http://www.azzellini.net  -  facebook: Dario Azzellini

Nov-Dec 2018, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English  
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0. Before

1. New Books (English, German, Turkish): 

"The Class Strikes Back. Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century," Haymarket, December 2018

"Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela. Building 21st Century Socialism from Below," paperback by Haymarket, January 2018.

"Vom Protest zum sozialen Prozess. Betriebsbesetzungen und Arbeiten in Selbstverwaltung". VSA: Verlag, eine Flugschrift. Hamburg. März, 2018.

"Bizi Temsil Edemezler! Yunanistan'dan Occupy'a Demokrasinin Yeniden İnşası". Istambul: Amara Yayıncılık. Temmuz, 2018. 

2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)

3. Videos/Audios: "Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti" (English)

4. Interviews and press articles (English )

5. Reviews (English, German)

6. Events (Ithaca NY, USA; Canterbury, England; Mannheim, Germany)

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0. Before

Hello!

Tuesday I will present "Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti" - the fourth film in the series on recuperated workplaces in Europe - at Cornell University, Itahaca. The film on the former Unilever tee packing plant in Southern France is available (for now) with English or German subtitles (see 3). If you are interseted in showing it, please contact me. US. All four films are also part of an exhibition in Canterbury (UK) and  Mannheim (Germany) (see 6).

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I am still looking for reviewers for my latest books. If you are interested in reviewing any of them (see 1), please send me a mail. I will then contact the publishers and let them know.

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Best,

Dario

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1. New Books (English, German, Turkish):

Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft (Eds.): The Class Strikes Back. Self-Organised Workers`Struggles in the Twenty-First Century.BRILL, January 2018. Historical Materialism Book Series, volume 150. Pages, Illust.:xii, 321pp. 

In October 2018 an affordable paperback edition will be published by Haymarket!

"The Class Strikes Back" examines a number of radical, twenty-first-century workers’ struggles. These struggles are characterised by a different kind of unionism and solidarity, arising out of new kinds of labour conditions and responsive to new kinds of social and economic marginalisation. The essays in the collection demonstrate the dramatic growth of syndicalist and autonomist formations and argue for their historical necessity. They show how workers seek to form and join democratic and independent unions that are fundamentally opposed to bureaucratic leadership, compromise, and concessions.

Specific case studies dealing with both the Global South and Global North assess the context of local histories and the spatially and temporally located balance of power, while embedding the struggle in a broader picture of resistance and the fight for emancipation.

http://www.brill.com/products/book/class-strikes-back

http://www.azzellini.net/en/buecher-von-dario-azzellini/class-strikes-back

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Dario Azzellini: "Vom Protest zum sozialen Prozess. Betriebsbesetzungen und Arbeiten in Selbstverwaltung". VSA-Verlag, eine Flugschrift. Hamburg. April 2018 / EUR 12.80

www.vsa-verlag.de-Azzelini-Vom-Protest-zum-sozialen-Prozess.pdf

Betriebsbesetzungen mit dem Ziel der Produktion in Selbstverwaltung sind seit der Jahrtausend­wende aus Lateinamerika, vor allem aus Argentinien, bekannt. Im Laufe der aktuellen Krise haben Beschäftigte auch in Europa und Nordamerika erfolgreich Besetzungen von Betrieben durchgeführt, die von der Schließung bedroht waren. Sie zeigen nicht nur auf, wie in Zeiten der Defensive der Arbeiter*innenbewegung und Gewerkschaften offensive Kämpfe geführt werden können, sie bieten auch praktische Lösungen und zugleich eine konkrete Utopie an. Der Betrieb wird demokratisiert, Produktion, Arbeitsprozess und soziale Beziehungen verändern sich, und die Ware Arbeitskraft wird in Richtung Commons transformiert. Dabei sehen sich die Arbeiter*innen mit einer Vielzahl von Problemen konfrontiert, für die es keine vorgefertigten Antworten gibt. Die Tatsache, dass die ehemals Beschäftigten – jenseits ihrer vorherigen politischen Orientierung – zusammenkommen und im Kampf solidarische Erfahrungen sammeln, unterscheidet diese Betriebe auch grundsätzlich von traditionellen Genossenschaften. Mit all ihren Widersprüchen zeigen sie auf, wie ein Weg zur Emanzipation der Arbeit und zu einer anderen Gesellschaft aussehen könnte.

www.azzellini.net/buecher-von-dario-azzellini/vom-protest-zum-sozialen-p...

