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Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms (Employment and Work Relations in Context Series)

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Since the collapse of official communism, the left has been incapable of reformulating a cogent internationalist position. Waterman insists that the end of the desicated, state-centric forms of socialism should be seen as an opportunity to recover a humanist and emancipatory tradition. He convincingly shows that the aims of the `alternative' or `new' social movements are not in opposition to the labour movement. The links between the labour and feminist movements are especially well portrayed. Passionately written by an activist and a scholar, this book will aid the long climb back by the left to political and intellectual credibility. (Robin Cohen, Professor of Sociology, Warwick University, UK).

`New Internationalisms' is a timely and visionary book. It stands on the cusp of critique and prescription, as being both an account of internationalism and a manifesto on how it should or could develop. It is an important contribution to debates on the possibilities of internationalism, that have raged for at least 150 years, since the publication of the Communist Manifesto. The author has been involved in these issues for much of his life, and the book is the outcome of political involvement as much as academic interest. The opening chapter invites the reader on a 'voyage of discovery, a voyage simultaneously professional, political and personal' (9), much later, in the postscript, this is clarified as a journey 'from proletarian and socialist internationalism to a cross-class and democratic one' (247). There is recognition that labour internationalism was always cross-class, and that 'the bearers of internationalism have customarily been middle-class intellectuals', and importantly, the author recognises himself in this image, and explores the logic of the role, revealing all the frustrations and inspirations of his 'many years in the wilderness' (247-53). The book ends with Edward Thompson's aspiration to an 'international of the imagination'. Taken as a whole, New Internationalisms is a seven part journey that argues for this imagination, and for the 'global solidarity' that expresses it.

James Goodman Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Technology Sydney (UTS), PO Box 123, Broadway, Sydney 2007, Australia

Global capital is building a new world, but there's a spectre haunting it. While Communism as we knew it has evaporated, mass strikes and upheavals rage in dozens of countries and insurgent networks spread their tendrils across the borders of nations and regions. The outsiders are raising fists - and joining hands - in ways the architects of corporate globalism never anticipated. No one provides more profound insight into the meaning of the new transnational struggles than Peter Waterman. Read `Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms' to get the inside story of the outside story.

(Jeremy Brecher, author of `Strike!', `Global Village or Global Pillage', radio producers, film-maker.)