Abstract

Technology presently exists in the U.S. which can make it possible to free workers from alienated labor without sacrificing their material needs. The economy has become so inter-dependent that workers in any of a dozen basic industries can bring the system to its knees in a matter of days by simply withholding their labor. The American working class brings to this context a hundred years of organized militancy and unprecedented command of the strike weapon. Still, no revolution. Many ask, with Stanley Aronowitz, “why the working class in America remains a dependent force and what the conditions are that may reverse this situation,” the fundamental question he explores in False Promises.