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

11/2017, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English
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0. Before - Analysis regional elections in Venezuela and more

1. New Books (English/Spanish): 

"The Class Strikes Back. Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century," BRILL, November 2017

"Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela. Building 21st Century Socialism from Below," paperback by Haymarket, November 2017.

"Poder Obrero. Autogestión y control obrero desde La Comuna hasta el presente," Oveja Roja, Oktober 2017

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

3. Videos/Audios (Spanish/German)

4. Interviews and press articles (English)

5. Reviews (English/German)

6. Events (Berlin/Ithaca, NY)

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0. Before

Hello!

First newsletter in a while. I promise the next newsletter will be sent out soon and it will be much shorter...

I am now visiting research fellow at the ILR (Industrial and Labor Relations) School, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

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Analysis regional elections in Venezuela

Venezuela - Chavismo wins 18 out of 23 regional governments, opposition 5. The governing PSUV and allied parties won in the states of Amazonas, Apure, Aragua, Barinas, Bolívar, Carabobo, Cojedes, Delta Amacuro, Falcon, Guarico, Lara, Miranda, Monagas, Sucre, Trujillo, Yaracuy, and Vargas. The opposition alliance MUD won 5 states: the Democratic Action (AD) party won Anzoátegui, Merida, Nueva Esparta, and Táchira; Primero Justicia won the strategic oil rich northwestern border state of Zulia. While the results of 22 states were announced a few hours after polls closed, the votes in Bolívar were recounted due to the small margin between winner Justo Noguera Petri of the government forces coalition and the opposition candidate Andres Velasquez. Petri finally won with 276,655 votes, while the MUD-candidate gathered 275,184 votes.

According to Electoral Council CNE, 61.14 percent of Venezuela’s 18 million electorate participated in the regional elections, the second highest voter turnout in regional elections after the 65.45 percent turnout in 2008. The PSUV and allies won 54% of the total vote on a national level, marking an important recovery since their huge defeat in the 2015 parliamentary elections when they won only 40.8% of the vote. The right-wing opposition coalition MUD won 45% of the vote.

In the parliamentary elections 2015 the participation had been 75%. While the PSUV could maintain more or less their electorate in absolute numbers, the opposition lost 2.2 million votes relative to 2015.

In the regional elections of 2012 government parties won 20 out of 23 regions. But most media and polls were expecting them to lose much more states than they did. The economic crisis since 2014, the violent opposition protests causing 140 deaths, the US pressure and international economic and financial boycott of Venezuela, high inflation, scarcity of food, medicine and other basic goods (due to speculation, smuggling, high prices, intentional economic boycott, but also to corruption, government mismanagement and failure in economic and financial policies) had reduced popular support for the government significantly and some political sectors and former Chavista politicians had withdrawn their support for the Maduro government while discontent was widespread. But polls predicting opposition victory in almost all states six months ago have been shifting rapidly towards a Chavista victory over the past 2-3 months.

What happened?

- First it is important to state that there is no evidence of fraud, as some opposition politicians claim and many international media and politicians suggest. Venezuela has an electronic voting system and the vote is also printed so that there can be a manual recount. The correct functioning of the electoral machines was checked and approved also by representatives of the opposition before the elections. The electoral system asks for a manual audit of 54.4% of the votes, nevertheless president Maduro called on the electoral council to carry out a “100 percent audit” of all paper ballots from Sunday’s vote. International observers were present during the elections and confirmed that there was no evidence of fraud nor even of the possibility of fraud.

- The strategy of the opposition to spread violence and terror on the streets alienated a good part of its own electorate. Especially because barricades and violence concentrated very much in the opposition’s strongholds and neighborhoods. Entire neighborhoods were literally taken hostage by violent groups that made it impossible for the inhabitants to live a normal life. And the longer the violent protests lasted, the more they were taken over by gangs and groups forcing people to pay when they wanted to pass the barricades to go to work or buy groceries. And finally the strategy did not show the expected result of bringing down the Maduro government.

- The opposition is divided. The radical factions of the opposition did not agree with participating in regional elections and called for a boycott.

- The July 30 National Constituent Assembly (ANC) elections, with a turnout of over eight million people, brought back peace and brought back in the offensive Chavista rank and file after years of paralysis, desperation and defensive acting. The opposition called for a boycott of the ANC-elections, said there had been a massive fraud and participation was much lower than the government said, and did not recognize the results. Nevertheless, it seems they know the turnout was as high as the government announced: after the ANC-elections they stopped immediately the violent mobilization to topple the government and a majority of the opposition agreed to participate in the regional elections. Something they would not have done if they would have really believed that the government lost almost all support and its deposition was only a matter of days or weeks.

