Coming From Left Field (Video)

In this episode of Coming From Left Field, philosopher and cultural critic Gabriel Rockhill joins us to discuss “Requiem for French Theory: Transatlantic Funeral Dirge in a Marxist Key,” his new book co-written with Aymeric Monville. Rockhill examines how postwar French Theory—associated with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others—was received, promoted, and institutionalized in the United States during the Cold War. He argues that the rise of postmodern and poststructuralist approaches often displaced class analysis, historical materialism, anti-imperialism, and practical socialist politics in favor of a focus on discourse, difference, and anti-totalitarianism.

The conversation also explores the Ford Foundation, the 1966 Johns Hopkins conference often cited as a launching point for French Theory in the United States, Cold War cultural politics, and the wider political economy of academic knowledge production. Rockhill argues for rebuilding a class-centered, internationalist Marxism and joins a thoughtful exchange on China, Vietnam, socialism, imperialism, inequality, and the challenges of assessing existing socialist projects without demonization or uncritical celebration.

 

About Gabriel Rockhill

Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic, and professor of philosophy and global interdisciplinary studies at Villanova University. He founded the Critical Theory Workshop, an educational nonprofit established in 2008 that offers summer programs, courses, public discussions, book launches, and other forms of accessible critical education.

Rockhill’s research focuses on political philosophy, ideology, culture, intellectual history, the political economy of knowledge production, Marxism, and anti-imperialism. “Requiem for French Theory” and his previous book, “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?” are part of a larger effort to investigate how intellectual institutions shape political thought—and how Marxist theory can again connect to collective struggles for social transformation.

 

Follow Gabriel Rockhill:

Resources: Order the book: https://kingsbookstore.com/book/9781685901493

Webpage: https://gabrielrockhill.com/

 

Greg’s Substack: https://substack.com/@greggodels929536

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/

 

#GabrielRockhill#RequiemforFrenchTheory#AymericMonville#FrenchTheory#Marxism#WesternMarxism#FordFoundation#CongressforCulturalFreedom#JohnsHopkins1966conference#FrankfurtSchool#criticaltheory#CriticalTheoryWorkshop#politicaleconomy#classstruggle#socialism#communism#anti-capitalism#U.S.empire#leftpolitics#China#Vietnam#multipolarworld#GlobalSouth#PatCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#zzblog#mltoday

Bill Moyer has spent over two decades turning protest into an art form — literally. As co-founder and executive director of the Backbone Campaign, he's behind the giant "We the People" banners, the overpass bannering, the light projections, and the inflatables that have shown up at marches from Seattle to Washington D.C.

In this conversation, he joins us to talk about where that all started, the "grand strategy" framework that guides Backbone's tactics, and how a dare from a rail-industry labor rep thirteen years ago led him to co-author with Patrick Mazza Solutionary Rail: A People-Powered Campaign to Electrify America's Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future. The book proposes electrifying U.S. freight and passenger rail, shifting long-haul freight from trucks to trains, and using rail rights-of-way to carry renewable energy transmission — financed through public "Steel Interstate Development Authorities" that would keep the infrastructure under public ownership even as private and public operators run trains on it.

 

We cover Bill's personal origin story (including a fall from a tree that gave the "backbone" metaphor its resonance), the mentorship of Pentagon strategist Chuck Spinney and Colonel John Boyd's theories of conflict, a debate about whether "unassailable" movement messaging is even possible in today's media environment, and a deep dive into why America's privately owned rail system might be, as Bill puts it, a "peculiar institution."

 

About Bill Moyer

Bill Moyer is the co-founder and executive director of the Backbone Campaign, a progressive movement-building organization based on Vashon Island, Washington. A fourth-generation Washingtonian and lifelong musician and activist, he co-founded Backbone in 2003 with a circle of artist friends responding to the post-9/11 political climate, and has served as its executive director since 2004.

Moyer now leads Solutionary Rail as a project of the Backbone Campaign and hosts the Reconnect America podcast, which extends the book's ideas into ongoing conversations with rail experts, policymakers, and advocates.

