Economic-union Books

First it must be said that the book's central argument is very controversial.

In my experience, common wisdom dictates that the economic policies of the late Soviet Union were far less destructive than Stalin's economic policies had been. This book argues the opposite: that Stalin's economic policies were wise and successful, whereas later leaders dropped the ball.

There is probably some truth to the idea that the Soviet Union was in some ways less backward than various Capitalist third-world countries and that it was less backward than some other Communist countries. Even so, the claim that the Soviet Union's main successes came during Stalin's times are somewhat dubious.

The book is easy and exciting reading. Even so, the questionable nature of some of the author's sources and jumps in logic mean that one has to look at the book soberly and throw heavy doses of salt on it.

In some ways, this book supports the United Russia-supported belief that "Stalin successfully industrialized the fatherland's economy."
At the same time, it contradicts the United Russia-supported belief in the fundamental greatness of the Tsarist regime and the Tsarist economic system, which Allen criticizes.

Overall, Allen seems grounded in Western research into the Soviet economy, not really drawing on the Soviet people's own opinions about their system. This is ironic because both the American "right" (the hardline anti-Communist crusaders) and the American "left" (which Allen belongs to) view the history of the Soviet Union through their own distant lens, with little regard for the opinions of the broad body of people who actually lived in that country.

Overall, the book is a strange mix of unusual opinions, with the presentation of data tailored to suit the thesis. The book is not objective and not very scholarly. It can also be said to be "intellectually lazy," a term Paul Krugman used to describe the American right but which is equally applicable to the extreme left (Allen) in this context.

Not recommended for those looking for good scholarship and objective, if pessimistic, facts.

Robert Allen has done what few people have attempted - defending Soviet, in particular Stalinist, industrialization policy from the viewpoint and with the methodology of orthodox neoclassical economics. In so doing he reacts particularly against the works of Paul Gregory, the main academic defender of the thesis that the Czarist system would have developed Russia faster and better than the USSR did. Allen takes great pains to refute this position.

Allen shows that the Stalinist policy of industrialization followed the strategy laid out by Preobrazhensky, namely to use terms of trade between agriculture and industry to use the agricultural surplus for investment in heavy industry. All the heavy industry production would then be reinvested in that heavy industry, leading over time to a very fast and strong development of industrialization in the USSR. Although this meant in the short term that living standards, as measured by consumption of consumer goods, would increase but little (and even drop during certain periods), in the long run the result would be that the industrial capacity so built up could be used for production of consumer goods eventually at a much higher level than would otherwise have been the case.

This has always been much contested by most economists, both socialist and anti-socialist, especially since the system of NEP seemed to perform decently well and created much more stability than the Stalinist heavy industry planning did. Nonetheless, Allen shows through modelling the different factors involved in simulations of alternative paths that the Preobrazhensky strategy was entirely correct, and indeed had the required results. In fact, Allen argues contrary to most historians of the Soviet 1930s that living standards generally did not even drop during this period, with the exception of the years of collectivization of agriculture.

This collectivization is also a subject he addresses, where he, again against almost everyone else, finds that it had a slight positive effect, because it made the marketing (in the sense of bringing into circulation) of agricultural produce much larger proportionally and much easier. This solved the recurring problem in the early USSR of ensuring the peasantry sold sufficient of their produce to feed the large urban population, despite the living standards of the Soviet peasants being low. As Allen shows, there was also a great excess of manpower in Soviet agriculture, so the mechanization that accompanied collectivization allowed millions of redundant peasants to move to the cities. It is this generation of peasants-turned-cadres that would form the main basis of support for Stalin and his policies, as is confirmed by Fitzpatrick and others. Of course, given the enormous human cost of collectivization and the famine that followed it, it is still dubious whether the undertaking was overall worth it. In his simulations Allen also traces alternatives such as industrialization without collectivization, which performs slightly worse, a continuation of NEP, which performs significantly worse but still well, and a 'capitalist path' where unemployment was possible and every individual company had to be profit-making; as one could expect, this path works by far the worst. In fact, because the wheat and railroad booms that buoyed the Czarist government in the period 1905-1914 would have ended in the 1920s, a continuation of this road would have brought Russia no further than the level now shown by Mexico or Argentina.

