David Ost is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Reform and Opposition in Poland Since 1968 and coeditor of Workers after Workers' States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. Ost also publishes articles in magazines including The Nation, Dissent, and Tikkun.
Ost goes against the grain, insisting that class is still a useful,
indeed vital, sociopolitical category and that the working class,
although usually among the losers in the transition from socialism
to capitalism, remains a necessary impetus, not an obstacle, to
democracy.
*Foreign Affairs*
Ost's book is personal, the result of repeated visits to Polish
factories and mines, real knowledge of Polish mental habits, and
familiarity with the abundant Polish sociological literature. It is
also the work of a man who once saw Solidarity as a possible
inspiration for the Western Left, and who has now come to see it
rather as a cautionary tale of globalization. Indeed, the argument
seems relevant in an American context, where the conservative
voting of patriotic workers is a cause of distress on the Left, and
perhaps dangerous to democracy.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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