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Dario Azzellini ve Marina Stirin: "Bizi Temsil Edemezler! Yunanistan'dan Occupy'a Demokrasinin Yeniden İnşası". Istambul: Amara Yayıncılık. Temmuz, 2018, sayfalar 312. 

David Harvey'in önsözünü yazdığı bu çalışma, Yunanistan, Türkiye, Arjantin ve ABD gibi farklı lokasyonlarda, kitlesel protesto hareketleri nihayetinde demokrasinin ne anlama gelmesi gerektiği sorusunu gündeme getiriyor. Occupy da dâhil olmak üzere bu yatay hareketler, devrimci sosyal değişimin temeli olarak katılımcı demokrasiyi uygulama rolünü üstlenmekte ve bunu talep etmekte.

Uluslararası düzeyde iki aktivist-aydın tarafından kaleme alınan ve İspanya, Venezüella, Arjantin, ABD, Türkiye ve diğer noktalardaki hareket katılımcıları ile yapılan geniş çaplı röportajlara dayanan bu kitap, meclislerin, doğrudan demokrasi forumlarının ve yeni hareketler ile savunulan örgütsel biçimlerin geniş bir portresi olmasının yanı sıra, Atina'dan Zuccoti Park'a kadar geçen tarihsel süreçte doğrudan ve katılımcı demokrasinin analitik yapısını inceliyor. Ayrıca bu yeni hareketler, liberal demokrasinin günümüzde veya daha öncesinde demokratik olmadığının da altını çiziyor.

Keep reading:: http://www.azzellini.net/node/3081

http://www.amarayayincilik.com/urun/bizi-temsil-edemezler/

Turkish translation of: "They can't represent us" (http://www.azzellini.net/node/2745) and: "This is a process not a protest" (http://www.azzellini.net/akademische-veroeffentlichungen/%E2%80%9E-proce...)

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2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)

Dario Azzellini (2018): "The Legacy of Workers’ Councils in Contemporary Social Movements." In: Muldoon, James (ed.): Council Democracy. Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics. Routledge. 228-248. 258 pgs.

"The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-First World War era, were the most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workers’ councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy.“

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3093

https://www.routledge.com/Council-Democracy-Towards-a-Democratic-Sociali...

Dario Azzellini: Book Review: Living on the Margins: Undocumented Migrants in a Global City by Alice Bloch and Sonia McKay. ILR Review, Vol 71, Issue 4, pp. 943 - 945, July 2018

"The book offers interesting insight into the everyday life of undocumented migrants without portraying them as helpless victims. Ample quotations from the interviews underline their agency and the complex and contradictory conditions they experience in the ethnic enclaves they are forced to rely on. Bloch and McKay shed light on the circumstances, motivations, and conditions of ethnic enclave employers, who, in most of the literature on undocumented migration, are not a subject of research. This approach helps overcome simplistic accounts that portray those employers merely as ruthless exploiters who take advantage of the undocumented, as it brings to light a wide range of motives and contradictions they face themselves, while it does not deny that the undocumented are usually underpaid, work overtime in precarious conditions, and have practically no labor rights. (…) The book’s clear structure and the vivid firsthand testimonies make Living on the Margins accessible for undergraduate and graduate students. It is a valuable resource for a wide range of courses in labor and migration sociology, inequality, citizen rights, law, and ethnic and cultural studies.“

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019793918775716

http://www.azzellini.net/articles

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Dario Azzellini: "The Commune in Venezuela: A Utopian Prefiguration," in: Latin American Utopias: Past and Present. Edited by Juan Pro. Sussex Academic Press. 235-261.

