Book | Economic Growth

The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future, and What It Will Take to Win

The Global Class War

January 2006 | A Wiley book

The Global Class War

How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future?and What It Will Take to Win It Back

by Jeff Faux

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News releaseAcrobat (PDF)

The Global Class War fact sheet Acrobat (PDF)

Jeff Faux’s scheduled appearances.

Why is America’s governing class so indifferent to the fate of its people? In his provocative new book, The Global Class War, economist Jeff Faux argues that now that they can find workers and investment opportunities elsewhere, America’s rich and powerful are abandoning the social contract that until recently had united the economic interests of all Americans.

Faux explains how globalization is creating a new global political elite?”The Party of Davos”?who have more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens. Their so-called trade agreements (like NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization act as a global constitution that protects only one kind of citizen?the corporate investor. The inevitable result will be a drop in American living standards that will have dramatic political consequences. Faux concludes with an original strategy for bringing democracy to the global economy beginning with a social contract for North America.

This book, a Foreign Affairs bestseller, is already in its third printing.

Comments About the Book

“Globalization is a cover for American imperialism, but the beneficiaries are not the American people at the expense of foreigners but corporate executives at the expense of working class and poor people wherever they may be. Jeff Faux offers a comprehensive and devastating analysis.”
-Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire

“Faux is clearly correct that the balance of power between labor and capital has shifted dramatically. Today, investment capital moves at blinding speed, while labor still must go by boat, train and plane?and that’s if it’s lucky.”
-Michael Hirsh, The New York Times

“A persuasive and revealing framework for understanding globalization in terms of class. It’s a much-needed corrective to the way in which most news about the changing world economy is viewed, usually through a free market fundamentalist or, less frequently, a nationalist lens.”
-David Moberg, In These Times

“Incisive, rancorous?with a fluid grasp of both history and economics, Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, critiques both Democrats and Republicans for protecting transnational corporations “while abandoning the rest of us to an unregulated, and therefore brutal and merciless, global market.””
Publishers Weekly

“Jeff Faux’s astonishing story of how class works will scandalize the best names in Wall Street and Washington. Even the most cynical Americans will be shocked by the sordid details. This really is an important book.”
-William Greider, author of Secrets of the Temple

“You will never think about ‘free trade’ the same way after reading Jeff Faux’s superb book. As Faux makes clear, the globalization debate is really about whose interests are served by global elites, and how we need to go about reclaiming a democracy that serves ordinary people. This book should transform public discourse in America.”
-Robert Kuttner, founding coeditor of The American Prospect and a contributing columnist to Business Week

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1: NAFTA: Class Reunion
Chapter 2: “Good Jobs” and Other Global Deceptions
Chapter 3: The Governing Class: America’s Worst-Kept Secret
Chapter 4: How Reagan and Thatcher Stole Globalization
Chapter 5: A Bipartisan Empire
Chapter 6: Alan, Larry, and Bob Save the Privileged
Chapter 7: NAFTA: Who Got What?
Chapter 8: The Constitution According to Davos
Chapter 9: America Abandoned
Chapter 10: After the Fall
Chapter 11: Imagining North America
Chapter 12:Toward, and Beyond, a Continental Democracy

Scheduled Appearances

Monday, October 16, from 7:00-8:30 PM
Public Lecture?The Global Class War
Wayne State University
Bernath Auditorium, WSU Undergraduate Library
5155 Gullen Mall
Detroit, MI
For More Information: Labor Studies Center, (313) 577-2191

Friday, June 23 at 11 AM
Speaking at Americans for Democratic Action convention
Gallaudet University
Washington DC

Tuesday, March 7 from 6:00 to 7:30 PM
Book talk — The Party of Davos: How Globalization Has Reshaped American Politics
New School University
Wollman Hall
5th Floor, 65 West 11th Street
Enter through: 66 West 12th Street (Cross the courtyard)
RSVP 212-229-5808 ext 1 or wpi@newschool.edu

Tuesday, March 7 at Noon
Book talk
Demos Forum
220 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10001

Thursday, February 16 at 5 PM
Speaking at Facing Hawai?i?s Future: A Gathering for the Common Good
Harris United Methodist Church
Honolulu, Hawaii

Monday, February 13 at 7:30 PM
Black Oak Books
1491 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94709

Monday, February 13 at 12:30 PM
Cody’s Bookstore
2 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

Saturday, February 4 at 6 PM
Politics and Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008

ISBN: 0-471-69761-3
$27.95 US / $35.99 CAN
Available wherever books are sold, including Powell’s Books and Amazon.

Related Articles

Flat Note from the Pied Piper of Globalization  Jeff Faux reviews Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat.

Partying at Davos  This commentary originally appeared in CommonDreams.org on Monday, January 23, 2006

The Party of Davos  This article is in the February 13, 2006 issue of The Nation

The Democrats’ opportunity: Are they ready?  This article appeared in the winter 2006 issue of Dissent magazine

Defining a progressive economic strategy for America’s future  Jeff Faux joined former White House economic adviser Gene Sperling to discuss their differing economic strategies for Democrats and progressives in this February 2006 debate.


See related work on Economic Growth

See more work by Jeff Faux