Meiksins Wood (1942-2016) placed class analysis at the center of her work and opposed the rejection of working class revolution promoted by Ernesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe and the New “True” Socialists (NTS). She taught political science at York University in Toronto, Canada for many years.
Revolutionary socialism has traditionally placed the working class and its struggles at the heart of social transformation and the building of socialism … as a conclusion based upon a comprehensive analysis of social relations and power, …. based on the historical-materialist principle which places the relations of production at the centre of social life and regards their exploitative character as the root of social and political oppression. … The proposition that the working class is potentially the revolutionary class is an extension of these materialist principles … The working class is the social group with the most direct objective interest in bringing about the transition to socialism … The working class is the one class whose interests do not rest on the oppression of other classes. /> From the Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader, p. 282.
