It’s hard to get nostalgic about a time when Jim Crow was still in force, abortion was illegal, and the Vietnam war seemed to be spawning mini-civil wars all over the West. And whatever was best about the 1960s was as much hype as reality; working people and the poor were certainly no better off. But I am almost nostalgic when I read a piece like, “Why Do Students Drop Out? Because They Must Work at Jobs Too.” Is it possible to be nostalgic for an idea that never really became real?

It was a privilege of a small group of the middle to upper middle class, mostly white, but for a moment in the U.S. we seemed…

The goal of capitalist economics is finding ways to increase the profitability of capital. A socialist or humanist economics, in contrast, has improving the quality of human life as it’s main goal. Similarly, a capitalist sociology is focused on research that facilitates capital accumulation and profits. There’s a lot to recomend in James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee’s recent piece, “Using technology to improve workforce collaboration,” but in the end, it’s limited by it’s capitalist focus.

Even in the most superficial sense, for example, the writer’s class biases are obvious. Their definition of a ‘knowledge worker’ for example, seems very focused on the middle to upper professional classes, rather than on, say, nurse, police officers or firefighters (to cite…