Free Republic

This Labour Day, I thought about the working class, the masses. No, honestly, I did. Okay, I was on the beach, but the folks around me lying on the sand had jobs they'll be getting back to this morning. They worked. They would be classed as workers. But they're not a homogeneous "working class," they're not conscripts in Karl Marx's "masses." The transformation of Labour Day, from a celebration of workers' solidarity to a cook-out, is the perfect precis of the history of Anglo-American capitalism. If you want to see what "the masses" are meant to look like, buy a...

Wal-Mart faces a class-action lawsuit that claims it knew full well its cleaning contractors were hiring illegal immigrants, paying them slave wages and locking them inside the stores at night. All in the name of everyday cheap prices by Brita Brundage - December 23, 2004 Wal-Mart. That boxy behemoth with its neatly stacked rows of toilet paper and DVDs, trampolines and hooded sweatshirts, cheese balls and wrapping paper. With its employees wearing the signature bright-blue smocks emblazoned with sunny yellow smiley faces. Here, shoppers push carts piled high with discount electronics, cookies and XXL T-shirts along endless waxed aisles that...