Struggle and Mutual Aid

In a critical and historical account of the formation and legacy of international labor movements, Nicolas Delalande explores the hard-fought struggle to strengthen labor movements across trades, languages, and national borders in the 19th and 20th centuries. Translated by award-winning writer and journalist Anthony Roberts, Struggle and Mutual Aid: The Age of Worker Solidarity shares the social movement that spurred global efforts to promote worker demands for fair wages and better working conditions. The movement for workers’ rights emphasized social capital by upholding dignity and humanity against the tyranny of capitalism.

This timely take on worker solidarities draws upon Delalande’s deep and nuanced understanding of economic sociology, sociopolitical, and geopolitical factors based on labor archives and self-published presses of labor organizations in the United States and Europe. He reveals the challenges and difficulties of sustaining the internationalist worker movement. For example, using money to resist the power of capital was one of the movement’s many contradictions.

Nevertheless, worker alliances developed complex mechanisms of mutual aid to financially support workers in nearby countries during labor strikes. In these scenarios, geographic proximity and linguistic familiarity helped. On the other hand, ethnic discord and linguistic difficulties fueled ideological disagreements. Important lessons about building cross-cultural movements focus on championing worker rights and economic equity.