The final part of this book contains a much smaller and less detailed discussion of the failures of the Soviet planning models in the late 1970s and the 1980s. The author here makes various subtle and interesting arguments. Firstly, he points out that investment put into military production and upkeep was from a purely economic point of view practically entirely wasted, mostly because it came at the expense of investment in other types of heavy industry than armaments, which the USSR dearly needed. The enormous losses of WWII also contributed here, with much capital being destroyed. A second result here was the enormous costs in manpower for the USSR of their almost Pyrrhic victory in WWII - the end of large quantities of newly free labor coming in from the countryside limited the expansion possibilities of all labor-intensive industry, which the USSR had hitherto relied on. Here again appears as useful the model of Soviet economics developed by Abram Feldman, which explored the interaction between capital and labor and how extra capital in a poor country like the 1920s USSR could lead to a positive feedback loop effect if invested in heavy industry (i.e. production of more 'capital'), since every unit of capital in such a situation led to vastly larger increases in output than every new unit of labor. From the late 1960s on labor, however, became the main constraint in output, and the old Preobrazhensky accumulation strategy no longer worked.

The main question is of course why the Soviet government did not adequately respond to this, and here Allen is for the first time severely critical: he identifies a number of major planning and investment errors on the part of the Brezhnev leadership. The most important of these is the wasteful retooling and upkeep of old industry where the production of new modern industry would have been more efficient, and secondly extremely wasteful unproductive investment in raw materials production in Siberia. This latter part was the result of the minerals and oil production in European Russia, the Ukraine etc. being largely depleted, so expansion had to be sought in Siberia, where costs were vastly higher. Coal production in the Donbass region peaked in 1976, after which the Soviet government was forced to massively invest in lignite (brown coal) production in Krasnoiarsk. Brown coal is not very efficient and the costs of operating in a vast desolate area as central Siberia are high, so that productivity of capital invested plummeted. Much the same applied to oil. Only natural gas production was something of a success story, which can still be seen today in Russia's position as major exporter of natural gas to the European continent.
Allen negatively compares this autarkic development strategy to that pursued by Japan, which had much fewer natural resources after WWII, but nonetheless greatly expanded its industrial production in these sectors by importing the raw materials. Drops in transport costs after the war made this profitably possible. Of course, the USSR, as Allen acknowledges, had political reasons for indigenous development even at higher costs, where Japan could operate entirely as an American vassal. It must be said though that Soviet energy use was very high per $1000 of GDP, and that conservation programs and saving the natural environment mostly failed due to the antique state of much of Soviet industry and the enormous scale of its factories. Short term "shock" responses to these problems by Brezhnev and successive governments only made the situation worse. Here Allen points to systematic deficiencies in proper cost accounting and saving, which had (correctly) not been a priority in the 1930s, but had to become one in the 1970s. The Soviet political system at that time was not very well-suited to adapt to this, and Brezhnev et al.'s 'dropping the ball' on these major economic reform issues played a large part in the fall of this system. Allen emphasizes though that it was not planning as such that failed, just that the plans were bad. These analyses are also along the lines of those provided in Paresh Chattopadhyay's excellent study of Soviet economic policy.

Overall this book is an excellent and highly stimulating discussion of Soviet industrialization programs and their beneficial effects as well as their failures. It is decidedly non-political and does not enter into any ideological question, but despite its thorough orthodoxy in methods, it is nonetheless very sensible - indeed Allen shows that such methods CAN be used in an intelligent manner when one really wants to. It must also be mentioned that poor Preobrazhensky had little benefit from the success of his strategy: he was shot in 1937.

The Soviet Union was the perfect failure, so said no shortage of people during and especially after its lifespan. So to argue the opposite, as Robert Allen's new book does, certainly presents a provocative hypothesis. Allen's argument is that from 1928 to 1970, the Soviet Union was one of the world's fastest growing economies, with few rivals in the world. By contrast, the high rate of growth under the last tsars was not sustainable. Collectivization seems to have encouraged industrial growth, though not enough to cancel out the horrible loss of lives from the 1932-33 famine. Unfortunately, unwise investment decisions in the seventies and eighties lead to rapidly falling growth rates and the collapse of the system.