Follow Bill Moyer:

Backbone Campaign: http://BackboneCampaign.org  

Flickr albums link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/backbone_campaign/albums

The Reconnect America Podcast (Episode 1 is a good overview): https://www.solutionaryrail.org/podcast 

Substack: https://solutionaryrail.substack.com/p/1-reconnect-america

Solutionary Rail Website:  http://SolutionaryRail.org

Mentioned Book:
Solutionary Rail: A People-Powered Campaign to Electrify America's Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future by Bill Moyer and Patrick Mazza: https://www.solutionaryrail.org/sr_book

 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/

 

#BillMoyer#BackboneCampaign#SolutionaryRail#ReconnectAmericapodcast#artfulactivism#nonviolentdirectaction#kayaktivism#WethePeoplebanner#overpassbanner#protesttactics#JohnBoydstrategy#ChuckSpinney#movementbuilding#politicalinterview#activistinterview#USpolitics2026#corporatepower#capitalismcritique#infrastructurepolicy#transportationpolicy#populism#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

Communist writer, educator, creator, and translator Luna Oi (Luna Nguyen) joins us from her home in Vietnam for a conversation that dismantles just about everything the West thinks it knows about her country. Luna has spent six years translating Vietnam's official university Marxism-Leninism curriculum into English — an annotated, diagram-rich series with contributions from Vijay Prashad, Gerald Horne, and Taimur Rahman.

We dig into why dialectical materialism is taught to every Vietnamese college student, how idealism still quietly shapes Western thinking, and why Marxism is the philosophy that teaches you to change the world rather than just interpret it. Luna cuts through the propaganda about life "under communism" — from the myth that Vietnam is striving to exchange its economy for a “free market” to what Vietnam's National Assembly actually looks like — and lays out the country's trajectory: free healthcare and education, a plan to become a high-income socialist nation by 2045, and quiet, decades-long solidarity work with Cuba.

She doesn't dodge the hard stuff either — the agonizing logic of Doi Moi, translated literally as "restoration," the corruption that came with opening the economy, and a deeply personal family story from the 1950s land reforms that ends with Ho Chi Minh weeping and apologizing on national radio.

 

About Luna Oi

Luna Oi (Luna Nguyen) is a Vietnamese writer, communist educator, and content creator, born in 1991 and raised in Vietnam — under the comprehensive U.S. embargo that shaped her childhood. She studied business administration and worked for years in the corporate world before turning to content creation. What began in 2019 as a travel-and-cooking channel became something else entirely when viewers flooded her with political questions, and she saw the scale of anti-communist misinformation behind them. Today she runs the Luna Oi channel as part of the Non-Compete cooperative alongside her partner EJ, and both rank among the top tier of political creators on the platform

Follow Luna Oi:

Luna’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/LunaOi

EJ’s NonCompete YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/NonCompete/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/LunaOi_VN
Website: https://www.lunaoi.com

Mentioned Books:
Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism:
https://www.lunaoi.com/product/ebook-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism/

Part 2 Historical Materialism:
https://www.lunaoi.com/product/ebook-historical-materialism/

 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

LunaOi#LunaNguyen#Vietnamesecommunism#non-compete#Marxism#Marxism-Leninism#dialecticalmaterialism#historicalmaterialism#communisteducator#HoChiMinh#DoiMoi#Vietnameconomy#anti-imperialism#classstruggle#Cubasolidarity#EJNon-Compete#Vietnamwarhistory#landreformVietnam#Marxistphilosophy#NationalAssemblyVietnam#VijayPrashad#GeraldHorne#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

In this episode, we talk with St. Louis historian Jackie Dana, author of “The Unseen History of St. Louis,” about the hidden history of central and southern Illinois coal mining. Jackie traces how immigrant workers and their families, including her own Croatian relatives in Benld, Illinois, were drawn to the mines that helped power St. Louis industry and the American economy. We explore the rich ethnic communities that grew around the mines, the realities of company power and debt, child labor, black lung, mine disasters, and the daily dangers faced by workers who went underground to earn a living.

The conversation is also personal. Greg and Pat reflect on their own coal-mining family histories while Jackie discusses labor organizing, the Battle of Virden, Mother Jones, the United Mine Workers, and the militant tradition that produced the Progressive Mine Workers of America. This is a story about exploitation, solidarity, immigration, race, working-class struggle, and the long afterlife of coal beneath the fields and towns of Illinois.

