The man who confronted me in the bowling alley was a delivery truck driver, doing menial labor at low wages. He obviously had been poor as a child. Yet he hated the poorest and most exploited of workers. He had been led to believe that black people are the lowest of the low, and since he grew up with them, he must be contemptible himself. This filled him with shame….His hatred transformed shame into superiority, a feeling encouraged by other whites, not least of whom were employers who used racism to drive a wedge between those whose alliance would be most dangerous to their power.

* where Yates is most effective is discussing the thing he knows best: our educational system and its pivotal role in capitalism. Schools, all the way up through universities, are not places where students are asked to be the best they can be and to think creatively, strategically, and imaginatively. As Yates points out, the “market” for that kind of student is small, and there are already enough of them (coming out of schools dominated by the bourgeoisie) to fill the existing number of jobs that require high levels of skill. Rather,

schools are essentially purveyors of misinformation and promoters of behavior consistent with the requirements of the economic system. What business leaders want is people who will work harder for less money and keep their mouths shut….When we examine the so-called education crisis with a critical eye, we see that the schools have not failed. They are doing what they have always done, preparing people for a lifetime of thoughtless work and consumption.

Yates explores at the personal level how the real mission of schools deeply affects educational workers (teachers). In the essay “Two Sick Children,” we see how university professors apply capitalist standards in a most hideous and mean way.

The disconnect of the situation is mind boggling on a number of levels. Although the Pittsburgh teachers union stood up for its members’ civil liberties on the job, here was a teacher oppressing civil liberties, demanding that his students demonstrate patriotism in a country that has systemically oppressed folks of African descent since its inception. Such is the power of hegemony in capitalism’s inner sanctum; people act in ways opposite from their real needs.

Antonio Gramsci trying to figure out why there was no sustained revolutionary activity in Italy. Police oppression couldn’t explain it all. Most troubling was the inability of the northern urban workers and southern peasants to unite to defeat capitalism and fascism. Gramsci’s works on these obstacles to revolution are the foundation for exploring hegemonic rule from the Marxist perspective. Befitting its author, the essays of In and Out of the Working Class add up to the ABCs of hegemony in the U.S. context. Yates proves one of Gramsci’s most important insights—every revolution needs its “organic intellectuals.”† They are the “whalebone of the corset.” Gramsci would certainly be proud.

† Organic intellectuals are those thinkers of working-class origin who don’t move up and out of the class, but stay with it and use their gifts to help build for working-class power and revolution.

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