4-6/25 New books & articles: Factory takeovers, ILPC, communes, climate
http://www.azzellini.net - https://www.facebook.com/dario.azzellini
4-6 2025, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English - approx. 4 times a year (also available in Spanish and German)
To unsubscribe: https://www.azzellini.net/newsletter/subscriptions
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0. Before
1. New Books and research reports (English, German):
2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)
3. Videos/Audios (English/Spanish)
4. Interviews and journalism (German)
5. Talks/Conferences (Santiago de Chile, Buggerru/Sardinia)
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0. Before
Hello!
This is all going to get much worse...
I will limit myself to commenting my work.
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Finally! The co-authored book with my great comrade Marcelo Vieta will be published in July:
"Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over"Routledge, 290 Pages, July 14, 2025 (a more affordable paperback edition will be following)
By the time we finished writing the book, it had reached over 500 pages, including communes and direct self-government. We are convinced that direct self-government, the political-administrative control, must go hand in hand with control of the means of production. In the end, we decided to write two books. So get ready: another book on communes and self-government will follow soon...
We accept invitations for book presentations and discussions.
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It is a great honor for me to have been invited to give one of the keynote addresses at the International Labour Process Conference (ILPC) 43 in Santiago, Chile, alongside Matt Hubber, Alessandra Mezzadri, and Carlos Eduardo Martins, April 23-25.
More in point 5.
Hopefully, we'll see you in Santiago!
Dario
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1. New Books and research reports (English, German)
Dario Azzellini and Marcelo Vieta
Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over
Routledge, 290 Pages, July 14, 2025 (a more affordable paperback will follow later)
This book investigates the return of workers’ self-management in recent decades as responses to recurring neoliberal crises. In particular, the book homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (WREs), a promising form of workers’ self-organization whereby workers restart troubled, bankrupt, or shuttered companies as cooperatives or other forms of democratic workplace.
The book argues that WREs are prefigurative of new forms of work based on equality and sustainability. Framed by the concepts of autogestión, the labour commons, and prefigurative ethico-political practices, the book argues that WREs contribute to the construction of more directly democratic community economies. Drawing on a range of contemporary case studies from numerous countries in the Global South and North, as well as new theories of workers’ self-management, the book contributes a critical development, political economic, and class-struggle Marxist perspective to the re-emergent labour question within anti-systemic social movements, while theorizing the transformative nature of WREs for workers, work organizations, and communities.
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Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “La democracia consejista y comunera en contra del Estado-nación.” Curto López, Saúl (ed.). La emergencia de la Democracia Comunal. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch.
"Este volumen, además de ser una compilación de estudios sobre realidades comunitarias, también es una primera aportación tanto teórica como práctico-empírica para situar la democracia comunal como un posible campo de trabajo e investigación en las próximas décadas. Pensamos que esta posibilidad, no sólo existe, sino que, además, tiene sentido y pertinencia en la situación social que vive el mundo..."
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Atzeni, Maurizio, Dario Azzellini, Alessandra Mezzadri, Phoebe Moore, Ursula Apitzsch. 2023. Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work. UK, E-Elgar EE.
"This ground-breaking Handbook broadens empirical and theoretical understandings of work, work relations, and workers. It advances a global, intersectional labour studies agenda, laying the foundations for the politically emancipatory project of decolonising the political economy of work. Moving beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, this Handbook provides a comprehensive account of the relations between different forms of work, exploitation, class configuration and worker resistance. With insights from global experts across the social sciences, it examines changes in technology, geographies of production, and the dynamics of the global capitalist political economy to map modern configurations of work. Using ongoing empirical qualitative research, contributors explore key issues such as capital accumulation, migration, digital work, trade unionism and reproductive labour. There is a particular focus on perspectives from the Global South, with in-depth analyses of class and work in countries and regional economic blocs used to explore the dynamics between the local and the global. "
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3320
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Azzellini, Dario. 2023. Sustainable Work and Just Transition: Policies and labour movement actors in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Spain, Poland, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation: Geneva
https://rosalux-geneva.org/sustainable-work-and-just-transition/
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3327
Free download at: https://rosalux-geneva.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Dario_Azzellini_Report_JT_RLS_final-1.pdf
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Azzellini, Dario. 2024. Crowdwork: Kontext und Kompetenzentwicklung in den Ländern Italien, den Niederlanden, Schweden und dem Vereinigten Königreich. Working Papers No. 14. Working Papers des Forschungsclusters OPAL der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung zu Crowdwork bietet einen Überblick zu den Funktionen und Praxen der Gestaltung von Crowdworking-Plattformen im Allgemeinen und in vier Ländern Europas (Italien, Niederlande, Schweden und Vereinigtes Königreich) im Besonderen.
https://openhsu.ub.hsu-hh.de/entities/publication/17002
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2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)
Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “Contemporary Communes and Council Democracy in Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy. DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067.
Ideas and practices of communal self-administration are widespread in Latin America, especially among indigenous and Afro-American communities, stemming from ancestral customs. Commune-like self- administration predates the Paris Commune and has surfaced repeatedly throughout history. It was present in the wars of independence, in peasant uprisings, in revolts and revolutions in the early 20th century and in the struggles of its second half. The idea of the commune as democratically self-governed space corresponds to the framework of alternative imagination of many popular movements and the experiences of building popular power...
Article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067
50 free pdf available with this link (please use it only if you don't have access otherwise):
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BXBM2EYQ55UGUTJJZZHT/full?target=10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067
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Azzellini, Dario. “Factory Takeovers in the European Mediterranean Area: Self-Managed Companies in France, Italy and Greece.” CESCONTEXTO. 36:38-46.
