Table of Contents
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 Own will 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 participatory 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 Indias Labouring Poor: Historical Studies, c. 1600c. 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 that the working class can liberate itself by its own efforts.
Coen Husain Pontoh , former political prisoner in Indonesia,
author, The Catastrophe of Market Democracy
This book is indispensable. Against the philistines, it analyzes the revolutionary centrality 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
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 transforming 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 struggle 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 Own assembles a dazzling array of histories that document the attempts of workers to transform capitalist alienation and authoritarian control into democratic 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 destruction of our jobs by corporate executives.... Ours to Master and to Own provides an important 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 sustainable (both environmentally and economically) meaningful jobs for our communities.
Peter Knowlton, UE Northeast region president
In an era of global capitals hegemonic pursuit of workplace control at all levels, the exploration 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
All the world thats 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.
Acknowledgments
This project springs from the reemergence throughout the world of theoretical 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 volume represents the collective effort of a community of scholars who are documenting the increasing instances of workers control in the contemporary 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 institutional framework.
