The site of industrial struggle is shifting. Across the Global South, peasant communities are forced off the land to live and work in harsh and impoverished conditions. Inevitably, new methods of combating the spread of industrial capitalism are evolving in ambitious, militant and creative ways. This is the first book to theorise and examine the present and future shape of global class struggles.
Immanuel Ness looks at three key countries: China, India and South Africa. In each case he considers the broader historical forces at play – the effects of imperialism, the decline of the trade union movement, the class struggle and the effects of the growing reserve army of labour. For each case study, he narrows his focus to reveal the specifics of each grassroots insurgency: export promotion and the rise of worker insurgency in China, the new labour organisations in India, and the militancy of the miners in South Africa.
This is a study about the nature of the new industrial worker in the Global South; about people living a terrifying, precarious existence – but also one of experimentation, solidarity and struggle.
Table of Content
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: The New International Working Class
Part I: Capitalism and Imperialism
2. The Industrial Proletariat of the Global South
3. Migration and the Reserve Army of Labor
Part II: Case Studies
4. India: Neoliberal Industrialization, Class Formation and Mobilization
5. China: State Capitalism, Foreign Investment and Worker Insurgency
6. South Africa: Post-Apartheid Labor Militancy in the Mining Sector
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the author
Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author and editor of many books, including Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto, 2015) and Urban Revolt: State Power and the Rise of People’s Movements in the Global South (Haymarket, 2017).
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