My curiosity and concern about the working class in America stems from childhood memories of my father, a cabinetmaker, and of my oldest brother, an autoworker, who were passionately involved in the labor movement. Perhaps because they so wanted the working class to achieve greater social and economic justice and because they insisted it was not happening, I became curious to know the reasons why. Without even being aware of it, I began to explore a possible explanation-the internal diver­ sity of the working class. In my studies of autoworkers (the prototype proletarians) in the United States, Italy, Argentina, and India, I discovered that they seemed to be more divided economically, socially, and politically in the more eco­ nomically advanced countries-an idea that ran contrary to the evolution­ ary predictions of my Marxist friends. When I reported this in Blue-Collar Stratification (1976), I was surprised that some of them who were commit­ ted to an ideology of working-class solidarity attacked the hypothesis because it ran against their convictions.

Change and Decline.- Explaining Labor's Political Fortunes.- Can a Class Theory of Labor Politics Be Saved?.- Labor as a Changing Social Class.- Labor's Changing and Turbulent Environment.- All Politics Is Local.- Labor Politics in Three Cities.- Economy, Politics, and Labor in Three Cities.- Cleveland.- Cincinnati.- Columbus.- Labor-Party Relations in Three Cities.- Labor, Community, and State Politics.- Labor in National Politics.- Bargaining in the Democratic Party.- Labor Politics in Washington.- Organizational Reform or Movement Revival?.