Written: 1942/1943
Published: 1947
Transcribed and edited by: Chris Gilligan, October 2025.
Background: Transcribed from the copy available at the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection [External Site]. Was written as part of an intended publication originally titled The Nature of the Russian Economy. The Workers' Party published the first part of the manuscript, which was published as 'An Analysis of the Russian Economy' in The New International in three installments (December 1942 to February 1943). 'Labor and Society' remained unpublished until mimeographed by the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the 'Interim Period' (latter half of 1947).Dunayevskaya identified 'Labor and Society' as the place where she first brought Marx's Humanist Essays (the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which she was the first to translate into English, from the Russian translation) into the development of the State-Capitalist Tendency.
I – The Concept of Labor
1) – Labor in Class Societies
2) – Labor in Socialist Society
II – The Concept of Property
III – Plans and Accomplishments
B: THE ROLE OF LABOR IN A WORKERS STATE
I – The Party and the Trade Unions
II – II. Lenin, Trotsky and Shlyapnikov
1) – Trotsky's Position
2) – Lenin's Reply
3) – Shlyapnikov's Position
4) – Lenin, the Realist
III – The Trade Unions and the NEP
IV – The International Market and the Isolated State
Last updated on 09 January 2026