Benjamin Y. Fong

I teach at Arizona State University, where I'm also associate director of its Center for Work & Democracy.

I run a Substack with Scott Jenkins called On the Seams devoted to labor and logistics.

I am also the host and producer of the Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO podcast (also on Jacobin Radio), an editor at Damage magazine, and the writer of numerous things linked below. You can reach me at benjamin.yenyi.fong ( at ) gmail ( dot ) com.

THE NEED FOR SPEED?

LARGE UNIT NLRB ELECTIONS

ALSO, THE USE OF MUNICIPAL PROCUREMENT STANDARDS!

DRUGS/ADDICTION

FDA rejects MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD treatment The Conversation, August 12, 2024

"Psilocybin legislation is helping psychedelic drugs make a comeback" The Conversation, August 2, 2024

"Who Deserves Amphetamines?" (a deep dive on America, ADHD, and amphetamines) The Point, August 18, 2023

"Moral Crusading is No Substitute for Mass Working-Class Politics" (on lessons from the Noble Experiment) Jacobin, July 14, 2023

"One or the Other" (a response to Leila Mechoui's review of Quick Fixes) Damage, October 26, 2023

"The Psychedelic Renaissance Is On the Verge of an Uneasy Enlightenment" Jacobin, August 7, 2022

"The Sex Addiction Rabbit Hole" Damage, May 26, 2021

"Knowledge is not Power: Why Cigarettes Still Appeal" Current Affairs, February 6, 2021

"Unfair Trade" (on coffee and modernity) The Outline, April 3, 2020

"Log Off" (yes, the internet is bad for you) Jacobin, November 29, 2018

"Inventing the Weekend" (oh, for Saint Monday) Jacobin, July 6, 2018

LABOR/WORK Labor's Gains? (on large-unit NLRB elections) Phenomenal World, September 4, 2024 "The Art of the Green New Deal" (on Jobs to Move America's use of public procurement to raise labor standards) Jacobin, May 19, 2024 "We Can't Foreclose Grubbing Analysis" (with Scott Jenkins, a response to Eric Blanc on workplace decentralization) Damage, February 14, 2024 "How Can Workers Organize Against Capital Today?" (a review of John Womack's Labor Power and Strategy) Catalyst, December 20, 2023 "Strategic Disruption" (against the "democratic politics vs. blowing things up" dichotomy) Damage, November 29, 2023 "You Should Know About Labor Leader John Brophy" Jacobin, March 25, 2023 Episode Pages + Bibliographies for Organize the Unorganized: Ep1: A New Giant of Labor Emerges Ep2: Industrial Workers Get Organized Ep3: Power at the Point of Production Ep4: The CIO's Culture of Unity Ep5: Steel and the Soul of Capitalism Ep6: From the Docks to the Killing Floors Ep7: War Ep8: Is There an Ending to the CIO? Ep9: Lessons Interviews for Organize the Unorganized: Jeremy Brecher | Robert Cherny | Dorothy Sue Cobble | Lizabeth Cohen | Peter Cole | David Brody | Melvyn Dubofsky | Steve Fraser | Rick Halpern | William Jones | Nelson Lichtenstein | Erik Loomis | Ruth Milkman | Daniel Nelson | Bryan Palmer | Lisa Phillips | Ahmed White | James Young POLITICS "The Jobs and Freedom Strategy" (on A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin's political program from 1963-1968) Catalyst, 7:2 (Summer 2023) "The Unfulfilled Promise of the Freedom Budget" (an interview with Norman Hill) Jacobin, August 1, 2023 "Toward a Socialist Minimalism" (on why we don't need to have strong opinions about everything) Damage, May 24, 2023 "Occupy in Retrospect" (with Christie Offenbacher, correcting the idea that Occupy Wall Street "led" to the Bernie Sanders moment) Catalyst, 5:4 (Winter 2022) "NGOism: The Politics of the Third Sector" (with Melissa Naschek, laying out the history of foundations/nonprofits in the US and their effects on politics) Catalyst, 5:1 (Spring 2021) The Green New Deal and the Future of Work (an edited volume with Craig Calhoun) Columbia University Press, 2022 "The New Deal Against the Environmentalists: A Review of Neil Maher's Nature's New Deal" New Politics, May 31, 2020 MISC "Odd Man Out" (on the decline of associational life in the United States and the fledgling attempts to rekindle it) Damage, Issue #2 (Spring 2024) "Teaching Racial Justice Isn't Racial Justice" The New York Times, November 18, 2020 "To Love and to Be Loved" (on an overlooked possibility in Freud's "Instincts and their Vicissitudes") European Journal of Psychoanalysis, December 9, 2022 "Monsters of the Brain, Images of the Deity: Psychology and Religion in the Eighteenth Century" The Journal of Religion (October 2018) "In Praise of the Berenstains" Damage, March 10, 2021 "Michelle Yeoh in the Multiverse of Me" (a review of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) Damage, July 7, 2022 Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism Columbia University Press, 2016 "Society, Regression, Psychoanalysis, or 'Capitalism is Responsible for your Problems with your Girlfriend': On the Use of Psychoanalysis in the Work of the Frankfurt School" (with Scott Jenkins) The Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Volume 2 (London: SAGE Publications, 2018): 952-969 "A Whole Climate of Critique: Psychoanalytic Politics Between Vitality and Obsolescence" (with Phillip Henry, a review essay exploring the historiography of psychoanalysis through Eli Zaretsky's Political Freud) Critical Historical Studies (Spring 2018) "Critical Attempts: Moishe Postone on Education" (an interview Jeremy Cohan and I did with the late great Moishe Postone) The Point, October 9, 2018 "On Pleasure" The Los Angeles Review of Books' Philosophical Salon, August 21, 2016