Allen's argument does not start off well, as he seems to separate Russian development from Europe altogether. This coincides with Marshall Poe's argument that Russia shouldn't be considered European at all. This is misleading. It is true that in terms of poverty, rural population and demographic structure, Russia was behind the rest of Europe. But this does not mean that it was radically different from it. Russia is Christian, not Muslim. Russian is a Slavic language, and Slavic languages are European ones. Serfdom and feudalism are European institutions distinct from Ottoman and Moghul ones. However Allen soon gets back on track. The essential fact of comparative economic performance is that the high-income core generally stays the same, while those outside it fall further behind (relatively). Occasionally a country is able to enter the high-core club, like Japan, and occasionally another country is expelled, like Argentina. Given this stability, the Soviet Union's success from 1928 to 1970, where it outperformed all other developing countries except Japan, looks more impressive.

But wasn't economic growth high under the tsars? Surely would it not have reached the heights held by Western Europe? Clearly not, says Allen, since that would require an average 3.3 % growth rate from 1913 to 1989, a rate only held by one country, Japan. More to the point the Tsarist economic strategy faced severe problems. Russia's literacy rates were well below Japan's. Much of the growth in agriculture was the result of the wheat boom. Had Russia continued to be a wheat exporter it would have faced the disaster of the collapse of wheat prices in the Depression. Indeed, it would have made it worse. Argentina's own wheat boom did not last, and even wealthy Australia faced relative decline. Meanwhile the bulk of the railroad boom was over by 1913, while attempts to encourage a cotton industry were muddled by misguided protectionism.

Allen then discusses the crisis of the NEP. Given the limits of Soviet soil, agricultural output could not be easily raised until the fifties, when fertilizers became readily available. On the other hand agricultural productivity could be increased by mechanization and the now surplus agricultural labour could be diverted into industry. Potentially there is no conflict by increasing the investment needed for mass industrialization and increasing consumption. Both can increase at the same time. For Allen a key element to the 1928-1939 period was the use of "soft budget" constraints. Instead of basing the number of workers on simple budgetary constraints, constantly raising targets and increasing the demand for workers could increase growth enough that it would compensate for the deviations from strict accounting. Collectivization's contribution to this process was not the increasing of agricultural production; indeed, it dropped dramatically. Instead it encouraged, or more accurately forced, rural-urban migration and the growth of industry. Rather ironically the mass slaughter of horses to protest collectivization was not an unmitigated disaster, since it diverted grain from a rather "inefficient" animal. At the same time the Soviet Union benefiting from slower population growth. Much of this, of course, was the result of Stalinist terror, though nearly three times more important was the result of the Second World War. But even more important was the relatively quick fertility transition. Had it more resembled India the former Soviet Union would have had a 1989 population of 825 million. Allen then goes on to discuss standards of living from 1928 to 1939. They did seem to increase during this period. Previous studies suggested that they fell or stagnated, but Allen makes the reasonable argument that the index numbers they used miscalculated inflation and the effect of rural-urban migration.

So far, so good. But there are some problems. Allen's book is based on secondary literature and all Soviet statistics have a provisional nature. Allen then goes on to argue that Stalin's industrial strategy was more effective than a possible continuation of the NEP, but not so more effective to justify the loss of lives in the famine. This is not an unreasonable or inhumane argument. On the other hand, it would have been far more effective than a simple capitalist standard. This argument is based on complex computer simulations, which are difficult to read, and even more difficult to verify. Given that the Soviet Union would have been radically different if it had not followed Stalin's strategy in 1929, Allen's simulation models seem too simple. The last chapter deals with the decline of the Soviet economy after 1970. Allen delineates several crucial flaws: attempts to upgrade old factories when it would have been more productive to create new ones; increasing energy production with illusory success at prohibitive cost, when it would have been wiser to increase conservation; the harmfulness of soft budget constraints in a period of labour scarcity, and finally diversion of research and development into the military. These are interesting suggestions; we will have to see how they play out.

