Perhaps I was thrown off by the title, but there were few rats and revolutionaries, and far more labour parties, associations, and unions all with different acronyms fighting over how best to manage the working class and the state. Not once did I learn how strikes were organised, how workers were convinced to the benefits of socialism, how delegates were appointed, how money was pooled, what tactics were used to avoid state surveillance and fend off police violence. There was nothing that helped me understand anything about organising labour struggles, just an endless tide of acronyms.

Don't get me wrong, some of the information was interesting. I learnt Australian labour groups were so racist and sexist at the turn of the century that New Zealand groups didn't want to associate with them. That Asian and Pacific immigrant labourers were blamed for bringing down wages in Australia, rather than capitalism. That Jewish conspiracists were rife in the leadership of labour movements in both Australia and New Zealand.

This left me feeling pretty depressed. I wish this book had featured more examples to aspire to, victories to cherish and admire. But such victories were passed over quickly, with little detail of the actual workers involved, their ways of living, planning, celebrating, communing.

I want to think and live like an autonomist. I want to act and understand the world through my own creative actions and the creative actions of those around me. I want to locate the worker as the site of life, because without them who are we? No matter what labour, corporate, or state institution we operate through, we are nonetheless the productive beings that reproduce it. I think this orientation is far more hopeful, meaningful, and insightful than looking at labour groups at an abstract level, or focusing only on their leaders and their intellectual scuffles.