The term “lean production” refers to a series of organisational processes and techniques developed by Toyota and popularised by James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos in their bestselling work, The Machine That Changed The World: The Triumph of Lean… Continue Reading
In the summer of 2022, strikes by workers suddenly returned to centre stage.1 Three high profile national disputes catapulted industrial action, picket lines and national union leaders into the public arena. The first nationwide strikes on the railways since 1993,… Continue Reading
From Algiers to Beirut and Baghdad to Khartoum, it appears that revolution is once again “the choice of the people”—as a slogan echoed by tens of thousands on protests in Sudan puts it.1 Meanwhile, the temperature of social and political… Continue Reading
Roger Cox was among the earliest members of the Socialist Review Group (SRG), founded by Tony Cliff in the 1950s, a group that would later evolve into the International Socialists (IS) and then the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). As one… Continue Reading
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels sketched what has come to be known as the gravedigger thesis, widely believed to propose that the objective conditions of capitalism would inevitably produce a revolutionary working class which would overthrow… Continue Reading
A review of Joshua Clover, Riot. Strike. Riot: The new era of uprisings Verso (2016), £20 Joshua Clover identifies a cycle of struggle occurring over the centuries which he categorises respectively as riot, strike and “riot prime”. Riots first occurred… Continue Reading
A review of Hao Ren, Eli Friedman and Zhongjin Li (editors), China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance (Haymarket, 2016),£15.99 China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance is an exciting and illuminating book focused on the labour struggles waged by… Continue Reading
When I wrote “Why Are There So Few Strikes?”1 I expected that it would generate some discussion. I was not prepared, though, for the huge number of words and length of time taken up by responses. In addition to numerous… Continue Reading
During the blisteringly hot summer of 1976 a group of Asian workers, predominantly women, walked out on strike at a small factory in north west London. Most were recently arrived migrants from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya and were as unlikely… Continue Reading
Technical advances in new information and communication technologies (ICT) have led to debates on the left about the impact of digitalisation on the world of work. Alongside digitalisation and advances in interactive web-based communication, we have also witnessed new advances… Continue Reading