Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

Live working or Die fighting How the working class went global By Paul Mason Harvill Secker, How The Working Class Went Global came away from Paul Mason's book with a mixture of emotions. The crisp language and the power of the storytelling enthralled me. I was invigorated by the stories themselves - some of them very familiar, some with hidden corners illuminated for the first time, some completely unknown to me. The pages bubble with the creativity of collective ideas and collective action. Paul's work as a news journalist has taken him to all corners of the globe - and in the book he covers not only space but time too as he links today's emerging working class struggles with parallels from history. But in the end, I was dissatisfied with the conclusion. In the introduction, Mason uses the powertul story of James Larkin's time capsule, to passionately argue that the true history of the labour movement has been 'worse, simplified beyond either lost or, meaning'. He argues that rediscovering that history and exploring its relevance anew is vital for both the Seattle generation of anti-globalisation activists and for workers building a new labour movement in their countries. London, 2007, £12.99 So far, I'm with the author 100 per cent - and on this count the book itself does extremely well. And I take for granted his later qualification, 'there is no attempt to be comprehensive'. There are more examples than can be contained in one book, with one authorial voice. A taster can be just as potent in its message. The book graphically links themes confronting workers in the global reality of today with those faced a century and more earlier. Each of the analogies has its own twist and none is predictable. Nor am I complaining that Mason gives prominence to the struggles of syndicalists. I don't agree with syndicalism. I don't think that trade unions can be the instruments for getting rid of capitalism and/or for running a socialist society. But that doesn't mean I don't recognise that syndicalists have made significant contributions to labour movement history. I was irritated by some of Paul's excuses for not telling the story of more women. I thought he sold short the women whose lives he did tell, including some I didn't know previously, by suggesting that the material doesn't exist. I was uncomfortable with some of the language he used to deal with the fact that many periods of political upheaval also saw upheavals in family structures and personal relationships. But most of all I take issue with Mason's own conclusions about the key theme of the book. Towards the end of the introduction he argues, 'If there is a recurrent theme amid all this, it is control. Politically the labour movement has debated strategy in terms of reform versus revolution. Practically, to the frustration of advocates of both approaches, workers have been prepared to go beyond reform but settle for In an interview with Mark Hoskisson on the Permanent Revolution website he argues that, 'there is only one lesson spelled out...' Hoskisson asks what it is and Mason replies, 27 Reviewed by Terry Conway 'That power is just as big an issue as class for working people over the past 200 years. That given the opportunity, they carve out a niche in which they can live life under their own control - and if they can do this without challenging the economic system they will do it.' But is this the lesson that comes through from these stories? I don't think so. What comes through from the book is that people go into struggle over one issue and end up battling a whole range of things which they knew nothing about - at least consciously - a very short while before. What comes through is that people learn very fast when they are in the melting pot of history. What stands out is that what seem like small mistakes can be big disasters when the momentum is lost and the seesaw tips against the workers. What comes through is the huge energy and dynamism of people fighting not only around issues that affect them directly at work, but around questions of culture and community, issues of race and ideas of gender. The stories of the Paris Commune, of the Nigerian slums, of the Jewish Bund can't be fitted into simple prisms. Mason's book reminds us many times over why another world is as necessary today as it was at the birth of the labour movement. The fundamental reason that another world is only possible and not a reality today is not to do with the fact that working people have been prepared to settle for less, but that power has been taken away from worker's organisations by misleaders both in the industrial and political field. That's what the voices Paul Mason gathers together had to say to me - - and that's why I recommend everyone to read the book, despite my misgivings.