Albo Gregory - Socialist Register, 2015: transforming classes

SOCIALIST

REGISTER

2015

Founded in 1964

EDITORS

LEO PANITCH
GREG ALBO

FOUNDING EDITORS

RALPH MILIBAND (1924-1994)
JOHN SAVILLE (1916-2009)

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

COLIN LEYS
VIVEK CHIBBER
ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO

ASSISTANT EDITOR

ALAN ZUEGE

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

ADAM HILTON

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

BASHIR ABU-MANNEH
GILBERT ACHCAR
AIJAZ AHMAD
ELMAR ALTVATER
HENRY BERNSTEIN
PATRICK BOND
ATILIO BORON
JOHANNA BRENNER
PAUL CAMMACK
GEORGE COMNINEL
MADELEINE DAVIS
BARBARA EPSTEIN
BILL FLETCHER JR
SAM GINDIN
BARBARA HARRISS-WHITE
DAVID HARVEY
JUDITH ADLER HELLMAN
CHRISTOPH HERMANN
NANCY HOLMSTROM
URSULA HUWS
RAY KIELY
MARTIJN KONINGS
HANNES LACHER
LIN CHUN
MICHAEL LOWY
EBNEM OUZ
CHARLES POST
ADOLPH REED JR
STEPHANIE ROSS
SHEILA ROWBOTHAM
JOHN S. SAUL
MICHALIS SPOURDALAKIS
HILARY WAINWRIGHT

To get online access to all Register volumes visit our website
http://www.socialistregister.com

Edited by LEO PANITCH and GREG ALBO

First published in 2014
by The Merlin Press Ltd.
99B Wallis Road
London
E9 5LN

www.merlinpress.co.uk

The Merlin Press, 2014

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British
Library

ISSN. 0081-0606

Published in the UK by The Merlin Press
ISBN. 978-0-85036-621-1 Paperback
ISBN. 978-0-85036-620-4 Hardback

Published in the USA by Monthly Review Press
ISBN. 978-1-58367-481-9 Paperback

Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing
ISBN. 978-1-55266-689-0 Paperback

Printed in the EU on behalf of LPPS Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants

Ricardo Antunes is a professor of sociology at the State University of Campinas, Brazil.

Sam Ashman is associate professor in the Department of Economics and Econometrics at the University of Johannesburg.

Rishi Awatramani is organizing director at Virginia New Majority Student Power Network.

Joel Beinin is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University.

Andreas Bieler is professor of political economy and fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at Nottingham University, UK.

Timothy David Clark is a research associate at Willow Springs Strategic Solutions in Calgary, Alberta.

Marie Duboc is professor of political science at the Eberhard Karls University in Tbingen, Germany.

Mark Dudzic is a labour activist and served as National Organizer and Chairman of the United States Labor Party.

Fuat Ercan is a professor in the Department of Economics at Marmara University, Istanbul.

Roland Erne teaches international and comparative employment relations at University College Dublin, Ireland.

Susan Ferguson is an associate professor in digital media and journalism at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario.

Lin Chun is an associate professor in comparative politics in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Randy Martin is professor of art and public policy at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Jane McAlevey is a union organizer, doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center and author of Raising Expectations.

John McCullough is associate professor in the Department of Film at York University, Toronto.

David McNally is a professor of political science at York University in Toronto.

Kim Moody is a senior research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.

ebnem Ouz is associate professor of political science and international relations at Baskent University in Ankara.

Nicolas Pons-Vignon is a senior researcher in the School of Economic and Business Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Charles Post is a professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College-CUNY.

Hugo Radice is life fellow at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds.

Adolph Reed Jr is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Supriya RoyChowdhury is a professor of political science at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.

Achin Vanaik is professor emeritus of international relations and global politics at the University of Delhi.

Steve Williams is a San Francisco-based organizer and co-founder of POWER.

George Wright is professor emeritus in political science at the California State University, Chico.

By devoting the 2015 Socialist Register to investigating class formation and class strategies on a global scale, as we also did the 2014 volume marking the Registers fiftieth anniversary, we were going against fashion in quite deliberately emphasizing the fundamental importance of class analysis, class discourse and class politics for the twenty-first century. It has unfortunately been the case that even in left circles over the past several decades any talk of class, let alone class struggle, became decidedly unfashionable. Of course, this was in many ways a very old story. When the Register was founded in 1964, the irrelevance of class had already been proclaimed in mainstream intellectual circles, and this was increasingly echoed by the leaders of social democratic parties. Twenty years later, as the political compass of even the more radical left began to swing to a proliferation of other identities, Ralph Miliband faced this head-on in the 1983 Register: Socialist work means intervention in all the many different areas of life in which class struggle occurs: for class struggle must be taken to mean not only the permanent struggle between capital and labour, crucial though that remains, but the struggle against racial and sex discrimination, the struggle against arbitrary state and police power, the struggle against the ideological hegemony of the conservative forces, and the struggle for new and radically different defence and foreign policies. Yet, amidst an endless stream of images across the new communication technologies, the lefts attention became more and more focused on those very spaces of civil society and the global economy in which class relations and class struggles seemed all too little visible.