Current Debate

Mon, 17/10/16

A Reply to Daguerre, Ozarow and Upchurch

This is a reply to the workerscontrol.net article "Spectrum, Trajectory and the Role of the State in Workers’ Self-Management", especially on its treatment of the parecon model.

This is a reply to a specific part of this article: http://www.workerscontrol.net/authors/spectrum-trajectory-and-role-state-workers%E2%80%99-self-management read more »

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Mon, 23/05/16

Cooperative and common ownership

Certain changes to the cooperative form could permit the creation of enterprises that would not belong to anyone specifically but would be at the disposal of its users, workers and clients alike.

Company buy-outs and transformation into cooperative enterprises are often presented as a step in the construction of commons, as the various stakeholders – workers and users – are involved in the process of preserving and developing a resource. However, even though the cooperative form departs from the traditional rules of capital, it still remains essentially private in nature, which leads to frequent capitalist drifts when the cooperative is successful. read more »

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Fri, 13/05/16

Self-management, Social Reappropriation and the Commons

It is necessary to encourage all members of society who have an interest in the business’s activity (clients, users, environmental protection associations) to participate in its governing process.

I would like to start by examining the latter of these three notions, first exploring its meaning in the singular sense. The ‘common’ should be understood as a political principle whereby there is no shared accountability without co-participation in the same activity: simply being a member of a specific group (be it a family, a nation, a certain ethnicity, etc.) is not enough. It is this very principle that inspired the backlash against representative democracy seen amongst movements in recent history that have occupied squares (the Indignés movement as well as the Gezi Park and Taksim Square protests, to name but a few). read more »

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Mon, 01/02/16

The workers’ self-management alternative

There is confusion about self-management, with antagonism even from socialists and Marxists. These attitudes are rooted in misconceptions of both what capitalism is and of the communist alternative.

Discussions about workers’ control and self-management which were once at the heart of the labour movement are now once again on the agenda, both among British activists and internationally. The network of communists who produce The Commune are the most determined advocates of self-management among the English and Welsh radical left, and have generally found a positive response.  read more »

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Tue, 26/01/16

Who Needs a Boss?

Historically, worker co-ops have held the most appeal when things are harder for laborers. Yet, despite their ability to empower workers, co-ops remain largely relegated to boutique status in the U.S.

If you happen to be looking for your morning coffee near Golden Gate Park and the bright red storefront of the Arizmendi Bakery attracts your attention, congratulations. You have found what the readers of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alt-weekly, deem the city’s best bakery. But it has another, less obvious, distinction. read more »

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Sat, 23/01/16

Towards a radical cooperativism against the crisis of imagination: Speech at the Athens Biennale 2015-2017

A needs-based economy and a radical cooperativism can help us overcome not only the tyranny of the market, but also our own inability to imagine our welfare outside of it.

This session explored four institutions of human economy – alternative currencies, cooperativism, urban welfare and commons – and reflected on how these forms can become permanent and sustainable alternatives. read more »

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Fri, 22/01/16

Own The Change: Building Economic Democracy One Worker Co-op at a Time

A documentary that shows the potential of a networked worker co-op movement, created by GRITtv and TESA to help form new alliances and turn conversations into action in many communities.

The explosion of worker cooperatives in recent years has social justice organizers talking. Transitioning to a people-powered economy will require the work of many different social movements and worker co-ops have come to the center of the conversation due to their ability to address multiple issues at once. read more »

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Tue, 12/01/16

Post-Capitalist Imaginaries: The Case of Workers’ Collectives in Greece

This article looks at the collective dimension and the inherently political character of entrepreneurial activity by focusing on the case of two workers’ collectives in Athens, Greece.

This article focuses on the case of two workers’ collectives in Athens, Greece, and reflects on the transformative potential of entrepreneurial creation. I argue that these social and economic experiments are collective and essentially political. read more »

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Sat, 02/01/16

The Worker-Recovered Enterprises in Argentina: The Political and Socioeconomic Challenges of Self-Management

A paper that traces the emergence of Argentina's recuperated workplaces as responses to the neoliberal restructuring and appraises their achievements and the challenges they face.

The worker-recovered enterprises, defined as productive business units abandoned by their owners and put into operation once again by their workers under self-management, are a relatively new phenomenon in  Argentina and, on the whole, in Latin America.  read more »

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Sat, 02/01/16

The Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises: Cooperatively Reorganizing Productive Life in Hard Times

An essay that sketches out the most common microeconomic and organizational challenges that Argentina's recuperated workplaces face and maps out the “social innovations” being spearheaded by them.

Argentina’s  worker-recuperated enterprises emerged out of the unraveling of the country’s neoliberal experiment circa 1997. With traditional union tactics proving incapable of addressing workers’ immediate needs, some workers took matters into their own hands by occupying and reopening their bankrupted or failing firms as workers’ cooperatives under the auspices of autogestión (self-management).

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Wed, 30/12/15

Occupy, Resist, Produce – Officine Zero

The second in a series of short documentaries on the recuperated factories of Europe.

Officine Zero, former RSI (Rail Service Italia) was dedicated to the maintenance and repair of sleeping cars. When in December 2011 Italian train services decided to stop the night train service and invest in fast track trains, RSI closed. Some 20 workers out of the almost 60 employees strong work force did not accept the closing and took up the struggle. They found support among the activists from the nearby social center, “Strike.” In February 2012 they occupied their work place. Together they started a laboratory on reconversion, organizing public assemblies attended by hundreds of people. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

Occupy, Resist, Produce – VIOME

The third in a series of short documentaries on the recuperated factories of Europe.

VIOME is a building materials factory in Thessaloniki, Greece, which was abandoned by its owners at the peak of the Greek crisis, in 2011. Subsequently it was occupied by its workers, and has been producing natural detergents under workers' control since 2013. Despite being an emblematic and inspiring struggle, today VIOME is under imminent threat of eviction. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

When the Workers Become the Owners: Taking the Co-op Movement to the Next Level

An interview with Esteban Kelly and Melissa Hoover, two prominent figures in the worker-cooperative movement.

There's a revolution taking place in the US workforce - but you may not have heard about it.

Around the country, workers are starting businesses that they democratically control and that financially benefit them. These businesses, called worker cooperatives, are owned and governed by the employees. Every worker is a member of the co-op, which gives them one share and one vote in the company's operations. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

A Deeper Look at the Mondragon Principles 2: Participatory Management

Needed: Self-Management and Workplace Democracy

The next principle from Mondragon is that of Participatory Management. This seems like a no-brainer for worker co-operatives. What is the point of going through all the work of setting up a worker co-op if the workers don’t actually have a say in how the place is run? They would be better off in a unionized Employee Stock Ownership Program. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

What’s Next for the World’s Largest Federation of Worker-Owned Co-Ops? A conversation with Mondragon President Josu Ugarte

Mondragon Corporation, a federation of 103 worker-owned cooperatives based in the Basque Country, aims to be globally competitive while empowering local workers and addressing income inequality.

In early May, President Barack Obama visited Nike’s headquarters in Oregon to gather support for the T read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

Why Unions Are Going Into the Co-op Business

As manufacturing in the United States continues in free fall, the USW aims to use employee-run businesses to create new jobs to replace union work that has gone overseas.

“Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollow out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants,” said United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard in 2009. “We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Gerard was announcing a formal partnership between his 1.2-million-member union and Mondragon, a cluster of cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy

Imagine that the algorithmic heart of the "Sharing Economy" could be cloned and brought back to life under a different model of ownership and work conditions, as a humane alternative to the market.

The backlash against unethical labor practices in the “collaborative sharing economy” has been overplayed. Recently, mainstream media started to rail against online labor brokerages like Taskrabbit and Uber because of an utter lack of concern for their workers. 

But just for one moment imagine that the algorithmic heart of any of these citadels of anti-unionism could be cloned and brought back to life under a different ownership model, with fair working conditions, as a humane alternative to the free market model. read more »

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Wed, 30/12/15

Sewer Syndicalism: Worker Self-Management in Public Services

Public services under worker control can serve as demonstration projects to promote workplace democracy and worker empowerment more broadly.

In the current US political climate, the prospects of implementing a robust form of public service syndicalism will surely appear remote. Yet, the example of Britain suggests that at least measured steps in that direction might be politically feasible here. Particularly at the state and municipal levels, there may be opportunities to engage in “novel social and economic experiments” with worker-run public services. Through such experimentation, public services under worker control can serve as demonstration projects to promote workplace democracy and worker empowerment more broadly. read more »

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Tue, 29/12/15

The International Gatherings of “The Workers' Economy”

The history, the objectives and the future of this open space for debate on self-management

The 3rd and 4th of October, 2014, in the Textiles Pigüé Worker Cooperative, a recovered business in the town of the same name in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires, the First South American Regional Meeting on “The Worker Economy” was held, with the participation of more than two hundred workers, cooperators, and university students from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Co read more »

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Mon, 28/12/15

The Causes of Alienation

Human alienation will disappear through the withering away of commodity production and social division of labour, through the disappearance of private ownership of the means of production.

 

Alienation results from a certain form of organisation of society. More concretely, only in a society which is based on commodity production and only under the specific economic and social circumstances of a market economy, can the objects which we project out of us when we produce acquire a socially oppressive existence oftheir own and be integrated in an economic and social mechanism which becomes oppressive and exploitative of human beings.

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