Annotated list of popular movement literature

Labour movements

P.K.Edwards: Conflict at work, Blackwell 1986

A conflict theory for the workers’ relationship with capital, where it is constantly about fighting over small things to set boundaries. Most interestingly, Edwards points out that although workers have their collective strength in the workplace, it is their social status as a subordinate underclass that defines them as a class. Labor disputes divide as much as they unite, but nevertheless they are necessary to advance workers’ interests. But something else is also needed that binds together on a societal level.

Michael Burawoy: The politics of production, Verso 1985 and
Richard Edwards: Contested terrain, Basic Books 1979

An investigation into different “work regimes” and what type of conflict or what the results are from them. For example, when there is market despotism, the conflict is about the right to conclude collective agreements. Or that when there is a corporate state (ie the state has great responsibility for discipline) successful trade union actions have very large political effects. Etc.

Beverly Silver: Forces of labor. Cambridge University Press 2003

Labor movements 1870 to now. Silver maps how labor movements respond to different strategies used by capital and concludes that they usually come up with solutions, regardless of what the capitalists think they have achieved. When the textile industry was globalized at the end of the nineteenth century, labor movements arose in the "newly industrialized countries" of the time, which were of great help to the anti-colonial movements. When big industry introduced the assembly line to crush the independence of artisans, it wasn't long before workers discovered how to shut down an entire industry with the flip of a switch. And so on. So Silver has quite a lot of confidence that today’s labor movement will recover. However, there is a catch -- that today’s capitalists seem to place so little emphasis on production at all in favor of speculation and usury, which gives the workers a worse hold.

Edward Shorter & Charles Tilly: Strikes in France 1830-1968, Cambridge University Press 1974

Review of everything available. Conclusion: Strikes pay off mainly on the social level: they give political power which in the next turn can bring both money and reforms. They don't give that much money right away, but that doesn't matter, it's the amount that matters.

Jill Harsin: Barricades: The war of the streets in revolutionary Paris 1830-1848, Palgrave Macmillan 2002

About the republican movement, which would soon split into the ruling bourgeoisie and powerless workers. Unfortunately, the focus is almost exclusively on the small radical groups who dreamed of the Great Barricade War which would somehow end all oppression in one fell swoop, the more long-term alternative or reformist working groupings are not seen at all, although of course they also existed.

Alain Touraine et al: The workers movement, Cambridge University Press 1987

Covers the labor movement today, through interviews. Content: What is the purpose of the labor movement. Labor movement and unions. Class consciousness (artisans: we build the country, educated workers: group consciousness and collectivism, blue collar workers: "us and them", Taylorist workers: more paid). What happens after Taylorism? What happens when worker culture weathers?

Charles Bergquist (ed): Labor in the capitalist world-economy, Sage 1984

Michael Burawoy on production politics: politics = struggle. How does it manifest itself in different situations? In the colonial enterprise? In the state socialist? In the capitalist West? How do the workers respond? Through control of the state, through comprehensive trade unions, through local power? Christopher Chase-Dunn on the world system since 1500 -- what has really changed. Not so much, he says, the same tendencies have prevailed all along, although some of them are moving towards 100% now.

Before 1939

B. N. Ponomarjov et al: The international labor movement, Progres 1983 etc

Early labor movement from a Soviet point of view. Meaning it gets terribly predictable after 1917, but before then this multi-volume work is the most detailed and geographically comprehensive there is. Not least, it gives space to the rank and file in a way that few other counterparts do.

E. P. Thompson: The making of the English working class. Victor Gollancz 1963

The classic, not only for depictions of the labor movement but for modern historiography in general. Describes how the working class creates itself to defend itself against capitalism, by depicting the actions of ordinary people. Contents: London corresponding society and the French Revolution. The Methodist Heritage. Source of labor movement: the occupations that are squeezed down. The organization's background: Methodism and friendly societies. Action. Luddism. Political agitation against corruption. Underclass culture.

