Overview

Bureaucratic labor unions are under assault. Most unions have surrendered the achievements of the mid-twentieth century, when the working class was a militant force for change throughout the world. Now trade unions seem incapable of defending, let alone advancing, workers' interests. As unions implode and weaken, workers are independently forming their own unions, drawing on the tradition of syndicalism and autonomism-a resurgence of self-directed action that augurs a new period of class struggle throughout the world. In Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, workers are rejecting leaders and forming authentic class-struggle unions rooted in sabotage, direct action, and striking to achieve concrete gains. This is the first book to compile workers' struggles on a global basis, examining the formation and expansion of radical unions in the Global South and Global North. The tangible evidence marshaled in this book serves as a handbook for understanding the formidable obstacles and concrete opportunities for workers challenging neoliberal capitalism, even as the unions of the old decline and disappear. Contributors include Au Loong-Yu, Bai Ruixue, Shawn Hattingh, Piotr Bizyukov, Irina Olimpieva, Genese M. Sodikoff, Aviva Chomsky, Dario Bursztyn, Gabriel Kuhn, Erik Forman, Steven Manicastri, Arup Kumar Sen, Verity Burgmann, Ray Jureidini, Meredith Burgmann, and Jack Kirkpatrick.

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9781604869569

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[...] Received concepts and theories of class, class struggle, economic democracy, workers' power, socialism and communism are being reexamined and changed to meet the practical needs and conditions of anticapitalist struggle now. Immanuel Ness's new volume documents some dramatic new projects of self-conscious class struggle around the world. --Richard D. Wolff, DemocracyAtWork.info

Author Information

Immanuel Ness is a political economist who specializes in labor unions and a professor of political science at City University of New York. He is the editor of WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society and author of numerous works including Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism. He was a worker and union organizer in the food, maintenance, and publishing industries. He lives in New York City. Staughton Lynd taught American history at Spelman College and Yale University. He was director of Freedom Schools in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. He is the author or coauthor of From Here to There, Labor Law for the Rank & Filer, Lucasville, Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks, and Wobblies & Zapatistas. He lives in Youngstown, Ohio.

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