Customer Reviews

Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

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In response to various theorists and historians who claim that labor has very little role to play in creating a better world, Silver's book is an attempt to say that the labor movement is not dead. She by no means is looking to the US or various European labor movements to save the world but instead, by locating labor and capital in a world-historical perspective Silver is able to argue that auto workers in the global south are today strategically located in the same place auto workers in Detroit were located in the 1930s. Her basic argument is that wherever capital relocates, workers are then proletarianized, and organized working class resistance begins. She does an excellent job of illustrating that capital has always been mobile, and that through spatial fixes and product cycles, resistance follows capital's mobility.

As a labor educator for 22 years, director of a labor education center, and adjunct professor of labor studies, this is simply the best book on labor studies I have ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in figuring out what is happening to the world labor movement today. I can't say enough or recommend it enough.

The history events on labor movements for the past 130 years were put together in this book. However, the book has very few tables and figures, making it very dry to read.

It will be better to cover just a narrow range, say year 1956 to 2006, for more graphical illustrations.

It is a useful reference book for researchers.