William Sewell: Work and revolution in France. Cambridge University Press 1980

About how the guild's journeyman organization is transformed into a labor movement. Content. The revolution: the people = the united guilds. Industrialization is pushing down the professions. The revolution of 1848 as the first major appearance of the labor movement on the political scene.

Dorothy Thompson: The Chartists. Pantheon 1984.

The first labor movement organization. Origin: protest against the utilitarianism of the liberal middle class and against the poor houses. Content: The Liberal government policy which was more hostile to the workers than the Conservative one had been. The Great Petition of “Working People”. The climax, with the world's first general strike. Different membership groups -- management, women, local activists, artisans etc -- and what they do, and not least the popular movement culture they create that dominates the small towns of the Midlands. Finally: why the 1948 disaster?

C.L.R. James: The black Jacobins, Allison & Busby 1980; and
Thomas P Ott: The Haitian Revolution, University of Tennessee Press 1972

Two books about the first workers' revolution, that of the black sugar plantation slaves in Haiti, and how they triumphed tactically but were crushed strategically through two hundred years of starvation. James also depicts how the alliance between sugar workers and the artisans of Paris for a time -- by ruining the sugar-dependent French bourgeoisie -- was able to give the artisans hegemony in the French revolutionary movement and lay the foundation for a global radical popular movement tradition.

Charles, Louise and Richard Tilly: The rebellious century 1830-1930. Harvard University Press 1975

Tests of different theories of social violence. Tillys claims that the rather insignificant violence of popular movements is solidaristic and organized, and that the state is responsible for most of the violence. Contains stories from France, Italy and Germany.

Dick Geary: European labor protest 1848-1939, St Martin's Press 1981

An excellent, thin primer on the “heroic era” of the labor movement. Puts a lot of energy into explaining why this and that happened and who was behind various actions. Who organized the first unions? Why did English workers concentrate on union action while German were more interested in state politics? What social basis did the great labor movement upsurge of World War I have? Etc.

Ira Katznelson & Aristide Zolberg (ed): Working class formation. Princeton University Press 1986.

Describes the formative years of the labor movement in Germany, France, and the United States. Content: Jürgen Kocka on how the labor movement was organized in Germany. Mary Nolan on the interaction between state and labor movement in Germany 1870-1900. Michelle Perrot about France, i.a. the importance of the city for the labor movement, about the collective identity, etc. Amy Bridges about the labor movement in the United States before the Civil War. Martin Shefter on how immigration is breaking up the labor movement and forcing the AFL to betray labor solidarity and concentrate on the skilled trades.

Dick Geary (ed): Labor and socialist movements in Europe before 1914. Berg 1989.

Traditional but good about the origin, in UK, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain.

Walter Kendall: The labor movement in Europe. Allen Lane 1975.

Description of the movement, with an emphasis on the union movement and with party leaders etc downplayed, from the beginning until about 1970. The chapters deal with France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and the Netherlands respectively. A special chapter in addition on the automotive industry throughout Europe.

Paolo Spriano: The occupation of the factories. Pluto Press 1975

About the so-called red years in Italy after the First World War. Unfortunately, a book in the old-fashioned historiographical tradition that places more emphasis on what leaders and big men do than what the people do themselves, but nevertheless shows how conflicts between union leaders and their base paralyze the movement and make it easy prey for business’ armed fascist gangs.

S A Smith: Red Petrograd -- Revolution in the factories 1917-1918. Cambridge University Press 1983

About what the workers, as opposed to the political parties, did. Thesis: the workers were the dynamism, the parties stole the show because they promised food when the workers were threatened with starvation.

Daniel H. Kaiser (ed): The workers’ revolution in Russia: the view from below, Cambridge University Press 1987

Continuation of Smith’s book, i.e. what happened up to about 1921 when the new Russian ruling class no longer needed an alliance with the workers. Builds on the archives that became available after glasnost.