Maybe I didn't read the little words on one side, or I was buying this book too much in a hurry. But the book was an international version that was not supposed to be sold in the US. The pages are made of a cheaper material so not very pleasant. I really only need the book for few references, but if you need to use this book for longer and extense use, I would go to a bookstore and buy a new version with better material.

George Borjas in this book deal the basic of de Labor Economics, it's very usefull for the pre-grade student and it's preleminary to introduce in the labor world (academic). It's good but it's necesary to complement with anothers advanced books for a improve vision.

This is truly an amazing work, which shows so many models of labor market phenomena at the undergraduate level that an undergraduate's economics education is incomplete without it. This book is essential reading for both undergraduates and policymakers who want to learn labor economics, economics in general, or have a deeper understanding of public policy issues. The best features are its unmatched explanations of human capital models, labor market discrimination models, and labor union models -- which will change the way you think of these issues and give deeper understanding. The book is both concise, deep, a quick and fun read, and makes Nobel-prize winning material accessible to any undergraduate or policy maker.

Mentally reviewing Chateauvert's book, my first impression is that its thesis belies its title. One of the several points made by the author is that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters never permitted its women's auxiliary any sort of equality with it. The Brotherhood may have used its auxiliary as a tool but always remained "the boss" and, when it no longer felt the auxiliary organization to be useful, abolished it. Even the women's own perceptions and goals supported supremacy of their husbands over their own unperceived rights as individual workers. No, there was definitely no "marching together," the title notwithstanding. The Brotherhood was always in the lead and the "little woman" was respectfully trailing behind.

Beyond the misleading title, Chateauvert makes a number of historically accurate observations, none of which are surprising given the social and cultural beliefs and attributes of the era:
- Both the Pullman Company and the railroads as employers were totally segregated along racial lines and did not afford their black employees any sort of equality with whites in terms of job assignments, pay scales, promotions, levels of authority, rest periods, or any other aspect of employment, hardly a surprising revelation in the early to mid-twentieth century United States.
- This discriminatory treatment led to the gradual formation of the first black labor union in the nation.
- The union itself, however, was blind to its own highly discriminatory practices, being just as intractable where the sex of employees was concerned as were the railroads where race was the factor, dropping the word "maids" from its official name early on and essentially ignoring the problems of female sleeping car workers.
- Despite their treatment by the union as "second class citizens," the wives of porters supported the Brotherhood by encouraging porters to join, collecting dues, and holding organizational meetings.
- The wives themselves felt that they would achieve higher social standing not by their own work but through their husbands' increased union wages, for those would enable them to leave a workforce where women did not belong and become full time housewives, which was the status to which they aspired. Strange though such a concept seems today, it was prevalent through much of the twentieth century.

While these and similar observations are accurate enough, they will come as no surprise to anyone who has either lived through or studied the culture of the United States as it persisted through the past century. From this perspective, it does not appear as though Chateauvert has added anything to our existing body of knowledge. Even though her book may be redundant so far as revelatory material goes, yet it might still have made a contribution had its readability, wit, charm, or other attribute encouraged the public to savor it. Unfortunately, the writing is deadly dull and highly repetitious.

Almost as bad as its plodding, uninspired style is the fact that the text contains a number of grammatical errors. The author repeatedly uses the present tense verb "forbid" where the past tense "forbade" is obviously called for. On page 37, she writes of a "principle organizing strategy" where the adjective should have been "principal," an error repeated on page 145. On page 106, she coins the adjective "confrontative" although the language already has a recognized word for that purpose, "confrontational." Ten pages further on, we wonder if she understands the basics of railroad technology even though the railroad industry underlies the organization about which she is writing, for she misapplies the word "locomotive," limiting it purely to steam-powered locomotives although the term applies equally to diesel-electric power, which she names an "engine." One page later, she refers to the operating trades as "operative" job classes, further revealing her lack of knowledge of railroad occupations. Her constant, sophomoric use of the term "lily-white" to describe segregated unions, while accurate enough, becomes annoying through unimaginative repetition. On page 170, the ordnance (i.e., munitions) industry is misnamed the "ordinance industry." Only twelve pages later, she appears to confuse "sufferance" for "suffrage," the application of voting power.

