Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day is not Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most renowned work, but it’s certainly the legendary German filmmaker’s most politically sophisticated.

The five-part television series revolves around a cast of working-class characters in Cologne: the young toolmaker Jochen, his coworkers, his family, and his girlfriend, Marion. Over the course of the series, the factory workers, led by the popular Jochen with encouragement from the inquisitive and principled Marion, grow increasingly determined to assert control over the production process and take a bigger share of the profits.

The series aired on West German public television in the fall of 1972. Millions of people who watched it for the tender portrayal of its characters’ personal lives were also treated to debates like the following, in which Marion leads Jochen and his coworker Rolf to a conclusion lifted straight out of the Communist Manifesto.