Forging a new global workers’ movement

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to re-produce here an excellent overview article by a colleague Immanuel Ness, that first appeared in the GLU Labour Column. The article provides a sound snapshot of the key themes and thesis of Immanuel's latest book, Organizing Insurgency. You can buy the book here:

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343594/organizing-insurgency/

This post re-produces the first section of the article, and provides the link to the remainder.

Organizing Insurgency (2021) argues that the contemporary era of imperialism is marked by the extension of exploitation of Southern workers in core sectors of the economy: agriculture, mining, and industry. Indeed, incidences of protest are expanding in absolute numbers as industrial production shifts to the Global South[1], where 83% of the world’s population of 7.7 billion people reside.  These workers are subjected to far more onerous and dangerous labour conditions than industrial workers in developed countries. In recent years, workers have engaged in mass protests at a higher rate than ever to obtain political power. In the 2010s, mass protests occurred unabated throughout the South, in a range of contexts. The struggles are in large and small factories that have directly disrupted global value chains essential to the production and distribution of goods and services in ‘advanced’ economies.

Second, I contend that workers in the rural and urban informal sectors of the South are firmly integrated into global commodity chains, and that their labour is essential to the maintenance of profit rates worldwide. Profits are extracted from workers in rural regions as well as those who migrate back and forth from rural to urban areas for economic sustenance. Informal workers surrounding major economic centres are major sites of economic contestation between labour and capital. While arable lands are located in regions of the Global North and South, the production of key agricultural commodities such as coffee, cocoa and tropical foodstuffs are in regions where wages are low due to imperialist underdevelopment and where, as a consequence, there is an oversupply of labour.

On a planetary level, urbanization has not reduced the total population of agrarian workers. In fact, the evidence shows that rural labour has expanded in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the agrarian population has continued to grow over the past century, and even over the past 50 years. Population growth in rural regions challenges the dominant narrative generated by the United Nations which focuses on ineluctable urban growth globally. While urban growth is indeed expanding, the rate of rural population growth is also expanding. Concomitantly, mass urbanization over the past century has increased populations in major urban centres, especially in the South. The vast majority of populations in major cities of the South live in abject poverty without basic necessities such as electricity, running water, sanitation, and access to basic services. 

Third, Organizing Insurgency affirms the significance of strong working-class political organization to advance and grow: political and economic representation is crucial to improving the quality of life in the global South and building the power of labour. The Southern countries show that worker unrest and popular social movements are ubiquitous in contemporary neoliberalised capitalism. The size and intensity of protests are expanding today as industrial labour has expanded dramatically from the 1990s to the present. Even as workers engage in mass mobilization, the disconnected nature of protests does not ensure that successful strikes are consolidated to become the basis for the development of socialism, solidarity, and equality. 

Read the rest of the article (or download a PDF) here:

https://globallabourcolumn.org/2021/08/05/forging-a-new-global-workers-movement/

In solidarity

Ian