In brief, MARCHING TOGETHER appears flawed in that it neither offers new information on social and economic conditions of twentieth-century United States society nor presents well-known data in a new and interesting manner. The book may have value to historians of organized labor (although there were never more than 1500 members of the BSCP women's auxiliary) and perhaps to sociologists who wish to collect further examples of race and sex-related discrimination during the time period under examination. Unhappily, I can find little else to recommend it. Readers who are particularly interested in the formation of the first black labor union and its contribution to the United States Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s will find RISING FROM THE RAILS: PULLMAN PORTERS AND THE MAKING OF THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS by Larry Tye a more informative source than Chateauvert's book.

I had the honor of taking several classes taught by Dr. Chateauvert at the University of Maryland. I strongly recommend any book that she's authored or contributed to as her insights are always deep and encourage an even deeper exploration of the subject by the audience.

Ms. Chateauvert illuminates an all-too forgotten segment of American history. The relationships and connections she highlights are remarkable. I highly recommend this book.

A scathing analysis of the flaws of Meany and Kirkland as leaders of the AFL-CIO. Well-written, well-informed, and passionate. Must reading for union activists and scholars, especially those who are sympathetic to Kirkland or Sweeney. But for rather different views, see Mort, Not Your Father's Labor Movement, and, especially, Taylor Dark, The Unions and the Democrats.

A pugnacious, elegant and devastating critique of the Cold war liberal, business unionists who have corrupted American trade unionism and delivered the wimpy, pathetic federation we have now.

"Taking Care of Business" is a scathing attack on the shortsighted, bureaucratic, business union approach of the leadership of the AFL and AFL-CIO over the last one hundred years. None of the presidents of these labor federations from Gompers through Meany and Kirkland escape the author's thoroughgoing criticism.

Of course, those leaders can only reflect the nature of the overall trade union movement. Trade unions in the US have historically been both exclusionary and, since WWII, controlling in their relationship to the working class. Most trade unions, until only very recently, have focused on protecting the relatively privileged position of white, skilled craftsmen within the economy while either outright excluding or only rhetorically supporting the largest portion of the working class due to differences in race, ethnicity, gender, or skill level. The rise of industrial unions in the WWII era, despite being a small step in the direction of inclusion, ushered in a labor relations regime where labor unions' role became one of enforcing constraining collective bargaining agreements as much as the representation of workers.

By the early 1950s union officials, as typified by Meany and Kirkland, came to see themselves as the counterpart to business leaders in a labor-management accord. They adopted the same lifestyles and moved in the same social circles. Labor officials, in their newfound role, had no problem with making the world safe for business interests. So-called radical unions and unionists with their demands for worker activism at the point of production were purged from the AFL and unions. The AFL and AFL-CIO under the regimes of Meany and Kirkland collaborated with the US intelligence community through a series of front committees and councils to defeat popular movements in favor of pro-US, right-wing thugs in foreign lands, especially Latin America. Even though the PATCO fiasco of 1981 clearly showed the shredding of the post-WWII domestic social compact, the focus of the AFL-CIO remained on expending tremendous amounts of federation resources on dubious foreign operations.

Clearly, Meany and Kirkland did little to advance the interests of US workers, but the author does not really address the weakly federated structure of organized labor in the US. Given the independence of the AFL's constituent unions and the history of organized labor through WWII, were Meany and Kirkland types not almost predictable? Perhaps they do deserve the author's scorn as symbols of the ineffectualness of organized labor, but the problems run much deeper.

The author more than hints that the Gompers-Meany-Kirkland threesome squashed the desires of the US working class to establish some sort of workers democratic regime - his admiration for the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) being a tip-off. But that view may be mostly wishful. He cites the Knights of Labor as indicative of working class interest in social unionism, but it is clear that only a small portion of the membership of that organization supported the KOL position of transforming the US into a cooperative society. In fact the KOL impaled itself on traditional, yet failed, strike actions. The author does not attempt to quantify, or place in a broader perspective, the impact of the 1890-1920 movements of populism, the IWW, and socialism on the wider society. Though Gompers, a socialist in his early working days, was clearly unsympathetic towards these movements, the attribution that he was a major factor in their demise seems very questionable. His power to influence events pales in comparison to power of various organs of the state, especially the judiciary, and corporations to adversely affect the working class.

