maybe not current day, but to understand where it came from and how & where it emerged, the origins of capitalism by ellen meiskins wood is fantastic
Books on current day working class, capitalism and anarchism.
Hmm.
On the "financialization" of capitalism, maybe Eric Touissant's _Your Money or Your Life_ or Kavaljit Singh's _The Globalisation of Finance_, although both books are almost a decade old by this point.
I've heard good things about David Harvey's _A History of Neoliberalism_ but have not read it and thus cannot recommend it. Robert Brenner might also be worth investigating.
I third "A Brief History Of Neoliberalism".
Also, (and I know I'll get shit for this from the Libcom crowd) for the present day American working class Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel And Dimed" is a good first hand account of low wage service jobs (maid service, waitressing, etc). Not a lot of analysis but still very interesting.
catch wrote:
Haven't read it, but Beverly Silver's Forces of Labour I believe goes up to the present day.
Yeah, Silver's book is fucking sweet.. it's a bit 'trade unionist' (i.e. she talks a lot about institutionalisation of unions into state as a positive) but definitely on the more militant edge of it.. worth giving a read anyway, and it makes you feel dead pleased about the future of the international labour movement.. 
I'd also check out aufheben (articles are online at http://libcom.org/aufheben ) - they've covered both various theories of modern capitalism (often critically), and done some in depth studies of various recent working class movements.
I'd echo Silver's book. Arrighi's long article in reply to Brenner's book is much better than Brenner's book in my opinion. The arrighi article is here
I haven't read it yet but I'd also recomend The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century by Robert Gilpin and Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order by the same author.
To be honest it depends on what you are looking for. The above are all good for understaninding the development of global capitalism in the last few years. But thats what they're good for.
Apart from Silvers book there's very little work that is analysing the world economy from a class perspective. And there are almost no good anarchist books on current affairs. Very few anarchist books get published and those that do tend to be on history or propagandistic. Very little contemporary analysis gets produced in book form. In terms of pamphlets and essay etc. theres a fair bit knocking around. Specify what you are looking for a bit more and people could probably give you better answers.
Matt wrote:
Well, I guess pretty much anything to do with the state of the working class and capitalism today, from an anarchist/class perspective. That sort of thing.Hmm, don't think I'm being any more specific
Have you looked at An Anarchist FAQ? That may have some material of interest. Volume 1 (sections A to F, plus the appendix on the symbols of anarchy) will be out this August (launch in Glasgow).
OK well if you're not sure. I'd recommend looking at some of the major and minor struggles of the past 30 years. If you want to understand the current situation, you need to understand the trajectory things are taking. By reading something fairly in-depth about particular events, regions or sectors, it puts some of the very general books posted above in context.
Here's a bunch of stuff between 1974 to now:
Portuguese Revolution, 1974-76 http://libcom.org/tags/portuguese-revolution
Wildcat Dodge 1974: http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/dodge_wildcat.html
UK Winter of Discontent, 1978-79: http://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-winter-of-discontent
Poland 1980-82, Henri Simon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poland-1980-1982-Henri-Simon/dp/0934868263
Korea 1987-97: http://libcom.org/history/korean-working-class-mass-strike-casualization-retreat-1987-2007
Our blog on the CPE protests in France, 2006: http://libcom.org/blog/cpe-france
http://www.prol-position.net/ (covers 2005-2008)
Matt wrote:
Well, I guess pretty much anything to do with the state of the working class and capitalism today, from an anarchist/class perspective. That sort of thing.Hmm, don't think I'm being any more specific
Yeah, I'd recommend Beverly Silver's book. It's academic but very good. On specific stuff of the recent past prol-position that catch reccomends is quite good. In issue #2 of prole-position they carried this Wildcat Preface: Beverly Silver, ‘Forces of Labor’ and #3 they carried this Interview with Beverly J. Silver
She's not an anarchist but she writes froma class perspective. It might be worth reading that preface and the interview to get a taste of the book before buying it. (Its expensive and written in an academic style.)
From an anarchist perspective:
The American Labor Movement - A New Beginning
by Sam Dolgoff
http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/display/210/index.php
Worthwhile reading for anarchists:
Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take On the Global Factory
by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie
Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement
by Peter Rachleff
Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below
by Vanessa Tait
I'll promote myself, if only to say that I think that Harvey's A Brief History of Neo-liberalism is pretty crappy politically, but decent enough for information. I review it in Mute (you can get it from MetaMute online), using Michael Hudson's Super-Imperialism to interrogate it. I think that the Hudson book is much, much better in many respects, despite it being politically much more conservative. Its analysis of finance is very strong.
Cheers,
Chris
The best book on class composition in the US that I've come across is Mike Davis' "Prisoners of the American Dream". Although the book is presented as an investigation of the question, "why did no European-style labor party ever emerge in the US", the answers (and their details) are of general interest to anyone concerned about class composition over here. It's over 20 years old and is in sore need of an update.
I haven't read it yet but this looks really good:
Quote:
In Getting the Goods, Edna Bonacich and Jake B. Wilson focus on the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—which together receive 40 percent of the nearly $2 trillion worth of goods imported annually to the United States—to examine the impact of the logistics revolution on workers in transportation and distribution. Built around the invention of shipping containers and communications technology, the logistics revolution has enabled giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to sell cheap consumer products made using low-wage labor in developing countries. The goods are shipped through an efficient, low-cost, intermodal freight system, in which containers are moved from factories in Asia to distribution centers across the United States without ever being opened.Bonacich and Wilson follow the flow of imports from Asian factories, exploring the roles of importers, container shipping companies, the ports, railroad and trucking companies, and warehouses. At each stage, Getting the Goods raises important questions about how the logistics revolution affects logistics workers. Drawing extensively on interviews with workers and managers at all levels of the supply chain, on industry reports, and on economic data, Bonacich and Wilson find that, in general, conditions have deteriorated for workers. But they also discover that changes in the system of production and distribution provide new strategic opportunities for labor to gain power. A much-needed corrective to both uncritical celebrations of containerization and the global economy and pessimistic predictions about the future of the U.S. labor movement, Getting the Goods will become required reading for scholars and students in sociology, political economy, and labor studies.
Not sure how helpful either of those would be to someone in Scotland.
Wondering if anyone could recommend some? Ta.