Having established what happened to unions in Kenya and the role of capitalism in their weakening and eventual co-optation, we move on to imagining what unions can look like in today's conditions.

To begin, we highlight a concept rooted in historical recurrence, initially highlighted by Marx and Engels: dialectical materialism. At its core, dialectical materialism is about the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital. We situate the history of labor union activism in Kenya within this tug; careful not to regurgitate the oft-repeated myth that history simply repeats itself.

It is indeed true that there are recurrent themes within history but even as these themes repeat themselves, they usually unfold each time differently because both capital and labor are ever-evolving—moving unidirectionally and never backward as they try to outdo each other.

With this knowledge in mind, how then can we re-imagine unions in today's working conditions? What do unions look like outside of the factory floors they were built on? And, what forms of solidarity are being built by workers in spaces that do not allow for formal union organization? We try to answer these questions drawing from examples across the world and at home—from Starbucks Workers United, which is teaching us how to organize in the precarious employment conditions of the hospitality industry, to the Dhobi women of Mathare, who are coming together outside of formal unions in quasi-cooperatives to help each other meet needs not fulfilled by the state or their employers.

By doing this, we hope to "demystify" the history of the labor movement as it has unfolded in the country—to remind the working class that they exist within a long lineage of resistance by those who pulled the tug against capital here and worldwide. And in knowing that the fights of today are part of a long tradition of a battle between labor and capital and that we, workers, have turned the tides before by banding together, we hope listeners come out with a sense of revolutionary optimism that we can change our material conditions.