Though the author continually raises the issue of worker democracy as a rebuke to the policies of labor leadership, there is scant reflection on what worker democracy may entail. It would have been unthinkable that the author's much admired IWW would have tolerated third-party bureaucratic organizations like unions negotiating contracts for workers. The IWW wanted direct worker control at the point of production for all workers. But then the practical questions of social and economic coordination arise quickly with such radical decentralization. Nonetheless, the author does not attempt to resolve in any practical way the conflict between actual democracy and the current form of organized labor in the US. Nor is there any real assessment of the desire of the American working class to participate in some form of IWW-like democracy.

The author does not limit himself to the personalities that have led the AFL-CIO. He is determined to identify countless former communists and socialists of labor organizations who renounced their radical pasts and joined neo-conservative political bodies or collaborated with the intelligence community. The fact that the author is a socialist undoubtedly is germane to his mission of identifying those who have abandoned the cause.

A book that is so intent on skewering personalities usually suffers as a result and this one is no exception. The author hints at but does not pursue some worthy topics. What is worker democracy? Are trade unions compatible with such democracy? Aren't centralization and bureaucracy necessary in any complex society? Now those are topics worthy for a book on the labor movement and the working class.

This is a very well written book, almost 500 pages of judicious treatment of the IWW. The author traces the wobblies' very shaky evolution from 1905 to their ultimate decline into oblivion after World War I. Dubofsky is clearly far from unsympathetic to the wobblies but he portrays them with objectivity. It appears from his analysis that the wobblies suffered many times from a fervent devotion to principle at the expense of clear headed analyses of the real-life situations they faced and were full of optimism about their organization's future that was totally unwarranted.

The wobblies had to figure out how to organize deeply impoverished workers, who were divided by race, language, ethnicity, etc. and who had little funds to support the wobblies. They were opposed by almost the entire Socialist Party, which argued that the only proper course for socialists in the labor movement was to try to "bore from within" A.F of L unions and try to elect socialists to political office. Of course, the AF of L itself was violently hostile, offering support to state and employer repression of the wobblies. The A.F of L was filled mostly with white, relatively well paid English speaking craft workers, who tended to disdain the eastern and southern European immigrants, African Americans, migratory lumber workers and others that the IWW targeted for organization. In its early years the organization could barely keep from collapsing as innumerable left wing elements tried to hijack the organization for their own purposes. The Western Federation of Miners(WFM), originally the leading component of the IWW, soon decided that it wished to eschew a radical anti-capitalist course and adopt AF of L style business unionism. The WFM would soon leave the IWW.

But of course, the biggest component hindering IWW operations was state repression. Because the wobblies preached revolution and sabotage, even if, as the author points out, they were non-violent in practice, state authorities had little compunction in arresting wobbly activists on trumped up charges. The large majority of employers still objected to even the moderate unionism of the A.F of L, so they were especially paranoid about a militant union like the wobblies. Wobblies were placed in horrible conditions in jails during the Free Speech fights on the west coast in 1909-1913. They were deprived of adequate food and water, stuffed together in tiny cells, had a fire hose turned on them at full blast for a half hour in their cells, etc. In San Diego wobblies were kidnapped by vigilantes and taken to a deserted place where they were tortured by being beaten while running through gauntlets of vigilantes. Dubofsky quotes California state investigator Harris Weinstock who compared the treatment of the wobblies to the pogroms against Jews in Czarist Russia. In Lawrence Massachusetts, the Mesabi Range in Minnesota and Everett WA, wobblies were arrested on spurious charges of murder but later found not guilty. In Utah, wobbly member Joe Hill was executed for murder even though the murder gun and bullets could not be tied to him. The prosecution convicted Hill mainly by stressing to the jury that he was a member of a subversive organization that preached against capitalism, religion, patriotism, and other sacred things. In Everett WA, in a prelude to the "Everett Massacre" wobblies were taken from the town's jail by vigilantes to a local park where they were stripped naked and forced to run gauntlets of vigilantes who beat them with very hard and sharp objects.

