The Working Class Movement in America

Editor Paul Le Blanc presents a new edition of this classic study of American labor in the 1880s. Written by Eleanor Marx (perhaps Karl Marx's most talented daughter) and her common-law husband Edward Aveling (who helped translate Marx's Capital into English), the original text is lively, lucid, and insightful. It provides a snapshot of the U.S. labor movement and working class at a time when the United States was becoming the world's leading manufacturing nation.

Blending together firsthand observations and interviews with a wealth of appropriate statistics and reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in various states, Marx and Aveling vividly depict a representative cross-section of working-class people. They describe conditions in numerous workplaces and sectors of the labor force; the nature of such labor organizations as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor; a variety of trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, and reformers; even a Marxist analysis of the American cowboy!

Three recent essays enhance the original text. The first, by editor Paul Le Blanc, situates this work within the general sweep of U.S. labor history in the nineteenth century, with special emphasis on key realities that the authors missed. The second essay, by feminist cultural critic Lisa Frank, discusses Eleanor Marx's meaningful though tragic life in connection with her political writings, her work, and the time in which she lived. Internationally respected labor analyst Kim Moody concludes this volume with an article exploring the developments in the U.S. economy and working class in the century following the appearance of the Marx-Aveling text.