E113: [TEASER] Radical Reads – Forces of Labour

E113: [TEASER] Radical Reads – Forces of Labour

From Working Class History by Working Class History

November 26, 2025 · 18 min · Season 1 · Episode 113

About this episode

This episode is a teaser discussing Beverly Silver's influential book on labour movements and globalisation.

This is a teaser preview of one of our Radical Reads episodes, made exclusively for our supporters on patreon. You can listen to the full 67-minute episode without ads and support our work at https://www.patreon.com/posts/e113-radical-of-143322722 In this episode, we discuss Beverly Silver's pioneering work, Forces of Labour: Workers' Movements and Globalisation Since 1870 , a book which was hugely influential on many of us at Working Class History. The book is epic in its breadth (looking at labour unrest around the world and across a long period of time), but also firmly committed to viewing class struggle from the bottom up. But most important about the book is how deeply materialist and methodical it is in how it outlines the concrete conditions that gave space for working-class struggle, and how those struggles forced capital to think of new strategies in order to deal with it. Moreover, in doing so, her book also helps us to think and to strategise about working-class organising today. Listen to the full episode here: E113: Radical Reads – Forces of Labour More information Buy Forces of Labour from an independent bookshop (or read it online here ) Check out our collection…

People in this episode

Host: Working Class History

Topics covered

  • labour movements
  • globalisation
  • class struggle
  • working-class organising
  • historical analysis

Keywords

  • labour unrest
  • class struggle
  • Beverly Silver
  • Forces of Labour
  • working-class history

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Forces of Labour: Workers' Movements and Globalisation Since 1870

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