Live working or die fighting

How the working class went global

Paul Mason, Harvill Secker, 304 pages, paperback, £12.99

Global capitalism has created a new working class that spreads from the sweatshops of China and the slums of Nigeria to the mines of Bolivia and the factories of India.

Mason, a BBC Newsnight presenter, investigates the history of the global labour movement and explains the economic and political problems that affected it.

He also looks at modern workers' struggles and juxtaposes them to great battles in the past. For example, he links the lives of 19th-century century factory girls with the lives of teenagers in a giant Chinese phone factory.

Even when the parallels are a little shaky, the book is alive with the rich tapestry of labour history, with its references to solidarity and "an injury to one", May Day, and the demand for "bread and roses". Elegantly written, it is a clarion call for the modern labour movement to remember its traditions.