4/2023: Platform capitalism, class struggle, books, articles ...
http://www.azzellini.net - facebook: Dario Azzellini
April 2023, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English - approx. 2 times a year
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0. Before
1. New Books (English, German, Portuguese):
Azzellini, Dario (Ed.). 2021. If Not Us, Who? Workers against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship. Hamburg: VSA. (and German edition)
Azzellini, Dario und Carina Crenshaw. 2023. Arbeitskämpfe gegen Rechts: Serie von bebilderten Texten. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-Projekt L!NX.
Azzellini, Dario. 2023. O movimento autogestionário mundial: uma perspectiva marxista. Brasil: Lutas Anticapital.
2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, German)
3. Videos/Audios (English, Spanish)
4. Reviews (English, Spanish)
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0. Before
Dear all!
My new newsletter! Finally! More than 14 months passed since my last newsletter... Time flies. I had a lot of work to do. You can read about some of the results in this newsletter.
My first book in Portuguese is available now in Brazil: O movimento autogestionário mundial: uma perspectiva marxista. (see 1)
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With a great team of co-editors and great authors we finished:
Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work
Edited by Maurizio Atzeni, Dario Azzellini, Alessandra Mezzadri, Phoebe Moore, UrsulaApitzsch, Edward Elgar Publishing, 640 pp
It will be available in October 2023!
‘The Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work offers the most pervasive and up-to-date companion to understanding the contemporary ontology of labour exploitation and emancipatory struggles alongside global value chains and new technological developments. By foregrounding social reproductive work, commodified reproduction and class in interplay with sex, gender, age, race and ethnicity, the Handbook is second to none in taking Marxist theorization to the next level.’
– Angela Wigger, Radboud University, the Netherlands
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-of-research-on-the-global-poli...
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I recommend All Things Co-op: People Power - Imagining a World without Bosses, podcast audio by Democracy at Work (March 14, 2023), where I discuss with Kevin Gustafson and Cinar Akcin. See 3 for links and details.
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Best,
Dario
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1. New Books (English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish)
Azzellini, Dario (Ed.). 2021. If Not Us, Who? Workers against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship. Hamburg: VSA.
In struggles for democratization, workers continue to play a central role: from the new, class-conscious feminism to the mass protests that have erupted in countries such as Chile, Lebanon, and France. How have workers historically fought against fascism, dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and repressive tendencies in society, and how are they doing so today? And how do they organize themselves within and outside of trade unions?
Featuring contributions from some 30 authors on the new class-conscious feminism and labour struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as stories from France, the USA, Germany, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, the Philippines, Russia, Argentina, Spain, Indonesia, South Korea, the former East Germany, Tunisia, Egypt, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
https://www.vsa-verlag.de/nc/buecher/detail/artikel/if-not-us-who/
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3219
Link to free download the English version: https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/44046/if-not-us-who?cHash=61c6b...
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Azzellini, Dario und Carina Crenshaw. 2023. Arbeitskämpfe gegen Rechts: Serie von bebilderten Texten. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-Projekt L!NX.
Auf der Grundlage des von Dario Azzellini für die RLS herausgegebenen Buches "Mehr als Arbeitskampf!" wurde für das neue RLS-Projekt L!NX eine Serie von bebilderten Texten erarbeitet, die zur Einführung in die Thematik Arbeitskämpfe gegen Rechts dienen. Dazu gehören bisher: Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Gewerkschaften und Antirassismus, Frankreich: Gewerkschaften, soziale Bewegungen und Gelbwesten, Indien: Massenstreiks und Selbstorganisierung, Chile: „Es sind nicht 30 Peso, es sind 30 Jahre!“, Kolumbien: Eine mörderische "Demokratie".
Erzählung: Dario Azzellini, Grafik: Carina Crenshaw
https://linx.rosalux.de/arbeitskaempfe-gegen-rechts
https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/44046
https://www.azzellini.net/buecher-von-dario-azzellini/mehr-als-arbeitskampf
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Azzellini, Dario (Hrsg.). 2021. Mehr als Arbeitskampf! Workers weltweit gegen Autoritarismus, Faschismus und Diktatur. VSA: Verlag.
German edition of If Not Us, Who? Workers against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship.
http://www.azzellini.net/buecher/mehr-als-arbeitskampf
https://www.vsa-verlag.de/nc/detail/artikel/mehr-als-arbeitskampf/
Free download German pdf: https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/44046
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Azzellini, Dario. 2023. O movimento autogestionário mundial: uma perspectiva marxista. Brasil: Lutas Anticapital.