- The elections for the ANC proved to be a good idea, even if I think the way they happened was not as good: public debate was not broad enough and the electoral machine of the PSUV imposed the party candidates and did not leave much space for radical and movement Chavismo candidates. Nevertheless, the ANC-elections reinvigorated rank and file Chavismo which had kept paralyzed over the past few years in order not to provoke violent confrontation with the opposition mobilization. With the call for ANC-elections and since then movements, rank and file and different sectors (neighborhoods, women/feminists, communes, peasants, workers, ecologists etc.) started again meeting, discussing, mobilizing, pressuring with and around the ANC. The widespread feeling of desperation, of not being able to do anything, the feeling to have to hide Chavista identity, was blown away. The ANC brought also back to Chavismo many rank and file supporters that had stopped supporting government Chavismo in the past. I have several of them as FB friends, for example workers from Bolivar’s heavy industries, who had turned their backs on government Chavismo because of corruption and missed transformation in the heavy industries and they suddenly started mobilizing for the ANC. 

The result is also problematic for the government. To have lost Zulia, Táchira and Merida puts it in a difficult situation. The 3 states in the northwest, bordering Colombia, are the entry door for paramilitarism, and the main corridor for the smuggling and extraction of Venezuelan subsidized food and gasoline. The 3 states are also the base for the a possible “half-moon” strategy formulated by some sectors of the opposition in the past: to follow a secessionist strategy and declare a parallel government. Zulia is also the region with a majority of oil fields. After having lost the option of winning easily through elections the opposition will also be less inclined to negotiate with the government and try to mobilize more international support for the economic and financial strangulation and international isolation of Venezuela. The US, Canada, the EU and the right-wing governments in Latin America are very likely to follow and support these calls by the extreme right-wing opposition sectors in Venezuela.

Despite important victories in some key states, the opposition alliance MUD refused to recognize the electoral results – but accepts its own victories – and accuses the government of fraud. MUD campaign leader Gerardo Blyde rejected the outcome and said it was not “not reliable.” He accused the government of having provoked the opposition defeat criticizing that the CNE had relocated 334 voting centers – mainly because they were in opposition areas and targeted by violence during the elections to the ANC and that some withdrawn opposition candidates were still listed on the ballots. The accusations are ridiculous, the relocation was announced already weeks ago and done for a good reason. Moreover, transport was installed to bring voters to new election sites. And many people from poor neighborhoods have had to cover miles without organized transport in all past elections and they voted. The opposition never complained about it. The fact that some opposition candidates were still listed on the ballots was simply due to the fact that they missed the due date to officially withdraw.

Some opposition candidates also admitted their defeat. So did Henri Falcón, former governor of Lara, who lost by a 17-point margin to his PSUV challenger Carmen Melendez. And the Carabobo opposition candidate also recognized his defeat. The former opposition governor of Delta Amacuro, who did not run again for office, blamed the opposition, their divisions and their choice who to nominate as candidate, for having lost the elections. And AD leader Ramos Allup, a main player in the opposition alliance, especially now that his party has 4 of the 5 opposition governors, called aggressive right-wing secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) Luis Almagro to stop giving external advise to the Venezuelan opposition.

The result is a huge victory for Chavismo and puts it - after having been for 3 years against the wall – in a position of strength. The government has now to deal urgently with the economic and financial situation, combat corruption effectively, democratize the PSUV and go back to participative politics that marked the Chávez era, strengthening again communes, community councils and go back to support workers control and self-management. The economic and political crisis had pushed the government to reduce participation and rely on centralization, top down decisions, opening to transnational capital. If the government does not do that it seems unlikely that they will be able to repeat their victory in the presidential elections in 2018.  

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Now available as paperback fo $28 with Haymarket:

"Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela. Building 21st Century Socialism from Below" (scroll down to 1).

The book covers the time between 1998 and 2014. Nevertheless, even in the midth of the multiple crisis Venezuela is suffering, which is fostered by the low oil prices, the violence of the opposition, the economic war waged by private entrepreneurs, political and economic attacks by the US, corruption and missing counter measures by the government... the positive examples of how to overcome the crisis and the capitalist rentist and extracitvist model come from the communes and the initiatives in favor of workers control.

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NEW BOOK!!!

Together with Michael G. Kraft I edited "The Class Strikes Back. Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century"

Published by Brill (scroll down to 1)

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I am happy to announce the Spanish translation or "Ours To Master and To Own: Workers Control From the Commune to the Present":

Poder Obrero. Autogestión y control obrero desde La Comuna hasta el presente

Published by OVEJA ROJA (scroll down to 1)

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Moreover I want to point out not to forget the terrible disaster in Puerto Rico, made worse by its colonial status, the earthquake ridden Mexico, which put in evidence once again the total failure of the narco-government. Only the people save the people!

Greetings, love and strength to friends, beloved, family and all the people in Mexico and Puerto Rico!

