their families, and for all working people.

Also available in Spanish (ISBN: 9781604881080), French (ISBN: 9781604881110), Farsi (ISBN: 9789645783509), and Greek (ISBN: 9786185130152)

“Erudite, thoughtful and thought-provoking...an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, and academic library Contemporary and Political Science Collections.” —Midwest Book Review

Mary-Alice Waters (1942– ), a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee since 1967, is president of Pathfinder Press and editor of New International magazine. She joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1962 and Socialist Workers Party in 1964. She has helped lead the SWP’s work nationally and internationally, especially in defense of the Cuban Revolution as well as the fight for women’s liberation.

Waters was YSA national secretary, then chairperson (1967–68). She covered the 1968 student-labor uprising in France for the Militant and edited that working-class newsweekly from 1969 through the early 1970s.

She has edited more than thirty-five books on the Cuban Revolution as well as more than a dozen other titles. Waters has spoken in the United States and around the world on the Cuban Revolution and its lessons for working people and youth everywhere.

Her works include:
The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party (2019, coeditor)
In Defense of the US Working Class (2019)
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? (2016)
“It’s the Poor who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk about Their Lives within the US Working Class (2015)
Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women (2024, coauthor)
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970, editor)