Activist-scholar Kim Moody has produced another fantastic study. One of the founders of the essential rank-and-file newspaper Labor Notes, Moody has spent decades establishing himself as a clear-eyed analyst of labor politics, drawing our attention to the multiple problems that have plagued the union movement over the last several decades: employers, right-wing politicians, establishment liberalism's limitations, and the deradicalizing and often undemocratic actions of labor leaders. Until now Moody, the author of a handful of influential books, including the classic An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (1988), has focused mostly on the decades after World War II, highlighting examples of struggles from below in the face of various forms of capitalist exploitation. He has offered useful lessons about what has and has not worked. Unlike others, Moody has not succumbed to the belief, popular in many academic and trade union circles, that liberal establishment forces, especially...
