Worlds Of Labour Turned Upside Down

This volume offers a bold restatement of the importance of social history for understanding modern revolutions. The essays collected in Worlds of Labour Turned Upside Down provide global case studies examining: - changes in labour relations as a causal factor in revolutions; - challenges to existing labour relations as a motivating factor during revolutions; - the long-term impact of revolutions on the evolution of labour relations. The volume examines a wide range of revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering examples from South-America, Africa, Asia, and Western and Eastern Europe. The volume goes beyond merely examining the place of industrial workers, paying attention to the position of slaves, women working on the front line of civil war, colonial forced labourers, and white collar workers. Contributors are: Knud Andresen, Zsombor Bódy, Pepijn Brandon, Dimitrii Churakov, Gabriel Di Meglio, Kimmo Elo, Adrian Grama, Renate Hürtgen, Peyman Jafari, Marcel van der Linden, Tiina Lintunen, João Carlos Louçã, Stefan Müller, Raquel Varela, and Felix Wemheuer.

A World Turned Upside Down? poses two overarching questions for the new period opened by the Trump election and the continued growth of right-wing nationalisms. Is there an unwinding of neoliberal globalization taking place, or will globalization continue to deepen, but still deny the free cross-border movement of labor? Would such an unwinding entail an overall shift in power and accumulation to specific regions of the Global South that might overturn the current world order and foster the disintegration of the varied regional blocs that have formed? These questions are addressed through a series of essays that carefully map the national, class, racial, and gender dimensions of the state, capitalism, and progressive forces today. Sober assessment is crucial for the left to gain its political bearings in this trying period and the uncertainties that lie ahead.

Acting as a Sorcerer's Apprentice, the West incorporated 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.2 billion Indians into the world's labour equation within a context of lower production costs. This resulted in erosion of its competitive capacity and social stability, while greatly benefiting developing economies, many of which were able to emerge with unprecedented speed. With China as the main engine, the developing economies have become increasingly integrated, sustaining in the process a fundamental part of the global trade growth. While this phenomenon took shape, excesses within Western economies generated a seismic crisis that dramatically accelerated a slow decline. As the ascendant and descendant curves of developing and developed economies are crossing each other, a decoupling tendency between both has become evident. The economic partnership between China and Latin America epitomizes well the growing integration between emerging economies. Even if mostly benefiting from it, Latin America is under the double sign of threat and opportunity due to this complex relation. For Latin America to succeed, it will need to reinvent itself.The analyses and information contained in this book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy-makers alike.

'His finest work and one that was both symptom and engine of the concept of "history from below" ... Here Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians, the early Quakers and others taking advantage of the collapse of censorship to bid for new kinds of freedom were given centre stage ... Hill lives on' Times Higher Education In 'The World Turned Upside Down' Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them. The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by wandering 'masterless' men, the outbursts of sexual freedom, the great imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs. 'Established the concept of an "English Revolution" every bit as significant and potentially as radical as its French and Russian equivalents' Daily Telegraph 'Brilliant ... marvellous erudition and sympathy' David Caute, New Statesman 'This book will outlive our time and will stand as a notable monument to the man, the committed radical scholar, and one of the finest historians of the age' The Times Literary Supplement 'The dean and paragon of English historians' E.P. Thompson

Acting as a Sorcerer's Apprentice, the West incorporated 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.2 billion Indians into the world's labour equation within a context of lower production costs. This resulted in erosion of its competitive capacity and social stability, while greatly benefiting developing economies, many of which were able to emerge with unprecedented speed. With China as the main engine, the developing economies have become increasingly integrated, sustaining in the process a fundamental part of the global trade growth. While this phenomenon took shape, excesses within Western economies generated a seismic crisis that dramatically accelerated a slow decline. As the ascendant and descendant curves of developing and developed economies are crossing each other, a decoupling tendency between both has become evident. The economic partnership between China and Latin America epitomizes well the growing integration between emerging economies. Even if mostly benefiting from it, Latin America is under the double sign of threat and opportunity due to this complex relation. For Latin America to succeed, it will need to reinvent itself.The analyses and information contained in this book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy-makers alike.

A history and theory of settler colonialism and social control Many would rather change worlds than change the world. The settlement of communities in 'empty lands' somewhere else has often been proposed as a solution to growing contradictions. While the lands were never empty, sometimes these communities failed miserably, and sometimes they prospered and grew until they became entire countries. Building on a growing body of transnational and interdisciplinary research on the political imaginaries of settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, this book uncovers and critiques an autonomous, influential, and coherent political tradition - a tradition still relevant today. It follows the ideas and the projects (and the failures) of those who left or planned to leave growing and chaotic cities and challenging and confusing new economic circumstances, those who wanted to protect endangered nationalities, and those who intended to pre-empt forthcoming revolutions of all sorts, including civil and social wars. They displaced, and moved to other islands and continents, beyond the settled regions, to rural districts and to secluded suburbs, to communes and intentional communities, and to cyberspace. This book outlines the global history of a resilient political idea: to seek change somewhere else as an alternative to embracing (or resisting) transformation where one is.

World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

Organizing Matters demonstrates the interplay between two distinct logics of labour’s collective action: on the one hand, workers coming together, usually at their place of work, entrusting the union to represent their interests and, on the other hand, social bargaining in which the trade union constructs labour’s interests from the top down. The book investigates the tensions and potential complementarities between the two logics through the combination of a strong theoretical framework and an extensive qualitative case study of trade union organizing and recruitment in four countries – Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. These countries still utilize social-wide bargaining but find it necessary to draw and develop strategies transposed from Anglo-American countries in response to continuously declining membership.