 

About Jackie Dana

Jackie Dana is a St. Louis native, historian, freelance writer, editor, and novelist. She holds an MA in history from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and pursued doctoral work at the University of Texas. Through her Substack newsletter, “The Unseen History of St. Louis,” Jackie investigates the lesser-known stories that have shaped St. Louis and the surrounding region, including labor, immigration, architecture, race, industry, and local communities. Her work begins with the questions people encounter in everyday life: Who lived here? What happened in this building? Why does this place matter?.

 

Jackie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@jackiedana

Mentioned articles:

PART-1- https://unseenstlouis.substack.com/p/fuel-for-the-fire-illinois-coal-mining   

PART-2- https://unseenstlouis.substack.com/p/forged-in-rebellion-organized-labor-illinois-coal-mines

 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#Illinoiscoalmining#coalminers#Illinoislaborhistory#laborhistory#unionhistory#UnitedMineWorkers#UMWA#ProgressiveMineWorkersofAmerica#MotherJones#BattleofVirden#Illinoiscoalcountry#centralIllinoishistory#southernIllinoishistory#BenldIllinois#GillespieIllinois#UnionMinersCemetery#St.Louishistory#St.Louislaborhistory#immigrantworkers#industrialhistory#coalminedisasters#blacklungdisease#childlabor#labororganizing#laborunions#labormovement#mininghistory#JackieDana#TheUnseenHistoryofSt.Louis#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

This conversation with Bev Stohl, author of “Chomsky and Me,” takes you inside Noam Chomsky’s office and daily life in a way few people have ever seen. Drawing on nearly 25 years as Chomsky’s assistant at MIT, Bev shares intimate, funny, and moving stories about his work habits, his chaotic “checkerboard” office, his deep kindness toward ordinary people, and the emotional toll of spending a lifetime confronting war, propaganda, and injustice. Along the way we talk about Chomsky’s impact on linguistics, cognitive science, and radical politics, why he was shut out of mainstream media for telling the truth, and how he managed to keep going “by action, by moving” instead of being overwhelmed by despair.

The episode is also a love letter to the broader ecosystem of radical thinkers and organizers around Chomsky: Howard Zinn and the emotional power of his memorial, civil rights legend Dorie Ladner, union lawyer and Central America activist Dan Kovalik, and the many students, filmmakers, and musicians who passed through that cramped MIT office. Bev’s memoir and stories show Chomsky not as an abstract icon but as a complicated, sometimes awkward, always deeply principled human being—and highlight her own role using humor, care, and good judgment to keep him grounded.

 

About Bev Stohl

Bev Stohl is a writer, former MIT administrator, and longtime personal assistant to Noam Chomsky, whose memoir Chomsky and Me chronicles their quarter century working relationship. She came to Chomsky’s office from other administrative roles at MIT—including graduate programs in economics and ocean engineering—while completing her master’s degree in psychology, expecting an easier job and instead finding herself at the center of Chomsky’s intellectual and political life.

Over the years she managed his chaotic schedule, coordinated visits from students, activists, and documentary crews, and became a kind of social buffer and comic counterweight to his intense focus and often somber work. Beyond the Chomsky memoir, Bev has written extensively on wider political questions on Substack, has experience doing stand-up comedy, and recently completed an audiobook edition of Chomsky and Me with a Spanish translation forthcoming.

Order the book: https://orbooks.com/catalog/chomsky-and-me/

Bev’s substack: https://substack.com/@bevstohl

Mentioned articles:
I'm no longer waiting for the storm to pass (Bev Stohl): https://substack.com/home/post/p-190768008

“Ensnared” and “Manipulated” (Valéria Chomsky): https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/09/ensnared-and-manipulated-official-statement-by-valeria-chomsky-regarding-jeffrey-epstein/

Cross-Examining The Tabloid Left Show Trial of Chomsky w/ Rameez Rahman (Tara Van Duik): https://morbidsymptom.substack.com/p/cross-examining-the-tabloid-left

