Stanley Aronowitz Made Time for Anyone Who Wanted to Think Beyond Capitalism
Stanley Aronowitz, who died last month at age 88, brought people together for critical, imaginative thinking not limited to narrow topics or narrow approaches. You didn’t have to be credentialed or famous to get his attention — you just had to want a better world.
Stanley Aronowitz’s life was about making alternative spaces for thinking. (Verso)
As a young leftist, I read everything I could find by Stanley Aronowitz. Then one day, I wrote to him. I was about to take a job as a union researcher, but I felt like I should go back to school. I wanted his advice.
He wrote right back and said to call him. We ended up talking for hours. We talked about the book on education he was working on at the time, Against Schooling. We talked about Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life. We talked about what it would take for the labor movement to have its own schools and media.
Stanley didn’t have to talk to me. I wasn’t his student. I had no position or title. My only credential was the desire to think about how another world was possible and how we would win it.
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