Inflation and the fight against it is on the public agenda today in a way not seen since the 1970s. Adolph Reed Jr. leads a discussion with Sam Gindin and Samir Sonti, on what inflation means for the working class, and why anti-inflation policies have often come at the expense of workers. We also look at how this round of inflation is different, how we should fight it and what inflation means for bargaining union contracts.
- Sam Gindin is former research director of the Canadian Auto Workers and co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire.
- Adolph Reed, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives. Follow his podcasts at Class Matters.
- Samir Sonti has worked as a union organizer in the US and now teaches at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies. He has written for Jacobin, New Labor Forum, and many others.
- All three have essays in the current Socialist Register 2022: New Polarizations, Old Contradictions: The Crisis of Centrism.
Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor and author of several books on the relationship between class and racism. His writing and opinion pieces have appeared on academic and popular journals and magazines including The Progressive, The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, and nonsite.org, of which he is an editorial board member. Professor Reed served on the board of Public Citizen Inc., was a member of the Interim National Council of the Labor Party, and is currently on the boards of Food and Water Action and the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute (DJDI), serving as a regular on its Class Matters podcast
Sam Gindin spent most of his working life (1974-2000) as the research director of and then Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers. He then led a seminar on Social Justice and Political activism at York (which was also open to community activists). He is currently writing a book with Leo Panitch on the making of global capitalism and active in community-labour education and organizing through the Socialist Project (a group desperately trying to keep socialist ideas alive).