"In an age in which fears about the future predominate (in the form of dystopias, ecological catastrophes and terrifying Sci-Fi scenarios), utopia is reappearing as the bearer of hope for the fate of humanity. Latin America has historically been a fertile ground where utopian projects, movements and experiments could take root and thrive, and this constitutes one of the region's major contributions to world history."

http://www.sussex-academic.com/sa/titles/latin_american_studies/pro.htm

Pdf file available with index and book introduction: https://utopia.hypotheses.org/1027 

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“La guerra ha llegado a ser la forma de hacer economía y no la interrupción de la economía”. Diferencia(s). Revista de teoría social contemporánea, Vol. 1, No. 6 (2018). P. 113-130. Darío De Benedetti

Dario Azzellini: "...estudiando Colombia y el narcotráfico llegué a analizar el narcotráfico como un modelo posfordista de producción y comercialización. Es decir, con todos los elementos que tiene el posfordismo del just in time: la externalización, la fragmentación de las cadenas productivas, etc. De ahí empecé a estudiar más todo ese proceso posfordista en la economía legal, y de ahí otra vez regresé a los cambios en la conducción de guerra, como también un desarrollo posfordista neoliberal, que implica cambios sustanciales sobre cómo hay que entender la guerra y de cómo funciona.“ 

http://www.revista.diferencias.com.ar/index.php/diferencias/article/view...

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3106

 

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3. Videos/Audios (English)

"Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti."  34 min. / English. A film by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler. Release: October 2018.

Scop Ti is located in the small town Gémenos near Marseille, in Southern France. The plant belonged to Lipton (Unilever) and produced herbal and fruit teas and the 120-year-old local French black tea brand Thé de l’Éléphant. In September 2010 Unilever decided to relocate production and machines to Poland, closed the plant and left 182 workers without their jobs. The workers immediately occupied their workplace, supported by the union CGT. Initially all 182 workers participated in the occupation; after three years 76 were still active. They demanded from Unilever to get the factory, the machines and the brand name Thé de l’Éléphant. They planned to build a cooperative, switch production to natural and organic herbal teas using mainly regional products. 

Continue reading: http://www.azzellini.net/node/3096

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Dario Azzellini at the Asia Europe People's Forum. "The case for commons and social commons". Barcelona, June 2018

Practical implications of adopting a commoning approach to social protection – options for activism and policy development

What are commons? Who can develop commons? Is commoning based on harmony? Building and preserving commons is a struggle against capital and its history of preying on the commons. Nevertheless, not all commons are automatically anticapitalist, some are also functional to capital. Moreover it is important to also rethink reproduction. The commons cannot be based on gendered labour division...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mujmRXO1MNQ

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4. Interviews and press articles (English)

"Yes We Can: Worker-Owned Coops". Linewaiters' Gazette, Vol. MM, No. 22, November 8, 2018. 4-5. By Alison Rose Levy.

„Although not always designated by the term coop, “cooperation is anthropologically embedded in human beings. Cooperatives go back thousands of years. We wouldn’t have developed without them,” says Azzellini. Over the course of human history, “if humans had used today’s business norms and laws we wouldn’t have evolved beyond the state of Neanderthals. Humankind thrived because of cooperation,” he says. Azzellini points to numerous examples throughout human history—beginning with antique Greek mills and on through medieval times, when serfs and workers began “building networks of cooperation to resist the power of rich, commercial business and enterprises.“ 

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3110

https://www.foodcoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/lwg_2018_11_08_vMM_n...

