How Labor Is (Part of) the Problem in Building an American Left

Frances Fox Piven

Frances Fox Piven is a distinguished professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Her scholarship and activism have centered on social movements, electoral politics, and welfare policy. She received a B.A. in city planning from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has taught in the Columbia University School of Social Work and at Boston University, and has been on the faculty of the Graduate Center since 1982.

Piven’s Regulating the Poor (1972), co-authored with Richard Cloward, is a landmark historical and theoretical analysis of the role of welfare policy in the economic and political control of the poor and working class. Analyzing the historical roots of welfare, they argue that welfare rolls expand in response to mass disorder and electoral shifts. Piven has also co-authored Poor People’s Movements (1977), analyzing the dynamics of social insurgency, The New Class War (1982), The Mean Season (1987), The Breaking of the American Social Compact (1997), and Why Americans Don’t Vote (1998).

Professor Piven has served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is currently the Editorial Board Chair of the New Press, is a Left Forum board member, and is outgoing President of the American Sociological Association. Her most recent book is Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006).