International Development Studies Visiting Speakers Program

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. Azzellini focuses his 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.

Dario Azzellini is an Italian/German scholar, author, filmmaker and political activist who lives in Berlin and is an assistant professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. He holds a PhD in political science from the Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany) and a PhD in sociology from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico).