Peasants and Proletarians - The Struggles of Third World Workers

Originally published in 1979, this book examines differing forms of international, interracial working- class action and the relationship between workers’ struggles in the periphery and those in advanced capitalist countries. It analyses the nature of class alliances forged in the countryside and the urban sprawls of the developing world among workers, students and the unemployed. The volume draws on theoretical debates and detailed empirical studies dealing with a wide range of countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. Each of the sections is preceded by a linking editorial comment and the editors also provide an introductory overview. Reviews of the original edition of Peasants and Proletarians: ‘This is an important book both for historians and for social scientists. It draws attention to a previously underestimated labour force that has grown into a significant – indeed, indispensable – part of the international economic structure.’ Lynda Shaffer, Journal of Asian Studies, 39 (4) 1980. ‘This book offers a truly impressive and solid compilation of material on labour in the Third World. The sheer range of scholarship concerning many different types of workers over a timescale of nearly I00 years in countries and political situations as various, for example, as Lagos in the I890s, Jamaica in the 1930s, and socialist Algeria or Chile under Allende, is sometimes bewildering, but never fails to stimulate and absorb the reader.’ Paul Kennedy, Journal of Modern African Studies, 19 (4) 1981. ‘Peasants and Proletarians is a very major contribution. The editors' introduction, though brief, successfully raises many of these issues and outlines an approach to them…The twenty-one readings, concerned with early forms of resistance, rural workers, strategies of working-class action, migrant workers in advanced capitalist states, and contemporary struggles, offer geographical and intellectual breadth in their exploration of the diversity of Third World experience.’ Joel Samoff, ASA Review of Books, Vol. 6, 1980.