A presente obra de Dario Azzellini demonstra, com um extenso levantamento de experiências em diversos países e continentes, que existem elementos de continuidade entre as atuais fábricas recuperadas e o “legado” dos movimentos pretéritos de lutas autônomas e autogestionárias do movimento operário. Ao mesmo tempo, nas condições atuais do capitalismo e da luta de classes, Dario Azzellini atualiza a estratégia associativista e autogestionária, trazendo a tona importantes contribuições políticas para o projeto de emancipação da classe trabalhadora, pensando a força de trabalho como bem comum, produtor de valores de uso, e a perspectiva comunal, que articula produção e reprodução material com a organização social. Fruto de uma pesquisa extensa, de abrangência mundial, a presente obra deve se tornar referência obrigatória para todos que lutam pela superação do capital, da exploração econômica e da opressão política. Mauricio Sardá de Faria - UFRPE
https://lutasanticapital.com.br/products/o-movimento-autogestionario-mun...
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3310
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2. Book chapters and journal articles (English, German)
Azzellini, Dario. 2023. "Commune socialism: self-management, popular power and autonomy in Venezuela". In From Extractivism to Sustainability: Scenarios and Lessons from Latin America, edited by Henry Veltmeyer, Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete. (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003301981
In this chapter, the author analyses the dynamics of a broad movement to construct an alternative ‘social and solidarity’ form of society based on co-operativism, autonomism and worker self-management, and local community-based development within the context of popular power (poder popular) and the institution of Communal Councils, which was constructed ‘from below’ within civil society, although the leading role of these councils in the social transformation that has taken place in Venezuela over the past decade, and their revolutionary form (autonomous bodies of popular power), owes much to state support. This chapter elaborates this point, but he also argues out that the State has also an inherent tendency to inhibit the development of autonomous structures and tends to control and subordinate social processes. This contradiction, the author argues, in the case of Venezuela became increasingly accentuated the more communities developed the structures of self-government.
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3307
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003301981-20/com...
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Azzellini, Dario, Ian Greer, and Charles Umney. 2022. "Why platform capitalism is not the future of work." Work in the Global Economy. Vol. 2. No.2. 272–289. https://doi.org/10.1332/273241721X16666858545489
This article examines the assumptions behind the sociology of work and industrial relations literature on online labour-based platforms. This literature has critically examined working conditions and worker resistance in platform work, but it has done so without criticising what we call the ‘metanarrative of the platform economy’. This metanarrative enables a weaving together of platform work with broader trends such as precarisation, neoliberalisation, financialisation and marketisation, but it makes it difficult for scholars to explain the small size of the platform workforce or to understand the diverse forms that platforms take. We argue that in order to understand the limits and diversity of platforms it is important to understand the inherent problems of platforms as capitalist business models. We suggest a research agenda that decentres some of the better-known platform models (ridesharing and food delivery) and carries out in-depth studies of work and exchange in other sectors.
https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/wge/aop/article-...
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3296
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Azzellini, Dario. 2022. "Chavismo: revolutionary Bolivarianism in Venezuela". In The Cambridge History of Socialism. A Global History in Three Volumes. Vol. 2, edited by Marcel van der Linden, 517-541. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.
Summary: Chavismo refers to the set of ideas and policies of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (28 July 1954–5 March 2013) who was President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. Chávez gained popularity as leading member of a failed coup d’état of young military officers on 4 February 1992. In the years to follow, he turned into the undisputed leader of a broad movement for social transformation in Venezuela based on Bolivarianism. Bolivarianism refers to Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), Venezuelan liberator who fought for independence throughout South America and promoted the unification of the continent. In Venezuela, most popular movements and the governments since 1999 define themselves as Bolivarian. The social transformation process envisioned is called Bolivarian Process or Bolivarian Revolution. In twenty-first-century Venezuela Bolivarianism has become a set of political ideas, collective experiences, and values without a clearly defined programme or theoretical framework, and thus is a work in progress rather than a meticulous ideology or theory. Bolivarianism reaches across a wide ideological spectrum reflecting the diversity of political, social, and cultural influences feeding it.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-socialism/9B69...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-socialism/...
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3297
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Azzellini, Dario. 2022. "Workers’ Control and Self-Management". In The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies, edited by Henry Veltmeyer, Paul Bowles. Second edition. London/New York: Routledge
Workers’ control and workers’ self- management have manifested themselves in all kinds of crisis and historical changes. They proliferated in revolutions and anti-colonial struggles, during political, economic, social, and cultural crises, and as a response to capitalist restructuring. Different forms of and struggles for workers’ control and self-management occurred in capitalist and in declared socialist political systems. In the Global South, workers’ control was especially present in anti-colonial and postcolonial emancipation efforts from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. Over the past two decades there has been a renewed global interest in workplace democracy, cooperativism, and workers’ control. The contemporary crisis has put self-management and the control of the means of production by workers and communities back on the agenda in many different forms. From a growing cooperative movement in many countries, struggles for the collective democratic administration of resources as commons to workplace takeovers through workers (from radical models as in Latin America and beyond to workers’ buy-outs) and the broader societal practices of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Communes in Venezuela, and Rojava/Kurdistan. This chapter clarifies some conceptual differences, and looks at the history of workers’ control and workers’ self-management, focusing especially on the Global South. It summarises why larger-scale initiatives in the 20th century failed and looks especially at the Worker Recuperated Companies as a 21st-century phenomenon to analyse the anticapitalist and emancipatory potential of workers’ control.
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3251
https://www.routledge.com/The-Essential-Guide-to-Critical-Development-St...
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Azzellini, Dario. 2022. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Class Struggle". Global Dialogue, 12.1.
Crises under capitalism tend to increase existing inequalities. This is also a consequence of the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global labor income decreased by an estimated 10.7 % (or US$3.5 trillion) in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, the total combined wealth of the more than 2,200 official billionaires worldwide grew from $9.5 trillion on December 31, 2019 to an estimated US$11.4 trillion a year later. Studies throughout the world confirm that poor and working-class people are at a higher risk of being infected and of being hospitalized due to COVID-19 and that Black, Indigenous, and racialized working-class populations experience disproportionate COVID-19 infection and death rates.
https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/articles/the-covid-19-pandemic-...
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3274
Translations of the article are available in Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, French and Turkish at azzellini.net
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Azzellini, Dario, Ian Greer, and Charles Umney. 2021. "Why isn’t there an Uber for live music? The digitalisation of intermediaries and the limits of the platform economy". New Technology, Work and Employment. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12213
Online platforms have disrupted parts of the capitalist economy, but assessing the magnitude of this effect is difficult. Much is known about major platforms, but less about the conditions under which they take over—or fail to take over—a given market. Unlike explanations emphasising slow take-up by entrepreneurs or worker resistance, we argue that historical and organisational characteristics of markets make them resistant to the platform model. In Germany and the UK, intermediaries have digitalised to varying degrees. Three market characteristics have combined to limit ‘platformisation’: (1) irreducibly qualitative assessments of value; (2) the complexity and contingencies inherent in the task that resist unbundling (3) fragmentation of the organisational field. Hence we show how the dynamics of work in live music limit the traction of the platform model. However, partial and hybrid forms of digitalisation still contribute towards intensified discipline over live music workers, threatening pay and working conditions.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ntwe.12213
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3258
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Azzellini, Dario, Sebastian Brandl und Ingo Matuschek. 2023. "Nationale Perspektiven auf Nachhaltige Arbeit und Inwertsetzungen von Arbeit in Europa". In Nachhaltig Werte schaffen? Arbeit und Technik in der sozial-ökologischen Transformation, herausgegeben vom Thomas Barth, Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Georg Jochum und Stephan Lorenz. Series Arbeitsgesellschaft im Wandel. 100-116. Weinheim: Beltz / Juventa.
Die gegenwärtigen Organisationsformen von Arbeit sind vielfach nicht nachhaltig. Arbeit als zugleich wertschaffende und wertzerstörende Tätigkeit droht somit die Grundlagen zukünftigen Arbeitens und Lebens zu untergraben. Mit dem Band wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich auf nachhaltige Weise Werte schaffen lassen, wobei das Zusammenspiel von Arbeit, Nachhaltigkeit, Werten und den genutzten Technologien im Vordergrund steht: Unter welchen Bedingungen und mithilfe welcher Technologien können die Naturverhältnisse nachhaltig gestaltet werden und welche Hindernisse bestehen dabei?
https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/soziologie/produkte/details/48818-nachha...
https://www.beltz.de/fileadmin/beltz/leseproben/978-3-7799-7007-1.pdf
https://www.azzellini.net/buchbeitraege/nationale-perspektiven-auf-nachh...
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Azzellini, Dario. 2021. Nachhaltige Arbeit Länderstudie über Diskurse, Politiken und Akteure. Eine Untersuchung zu neun europäischen Ländern: Frankreich, Portugal, Spanien, Niederlande, Vereinigtes Königreich, Schweden, Norwegen, Polen und Slowakei. Working Paper der Fachgruppe Soziologie und Arbeitsmarktpolitik, Hochschule der Bundesagentur für Arbeit. 203 S.
Nachhaltige Entwicklung ist politisches Ziel der EU und ihrer Mitgliedsstaaten. CO2-Reduktion, Energie- und Mobilitätswende sind tagesaktuell. Spätestens zum Jahr 2050 soll in Europa die Treibhausgasneutralität erreicht werden, bereits bis zum Jahr 2030 soll die Bundesverwaltung in Deutschland klimaneutral sein. Nicht nur Produktion und Konsum werden sich dadurch massiv verändern, sondern auch die Erwerbsarbeit und die Arbeitsmärkte. Doch auch wenn die Vereinten Nationen menschenwürdige und entwicklungsfördernde, nachhaltige Arbeit als Ziel proklamieren, zeigt sich schon in Europa eine begrenzte Durchdringung der Thematik. Das Working Paper untersucht die Perspektiven auf nachhaltige Arbeit in neun europäischen Ländern. Deutlich wird, dass nachhaltige Arbeit kaum explizit thematisiert wird. Die gesellschaftliche Organisation von Arbeit, andere Arbeitsformen oder Wertorientierungen werden selten angesprochen. Technologie rsp. ihre Nutzungsweisen spielen dagegen eine zentrale Rolle. Die Rolle der Arbeitsverwaltungen bleibt auf Programme einer ökologisch ausgerichteten beruflichen Qualifizierung begrenzt.
Projekt: https://www.hdba.de/hochschule/organisation/fachgruppen/soziologie-und-arbeitsmarktpolitik/working-paper-der-fachgruppe-soziologie-und-arbeitsmarktpolitik
Download des Berichts(pdf): https://ilias.hdba.de/goto.php?target=file_332651_download&client_id=HdBA
https://www.azzellini.net/wissenschaftliche-artikel/nachhaltige-arbeit-l...
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3. Videos/Audios (English, Spanish)
Dario Azzellini, interview with Kevin Gustafson and Cinar Akcin, All Things Co-op: People Power - Imagining a World without Bosses, podcast audio by Democracy at Work, March 14, 2023.
In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin Gustafson and Cinar Akcin speak with sociologist, political scientist, author and documentary filmmaker Dario Azzellini. They discuss recuperated workplaces—workplaces that have been abandoned by private capitalist owners and taken over by workers and reorganized to be democratically controlled—and why the process of engaging in struggle with fellow workers builds an enduring ecosystem of trust. They also explore critiques of the Mondragon corporation, why co-ops should be rooted in community and social movements, the dangers of co-op owners identifying as entrepreneurs, the long history of worker struggles around the world, and more.
https://www.democracyatwork.info/atc_people_power_imagining_a_world_with...
https://www.ivoox.com/people-power-imagining-a-world-without-bosses-audi...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkPGfrvkTAU
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3309
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Panel "Alternative Democracies / Alternatives to Democracy":
At the Conference "Contesting Authoritarianism: Perspectives from the South" which took place in Berlin from 16.05 - 21.05.2022 organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-strategies, Labour policies and worker's struggles in authoritarian contexts | CAPS22
"... As the crisis looms, the lack of a political response from the working classes in struggle continues to create a void filled by fascist and conservative political mobilization. There is still much to be learned from the victories of current working class global struggles regarding democratic decision-making and self-awareness. These tools will help build the future of the class struggle amid the latest capitalist implosion."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmtDSr7mqaY&list=PLvnBzZOjEg-Gg08kpXxx1Y...
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3300
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Charles Umney and Dario Azzellini, Why the music industry won’t be “Uberized”, podcast audio by Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, University of Leeds, May 2022
"Dr Charles Umney and Dr Dario Azzellini discuss the limits to the platform economy, and why many occupations are unlikely to be ‘Uberized’, using the live music industry as an example. Dr Umney and Dr Azzellini, along with other CERIC members, presented at the 40th International Labour Process Conference held on 21-23 April 2022 in Padua, Italy. This podcast episode focuses on the presentation they gave at the conference, with Dr Ian Greer - “Why most occupations won’t be ‘Uberized’”."
Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/research-and-innovation/id1560944672?i=1000567090897
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3m9MgNuZKiRZlSGYhDoqXH?si=6f2e771227944d19
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/leedsunibschool/why-the-music-industry-wont-be-uberized?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
LUBS Research and Innovation blog: https://business.leeds.ac.uk/dir-record/research-blog/1995/podcast-why-the-music-industry-won-t-be-uberized
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Video - Conferencia: "¿Son las plataformas digitales el futuro del trabajo?"
Conferencia impartida por Dario Azzellini, bajo la moderación de Guadalupe Margarita González Hernández en el marco de la XVIII Sesión - Seminario de Pensamiento Crítico de la Unidad Académica de Estudios del Desarrollo. Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 01.11.2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyfCu73uzWw
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3299
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Dario Azzellini: "El trabajo común: bases teóricas y el ejemplo de la empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores"
Intervención en el I. Congreso Internacional sobre Democracia Comunal: "Comunidad, poder popular y autogobierno: prácticas para transformar la democracia", organizado por Paz con Dignidad – Batea Duintasunarekin / Parte Hartuz de la Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU. 13.10 - 16.10.2021
Mesa: Comunales históricos y nuevos comunes. Moderó: Xabier Renteria-Uriarte (UPV-EHU) y compartieron mesa: 1) Aratz Soto y Eusebio Lasa: Hiri-Kooperatiben hedatzea Kuban: Sozialismoan sakontzeko demokrazia komunaleko tresna?; 2) Edurne Bagué: De la remunicipalización del agua al Observsatorio del Agua de Terrassa. Una propuesta de gobierno común del agua urbana; 3) David García Ruiz y Sieso de Jaca: Rehabilitación comunitaria de un pueblo del Pirineo; y 4) Gorka Julio y Oscar García Jurado: Economía social transformadora: agente económico básico para la democracia comunal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udFPUf-_zT8
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4. Reviews (English, Spanish)
Greco, Julie. 2022. "Why is there no Uber for live music?". Review: of Why Isn’t There an Uber for Live Music? The Digitalization of Intermediaries and the Limits of the Platform Economy, by Dario Azzellini, Ian Greer, Charles Umney. Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2022.
While digital platforms like Uber continue to proliferate and expand the gig economy into new sectors of work, some industries, such as live music, have structural features that keep them from adapting well to online platforms. The difficulty of quantifying value, the complexities and contingencies of the task being performed and the fragmentation of the organizational field make certain industries resistant to platformization, according to the paper, “Why Isn’t There an Uber for Live Music? The Digitalization of Intermediaries and the Limits of the Platform Economy.” (...) through interviews and a systematic review of 168 “intermediary websites” – including agents’ websites, platforms and listing sites allowing individuals to connect offline – in Germany and the United Kingdom, the authors identified external issues that limit the growth of platforms. (...)
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/04/why-there-no-uber-live-music
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3258
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Ayala, Eduardo "Chavo" e Iván Andrés. 2022. "Recuerdos del futuro". Reseña de Poder Obrero de Dario Azzellini e Immanuel Ness. La izquierda Diario, PTS en el Frente de la Izquierda, 24 de Abril.
El libro Poder Obrero es una invitación a un viaje por múltiples experiencias que sacan a la luz el enorme potencial creativo, combativo y autogestivo de las y los trabajadores. Una bocanada de aire fresco en un mundo atravesado por una profunda crisis capitalista que solo puede encontrar respuesta en una alternativa revolucionaria de los trabajadores y todos los oprimidos. (...) Estas experiencias aparecen documentadas y narradas por distintos investigadores, presentadas no solo como casos de luchas puntuales frente a cierres o como parte de distintos procesos de lucha, sino como experiencias que buscan conscientemente jugar un rol en ascensos revolucionarios o bien como creadores de experiencias de autogestión y producción bajo control obrero al servicio de la comunidad, ejemplos alternativos a cómo organizan la producción los capitalistas.
https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Recuerdos-del-futuro
https://www.azzellini.net/node/3262
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Dario Azzellini
www.azzellini.net www.workerscontrol.net
