Forces of labor - Workers' movements and globalization since 1870

Beverly J Silver, Cambridge University Press, 240 pages, paperback, £16.95

This book rebuts the argument that labour movements across the globe are in terminal decline.

Organised labour has suffered defeats in some places, but labour movement growth and weakening is explained by looking at long-run cycles of capital movement and global politics.

The author suggests that the new leading industries of the 21st century will provide the setting for a revival of the labour movement, just as earlier leading industries, such as textiles and car making, did previously. As the author puts it tersely: "Where capital goes, conflict goes."

For example, the miracle economies of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Brazil, South Africa and Korea, created strategically located working classes, which produced powerful new labour movements.

These labour movements not only improved wages and conditions, but were instrumental in creating democratic governments. The author confidently predicts similar struggles in the near future in China.

Overall, she concludes, globalisation sows the seeds for a new labour internationalism.