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"What does class struggle mean today?" One Question in State of Nature Blog, 30th October 2018. Interviewers: Cihan Aksan And Jon Bailes

Dario Azzellini: "Class struggle, that is, the struggle between labour and capital, is not at all a concept that belongs to the past. In a world of growing inequality, it is a reality more pertinent than ever. A recent study has revealed that since 2008 the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an average of 6% a year, while the wealth of the remaining 99% of the world’s population has been growing by only 3%. By 2030, the world’s richest 1% will control nearly two-thirds of the world’s wealth."

http://stateofnatureblog.com/one-question-class-struggle-today/

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3109

With responses from: Dario Azzellini; Cinzia Arruzza; Jeffery R Webber; Adam Hanieh; Shahrzad Mojab; Guilherme Leite Gonçalves; Immanuel Ness; Demet Şahende Dinler; Cenk Saraçoğlu; Justin Akers Chacón; María Pía Lara; Terrell Carver; Charles Umney; Raju J Das.

6. Events (Ithaca NY, USA; Canterbury, England; Mannheim, Germany)

Documentary Screening & Discussion: "Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti"

Cornell University, 13 Nov 2018, at 4:30pm to 6:00 pm 

In “Occupy, Resist, Produce – Scop Ti”  (A film by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler) the workers tell the story of their collective struggle and speak about their democratic organization of work. They describe the difficulties and contradictions of trying to keep up a huge industrial production and sticking at the same time to their values and principles based on solidarity, natural flavors and organic production and the collaboration with local and regional producers.

The film is the fourth in a series of short films on occupations of workplaces and production under workers' control in Europe, “Occupy, Resist, Produce”, the filmmakers launched in 2014.

Ives Hall, 115 / B07 Tower Rd, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

http://events.cornell.edu/event/documentary_screening_discussion_occupy_...

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3108

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„Occupy, Resist, Produce“ / Solo exhibition of Oliver Ressler & Dario Azzellini

Herbert Read Gallery, 21 Nov 2018 - 14 Dec 2018

"The title of Oliver Ressler & Dario Azzellini’s solo exhibition “Occupy, Resist, Produce” refers to a four-channel video installation with the same title consisting of four films produced during 2014 – 2018 in occupied factories in Milan, Rome, Thessaloniki and Gémenos (near Marseille). In these cases, the workers were successful in bringing the labour under their control. Each film is based around conversations between workers. The workers' meetings or assemblies where decisions were made were also recorded. More particularly, the sites include the ‘open factory’ RiMaflow in Milan, the reuse and recycling centre Officine Zero in Rome, the organic cleaning products factory Vio.Me. in Thessaloniki, and the tea packing plant Scop Ti in Gémenos. For the future, it is planned to produce further films on occupied factories and to expand the video installation as the struggle of workers continues."

Herbert Read Gallery, UCA Canterbury, New Dover Road, Canterbury, Kent CT1 3AN. England

https://www.uca.ac.uk/galleries/gallery-events/occupy-resist-produce/

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3107

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„Occupy, Resist, Produce“ / A 4-channel video installation by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler. 131 min. (combined) 2014 – 2018 (RiMaflow, Officine Zero, Vio.Me. und Scop Ti)

Kunsthalle Mannheim, 12 Oct. 2018 - 03 Feb 2019

Within the framework of the exhibition „CONSTRUCTING THE WORLD: ART AND ECONOMY 1919-1939 AND 2008-2018: … this topical exhibition is the first to illustrate the economy’s dramatic influence on art and to make global comparisons, demonstrating these in an analysis of two separate eras“ (…) 

„The economic crisis that began in 2007-8 led to layoffs on a massive scale, leaving thousands of newly unemployed workers with little hope of another job. Their response put workers’ control back on the agenda in Europe. For many years beforehand, factories had been occupied and recuperated almost exclusively in Latin America.“

Kunsthalle Mannheim, Friedrichsplatz 4, 68165, Germany

https://www.kuma.art/en/constructing-world-art-and-economy-1919-1939-and...

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3105

 

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Dario Azzellini

www.azzellini.net                www.workerscontrol.net