Since the publication of False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness in 1973, Stanley Aronowitz has been one of the most important left critics of the official US labor movement. His latest book, The Death and Life of American Labor, builds on and synthesizes much of this previous work, and is a provocative contribution to discussions of the road out of organized labor’s current crisis.

At the core of The Death and Life of American Labor is a powerful critique of “bureaucratic business unionism” — the strategy of the US labor officialdom. This strategy, which became dominant in the insurgent industrial unions during the Second World War, rests on three key pillars.

First is the reliance on routine collective bargaining and the grievance procedure for the improvement and defense of the wages, benefits, and working conditions for the membership of their unions. Put simply, the most important industrial unions gave up contesting control over the labor process and recognized capital’s “right to manage” after the war.