This book focuses on how the state has become entangled in the processes through which workers have been organized, reorganized and disorganized as social and political actors in different historical periods.

In this book Brown argues that workers in East and Southeast Asia are significant actors in political change. Critically examining the themes of labour weakness, political exclusion and insignificance of 'class factors' he aims to bring workers back from the margins, demonstrating that both in the present and past the state has been entangled in processes that determine the forms of their struggles. This book presents new empirical data, important historical material and an innovative approach to workers and politics.