The Working Class Majority: America s Best Kept Secret

In the second edition of his essential book―which incorporates vital new information and new material on immigration, race, gender, and the social crisis following 2008―Michael Zweig warns that by allowing the working class to disappear into categories of "middle class" or "consumers," we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich. Economic relations then appear as comparisons of income or lifestyle rather than as what they truly are―contests of power, at work and in the larger society.

Michael Zweig is a professor of economics and director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he has received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is active in his union, United University Professions (AFT Local 2190), representing 35,000 faculty and professional staff throughout SUNY and has been elected to two terms on its state executive board. His earlier books include What's Class Got to Do with It?: American Society in the Twenty-first Century, Religion and Economic Justice, and The Idea of a World University.