Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

"This is micro-historical writing at its best."—Walden Bello, author of Dilemmas of Domination

"Brilliant."—Ken Loach

The stories in this book come to life through the voices of remarkable individuals: child laborers in Dickensian England, visionary women on Parisian barricades, gun-toting railway strikers in America’s Wild West, and beer-swilling German metalworkers who tried to stop World War I.

It is a story of urban slums, self-help cooperatives, choirs and brass bands, free love, and self-education by candlelight. And, as the author shows, in the developing industrial economies of the world, it is still with us. Live Working or Die Fighting celebrates a common history of defiance, idealism, and self-sacrifice, one as alive and active today as it was two hundred years ago. It is a unique and inspirational book.

Paul Mason is an award-winning journalist who reports regularly on labor rights and social justice stories as economics editor for BBC World News America and BBC Newsnight . In addition to Live Working or Die Fighting , which was shortlisted as a 2007 Guardian First Book Award, Mason is the author of Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed (Verso Books).