Acceptable Men
Life in the Largest Steel Mill in the World
by Noel Ignatiev
A Memoir
introduction by David Ranney
Publication Date: July 2021
Paperback: $12.00
Buy from AK Press
Now available as an audiobook from Audible
“In an age where a significant portion of the national workforce has been warehoused because of capital flight, technological innovation and now a pandemic virus, Ignatiev’s memoir is a must-read.”—John E. Higginson, author of Collective Violence and the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid 1900–1948
In the 1960s and '70s, class struggle surged in U.S. industrial cities. Many leftists joined these struggles by going to work in the nation’s factories; among them was Noel Ignatiev. He labored in different factories during this period, and this memoir came from his experiences as an electrician in the blast furnace division of U.S. Steel Gary Works. His first-hand account reveals the day-to-day workings of white supremacy, patriarchy, and the exploitation of labor. More so, though, we see the seeds of a new society sown in the workers’ on-the-job resistance. The stories Noel tells are gripping and humorous—and at times will bring you to tears.
Further Reading
Every purchase of Acceptable Men comes with a 40% discount on Facing Reality and The Lesson of the Hour. These select works heavily influenced Noel Ignatiev. Use the check out code KERR, and read them—as they are meant to be—in conversation.
Facing Reality
The New Society: Where to Look for it & How to Bring it Closer
Paperback: $16.00
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Noel Ignatiev was heavily influenced by the politics of C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian scholar, revolutionary, and activist from the 1930s through 1980s. A key aspect of James’s ideas was that the new socialist society exists in the experience and actions of the working class in this society. In Facing Reality, which James wrote with Cornelius Castoriadis and Grace Lee, he developed this idea in relation to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In conclusion, James wrote: “[The revolutionary organization’s] task is to recognize and record. It can do this only by plunging into the great mass of people and meeting the new society that is there.” That is how Noel saw his task as a steelworker and in everything else.
The Lesson of the Hour
Wendell Phillips on Abolition & Strategy
Buy from AK Press (Paperback: $12)
Buy from AK Press (Hardcover: $28)
Noel Ignatiev believed that those designated as “white” can contribute to the new society by casting off white skin privileges and joining the ranks of race traitors. The most inspiring of race traitors historically included the abolitionists who actively opposed slavery in the US. Of utmost importance to Noel was Wendell Phillips. For this reason, Noel wrote the introduction to the Charles H. Kerr edition of Wendell Phillips’s The Lesson of the Hour.
From PM Press
Living and Dying on the Factory Floor:
From the Outside in and the Inside Out
Paperback: $15.00
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David Ranney’s vivid memoir describes his work experiences between 1976 and 1982 in the factories of southeast Chicago and northwest Indiana. The book opens with a detailed description of what it was like to live and work in one of the heaviest industrial concentrations in the world. The author takes the reader on a walk through the heart of the South Side of Chicago, observing the noise, heavy traffic, the 24-hour restaurants and bars, the rich diversity of people on the streets at all hours of the day and night, and the smell of the highly polluted air.
“Apart from its merits as literature—it made me laugh and weep—Dave’s account of and reflections upon his experience working in the southeast Chicago/northwest Indiana region is valuable to young activists for at least three reasons: 1) It provides information about the nature and significance of the point of production to a generation that has no more knowledge of what it was like than would a Martian. 2) It offers an example of persistence to a generation that tends to measure commitment in days or weeks rather than years or a lifetime. 3) It shows the possibility of personal transformation, both in those like Dave who set out consciously to change the world and in those he met in the course of his efforts to do so—transformation which is, after all, the whole point.”
—Noel Ignatiev, author of Acceptable Men