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In Catalonia the Spanish state is showing its most authoritarian side. Don't believe the hype. It's not about nationalism (at least not on the Catalonian side), it's about democracy and the people's will. The Spanish government, who hase been at the forefront in attacking Venezuela and denouncing the supposed lack of democracy, sent 14.000 policemen to beat up the people that wanted to vote about their future, is jailing activists and preparing the authoritarian crack down, while openly encouraging a fascist Spanish nationalist movement. That is what "democracy" looks like. Keep your eyes open. Visca, visca, Catalunya república lliure, solidària, independent i socialista!

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And last but not least all the best wishes the Kurdish people and their local/regional allies. Strenght to the only relevant mutliethnic, secular, democratic forces in the region. Especially now that they are under attack by Turkey and their allies and proxies.

Best,

Dario

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1. New Books (English/Spanish):

Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft (Eds.): The Class Strikes Back. Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century.

BRILL, November 2017

"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: Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela. Building 21st Century Socialism from Below

Paperback by haymarketbooks, 14. November 2017, pages: 266, $28

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Poder Obrero. Autogestión y control obrero desde La Comuna hasta el presente

OVEJA ROJA, 16. Octubre 2017. Traducción al español de "Ours To Master and To Own: Workers Control From the Commune to the Present"

PVP: 22,50 €

ISBN: 978-84-16227-15-0
584 pgs.

Desde los albores de la era industrial, la mejor arma de lxs trabajadorxs en la defensa de sus intereses ha sido la acción colectiva. Gracias a ella, a lo largo del último siglo y medio y en prácticamente toda la geografía del planeta se han repetido experiencias de ocupación de fábricas, constitución de consejos obreros y democratización de los centros de trabajo. A lo largo de este volumen documentaremos algunas de ellas. Expondremos primero el debate teórico que las ha acompañado para sumergirnos enseguida en luchas desarrolladas tanto en sociedades capitalistas como bajo formas de socialismo de Estado. Desde finales del XIX hasta principios del s. XXI recorreremos diferentes manifestaciones de un movimiento que tiene una inagotable potencialidad política para nuestro presente.

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3022

http://www.laovejaroja.es/principal.htm

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

ALBA – an alternative regional alliance?
27.03.2017 Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office

Various regional integration initiatives have emerged as a counterpoint to the advance of globalisation. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is of interest from the perspective of the European left, because cooperation and integration take a very different shape in ALBA from other regional alliances. The three basic principles of ALBA are complementarity, solidarity and cooperation.  That in itself is a marked difference from the European Union (EU) with its four fundamental freedoms (the free movement of people, goods, services and capital). Below we will outline ALBA’s main features by looking at the three political, economic and social dimensions of the alliance.

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3013

http://www.rosalux.eu/topics/solidarity-and-emancipation/alba-an-alterna...

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Dario Azzellini: "21st century socialism? Venezuela’s solidarity, social, popular and communal economy"

in: Towards just and sustainable economies The social and solidarity economy North and South, Edited by Peter North and Molly Scott Cato.

Policy Press, Univertsity of Bristol, 2017, pp.213-233

With capitalism in crisis - rising inequality, unsustainable resource depletion and climate change all demanding a new economic model - the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has been suggested as an alternative. What can contribute in terms of generating livelihoods that provide a dignified life, meeting of social needs and building of sustainable futures? What can activists in both the global North and South learn from each other? In this volume academics from a range of disciplines and from a number of European and Latin American countries come together to question what it means to have a 'sustainable society' and to ask what role these alternative economies can play in developing convivial, humane and resilient societies, raising some challenging questions for policy-makers and citizens alike.

Read more:

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3003

https://policypress.co.uk/towards-just-and-sustainable-economies#book-de...

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Dario Azzellini: “Constituent and Constituted Power: Reading social transformation in Latin America.”

In: Betances, Emelio; Figueroa; Carlos (Eds.): Popular Sovereignty and Constituent Power in Latin America: Democracy from Below. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. 15-40.

This book combines a bottom-up and top-down approach to the study of social movements in relationship to the development of constituent and constituted power in Latin America. The contributors to this volume argue that the radical transformation of liberal representative democracy into participative democracy is what colours these processes as revolutionary. The core themes include popular sovereignty, constituted power, constituent power, participatory democracy, free trade agreements, social citizenship, as well as redistribution and recognition issues. Unlike other collections, which provide broad coverage of social movements at the expense of depth, this book is of thematic focus and illuminates the relationships between rulers and ruled as they transform liberal democracy.

