Judith Stein — who passed away on May 8 — left behind a body of work that stands as a model of uncompromising historical scholarship, as well as a compelling guide to politics today.

The broad sweep of her publications was impressive. She wrote insightfully about the political economy of Booker T. Washington, the class politics of the Garvey movement, the fate of the steel industry, the origins of neoliberalism, and most recently the politics of globalization. At every point Stein cut through the mystifications of economic orthodoxy and resisted the turn towards culture and the politics of identity.

Political economy and class conflict were her organizing premises, but for Stein that meant digging down into the nitty-gritty of political history rather than peering upward toward the abstract tendencies of the capitalist system.