Forces of Labour. Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870

Silver, Beverly J. (2003): Forces of Labour. Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870 Cambridge University Press 2003, 238 pages, 25,90 euro, ISBN 0 521 52077 0 [deutsch: Forces of Labour. Arbeiterbewegungen und Globalisierung seit 1870. Assoziation A, Berlin-Hamburg 2005, 284 Seiten, 18,00 euro, ISBN 3-935936-32-X] ,,While labor has been weakened in the locations from which productive capital emigrated, new working classes have been created and strengthened in the favoured new sites of investment. " (p. 5) Against a fashionable farewell to the working class in a process of race-to-the-bottom-globalization Beverly Silver points out, that working classes (in plural) will continue to play an important part in shaping the social order of the 21st century. In the face of a never known global expansion of labor relations the so-called end of work turns out to be a narrow-minded euro-centerism. Therefore, due to her her world systems approach inspired by Wallerstein and Arrighi, Silver enhances the analytical perspective in time (going back to the 19th century) and in space (taking the different working classes in the global division of labor as interrelated) in order to grasp possible futures of labor movements. Here class is not just an object of economic processes, Silver's emphasis is rather on working class activity than corporate or IMF misdeeds, on resistance rather than victimization. She looks at the rise and decline of labor unrest in different locations, industries and over time and her empirical data points out, that class struggle pushes and is pulled dialectically by capital's outward trajectory. Moreover the making, unmaking and remaking of the working class shapes the form of capitalism as a world system. The measuring rod for labor unrest is a database compiled by the World Labor Group at the Fernand Braudel Center in Binghamton/New York, with which Silver worked closely. They identified every mention of labor unrest in the London Times and in the New York Times since the 1870s. For Silver, labor unrest is rooted in the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production itself: as capital subjects more and more population to discipline and exploitation, commodifying ever more areas of life, labor the >ficticious commodity For the concrete analysis of key industries in history, Silver differenciates (with E.O. Wright) two forms of workers' bargaining power: ,,Associational power" comes from the formation of collective organisations, unions and parties. In contrast, ,,structural power" is divided in two subtypes, ,,marketplace bargaining power", the power that results directly from more or less tight labor markets or low unemployment rates, and ,,workplace bargaining power" that consists of the strategic position of a particular group of workers within the production process (p. 13). An important factor is, how these forms of power are shaped by what she calls ,,boundary drawing" and specific social compacts (p. 20). Workers' power may be used exclusive, only for specific groups of workers, or inclusive, even crossing class borders, linking to other social groups. …