I have argued on many occasions against a “class (capitalist) against class (working class)” strategy and politics. Life, experience, and politics reveal its shortcomings. In bygone eras it didn’t work nor is there any reason to think that it would work now. At the same time, any strategy that writes off the role of class, class struggle, and the working class in comprehending and changing the world can only become a self inflicted wound too.

It is true that the great social movements of the last half of the 20th century and first two decades of the 20th century didn’t arise out of the labor movement. They were animated by other social constituencies and motivated by social desires that were not at the top of (or at all on) labor’s agenda. That reality, however, shouldn’t become the template for social change in the period ahead. Given the immense challenges facing people here and across the world, only a movement of great breadth and depth, only a movement in which a revitalized labor movement is an essential part in the leadership and on the terrain of struggle, stands a chance of emerging victorious and securing a sustainable world.