"Over the past 15 years Workers Recuperated Companies (WRCs) emerged in several European countries as Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Turkey and eventually other countries ... "
Article: https://www.azzellini.net/node/3367
CESCONTEXTO 36: https://ces.uc.pt/pt/
publicacoes/outras-publicacoes-e-colecoes/cescontexto/numeros/debates-36
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Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “La democracia consejista y comunera en contra del Estado-nación.” Curto López, Saúl (ed.). La emergencia de la Democracia Comunal. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch.
"Este volumen, además de ser una compilación de estudios sobre realidades comunitarias, también es una primera aportación tanto teórica como práctico-empírica para situar la democracia comunal como un posible campo de trabajo e investigación en las próximas décadas. Pensamos que esta posibilidad, no sólo existe, sino que, además, tiene sentido y pertinencia en la situación social que vive el mundo..."
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Azzellini, Dario. “Entre la crisis climática, ecológica y social del planeta: ¿aún existen caminos para la resistencia y las utopías?" RBBA. Revista Binacional Brasil Argentina: diálogo entre as ciências. 13.2:1-25
"En el siguiente artículo realizo un breve recuento de las crisis múltiples de la humanidad, centrándome en la catástrofe climática y la inefectividad estructural de las contramedidas. Como consecuencia se propone el trabajo sustentable en el centro de las iniciativas para la transición socio-ecológica y critico el concepto de empleos verdes. Se introduce la relación Norte-Sur, y clase y género Como variables necesarias de una visión holística de sostenibilidad para una transición justa. Y en este contexto se aboga por una revalorización y decomodificación del trabajo..."
Artículo: https://www.azzellini.net/node/3364
RBBA 13.2: https://periodicos2.uesb.br/index.php/rbba/article/view/15568
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3. Videos/Audios (English, Spanish)
Commons and Social Transformation - Dario Azzellini, 23.10.2024, 26 min.
Theresa Alt asks Dario Azzellini about the concept of commons, economic activity that is neither capitalist nor governmental. The commons existed before capitalism, and capitalism requires enclosure of the commons. Now many see commoning as a way to decommodify some resources. Labor power too could be decommodified. But capital tries to take over more and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=kUrbsX5mYSY
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Entre la crisis climática, ecológica y social del planeta: ¿Hay caminos para la Resistencia y las utopías?
Dario Azzellini, 6 de noviembre, 2024, 1h 33 min.
Crisis climática, trabajo, utopías, comunas, autogestión, clase, Norte-Sur, genero, sustentabilidad... ¿Como se conecta todo?
Discurso de Dario Azzellini en la inauguración del 15. Colóquio Nacional e 8. Colóquio Internacional do Museu Pedagógico da UESB. Vitoria da Conquista, Bahía, Brasil.
“Entre a crise climática, ecológica e social do planeta: ainda há caminhos para a resistência e as utopias?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8kpBOd_bls&t=1s
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4. Interviews and journalism (German)
„Sie sind nicht nur Arbeitskräfte“
Aktuelle Analyse zu rückeroberten Betrieben. Gespräch mit Dario Azzellini. Geführt von Ayse Tekin, Manfred Neugroda, Nuria CafaroSoZ Nr.9, 2024
AT: Du dokumentierst in deiner Arbeit rückeroberte Betriebe in Europa und Lateinamerika. Ist das so bewusst geographisch gewählt, oder gibt es in den anderen Teilen der Welt weniger Beispiele?
DA: Nein, es gibt tatsächlich überall Beispiele auf der Welt. Ich wähle nur nach Sprachen, die ich gut beherrsche. Ich kann leider kein Chinesisch und von daher ist es echt schwer, da was rauszufinden. Was wir wissen, ist, dass es auch dort Betriebsbesetzungen um die 2000er Wende gab, als die große Privatisierungswelle war. Dabei haben auch einige besetzte Betriebe durchgesetzt, Genossenschaften zu werden....
Weiterlesen:
https://www.azzellini.net/interviews/%E2%80%9Esie-sind-nicht-nur-arbeitskraefte%E2%80%9C
https://www.sozonline.de/2024/09/sie-sind-nicht-nur-arbeitskraefte/
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5. Talks/Conferences (Santiago de Chile, Buggerru/Sardinia)
43rd International Labour Process Conference (ILPC), Labour Process and the Environmental Crisis in a Multipolar World. Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago de Chile, Chile, April 23-25.
Plenary Speakers: Matt Hubber, Alessandra Mezzadri , Dario Azzellini y Carlos Eduardo Martins
Together with Katja Praznik, Nayan Jyoti and Jaka Primorac, I have also organized the stream "Art Work and Creative Labor: Mapping Regimes of Exploitation, Invisible Labor, and Resistance in the Field of Cultural Production"
And I will be participating with two presentations in other streams:
- Green Jobs: Definitions and Employment relations in Europe and beyond
- The Looming Dilemma of Crowdwork Platforms
https://www.ilpc.org.uk/
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4th Labour Transfer School: establishing links between research and labour activism
Buggerru, Sardinia, Italy, 8th to 13th June 2025
As every year, I'll be joining many wonderful people at Buggerru. There are no more spots available this year. If you're not familiar with the LTS yet, check out the website and you might be interested in participating in 2026.
The Labour Transfer School (LabourTransfer) is an independent, not for profit, international initiative of global labour scholars interested in collaborations, synergies and knowledge exchange between academia and social organizations, aiming at producing emancipatory knowledge on labour and social issues. LabourTransfer gives participants a chance to exchange their research interests with academics, labour activists, artists, journalists and trade unionists from all over the world. LabourTransfer is not a traditional academic summer school or a training centre for trade unionists but a networking place for labour activism and social justice
More information:
https://www.labourtransferschool.org/home
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Dario Azzellini
www.azzellini.net www.workerscontrol.net
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