Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present

456 Pages·2011·4.9 MB·English

by  Immanuel Ness, Dario Azzellini

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Praise for Ours to Master and to Own
“Labor historians and activists will find this book always provocative and often persuasive
. . . any subsequent work on workers’ control will need to take it into an account. Highly
recommended.”
—Andrej Grubacic, coauthor of Wobblies and Zapatistas:
Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History
“Ours to Master and to Ownwill definitely be used in the struggle against bureaucratic
and capitalist domination. We now have a text workers can understand and actually use
in organizing for justice!”
—Gerardo Dominguez, coordinator, Mexican American Workers Association (AMAT)
“The contributors have recovered the lost . . . histories of workers’ practices of partici-
patory democracy through workers’ councils in different parts of the world. They have
brought alive the histories of workers’ control over the network of their organizations
and theoretical debates about political practices in workers’ self-management.”
—Professor Rana P. Behal, coauthor of India’s Labouring Poor: Historical Studies, c. 1600–c. 2000
“Ness and Azzellini have done splendid work by collating a wide spectrum of historical
evidence on the economic viability, political feasibility, and social acceptability of workers’
cooperatives and councils. The contemporary development discourse should certainly
include this paradigm in the agenda of both teaching and action-programme.”
—Debdas Banerjee, Head of Centre for Development Studies, Central University of Bihar
“As desperation for alternatives to the neoliberal creed takes over . . . this historically
grounded book on workers’ movements and struggles from all corners of the world shows
us that socioeconomic change is possible. ”
—Alex Julca, editorial board, Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration
“Here is a remarkable tapestry of workers’ struggles presented by an international array
of activist-scholars. Anyone wanting to learn from the efforts of working-class brothers
and sisters preceding us should make use of this inspiring and fact-filled volume.”
—Paul Le Blanc, author of Work and Struggle: Voices from U.S. Labor Radicalism
“This book is very enlightening and comes at the right time. It shows us(cid:0)that the working
class can liberate itself by its own efforts.”
—Coen(cid:0)Husain Pontoh, former political prisoner in Indonesia, author,
The Catastrophe of Market Democracy
“This book is indispensable. Against the philistines, it analyzes the revolutionary cen-
trality of the past and present global experiences of workers’ autonomous organization.
For contemporary militants and activists, this book is a great resource to organize the
new soviets of transnational living labor.”
—Gigi Roggero, author of The Production of Living Knowledge
“A much-needed and timely book. Ours to Master and to Own is both historical account
and theoretical reflection on experiments with workers’ councils over the last hundred years.”
—Ben Trott, global movements editor, International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest
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“Ours to Master and to Own is a book filled with possibility and inspiration, grounded in
concrete experiences of workers from around the world. . . . It is a powerful tool for trans-
forming our world, and creating one based in self-determination and dignity.”
—Marina Sitrin, author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
“Long overdue, this book is the first comprehensive worldwide compilation of the strug-
gle of workers to gain control of their work environments. It is a must-read for all who
are interested in the past and future of working-class struggles and insurgencies.”
—Michael Goldfield, coauthor of Labour, Globalization, and the State
“Ours to Master and to Ownassembles a dazzling array of histories that document the at-
tempts of workers to transform capitalist alienation and authoritarian control into dem-
ocratic practices. The histories assembled here demonstrate that workers’ councils have
long been recognized as authentic expressions of the radical and democratic impulses of
the working classes in all of their variety.”
—Roderick Bush, author of The End of White Supremacy:
Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line
“Workers’ control and direct participation in production have often been considered as
key to social change and pillars of a more equally, truly democratic society. . . . This book
is unique in the attempt to rehabilitate, through a blend of theoretical, historical, and
contemporary accounts of workers’ control, the political relevance of workers’ power in
building alternatives. With examples from diverse geographical, political, and economic
contexts and critically informed, the book . . . is a must-read.”
—Maurizio Atzeni,lecturer in Labor and Industrial Relations, Loughborough University
“Workers’ councils have long beckoned as a democratic alternative to the rule of profit-
driven corporations. This book brings together an extraordinary collection of case studies
by leading authorities. Unprecedented in the sheer sweep of its coverage, this volume
will engage and enlighten every reader from the seeker to the skeptic.”
—James Gray Pope, Professor of Law, Rutgers University
“Anyone who has been involved in a plant-closing fight knows the inherent difficulties,
most would say implausibility, even organized workers face trying to prevent the destruc-
tion of our jobs by corporate executives. . . . Ours to Master and to Ownprovides an impor-
tant historical perspective on what workers have accomplished around the world to enable
us to not only prevent further industrial bleeding but provide workers the tools and vision
necessary to finally gain some control over the means of our production and provide sus-
tainable (both environmentally and economically) meaningful jobs for our communities.”(cid:0)
—Peter Knowlton, UE Northeast region president
“In an era of global capital’s hegemonic pursuit of workplace control at all levels, the ex-
ploration of strategies and experiences that point to the potential of anticapitalist worker
control and the need for new models, is essential. Important examples and threads of
activism can be found in this book. Put it on your shelf! Make it a gift for colleagues in
the struggle for global justice.”
—Jerry Tucker, former UAW international executive board member
and cofounder of the Center for Labor Renewal
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Ours to Master
and to Own
Workers’ Councils
from the Commune to the Present
___________________
Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini
Editors
Haymarket Books
Chicago, Illinois
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© 2011 Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini
First published in 2011 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
[email protected]
www.haymarketbooks.org
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ISBN 978-1-60846-119-6
Cover design by Josh On.
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Please contact Haymarket Books for more information at 773-583-7884 or
[email protected].
This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and
the Wallace Global Fund.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini
Part I: Workers’ Councils: Historical Overview
and Theoretical Debate
1. Workers’ Control and Revolution 10
Victor Wallis
2. Workers’ Councils in Europe: A Century of Experience 32
Donny Gluckstein
3. The Red Mole: Workers’ Councils
as a Means of Revolutionary Transformation 48
Sheila Cohen
4. The Political Form at Last Discovered:
Workers’ Councils against the Capitalist State 66
Alberto R. Bonnet
Part II: Workers’ Councils and Self-Administration
in Revolution: Early Twentieth Century
5. From Unionism to Workers’ Councils: The Revolutionary
Shop Stewards in Germany, 1914–1918 84
Ralf Hoffrogge
6. The Factory Committee Movement
in the Russian Revolution 104
David Mandel
7. Factory Councils in Turin, 1919–1920: “The Sole and
Authentic Social Representatives of the Proletarian Class” 130
Pietro Di Paola
8. Workers’ Democracy in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1937 148
Andy Durgan
Part III:Workers’ Control under State Socialism
9. Yugoslavia: Workers’ Self-Management as State Paradigm 172
Goran Music´
10. Give Us Back Our Factories! Between Resisting Exploitation
and the Struggle for Workers’ Power in Poland, 1944–1981 191
Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski
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Part IV: Anticolonial Struggle, Democratic Revolution,
and Workers’ Control
11. Workers’ Control in Java, Indonesia, 1945–1946 210
Jafar Suryomenggolo
12. From Workers’ Self-Management to State
Bureaucratic Control: Autogestionin Algeria 228
Samuel J. Southgate
13. The Limits and Possibilities of Workers’ Control
within the State: Mendoza, Argentina, 1973 248
Gabriela Scodeller
14. Workers’ Councils in Portugal, 1974–1975 263
Peter Robinson
Part V: Workers’ Control against Capitalist Restructuring
in the Twentieth Century
15. Workers’ Control and the Politics of Factory Occupation:
Britain, 1970s 284
Alan Tuckman
16. Workers’ Direct Action and Factory Control
in the United States 302
Immanuel Ness
17. “Hot Autumn”: Italy’s Factory Councils and
Autonomous Workers’ Assemblies, 1970s 322
Patrick Cuninghame
18. Recipe for Anarchy: British Columbia’s
Telephone Workers’ Occupation of 1981 338
Elaine Bernard
Part VI: Workers’ Control, 1990–2010
19. Workers’ Control in India’s Communist-Ruled State:
Labor Struggles and Trade Unions in West Bengal 356
Arup Kumar Sen
20. Argentinean Worker-Taken Factories: Trajectories
of Workers’ Control under the Economic Crisis 365
Marina Kabat
21. Workers’ Control under Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution 382
Dario Azzellini
22. Brazilian Recovered Factories:
The Constraints of Workers’ Control 400
Maurício Sardá de Faria and Henrique T. Novaes
Editor Biographies 418
Author Biographies 420
Index 427
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All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.
—From “Solidarity Forever”
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Ours to Master-text.7:1 5/9/11 4:23 PM Page ix
Acknowledgments
This project springs from the reemergence throughout the world of theo-
retical and empirical curiosity about the transformative power of insurgent
workers, direct action, workers’ factory occupations, and the formation of
workers’ councils. The democratic struggles of workers are irreducible and
ecumenical, but are now giving rise to an optimism that had largely been
lost under a system of regulated capitalism and state domination. This vol-
ume represents the collective effort of a community of scholars who are
documenting the increasing instances of workers’ control in the contem-
porary epoch and who recognize the unbroken challenges by differentiated
working classes to repression in workplaces and communities. This project
is a tribute to this new revival of working-class militancy out of the insti-
tutional framework.
We thank first and foremost all those who have contributed to this work
as a form of solidarity through writing, translating, and suggesting contrib-
utors. And we thank a long list of scholars and organizations who have in-
spired our thinking and identified this critical field of research, and who
are sponsoring and conducting research on labor insurgency and workers’
self-activity and direct action.
We are grateful to the many scholars, activists, and students who have
helped inform and shape our knowledge and insight: Maurizio Atzeni, Au
Loong Yu, Debdas Banerjee, Padmini Biswas, Joshua Board, Peter Bratsis,
Sebastian Budgen, Verity Burgmann, Pedro Cazes Camarero, Carol Del-
gado, Ligia Consuelo Duerto, Ethan Earle, Steve Early, Bill Fletcher Jr.,
Ruthie Gilmore, Harris Freeman, Bernd Gehrke, Camila Piñeiro Har-
necker, David Harvey, Shawn Hattingh, Rowan Jímenez, Alex Julca, Boris
Kanzleiter, Tamas Krausz, Carlos Lanz, Michael Lebowitz, Staughton
Lynd, Stacy Warner Maddern, Julian Massaldi, Jamie McCallum, Ichiyo
ix
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x Ours to Master and to Own
Muto, Premilla Nadasen, Andrew Newman, Silvina Pastucci, Stalin Pérez,
Frances Fox Piven, Coen Hussein Pontoh, James Gray Pope, Luis Primo,
Peter Ranis, Adriana Rivas, Alcides Rivero, Gigi Roggero, Pierre Rousset,
Diego Rozengardt, Sari Safitri, Vittorio Sergi, Guillermina Seri, Jeff
Shantz, Gregg Shotwell, Heather Squire, Russell Smith, Lars Stubbe, Hi-
rohiko Takasu, Jerry Tucker, Lucien van der Walt, and Young-su Won. We
especially thank all the workers who engaged in sit-down strikes and work-
ers’ control and agreed to be interviewed for this project.
We have benefited from financial support to fund research and transla-
tions from the following organizations and institutions: Stiftung Men-
schenwürde und Arbeitswelt (Berlin), Aktion Selbstbesteuerung e.V.
(Stuttgart), Solifonds of the Hans Böckler Foundation (Düsseldorf), Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation (Berlin), and the Professional Staff Congress and
Research Foundation of the City University of New York. We thank also
Loughborough University, which hosted and provided the funding to con-
vene the Workers and Researchers Forum on Self-Management and Al-
ternative Forms of Work Organisations in October 2009, and the Center
for Place, Culture and Politics of the City University of New York. We
would like to thank the Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn
College/City University of New York, which provided logistical support.
We are especially grateful to Caroline Luft, who has masterfully copyedited
the manuscript and provided perceptive comments and suggestions. We are
thankful for the support of Anthony Arnove, Julie Fain, and the editorial
collective of Haymarket Books, who recognized the fundamental signifi-
cance of this book and resolutely understood that conveying the history of
workers’ control would require the inclusion of a diversity of scholars and
activists from throughout the world.
Immanuel Ness, New York
Dario Azzellini, Caracas
January 2, 2011