About

Eric Blanc is an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. He holds a Ph.D. from New York University. His research focuses on new workplace organizing, digital labor activism, strikes, and working-class politics. Blanc is the author of the forthcoming book 'We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big,' which analyzes the growth of worker-to-worker organizing in the United States since early 2020. He has also authored 'Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics' and 'Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire, 1882-1917.' His research has been published in various academic journals and mainstream outlets such as The Nation, The Guardian, and Jacobin. A longtime organizer in public education and labor movements, Blanc is involved in training through the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee and serves as the director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Political economy
• Law
• Economics
• Sociology
• Keynesian economics
• Labour economics
• Archaeology
• Art
• History
• Economic history
• Aesthetics
• Geography

Selected publications

• Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917)

  2021 · 23 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  "This groundbreaking study rediscovers the socialists of Tsarist Russia's imperial borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of working-class politics, the Russian Revolution, and Second International socialism. Based on archival research in eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy is the first comparative account of the numerous socialist parties that fought for democracy and workers' power across the entire span of the Russian Empire, from the factories of Warsaw, to the oil fields of Baku, to the autonomous parliament of Finland. By demonstrating that the Russian Revolution was far less Russian than commonly assumed, Eric Blanc challenges long-held assumptions of historians, sociologists, and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change under autocratic and democratic conditions."

  DOI

• Breaking the Law: Strike Bans and Labor Revitalization in the Red State Revolt

  Labor Studies Journal · 2020 · 15 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  A comparative analysis of the early 2018 statewide educators’ strikes in West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma illustrates the viability of a relatively neglected prescription for revitalizing organized labor: illegal strike action. Whereas the West Virginia and Arizona walkouts successfully ignored legal prohibitions on striking and won major concessions from the state, Oklahoma’s action was less successful in part because it remained on the terrain of legality. The experience of these three actions indicates that rank-and-file workers, union officials, and labor scholars should reconsider the labor movement’s prevailing strategy of working within the law.

  DOI

• The Red for Ed Movement, Two Years In

  New Labor Forum · 2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Keynesian economics
  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lois Weiner

  New Jersey City University

  1 shared

• Kate Griffiths

  1 shared

• Tithi Bhattacharya

  Purdue University System

  1 shared

• Barry Eidlin

  McGill University

  1 shared

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