Jeffrey Rossman: Worker resistance under Stalin, Harvard University Press 2005

Based on KGB/OGPU archives, it shows what the real working class thought and did in 1928-1932, namely resistance. Depicts one of the central industrial districts, Ivanovo northeast of Moscow, which was super-red in both 1905 and 1917 and continued to be militant after the labor movement in Petrograd had been crushed by famine and war. After creeping mobilization against work intensification, wage cuts and censorship, they struck with strikes and occupations in 1932, and were crushed with deportations and murders. Incidentally, it becomes quite revealing how the new bourgeoisie in the CPSU describes the workers as “class enemies” – their own?

Jonathan Rose: The intellectual life of the British working classes, Yale University Press 2002

About how British workers - and by extension also Swedish, French, etc. - put incredible effort into conquering the education of the ruling class through study circles, evening courses and community colleges. With great success, says Rose, the post-war social-democratic thrusts were organized in no small part by people who had gone through that process. But how in the end the ruling class scared people away from even trying.

Peter Gurney: Co-operative culture and the politics of consumption in England, 1870-1930, Manchester University Press 1996

About how mainly workers – but with assistance of a motley middle class people – built an archipelago of cooperative shops that organized everyday life in their neighbourhoods and created proudness among people in general. But also about how this movement was destroyed by petty quarrels about exactly how workers should assert themselves – co-operative shops, co-operative workshops or trade unions. No compromise could be stroken about this issue among the functionaries that increasingly dominated the movement after the early 1900s.

Robert Alexander: The anarchists in the Spanish civil war, Janus 1999

About the 20th century’s only seriously aimed revolution in Europe besides the Russian one, one that failed more immediately and why. Places more importance on the participation of union activists in the war than on the economic organization behind the front, which is connected with the fact that the latter has been described well before, says Alexander. Bit of a shame.

Walter Linder: The great Flint sit-in strike against GM 1936-37, The Radical Education Project, 1969.

An extremely vivid account of the act that finally broke the control of American big business over the workers and paved the way for union organizing and the rapid rise in standards of the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Joel Beinin & Zachary Lockman: Workers on the Nile, I.B.Tauris 1988

On cooperation and conflicts between the emerging labor movement and the anti-colonial movement in Egypt. Detailed as it suggests but unfortunately a little colored by Marxist paternalism. In any case, you get some insight into how tricky it can be to choose between different priorities. It’s a pity that the book ends in 1954 because one can assume that the conflicts are the same today.

Jean Chesneaux: The Chinese labor movement 1919-1927, Stanford University Press 1968

Despite its age, the most comprehensive description I have read of a labor movement in the global South. If you go through or skip about 100 pages of statistical background, you then get about 300 pages of exciting descriptions of union building and, as a highlight, the incredibly well-organized general strike in Hong Kong in 1925.

James Horrocks: The Guangzhou-Hongkong strike, 1925-1926, University of Leeds 1994

The detailed story. About how Chinese independence aspirations entered into a temporary alliance with local labor movement demands but then more and more friction arose as the Communist Party demanded that the workers sacrifice themselves for general Chinese demands.

After 1939

Joe Moore: Japanese workers and the struggle for power 1945-47. Wisconsin University Press 1983

About the struggle for “production control” and how the labor movement established itself and traded its social power after the war for record-breaking wage increases.

Colin Crouch & Alessandro Pizzorno: The resurgence of class conflict in western Europe since 1968. Macmillan 1978

Two volumes on the upsurge in the labor movement 1967-75. The most interesting chapter: Ida Regalia et al: Labor conflicts and industrial relations in Italy describes the new forms of action that emerged and which were based on the workplace power of lay people. There is also a chapter on urban movements and one on the relationship between trade unions and politics. Otherwise, it’s strange how boring academics can write about such an interesting subject.