 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#chomskyandme#memoir#bevstohl#BevBoisseauStohl#progressivepoliticspodcast#ValériaChomsky#CarolChomsky#howardzinn#normanfinkelstein#chrishedges#alanmacleod#vijahprashad#christianparenti#jefferyepstein#dankovalik#mitlinguistics#mediapropaganda#manufacturingconsent#antiwarmovement#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

This episode, artist, writer, and journalist Molly Crabapple discusses her new book, “Here Where We Live Is Our Country.” Through the conversation, she explores how art, memory, and reportage can challenge borders, social movements, and official narratives, focusing on the lives of workers, migrants, and resisters who carve out solidarity and dignity in hostile conditions. The discussion highlights the politics of looking—who is seen, who is erased—and how visual storytelling can expose injustice while honoring the full humanity of people living on the front lines of crisis and conflict.

Across the episode, Crabapple reflects on her own trajectory from artist to collaborator with radical journalists documenting war, incarceration, and economic exploitation. She talks about the responsibilities of depicting suffering, the intersections of culture and organizing, and why “Here Where We Live Is Our Country” reframes “country” as the networks of care and struggle we build together rather than flags or passports. If you’re interested in labor history, social movements, and the role of art in political resistance, this conversation offers a sharp, visually rich lens on the world we live in and the worlds we’re trying to create.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, writer, and journalist whose work sits at the intersection of illustration and political reportage. She first gained prominence for her intricate, densely detailed drawings and has since become known for visual essays and collaborations that address topics such as war, authoritarianism, incarceration, and economic inequality. Her illustrations and writing have appeared alongside investigative journalism and essays in major outlets, and she has worked extensively with reporters documenting events in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Crabapple is also the author of the memoir “Drawing Blood: A Radical Artist's Memoir of NYC Nightlife, Occupy, and Witness Journalism,” (2015), which examines her own life, work, and the political awakenings that informed her art and “Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War,”(2018), a ground-level reflection on revolution and war. With “Here Where We Live Is Our Country,” she continues this trajectory, using image and text to honor the people and places that rarely make it into official histories, but whose lives and struggles define the world we actually inhabit.

 

Order the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646320/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-by-molly-crabapple/         

Molly’s Website: https://www.mollycrabapple.com

 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#MollyCrabapple#HereWhereWeLiveIsOurCountry#politicalart#Bund#JewishBundism#laborhistory#workingclassstruggles#warandresistance#migrationandborders#solidaritymovements#leftistpodcast#Zionism#SamRothbort#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

Vietnam veteran, poet, educator, and essayist Bill (W.D.) Ehrhart joins our podcast to discuss his new collection, “Getting Shot At: Essays on War, Conflict and Culture Clash.” Drawing on more than fifty years of writing and activism, Ehrhart reflects on how Vietnam shattered his belief in American good intentions and how that disillusionment informs his sharp, plain-spoken essays on U.S. militarism, culture wars, and historical amnesia. The conversation ranges from controversial poems and “snowflake” politics on both the left and the right to the corrosive impact of technology on education and to his relationships with truth-tellers like Daniel Ellsberg and H. Bruce Franklin. Thoughtful, funny, and unsparing, this episode is essential listening for anyone trying to understand how past wars shape our present conflicts—and what it means to keep telling the truth in a country that keeps trying to forget.

 

About Bill Ehrhart

Bill Ehrhart was born in Pennsylvania in 1948 and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps straight out of high school, serving 13 months in Vietnam during some of the war’s heaviest fighting. After returning home, he became one of the most widely recognized Vietnam veteran poets, publishing numerous collections of poetry, several volumes of memoir—including “Vietnam-Perkasie” and “Passing Time”—and multiple books of essays on war, politics, and American culture. Ehrhart earned a Ph.D. in American Studies and spent decades teaching, most notably at the Haverford School, where his work in the classroom paralleled his public writing as a critic of U.S. militarism and historical myth-making. His poems and essays are known for their plain-spoken language, narrative clarity, and unflinching moral engagement, qualities that have led scholars and fellow writers to describe him as “the dean of Vietnam War poetry” and a persistent voice of conscience.