Constituent and Constituted Power: Reading Social Transformation in Latin
America, Pages 15-39:

http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137548245

http://www.azzellini.net/node/2986

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Azzellini, Dario (2016): "Labour as a Commons: The Example of Worker-Recuperated Companies". In: Critical Sociology, 1–14

This article argues that labour can be understood as a commons, located in the discussion of how commons can advance the transformation of social relations and society. To manage labour as a commons entails a shift away from the perception of labour power as the object of capital’s value practices, towards a notion of labour power as a collectively and sustainably managed resource for the benefit of society. Given that social change is largely a result of social struggle, it is crucial to examine germinal forms of labour as a commons present in society. I focus my analysis on worker-recuperated companies in Latin America and Europe. Worker-recuperated companies are enterprises self-managed by their workers after the owners close them down. Despite operating within the hegemonic capitalist market, they do not adopt capitalist rationality and are proven viable. Worker-recuperated companies offer a new perspective on labour as a commons.

http://crs.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/05/0896920516661856.abstrac...

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La Venezuela del pueblo. Control obrero, cooperativas y comunas. julio 2017, Autogestión. Para Otra Economía, no. 3, pp. 40-44

Los análisis sobre Venezuela se suelen concentrar en las políticas de gobierno y –hasta el 2013 – en la igura de Chávez. Hasta la mayoría de los autores que apoyan el proceso bolivariano han prestado poca atención a la construcción popular desde abajo. En este artículo se analizan la dinámica del movimiento para el control obrero, las cooperativas y su conexión con las Comunas como forma avanzada de autogobierno local.

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3015

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3. Videos/Audios (Spanish/Deutsch)

Dario Azzellini sobre las sanciones de EEUU en contra de Venezuela

RT, 3.8.2017, 6 min.

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWUlY2EsRKA&feature=youtu.be

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Venezuela - wie geht es weiter?

Stoffwechsel, Radio Z Nürnberg, 4.10.2017, 16:37 min.

In Venezuela gibt es seit August diesen Jahres eine verfassungsgebende Versammlung. Das südamerikanische Land wird seit über einem Jahr von massiven Protesten sowie Gewalt auf den Straßen gebeutelt und leidet darüber hinaus unter den Sanktionen südamerikanischer Länder und der USA. Wie es momentan in Venezuela aussieht und wie sich die Staatskrise entwickelt, darüber hat mein Kollege mit einem Politikwissenschaftler gesprochen.

http://www.azzellini.net/interviews/venezuela-wie-geht-es-weiter

https://www.freie-radios.net/85270

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4. Interviews and press articles (English)

Roar Magazine Issue #2
Workers’ Control in the Crisis of Capitalism

In February 2016, a dozen former workers of a small woodworks plant in the small Greek town of Patrida, some 60 kilometers from Thessaloniki, had had enough. Since 2008 they had been tricked by the owners. With a promise to pay back everything soon, the bosses did not pay the workers their full salary anymore, reduced working hours and announced bankruptcy without making it official. But the situation never improved and the workers never saw their money. Finally, in December 2015, the plant closed. The debt accumulated by the company in terms of unpaid salaries currently stands at around 700,000 euros.
Read more:

http://www.azzellini.net/node/2964

https://roarmag.org/magazine/workers-control-in-the-crisis-of-capitalism/

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5. Reviews (English/German)

28 March 2017, Journal of Labor and Society.  Azzellini, Darrio, ed. An Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy. London: Zed Books, 2015.

In an era of neo-liberal globalization where trade unions, the working-class and the working-poor are constantly under attack from vicious right-wing forces in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, it is very refreshing to read a book that provides a comparative history of Workers’ control in factories where rank and file workers waged struggles that linked shop-floor issues to broader societal issues of democracy and the transformation of society where the working class as in the words of the late CLR James, “every cook can govern.”

Read more:

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3004

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/wusa.12272/full

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6. Events (Berlin/NY)

03. November 2017 | 19:00 - 05. November 2017 | 16:00 Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung | Berlin

Staat und Ökonomie im Übergang: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Rätediskussion im 20. Jahrhundert

Die Russische Revolution vom Oktober/November 1917 hat nicht nur das 20. Jahrhundert im Allgemeinen, sondern auch die politische Theorie und Praxis der Linken in besonderer Weise nachhaltig geprägt. Den hundertsten Jahrestag dieser Revolution nimmt die Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung zum Anlass, sowohl die Geschichte wie die Gegenwart dieser Revolution in den Blick zu nehmen.

http://www.azzellini.net/staat-und-oekonomie-im-uebergang-bilanz-und-per...

https://www.rosalux.de/veranstaltung/es_detail/FYKX9/

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October 25, 2017 | 13:00 - 14:30, 281 Ives Faculty Building | Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

Workplace Takeovers for Self-Managment in Europe: Comparative Case Studies in France, Greece and Italy.

Dario Azzellini, Visiting Scholar ILR School

http://www.azzellini.net/node/3026

https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/centers-institutes/international-programs/vi...

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Dario Azzellini

www.azzellini.net                www.workerscontrol.net