In spite of all these hindrances, a great many industrial workers were ready to join an organization revolting against terrible working and living conditions. Dubofsky notes that among textile workers in Lawrence MA, the infant mortality rate was 172 per 1000 and for the state's textile workforce, respiratory illnesses were fatal 70 percent of the time compared to only 4 percent among Massachusetts's farmers. Meanwhile, in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, 600 miners suffered serious injuries from 1910 to 1913 while 160 died on the job.

Dubofsky points out that it was labor shortages caused by World War I that allowed the wobblies to have their greatest successes. Of course it was the war that also began the organization's demise. Wobbly strikes in such vital war industries as lumber and copper mining convinced the federal government, to the delight of businessmen everywhere, to repress the wobblies. The organization's leadership was decimated by imprisonment and most of the organization's records were seized by federal authorities and later destroyed. The wobblies were convicted by the government based on their anti-capitalist political opinions, Dubofsky shows. Meanwhile vigilantes lynched wobbly organizer Frank Little in Montana in 1917 and vigilantes in Bisbee Arizona, supported by copper companies and local authorities, forcibly took IWW copper workers from their homes, placed them in cattle cars and deported them into the New Mexico desert. Local authorities tended to act in more crude ways that the federal government, as Dubofsky shows by the example of IWW sympathizer Theodora Pollok. Pollok was forced by Sacramento police to receive a thorough medical exam of the type given to prostitutes, though, of course, she wasn't a prostitute. The Wilson administration vigorously protested Pollok's treatment, for she was from a well connected upper class Maryland family.

Dubofsky does a good job portraying the last years of the IWW as a remotely viable organization, including the episode of the vigilante terror meted out to the organization's Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union. He also discusses the crushing of IWW organizing efforts during the 1927 labor unrest in the Colorado mining industry. (My review refers to the unabridged 1988 edition of the book--the abridged edition may have left out details of the 1920's IWW and other topics that the unabridged editions cover).

This book brings up some fascinating topics relevant for advocates of militant left wing unionism. Such topics include the inability of the wobblies, as they struggled to gain short term bread and butter benefits for their members, to develop a lasting revolutionary culture among the bulk of its members. Another topic and particularly of interest to me is Dubofsky's discussion as to how ideas regarding centralized control versus more autonomous rank and file direction of strike activities played out within the organization.

This book caused a major stir when first released in the 60s. But labor history studies have changed a great deal since that time. The entire orientation of this book is patronizing to the amazing works of the IWW.

For example:

1) It completely ignores the IWW's international aspects, for example that the IWW had more influence in Chile and Australia than in the US and Canada.

2) It glosses over the IWWs activities during the 1920s, the Marine Transport Workers' control of the Wetsern Hemisphere's shipping, longshore workers in North America, the 1927 Colorado Miners' Strike, etc. etc.

3) It has no coherent understanding of why the IWW declined. How FDR worked with Lewis and the CIO to force unionization, the principled stands the IWW took to stop the rise of business unionism, and some buttheadedess by the IWW's membership.

It contains many good stories and is an OK overview. The definitive work is still waiting on the subject.

Historiographically speaking, this is THE book to read on the history of the IWW. There are other attempts worth reading, (Renshaw or Thompson for example) but for a solidly researched, brilliantly written academic study, this is the place to go. Renshaw's book includes a few things on the IWW oustide North America, and can be thought of as an easy to read summary, but as a historical research and analysis work, it is not in the same league. Thompson's official history of the IWW is a different attempt as well, as its focus is strictly an institutional history; it is not a work of historical research and analysis, it is written in the dry prose of a chronicler's accounts. You won't find in-depth analyses and a major historian's work there, although it has its uses. Given the fact that We Shall Be All was produced more than three decades ago, it still holds much better than a great many number of studies published in its time. In the absence of a new and comprehensive historical work on the history of the IWW, Dubofsky's book is still the major, requisite reading on the subject.

Extenisve research, could have been more inclusive with contingent work section. If you want to read about a temp turned activist (she testified in the U.S.Senate Labor Committee June 1993) read Temporarily Yours by Wendy Perkins, a revealing expose of the temp industry as portrayed by this Beverly Hills temp worker.

This volume culminates a five year project working with the top scholars on contingent work in the United States. Every form of contingent work is considered in depth by knowledgeable experts, from independent contracting to temporary arrangements, from service industries to higher education. The result, in our estimation, is a thought-provoking and timely review of how particular American workers are faring.

Reviewers have commented:

"Barker and Christensen bring together an outstanding collection on the transformation of American employment. This iterdisciplinary volume provides the theoretical, historical, and legal contexts for understanding the eremergence of contingent work, and offers empirical research on its extent and its consequences for workes and their families. This volume will be useful for scholars and students interested in work in America; it is a must for policy-makers, unions, and personnel specialists." (Barbara Reskin, Harvard University)

and "This book does a simply masterful job of helping us understand contingent work arrangements..." (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford University

This book confirmed many things that I have long suspected. 'Democracy', as it stands, simply doesn't work.

John Redwood exposes the shallow hypocrisy at the heart of the New Labour 'Project'. The government's programme of ill-thought out constitutional changes can be harmful to Britain. Blair is a fraud; this book completely exposes his reliance on the politics of envy. All those who have been seduced by the Labour Lie Machine should read this book.

Being an outsider of European Intergration as asian, I can catch layout picture from this book about the EURO system. Even it will bring new future in major regions on focus economy and business. This book is not under academical theories only but also on practical issues. And the writing is not hard to read for non-inglish speaker.

It's a book about EURO which you'll find interesting. It is actually a collection of articles written by various industry specialists. It examines the impact of EURO on many areas like Bond Market, Equity Market & foreign exchange rate etc, it also illustrates the role of ECB.

It's recommended to students who want to have a quick grasp of knowledge in the EMU. It contains many graphs and diagrams which can raise your speed of reading. However, the impact of Euro on Equity market is a little bit too short.

Highly recommended to overseas students in Europe.

It is a highly informative book which is easy to follow due to its issue based approach. I use it as one of the recommended readings in a course on Business in Europe in a couple of Polytechnics. The only thing is that it is getting to be rather badly out of date.

A definate must for anyone studying European Business. This book explains the complexities of the European Union, from it's founding to the present day. Key topics include European Community Law, Regional Policies and Macroeconomic Integration. Aimed at all levels, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the topic in an easy to understand format with excellent case studies and reference material. I wouldn't have got through a HND without it!

This book is strong with data and valuable information collected from various journals and reports. Taking this into consideration a reader can find easy to understand information on the political, social, economic, legal, and structural aspects of the European electricity market (in the first part of the book). The second part of the book presents studies of markets in countries including France, the UK, Nordic countries, and Hungary (I think the publisher forgot about hungary..but it's in there). The only weakness I have noticed in this book is the presentation. Having numerous authors may have made it difficult to avoid repetitive analysis and redundancies. Some sections treat similar issues in similar manners while some other sections treat them in very different ways making it hard to find continuity through the whole book (actually through any part at all). Although the reader will want to start with part-one before attacking part-two, he will be able to read chapters in each part in any order. Overall, the topic of this book is so broad and complex that a reader can only expect a good bigger-picture understanding of the subject. The appendix section containing definitions makes this book a challenging but feasible venture for a beginner in the field.

This book is strong with data and valuable information collected from various journals and reports. Taking this into consideration a reader can find easy to understand information on the political, social, economic, legal, and structural aspects of the European electricity market (in the first part of the book). The second part of the book presents studies of markets in countries including France, the UK, Nordic countries, and Hungary (I think the publisher forgot about hungary..but it's in there). The only weakness I have noticed in this book is the presentation. Having numerous authors may have made it difficult to avoid repetitive analysis and frequent redundancies. Some sections treat similar issues in similar manners while some other sections treat them in very different ways making it hard to find continuity through the whole book (actually through any single part at all). Although the reader will want to start with part-one before attacking part-two, he will be able to read chapters in each part in any order. Overall, the topic of this book is so broad and complex that a reader can only expect a good bigger-picture understanding of the subject. The appendix section containing definitions makes this book a challenging but feasible venture for a beginner in the field while the references and links provided in this book offer resources for further studying.