1/2019 The class strikes back, books, films, articles...
http://www.azzellini.net - facebook: Dario Azzellini
Jan 2019, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English - 6-8 times a year
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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, January 2019
"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, German)
3. Videos/Audios: "Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti" (English)
4. Interviews and press articles (English )
5. Reviews (English, Spanish, German)
6. Events (Barcelona, CAT; Mannheim, Germany)
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0. Before
Hello!
2018 was not a particularly good year globally. The extreme right has been on the rise, gaining government power in some European states and Brazil (with the support of the West and various corporations and financial institutions); the climate catastrophe has accelerated once again.
The United States, various EU countries and Australia have declared war on refugees and migrants ... And the US, the EU, Russia and Israel have just given Turkey their consent to take military action against the Kurds in Syria, who were not just the only ones to fight effectively against Daesh and other fundamentalist terrorist militias, but also implemented the only democratic and multi-ethnic societal model in the entire region. Turkey not only pursues dreams of rebuilding the Ottoman empire violating international law, but it also supports Daesh and other Islamist terrorist militias allied with Turkey. Meanwhile, Germany stands out in particular with arms deliveries to the Turkish terror regime and as a sidekick of Erdogan persecuting Kurdish organizations, sympathizers and symbols in Germany.
But we live in times in which everything can change again very quickly. No one had expected an uprising of the dimensions of the yellow vests in France - and it seems it might ignite a new global wave of protests. In Mexico, López Obrador has won the presidential election (yes, this is not a revolution, but certainly not negligible), the right in Latin America cannot satisfy its own (wealthy and powerful) supporters and fails dramatically, as especially Macri in Argentina puts into evidence. There are no media reports about the insurrection in Haiti, going on for several weeks now...
On a 2019 full of struggles and victories!
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"Occupy, Resist, Produce - Scop Ti" - the fourth film in the series on recuperated workplaces in Europe is ready (with English or German subtitles) and available for screenings (see 3). If you are interseted in showing it, please contact me. The film on the former Unilever tee packing plant in Southern France, together with the oher three film of the series, are also part of an exhibition in Mannheim (GER) (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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Have a great break, happy new year and a 2019 full of struggles and victories!
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, 321pp.
In January 2019 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. Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish, German)
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: "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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Dario Azzellini (2019): "Wir können auch anders. Räte, Arbeiterkontrolle und Selbstverwaltung am Arbeitsplatz". In: Demirovic, Alex (Hrsg.): Wirtschaftsdemokratie neu denken. Westfälisches Dampfboot. 297-315.
"Die Forderung nach Wirtschaftsdemokratie war eine Initiative der Arbeiter- und Gewerkschaftsbewegung in den 1920er Jahren. In der Bundesrepublik wurde dieser Impuls vor allem in die unterschiedlichen Formen der Mitbestimmung in der verarbeitenden Industrie umgesetzt. Daneben gibt es die Praktiken der Genossenschaften, der Kooperativen und der Selbstverwaltung. Die Veränderungen der Unternehmen, die veränderten Bedingungen der Lohnarbeit, die Autonomiewünsche und Subjektivierungsformen der Lohnabhängigen, die ökologischen Zerstörungen ebenso wie die Aushöhlung der Demokratie drängen zu einer demokratischen Gestaltung wirtschaftlicher Entscheidungsprozesse. Die Beiträge resümieren Erfahrungen und bemühen sich darum, Wirtschaftsdemokratie in einem anspruchsvollen Sinn zu aktualisieren. Es schreiben Roland Atzmüller, Dario Azzellini, Martin Beckmann, Richard Detje, Andreas Fisahn, Gisela Notz, Frank Nullmeier, Bernd Riexinger, Harald Wolf u.a."
Buch beim Dampfboot-Verlag: https://www.dampfboot-verlag.de/shop/artikel/wirtschaftsdemokratie-neu-d...
Inhalt: https://www.dampfboot-verlag.de/filepool/getfile/dampfboot/?datei=/datei...
