Class conflict, frequently referred to as class warfare or class struggle, is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes.

Class conflict can take many different forms: direct violence, such as wars fought for resources and cheap labor; indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty, starvation, illness or unsafe working conditions; coercion, such as the threat of losing a job or pulling an important investment; or ideology, either intentionally (as with books and articles promoting capitalism or anti-capitalism) or unintentionally (as with the promotion of consumerism through advertising). Additionally, political forms of class conflict exist. legally or illegally lobbying or bribing government leaders for passage of partisan desirable legislation including labor laws, tax codes, consumer laws, acts of congress or other sanction, injunction or tariff. The conflict can be open, as with a lockout aimed at destroying a labor union, or hidden, as with an informal slowdown in production protesting low wages or unfair labor practices.

Robert Bernard Reich ( /ˈraɪʃ/; born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC's Kudlow & Company, and APM's Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers". He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.

William Galston is a political theorist. He is the Saul I Stern Professor of Civic Engagement and the director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park. In addition, he is a Senior Fellow of Governance at the Brookings Institution. He was also a senior adviser to President of the United States Bill Clinton on domestic policy, and has also been employed by the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Walter Mondale. Since 1995, Galston has served as a founding member of the Board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and as chair of the Campaign's Task Force on Religion and Public Values. He previously taught in the department of Government at the University of Texas-Austin.

In political philosophy, Galston has written influential works on political pluralism and on domestic policy issues in liberal society.

Galston was a student of classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss.

Ralph Nader ( /ˈneɪdər/; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.

Nader is a six-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.

Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon and members of the Maronite Church. His family's native language is Arabic, and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson (born 18 April 1964) is a British historian. His speciality is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.

Ferguson, who was born in Glasgow, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He was educated at the private Glasgow Academy in Scotland, and at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Ferguson's books include Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Civilization: The West and the Rest, all of which he has also presented as Channel 4 television series.

In 2004 he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. He is currently^[when?] a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He is currently^[when?] working on the official biography of Henry Kissinger to whom he has been granted unprecedented access.

Ferguson was born the son of a doctor father and a physics teacher mother in Glasgow on 18 April 1964, and lived for a time near Ibrox Park. He attended The Glasgow Academy.^{[citation needed]}