Unite? A Multilevel Analysis of Unionization in Less Developed Countries

specific labor organizations and leftist parties. Yet he emphasized the need to move beyond mobilizing around local, firm-specific, “economic” concerns to create “a political movement that is to say, a movement of the class, with the object of enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially coercive force” (Tucker 1978:520). Marx fully appreciated that formal organizations were essential for cultivating workingclass power: “The political movement of the working class has as its ultimate object, of course, the conquest of political power for this class, and this naturally requires a previous organization of the working class” (Tucker 1978:520). For most of the twentieth century, sociologists shared Marx’s fascination with labor unions. In part, this was because of clear links to enduring disciplinary interests in mobilization, group Workers of the Less Developed World Unite? A Multilevel Analysis of Unionization in Less Developed Countries