 

Order the book: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/getting-shot-at/

       

Bill’s Website: https://wdehrhart.com/

Follow Bill online:
LA Progressive: https://www.laprogressive.com/author/w-d-ehrhart 
The New Hampshire Gazette: https://www.nhgazette.com/author/w-d-ehrhart/ 

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

 

#W.D.Ehrhart#BillEhrhart#GettingShotAt#EssaysonWarConflictandCultureClash#Vietnam#veteranpoet#VietnamWarliterature#Antiwarveteran#Progressivepolitics#U.S.militarism#DanielEllsbergPentagonPapers#BruceFranklinVietnammyth#Snowflakeculture#Free#Technologyandeducation#Warmemoirandessays#LAProgressivewriter#NewHampshireGazette#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

In this episode, our guest is Chris Smalls, discussing his new book, “When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class.” Smalls, best known as the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, led the first successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in the United States.

Smalls traces his path from growing up working class in Hackensack, New Jersey, to becoming a warehouse worker and supervisor at Amazon, leading a COVID walkout over unsafe conditions, and being fired and smeared from the very top of the company. From there, we get into the nuts and bolts of how a small group of workers with a shoe-string budget, a table at the bus stop, and a lot of persistence built enough trust and solidarity to beat a trillion-dollar corporation at its own facility. Along the way, we talk about the broken NLRB, Amazon’s years long strategy of appeals to avoid bargaining, and why Smalls believes strikes and independent, worker led organizing are the only way to force the company to negotiate in good faith.

We conclude our conversation with Smalls connecting his fight at the fulfillment warehouse to a broader internationalist politics, talking about meeting Amazon workers and militant unions in Europe and tying Amazon and Google’s cloud and AI contracts for the Israeli military directly to the same surveillance infrastructure used on workers at home. He’s candid about the cost of taking a public stand for Palestine including lost followers, speaking invitations, even a potential movie deals—and about how quickly liberal politicians and union leadership disappear when a labor struggle becomes explicitly anti-imperialist. If you’re interested in what serious, unapologetic working-class politics looks like in practice, you will enjoy this conversation.

 

About Chris Smalls

Chris Smalls (born July 4, 1988) is an American labor organizer and prominent voice for worker rights, racial justice, and economic democracy.  He has been widely profiled in major media outlets and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, while continuing to support union drives and picket lines.

Order the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724036/when-the-revolution-comes-by-chris-smalls/

Chris’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris.smalls_/

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#AmazonLaborUnion#ChrisSmalls#WhentheRevolutionComes#labormovement#labororganizing#Amazonunion#Amazonwarehouse#JFK8#AmazonStatenIsland#ProjectNimbus#Palestinesolidarity#COVIDwhistleblower#JeffBezos#unionbusting#NLRB#DemocraticPartyandlabor#anticapitalism#Times100ChrisSmalls#radicalpolitics#Teamsters#Palestineandlabor#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

In this episode, we feature historian Sven Beckert discussing his sweeping new book, “Capitalism: A Global History.” We dig into how capitalism emerged over the last thousand years, why it’s not just “markets” but a specific, historically created social order, and how it became a genuinely global system built on “connected diversity” of labor regimes—from wage work and peasant farming to slavery and colonial extraction. Beckert explains the crucial role of state power, empire, and the countryside in capitalism’s rise, and traces how different historical phases—mercantile, industrial, and neoliberal—have reshaped our world. We also talk about capitalism’s dual legacy of technological dynamism and staggering inequality, and why “denaturalizing” capitalism matters for how we think about today’s crises, from inequality to climate change.

If you’re interested in the history of capitalism, global political economy, or the roots of our current social order, this conversation offers an accessible big‑picture overview from an author recognized as one of the world's leading scholars on the history of global capitalism, 19th-century United States history, and labor.

