Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 - Zachary Lockman
A .pdf of the seminal book by Zachary Lockman detailing a class history of Palestinian and Jewish workers in Palestine in the decades before the founding of the Israeli state.
Reform or revolution - Rosa Luxemburg
One of the most important Marxist thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg is finding renewed interest among a new generation of activists and critics of global capitalism.
Has PCS been outflanked to the left by a bosses’ union?
Submitted by Phil on Oct 21 2013 17:20
A look at two of many attacks faced by workers in HM Revenue & Customs. The contrasting responses from clerical grade union PCS and senior grade union ARC are worth noting, but not for the reason you might guess.
Sewing freedom: Philip Josephs, transnationalism & early New Zealand anarchism - Jared Davidson
Sewing Freedom is the first in-depth study of anarchism in New Zealand during the turbulent years of the early 20th century—a time of wildcat strikes, industrial warfare, and a radical working class counter-culture.
On the question of reforms
Discussing the question of support for reforms against opposition to reformism.
Almost a testament: Encounters with Pasolini - Peter Dragazde
A collection of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s observations and aphorisms on religion, politics and culture, based on transcripts of unpublished interviews held over a six-year period and revised by the controversial Italian poet, novelist, filmmaker and all-around political-cultural celebrity, in which Pasolini, who once notoriously proclaimed his sympathy for the “working class” policemen in their clashes with spoiled “middle class” students, expresses his eccentric views on America, Third World nationalism, China, Russia, a pope or two, his favorite filmmakers and poets, hippies, NATO’s involvement in the attempted coup d’état in Italy in 1964, etc.
Strikes that give the impression we are winning - Miguel Amorós
In this transcript of a lecture delivered in 2008, Miguel Amorós examines economic and political trends since 1988 and their impact on the diminished ranks of the unionized working class, the meaning of the general strikes that took place in Europe during that period, the nostalgia for the welfare state that inspires the “aristocracy of labor”, and the ominous emergence of large numbers of surplus proletarians, lacking any kind of bonds or relations with one another, with nothing in common except their way of life as “the typical individuals of mass society, isolated, amorphous and manipulable” and their superfluity with regard to the process of production.
The Turkish working class and socialist movement in perspective - Mehmet Salâh
Historical survey of the Turkish left and workers' movement, focusing particularly on the 1960s-70s and the slide into guerrilla warfare, looking both at the strengths and fatal weaknesses of the two interconnected movements.
100 Years Ago: The Philadelphia dockers strike and Local 8 of the IWW - Mouvement Communiste and Kolektivně proti Kapitălu
A text published to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of an important strike launched by the IWW on the Philadelphia docks, analysing both the strengths and weaknesses of the IWW at the time.
Also made available as PDF and MOBI (Kindle) files.
A stitch in time: the ‘orchestrated networks’ of bloody Taylorism - John Barker
An analysis of the global clothing supply chain, its technology and organisation of labour; it's historical development and recurring high death rate for workers, with reference to recent factory disasters in Asia.
From its beginnings, the sewing machine’s role in shaping global capitalism has been crucial. In today’s high-tech and globalised production landscape, little about the actual machine has changed. A fact which keeps costs down and makes sewing a point of intensive value extraction in an assymetrical and retailer oriented system. John Barker ties together the threads linking the likes of Walmart and Primark to lethal garment factory conditions around the world
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