Charles Bergquist: Labor in Latin America. Stanford University Press 1986

Introduction about which circumstances strengthen or weaken labor movements in the third world. Then a country list of what has happened: Argentina (most amusing because it’s the most dramatic), Chile, Venezuela, Colombia.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett & Richard S Weinert: Brazil and Mexico; patterns in late development, Institute for the Study of Human Issues 1982

About the paternalistic, often state-controlled labor movement in the above countries and how it was broken in Brazil through the metal strikes in the 80s.
Assef Bayat: Workers & revolution in Iran, Zed 1987 About the decisive contribution of the oil workers: to call a strike that deprived the shah of the oil revenues at precisely the critical moment during the revolution.

Edward C Epstein (ed): Labor autonomy and the state in Latin America, Unwin Hyman

About Argentina and the fight against the military governments, and Brazil’s new labor movement. Plus a bit about how to break party control in Colombia. Unfortunately too little about each.

Gay Seidman: Manufacturing militance, University of California Press 1994

About the labor movements in Brazil and South Africa and their key role in overthrowing the respective countries’ authoritarian regimes. Unfortunately, almost half of the book deals with background factors such as economic development and the internal quarrels of the bourgeoisie. But the rest shows in an inspiring way how local movements develop into general popular movement mobilizations with emphasis on the workplaces where the opportunities to exercise people’s power were greatest.

Lars Lindström: Accumulation, regulation and political struggles, University of Stockholm 1993

The labor movement's successful struggle for the right to organize and democracy in South Korea. Emphasizes the ability of Fordism, ie mass production workers, to organize, thanks to their power in the workplace. Unfortunately 85% background and 15% movement; the opposite would have been more fun.

Hagen Koo: Korean workers, Cornell University Books 2001

The subtitle is the culture and politics of class formation. The book describes how the Korean workers rose from the military despotism’s prison-like working conditions during the 70s and 80s to reach almost European conditions, both in the form of stories of mobilizations and reflections on where they got the power from. The conclusion is probably that they felt that rather than continue with this, we risk everything. Perhaps Koo is underemphasizing the organizing work that did not appear in the form of theatrical manifestations.

Ronaldo Munck & Peter Waterman: Labor worldwide in the era of globalization, 1998

Chapters on e.g. The labor movement of Brazil and India today. Shows that the Third World labor movement, despite ups and downs, is getting stronger as industry moves there. The forecast is that this more than compensates for the decline in Europe.

Ronaldo Munck: Globalization and labour, Zed Books, 2002

A background to the above. Factors affecting the possibilities of a future labor movement, in the north and south. The position is that there is a lot in the so-called the globalization that works in favor of the labor movement, if only it manages to free itself from the practices of "Fordism" and the post-war era.

Beverly Silver: World-scale patterns of labor-capital conflicts, in Review xviii, Winter 1995

Description of where and when strikes have taken place during the 20th century. Like Munck & Waterman, she sees a development from the center to the periphery.

Joshua Clover: Riot, Strike, Riot, Verso 2019

A reflection on the fact that while strikes are becoming more and more rare, riots are becoming more and more common. Could this have something to do with the workers' increasingly insecure conditions and thus decreasing organization? Now, of course, the book limits itself to a large extent to the old industrial countries - in the new ones the frequency of strikes is increasing, and in the countries that have neither been nor are about to become industrial, riots have been common all along.

Beverly J. Silver & Sahan Savas Karatasli: Historical Dynamics of Capitalism and Labor Movements, in The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements 2015, and
Beverly Silver : Theorizing the Working Class in Twenty-First Century Global Capitalism, in M. Atzeni (ed): Workers and Labour in a Globalized Capitalism. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Mac Millan 2014

A reflection on the changes of labor movements depending on whether they appear in new or old i-countries. Or rather if they appear in flourishing or slightly dying ones. If it's about grabbing while you can (Marx type of labor movement as S&K call it) or if it's about defending what you have (Polanyi type). In any case, the authors are positive about the possibilities because wage workers are actually increasing in number, and weaknesses that can be observed right now have always existed and been overcome in the past.