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Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism
Class, Race, and Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism is for those who want to understand the underlying connections among today’s social justice movements.
Bringing forth the basic operations of capitalist economies, it reveals what is driving many of today’s most urgent and vexing the common origins of the inequalities of income, wealth, and power; environmental devastation; militarism; racism and white supremacy; patriarchy and male chauvinism; periodic economic crises; and the cultural conflicts that are tearing at US life.
Michael Zweig illuminates all propositions with specific examples from US history, from the first settlement of the New World to current life, including his own lived experiences as an activist, educator, and organizer over the past six decades. As such, the book is an urgently needed resource for activists and organizers seeking structural and moral transformation of life in the US. Building on his analysis, Zweig also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work.
Bringing forth the basic operations of capitalist economies, it reveals what is driving many of today’s most urgent and vexing the common origins of the inequalities of income, wealth, and power; environmental devastation; militarism; racism and white supremacy; patriarchy and male chauvinism; periodic economic crises; and the cultural conflicts that are tearing at US life.
Michael Zweig illuminates all propositions with specific examples from US history, from the first settlement of the New World to current life, including his own lived experiences as an activist, educator, and organizer over the past six decades. As such, the book is an urgently needed resource for activists and organizers seeking structural and moral transformation of life in the US. Building on his analysis, Zweig also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work.
- GenresNonfiction
252 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 28, 2023
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135 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 24, 2025
I’ve been reading quite a few books about class and intersectionality lately. I think I resisted reading or thinking too hard about class for years because of negative experiences I’ve had with communists who place class as the be all end all of leftist politics. Too often I heard from them that we should ignore such things as race or gender because once we all focus on class and destroy capitalism the rest would just fall into place. My argument was the opposite: that as soon as we can unite people of different races and genders, capitalism won’t have a leg to stand on and it will collapse on its own. Over the past few years I’ve begun to see it all as one. That class really matters, but the only way to have a real working class uprising is to also focus on other issues, like race and gender.
I don’t agree with everything Zweig says in this book. For example, he seems to believe that labor unions should align with and change the Democratic party from within, even though he admits that this does nothing to change the basic power structure in society. I believe people have been trying to do this for generations and haven’t even come close. Bernie? Look at what happened when he ran for president. AOC? She’s a lot less socialist/radical when someone else with a D next to their name is in power. Other progressive Democrats who have gotten elected in recent years, were met with the full force of the Democratic institution when they attempted to run for re-election.
Zweig also brings up “fusion politics.” Fusion politics allows a candidate to run under to parties at once. They can be a Democrat but also a socialist. Every vote they get as a socialist allows socialists to have more negotiating power. However, this type of thing is only allowed in a handful of states. Not to mention the fact that once people get any real power, they tend to become less radical and eventually are either tossed out or acquiesce to the centrists.
My favorite quite from this book is “As in the past, deep reform will require real disruption of the machinery of oppression, not just choreographed performative acts of civil disobedience precleared with the police.” This is so relevant today, not only in the weak pushback against Trump by Democrats in power, but also with the middle class organizing protests.
I agree with Zweig on his main points though. We need to talk more about class, we need to get working class white people to see others in their class as comrades, not people competing for their job. The capitalist class has strong class solidarity and the only chance we have of taking them down is to have equal strength among the rest of us. The oppressors have a lot of us believing that we’re in this position because we don’t work hard enough or because they are just naturally smarter and we should bow down to them. It’s not true, and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can end the misery that is capitalism.
I don’t agree with everything Zweig says in this book. For example, he seems to believe that labor unions should align with and change the Democratic party from within, even though he admits that this does nothing to change the basic power structure in society. I believe people have been trying to do this for generations and haven’t even come close. Bernie? Look at what happened when he ran for president. AOC? She’s a lot less socialist/radical when someone else with a D next to their name is in power. Other progressive Democrats who have gotten elected in recent years, were met with the full force of the Democratic institution when they attempted to run for re-election.
Zweig also brings up “fusion politics.” Fusion politics allows a candidate to run under to parties at once. They can be a Democrat but also a socialist. Every vote they get as a socialist allows socialists to have more negotiating power. However, this type of thing is only allowed in a handful of states. Not to mention the fact that once people get any real power, they tend to become less radical and eventually are either tossed out or acquiesce to the centrists.
My favorite quite from this book is “As in the past, deep reform will require real disruption of the machinery of oppression, not just choreographed performative acts of civil disobedience precleared with the police.” This is so relevant today, not only in the weak pushback against Trump by Democrats in power, but also with the middle class organizing protests.
I agree with Zweig on his main points though. We need to talk more about class, we need to get working class white people to see others in their class as comrades, not people competing for their job. The capitalist class has strong class solidarity and the only chance we have of taking them down is to have equal strength among the rest of us. The oppressors have a lot of us believing that we’re in this position because we don’t work hard enough or because they are just naturally smarter and we should bow down to them. It’s not true, and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can end the misery that is capitalism.
May 25, 2025
Great concept and very digestible and approachable. Ultimately, felt like as things progressed, it got much less "meaty" and useful over time, but still overall a very strong overview and tasting. Great academia-style book that is still very readable by the general public; the dozens of citations per chapter were especially helpful
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews