Collaborating with the council's president, Aronowitz cowrote New Jersey's unemployment compensation law, subsequently enacted by the state legislature in 1961.

His work with the Industrial Union Council led to Aronowitz's appointment as director of the organizing and boycott department of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

He engaged in lunch counter sit-ins and gave speeches on the labor movement's behalf to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee on the confluence of African-American civil rights and economic issues.

Through his work in civil rights, Aronowitz secured the role of labor coordinator, appointed by Bayard Rustin, on the planning committee of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1962–3.

With Fredric Jameson and John Brenkman, he was a founding editor of Duke University's Social Text, a journal that is subtitled "Theory, Culture, Ideology".

[11] In that article, he stated that with this publication, "Our objective was to interrogate Marxists' habitual separation of political economy and culture and to make a contribution to their articulation, even reunification."

Described as "The Anti-Candidate, Out To Anger The Rich" by the New York Times, he said of his campaign "My job is to start a public conversation, to show voters they have a choice and to get enough of a vote so we can stay on the ballot and speak out."

[citation needed] In 1969, Aronowitz, Jeremy Brecher, Paul Mattick Jr., and Peter Rachleff, began sporadically publishing a magazine and pamphlet series called Root & Branch.