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This collection, edited by the prolific international labour studies specialist, Ronaldo Munck, provides further testimony to the revival of international labour studies, a subject area that almost died out in the 1980s-90s. For this revival we have to thank 1) globalisation and the physical destruction and ideological disorientation it has wrought on labour, and 2) the tentative, uncoordinated and so far unsuccessful efforts of myriad labour movement instances, at different levels, of differing reach, to turn the tide.
Length restrictions on this review imply the customary invidious selection of items to address (see Appendix 1). However, the range of possibilities covered by the collection may be suggested by the early contributions, respectively, of Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick and Richard Hyman. The first provides a (pre-) history of the relationship between the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the world economy. What this reveals is the international social-democratic union tradition trailing, for 100 years, liberal-reformist attempts to defend, obtain and enforce state or inter-state restrictions on the capitalist world economy. These attempts have been marked by increasingly evident failure as the weight of politicaleconomic hegemony has shifted, dramatically, in favour of both the dominant states and corporations, and of those international financial institutions that most favour them. The failure is written into the strategic premise of the ICFTU – the increasingly bizarre assumption that such instances would be influenced by being lobbyed by union institutions (with decreasing weight and power, and with virtually no presence in the dominant or alternative public spheres internationally). What in the 1900s may have been farce has become in the 2000s tragedy.
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