 

About Sven Beckert

Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University and one of the leading historians of capitalism working today. Born in Germany and trained in history, economics, and political science before earning his PhD at Columbia University, Beckert’s research focuses on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States and from a global perspective. He is the author of the widely acclaimed “Empire of Cotton: A Global History”—winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. At Harvard, Beckert co-chairs the Program on the Study of Capitalism and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, teaches courses on American and global capitalism, and has helped lead major projects on the university’s historical ties to slavery, while receiving numerous honors and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Order the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541160/capitalism-by-sven-beckert/

Sven’s Website: https://www.svenbeckert.com/  

Sven’s Substack: https://substack.com/@svenbeckert

Greg’s book review on MLToday: https://mltoday.com/thinking-about-capitalism/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#SvenBeckert#CapitalismAGlobalHistory#capitalismhistory#historyofcapitalism#globalcapitalism#economichistory#politicaleconomy#laborhistory#EmpireofCotton#industrialcapitalism#mercantilecapitalism#neoliberalism#globalization#globaltrade#slaveryandcapitalism#colonialism#connecteddiversity#Harvardhistorian#workingclasshistory#capitalismandinequality#capitalismanddemocracy#capitalismandclimatechange#worldhistory#Marxisthistory#criticaltheory#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday

Les Leopold’s new book, “The Billionaires Have Two Parties – We Need a Party of Our Own,” starts from a simple claim: Republicans and Democrats alike have become instruments of the billionaire class, while working people are left with no real political home.

On Coming From Left Field, Leopold walks through the economic history behind that argument, from deindustrialization and NAFTA to Wall Street’s “financial strip mining” of communities through mass layoffs and stock buybacks. He highlights places like Mingo County, West Virginia—once a New Deal Democratic and union stronghold—where coal jobs collapsed, no serious public reconstruction ever arrived, and the opioid industry filled the vacuum as the only growth sector. In county after county across the Rust Belt and Appalachia, he and his co‑researchers found that rising mass layoffs map onto falling Democratic vote share; voters blame the party that was supposed to fight for them, not because of “wokeness,” but because Democrats abandoned New Deal‑style job guarantees and embraced a corporate‑first politics.

The heart of Leopold’s case, though, is that ordinary people are far readier for a bold working‑class program than the political class believes. In a 3,000‑person survey in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, he tested a fictional “Independent Workers Political Association” with a radical platform: a right to a job at a living wage (with the public sector stepping in if the private sector fails), a ban on compulsory layoffs at firms receiving government money, a genuinely livable minimum wage, and strong action against price‑gouging by pharmaceutical and food corporations. He expected fringe support; instead, 57% of voters backed the idea, only 18% opposed it, support was consistent across all four states, 40% of Trump voters said yes, and 70% of voters under 30 were on board. The same survey showed the Democratic label itself has become a liability: for identical populist platforms, “independent” candidates started about eight points ahead of “Democrats,” and in Ohio, the penalty for the Democratic label rose to roughly sixteen points.

For Leopold, the implication is clear: you cannot build a serious working‑class politics by trying to be “better Democrats” everywhere. Instead, his book calls for building a new “party of our own” from the ground up in deep‑red areas where Democrats barely exist—running independent working‑class candidates, pushing ballot initiatives like banning forced layoffs at firms on the public dime, and using labor‑rooted political education to turn widespread anger and insecurity into a coherent, independent working‑class movement.

 

About Les Leopold

Les Leopold is a longtime labor educator, author, and co‑founder of the Labor Institute, which has been training workers and union activists on economic and environmental issues since the 1970s. Raised in a working‑class family of war refugees, he studied at Oberlin College and earned a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton before working closely with visionary labor leader Tony Mazzocchi, a pioneer of the occupational safety movement and an early advocate of a Labor Party. Leopold is the author of several books, including “Runaway Inequality,” “How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour,” “Wall Street’s War on Workers,” and a biography of Mazzocchi, “The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor.” His work combines data‑driven political economy with on‑the‑ground organizing, aimed at helping working people.

Order the book: https://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Have-Parties-Need-Party/dp/B0GX77LK8B/

Website: The Labor Institute

Substack: https://lesleopold.substack.com/p/the-billionaires-have-two-parties-f10

Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ 

#LesLeopold#TheBillionairesHaveTwoParties#partyofourown#workingclasspolitics#laborpolitics#thirdpartymovement#independentworkingclassparty#deindustrialization#RustBeltworkers#MingoCountyWestVirginia#financialstripmining#stockbuybacks#guaranteedjobs#livingwagejobs#nocompulsorylayoffs#TonyMazzocchi#LaborPartyhistory#politicalrealignment#rightwingpopulism#economicinequality#workingclassvoters#newworkersparty#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday