Amazon.co.uk: Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global: Paul Mason: Books

Perfect Partner

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

(16) �15.00

Violence (Big Ideas) by Slavoj Zizek

(2) �9.09

Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

(4) �6.99

Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media by Nick Davies

(8) �10.69

Terrorism and Communism (Revolutions): Terrorism and Communism (Revolutions Series) by Leon Trotsky; Slavoj Zizek

(1) �4.99

› Explore similar items : Books (44) DVD (2)

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links (What is this?)

Live Fight

www.Ask.com Get Live Fight Search for Live Fight

How To Fight On Streets

www.The-New-Way-To-Fight.com Discover New Breakthrough In Real- Life Self Defence, As Seen In MAI

Live/work mortgages

www.liveworkhomes.co.uk Free advice for live/work buyers and developers in the UK

Product Description

Walden Bello, author of Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2005; executive director of Focus on the Global South; and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (a.k.a. the "Alternative Nobel Prize") in 2003
"...reveals the profound continuity in the conditions, hopes, and
challenges of the international working class...Micro-historical writing at
its best."

Greg Palast, Author of ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild
'If you haven't read Mason's book, you know nothing...
breathtaking, fascinating, perceptive... Damn, I wish I'd written this'

See all Product Description

Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed

Rosa Luxemburg: Writings and Reflections (Revolutionary Studies) by Rosa Luxemburg

�12.87

Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System by Henryk Grossman

�14.51

Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) by Beverly J. Silver

(1) �18.04

For Workers' Power by Maurice Brinton

(1) �7.92

Class, Culture and Social Change: On the Trail of the Working Class by John Kirk

�46.99

› Explore similar items : Books (46)

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

(3 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

An important book to get you thinking, 8 Aug 2007

By	Alistair Kelman (London, UK) - See all my reviews

How can you tell the stories of the struggle of the working class in a manner that seemed relevant today? Only by counterpointing present day reportage of poverty and human rights abuses amongst the underclass of people who support our modern society with the unvarnished tales of the battle for working class justice over the part two centuries. Peterloo, the Silk Workers strike in Lyon, the Paris Commune, pre-war German metalworking socialists, China under Japanese occupation, Brzeziny in Poland - all seem populated by aliens to a modern television viewing wired reader. How could civilised people live cheek by jowl with such human rights abuses and downright inhumanity?

We need to learn the lessons of our history - to stop us compounding them. This book deserves to be on every secondary school history teachers' reading list and in every university library. Only by showing the next generation the relevance of the working class struggle can you enable them to build on lessons learnt to improve the present and future.

Paul Mason's book shows how the trade union movement grew, became global and then imploded as it failed to maintain its social contract with the working class. Today in modern service economies with good enforceable `elf and safety and employment laws trade unions seem an irrelevance. In developing countries the trade unions tend either to be part of corrupt kleptocratic establishments or are supporting shibboleths which exclude the poor and unskilled from the very rights which the original trade union organisers fought for.

Paul tells stories about the past to give us some pointers towards our possible future. As far as this goes this is good. But "Live Working or Die Fighting" is only a starting point. It, together with Polly Toynbee's "Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain" form good foundation texts on which we can get young people debating the follow-on questions - How could underclasses be globally protected from abuse in a free market economy?" "What activities could genuinely help foster the failures of all businesses which engaged in cruel, inhuman and unsafe practices against the underclass.?

Read it and think - the solutions are out there. And we owe it as a debt to the brave people who founded the working class movement to finish the story for them in the way they would have wished.

Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Book to die for, 21 Jul 2007

By	reader "from exeter" (devon,uk) - See all my reviews

Fantastic research and a work of respect and love for the working class by BBC's Newsnight Industrial reporter, Paul Mason. Essential reading for anybody half interested in the struggles of the working class, internationally over the last few centuries, contrasting conditions then and today, makes me think how litle we have progressed in some areas. Mason does not seem to have a particulary sharp political axe to grind but he does point out in many of the industrial battles and struggles described that the workers were often well ahead of the offical trade union leaders and left political parties. The prose is magic, each chapter moves along at a pace, the detail and research is awesome, if you have any interest in the stuggle of working people for a more dignified and more valued life then this book is invaluable, often shocking and often violent, this is a work of real history. Best thing I have read for ages, buy it, you will not regret it. Look forward to more of the same.

Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you?

(