Synopses & Reviews
From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition. Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers control, Ours to Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes of the old.
Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA.
Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.
Review
Ours to Master and to Own is the most substantive and comprehensive work on workers control and self-management today. I strongly recommend this work, which provides examples drawn from throughout the world of workers struggling for justice and power.”
Gary Younge, columnist for the Guardian and the Nation
The seemingly logical and just idea that workers themselves should make the decisions regarding and reap the benefits of their labor has always been a fraught concept with the potential to topple or reform whole societies
This ambitious, copiously researched, and clearly written text provides a sweeping diversity of examples, analyzed with cool detachment from the specific politics but with underlying passion for the larger concept.”
Kari Lydersen, author of Revolt on Goose Island
"Ours to Master and to Own is a remarkable work that reminds us that history is not dead ... it is not even past. It is an ongoing process whereby women and men choose not to accept the workplace or the world as it is. Those who teach labor studies would profit from adding this book that covers the often-forgotten history of workers' agency to their reading lists. This book is highly recommended."
William A Pelz, Labour Studies
With the global capitalist order entering a period of crisis, but also with the dramatic increase in workers struggles especially in the global South, this collection is extremely opportune. Workers will seek greater control over market forces and workers councils are bound to reemerge. A must-read for labor analysts and activists alike.”
Ronaldo Munck, Dublin City University and University of Liverpool
Ness and Azzellini have made a major contribution in producing this insightful and exciting collection of essays on the question of workers control
it is timely and offers great strategic insight.”
Bill Fletcher, Jr., coauthor of Solidarity Divided
Excellent! A very complete, serious, and inspiring account of the movements for workers control and their difficulties. There is no doubt that it should become a standard point of reference for future discussions and actions.”
John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism
"Ours to Master and to Own is an incredible resource. With 22 essays that cover over a century of struggle, it explores experiences ranging from soviet power in Russia, self-management in Yugoslavia and Algeria, workers' control in Portugal in 1974 and co-management in Venezuela today ... With the sheer scope of the examples, this book is a serious contribution to debates around workers' control, what is possible and how to achieve it. The chapter on 1970s British factory occupations should be mandatory reading for the period that is to come."
Julie Sherry, Socialist Review
"The social and environmental disaster that international capitalism has caused in the past 20 years reinforces the importance of this book. The alternative popular initiatives it describes are socially and economically far more advanced than the productivist and predatory canon of industrial capitalism. They are an antidote to the suicidal tendencies of high finance."
Antonio David Cattani, Red Pepper
Synopsis
From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and even gone so far as to challenge the premises of the system by enacting democratic self-management aimed at controlling production. This path-breaking volume illuminates this under-appreciated and under-investigated aspect of working class resistance. While Capitalism would have us believe we need our bosses, this volume reveals the history of workers who dare to disagree.
Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA.
Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.
Synopsis
Capitalism would have us believe we need our bosses. This volume reveals the history of workers who dare to disagree
Synopsis
The global financial crisis has led to a new shop floor militancy. Radical forms of protest and new workers' takeovers have sprung-up all over the globe. In the US, Republic Windows and Doors started production under worker control in January 2013, later that year workers in Greece took over and managed, on their own, a hotel, a hospital, a newspaper, a TV channel and a factory.
The dominant revolutionary left has viewed workers' control as part of a system necessary during a transition to socialism. Yet most socialist and communist parties have neglected to promote workers' control as it challenges the centrality of parties and it is in this spirit that trade unions, operating through the institutional frameworks of government, have held a monopoly over labor history.
Tracing Marx's writings on the Paris Commune through council communism, anarcho-syndicalism, Italian operaismo, and other 'heretical' left currents, this book uncovers the practices and intentions of historical and contemporary autonomous workers' movements that have been largely obscured until now. Addressing the questions of our age: What if there were no factories? What if most workers were individualized and work precarious? Can workers' control still be an option? this collection shows that by bringing permanence and predictability to their workplaces, workers can stabilize their communities through expressions of participatory democracy. And as history has repeatedly shown, workers always already have the capacity to run their enterprises on their own.
Synopsis
The global financial crisis has led to radical forms of social protest and worker takeovers all over the globe. Tracing Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune through council communism, anarcho-syndicalism, Italian operaismo, and other autonomous social movements, this book uncovers the intentions and practices of workers’ struggles that continue in force today. Addressing timely and essential questions, Dario Azzellini shows how bringing permanence and predictability to workplaces can stabilize communities and secure autonomy.
About the Author
Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a founding member of the Lower East Side Community Labor Organization, an autonomous activist organization in New York City. His research and writing focuses on social and revolutionary movements, labor militancy, and migrant worker resistance to oppression. Ness has just completed
Guest Workers, Corporate Despotism and Resistance,(forthcoming University of Illinois Press) a book that examines the rise of guest workers from the global South in the US and labor opposition to employer abuses. He is author of numerous books including an anthology of contemporary labor:
Real World Labor, with Amy Offner and Chris Sturr (Dollars and Sense). He edits the peer-review quarterly journal,
Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, and has also edited several reference works, including the
International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, and, with Aaron Brenner and Bejamin Day, the
Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History.
Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director and political scientist and lecturer at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. He splits his time between Berlin and Caracas. His research and writing focuses on social and revolutionary militancy, migration and racism, peoples power and selfadministration, and workers control, with extensive case studies in Latin America. He served as Associate Editor for the the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, and was primary editor for Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, and the new left in Italy. He serves as Associate Editor for WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society and for Cuadernos de Marte, an academic publication about war sociology released by the University of Buenos Aires. He has published several books, among them The Business of War (Assoziation A 2002), about the privatization of military services. His latest documentary Comuna under construction (2010) examines worker councils in Venezuela.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on contributors
Introduction
Dario Azzellini
1 Council Democracy, or the End of the Political
Alex Demirovic´
2 Contemporary Crisis and Workers’ Control
Dario Azzellini
3 Workers’ Assemblies: New Formations in the Organization of Labor and the Struggle against Capitalism
Elise Danielle Thorburn
4 The Austrian Revolution of 1918-1919 andWorking Class Autonomy
Peter Haumer
5 Chile: Worker Self-organization and Cordones Industriales under the Allende Government (1970-1973)
Franck Gaudichaud
6 'Production Control' or 'Factory Soviet'? Workers’ Control in Japan
Kimiyasu Irie
7 The Factory Commissions in Brazil and the 1964 Coup d’État
Henrique T. Novaes and Maurício S. de Faria
8 Self-management, Workers’ Control and Resistance against Crisis and Neoliberal Counter-reforms in Mexico
Patrick Cuninghame
9 Collective Self-management and Social Classes: The Case of Enterprises Recovered by Their Workers in Uruguay
Anabel Rieiro
10 Self-managing the Commons in Contemporary Greece
Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Theodoros Karyotis
Index