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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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4. Interviews and press articles (English)
Commons and Conflict. Dario Azzellini
Talk at the Asia-Europe People’s Forum and transform! conference "Our Common Social Future," Barcelona, June 8-10, 2018 - 10 juni 2018
AEPF Asia-Europe People's Forum, December 13, 2018
"Today, everyone is speaking about commons and ‘commoning’, everyone wants to build commons. The World Bank has a group which is supposedly ‘protecting and improving the global commons’ and it reaches out to the private sector to ‘advance common goods’. You can find texts on commons on the website of the European Union, banks organize seminars on the commons. Transnational companies tell us they are building the commons, big magazines declare that Uber is commoning cars, and that the “sharing economy” is a form of commoning....."
Continue reading:
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3118/edit
https://www.aepf.info/single-post/2018/12/14/Commons-and-Conflict
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"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.
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5. Reviews (English, Spanish, German)
„The class strikes back: Self-Organized Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century“ (Book Review). Journal of Labor and Society, November 15, 2018 / Robert Ovetz
The path through decades of working class defeat is much discussed but little studied. Azzellini and Kraft's book The Class Strikes Back seeks to change that by helping to fill one of the most glaring holes in class analysis today. It offers a compilation of detailed analyses of workers organizing to shift the balance of power between capital and workers, or what is otherwise known as class composition, from 13 countries and nearly every continent. Everyone involved in and studying working class self-organizing needs to not only read this book but use it as a model for continuing this long overdue work.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/wusa.12367
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„Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below“. Socialism and Democracy, 20 Nov 2018 / Babak Amini
This monograph presents the most detailed account available in English of communal councils and workers’ control initiatives in Venezuela that have evolved since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999. At a time when Venezuela is grappling with the most serious economic and political crisis that it has experienced since the turn of the century, understanding the transformative processes that the country has undertaken is crucial for anyone seeking to have an informed assessment of what Venezuelan experience signifies for the socialist project in the twenty-first century.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08854300.2018.1508949?journa...
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„Poder Obrero. Autogestión y control obrero desde La Comuna hasta el presente“ (2017) - Darío Azzellini e Immanuel Ness (eds.). Polikracia, 21.11.2018 / Fidel Oliván Navarro
En este extenso repaso histórico, teórico y de casos sobre el control obrero de las fábricas y empresas han participado más de 20 autores de decenas de países, obteniendo como resultado la obra colectiva más exhaustiva y actual del tema. La perspectiva general es verdaderamente rigurosa, lo que no quita muchos comentarios críticos con las experiencias, los Estados y los actores que intervinieron en los procesos históricos que se analizan.
https://polikracia.com/libros-aprender-ciencias-sociales/
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„Vom Protest zum sozialen Prozess“ (Buchbesprechung). Oya, erschienen in 50/2018 / Elisabeth Voß
Dario Azzellini geht in seinem neuen Buch »Vom Protest zum sozialen Prozess – Betriebsbesetzungen und Arbeiten in Selbstverwaltung« der Frage nach, ob es möglich ist, »im Kapitalismus ›anders‹ zu arbeiten und damit die Perspektive einer demokratischen und solidarischen Gesellschaft jenseits des Kapitalismus aufzuzeigen und zu eröffnen«. Dafür untersucht er »Rückeroberte Betriebe unter Arbeiter*innenkontrolle« (RBAs) in Europa, im Nahen Osten, in Lateinamerika und den USA. Diese Betriebe unterscheiden sich von Kollektiven aus der Alternativbewegung und auch von Produktivgenossenschaften dadurch, dass sie aus Arbeitskämpfen entstanden sind, meist besetzt waren oder es bis heute sind und oft gegen Räumungsdrohungen durch die alten Eigentümer oder die Polizei verteidigt werden müssen.
https://oya-online.de/review/read/3055-vom_protest_zum_sozialen_prozess_...
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6. Events (Barcelona, CAT; Mannheim, Germany)
MACBA, Barcelona/CAT, 17. Januar 2019, 19:00
Utopías no textuales - Presentation of the monographic issue of REGAC journal and première of the film Occupy, Resist, Produce – Scop Ti, by Oliver Ressler and Dario Azzellini
https://www.macba.cat/en/utopias-no-textuales
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Kunsthalle Mannheim, 12 Oct. 2018 - 03 Feb 2019
"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)
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
