11-12 2025: Book Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work, LTS5 & more
http://www.azzellini.net - https://www.facebook.com/dario.azzellini
Nov-Dez 2025, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English - approx. 4-5 times a year (also available in Spanish and German)
To unsubscribe: https://www.azzellini.net/newsletter/subscriptions
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0. Before
1. New Books and research reports (English, German):
2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)
3. Videos/Audios (English)
4. Interviews and journalism (German)
5. Talks/Conferences (Buggerru/Sardinia)
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0. Before
Hello!
Registration is now open for the Labour Transfer School 5!
June 3-10, 2026, in Buggerru, Sardinia (Italy), as every year. This time, two more days of collective activities! Note: Registration closes on November 27!
To read the call, register, and see previous programs:
https://www.labourtransferschool.org/
The LTS is a place of shared exchange and discussion, where everyone learns from everyone else, among activists from the world of work (in all its forms), labor researchers, trade unionists, and students. More than 100 people from around 30 countries on at least five continents participate. We also eat and celebrate together, go to the beach, visit an old mine in Buggerru, and learn about the mining town where the army killed four miners in 1904, leading to Italy's first national strike...
Read more in point 5
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"Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over," co-authored with my great comrade Marcelo Vieta is out! (see 1)
Alessandra Mezzadri, SOAS, University of London, on our book:
"This book takes us on an exciting journey into the ‘concrete utopia’ of the labour commons, through a remarkable mapping of worker-recuperated enterprises, their features and possibilities across the globe. This concrete utopia suggests novel ways to democratize the productive and reproductive organization of work, centring workers’ self-determination and a more equitable redistribution of economic surpluses. Most importantly, in this analysis the labour commons are not a romantic ideal: they are an arena for and the outcome of struggle. A great read for those concerned with the study of the labour process, workers-centred labour regimes, and labour rights, and for anyone interested in concrete examples of how workers can challenge external labour control and reclaim the fruits of their labour, and their labour autonomy."
We accept invitations for book presentations and discussions. Send me a mail if you are interested in inviting me. In 2026 we have invitations to Italy, Spain and the Basque Country.
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Dario
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1. New Books and research reports (English, German)
Dario Azzellini and Marcelo Vieta. Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over. Routledge, 290 Pages, 2025 (a more affordable paperback will follow)
This book investigates the return of workers’ self-management in recent decades as responses to recurring neoliberal crises. In particular, the book homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (WREs), a promising form of workers’ self-organization whereby workers restart troubled, bankrupt, or shuttered companies as cooperatives or other forms of democratic workplace.
The book argues that WREs are prefigurative of new forms of work based on equality and sustainability. Framed by the concepts of autogestión, the labour commons, and prefigurative ethico-political practices, the book argues that WREs contribute to the construction of more directly democratic community economies. Drawing on a range of contemporary case studies from numerous countries in the Global South and North, as well as new theories of workers’ self-management, the book contributes a critical development, political economic, and class-struggle Marxist perspective to the re-emergent labour question within anti-systemic social movements, while theorizing the transformative nature of WREs for workers, work organizations, and communities.
"Dario Azzellini and Marcelo Vieta have written a fantastic book. It’s essential reading for anyone concerned with workplace domination, and a vital guide for envisioning a post-neoliberal world."
Tom Malleson, University of Wesern Ontario, author of Against Inequality and After Occupy
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Azzellini, Dario. 2024. Crowdwork: Kontext und Kompetenzentwicklung in den Ländern Italien, den Niederlanden, Schweden und dem Vereinigten Königreich. Working Papers No. 14. Working Papers des Forschungsclusters OPAL der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung zu Crowdwork bietet einen Überblick zu den Funktionen und Praxen der Gestaltung von Crowdworking-Plattformen im Allgemeinen und in vier Ländern Europas (Italien, Niederlande, Schweden und Vereinigtes Königreich) im Besonderen.
https://openhsu.ub.hsu-hh.de/entities/publication/17002
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2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)
Azzellini, Dario; Brandl, Sebastian; Matuschek, Ingo. 2025. “Sustainable work and industrial 85-107. relations in Europe.” Industrielle Beziehungen. 31:1.
The socio-ecological transformation is a key issue on the political agenda of the EU and its member states, as seen in the Green Deal. However, despite joint declarations, there are differences in the national transition paths. The UNDP Development Report 2015 calls for a transition to sustainable work, defined as work that promotes human development and reduces or eliminates negative impacts for both present and future generations. The approaches deal in different ways with elements of industrial relations as systemic orientations or ideologies that are more or less shared nationally by the specific actors (politics, business, trade unions and civil society). This article examines the extent to which there is a normative consensus in the member states on the ideas and objectives of a Green Deal or sustainable work as well as how industrial relations are addressed. The analysis is based on various literature reviews on sustainable work, socio-ecological transformation and just transition. The perspective is contextualised by industrial relations theories, which assess the inclusion of the topos of sustainable work in the Green Deal and whether it goes beyond it. To this end, the article presents different development paths preferred by actors from specific country clusters, and concludes by discussing the embedding of civil society movements in industrial relations. The result is that trade unions and civil society actors in particular must shape the content of a just transition and ensure its implementation.
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-2779-2024-1-85
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Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “Contemporary Communes and Council Democracy in Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy. DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067.
Ideas and practices of communal self-administration are widespread in Latin America, especially among indigenous and Afro-American communities, stemming from ancestral customs. Commune-like self- administration predates the Paris Commune and has surfaced repeatedly throughout history. It was present in the wars of independence, in peasant uprisings, in revolts and revolutions in the early 20th century and in the struggles of its second half. The idea of the commune as democratically self-governed space corresponds to the framework of alternative imagination of many popular movements and the experiences of building popular power...
Article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067
50 free pdf available with this link (please use it only if you don't have access otherwise):
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BXBM2EYQ55UGUTJJZZHT/full?target=10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067
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Azzellini, Dario. 2026. “Contemporary Communes and Council Democracy in Venezuela.” In: Kets, Gaard; van de Sande, Mathijs (eds.). Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire. From the Paris Commune to the Present. Advances in Democratic Theory series. London/New York: Routledge. 183-196.
In Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire Gaard Kets and Mathijs van de Sande bring together historians, sociologists, political scientists, theorists, and philosophers to reconstruct how "the Commune" has continued to serve as a source of inspiration to different movements and tendencies throughout the past 150 years, and how communalist thought and practices help us reimagine what radical democracy may look like today. Divided into three parts, contributors begin by exploring how the Paris Commune shaped political debates and influenced various theoretical oeuvres as well as political practices. Part II develops communalist ideas or strategies in a contemporary context. Part III sheds light on three different contemporary communalist practices in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Latin America.
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Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “La democracia consejista y comunera en contra del Estado-nación.” In: Curto López, Saúl (ed.). La emergencia de la Democracia Comunal. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch.
"Este volumen, además de ser una compilación de estudios sobre realidades comunitarias, también es una primera aportación tanto teórica como práctico-empírica para situar la democracia comunal como un posible campo de trabajo e investigación en las próximas décadas. Pensamos que esta posibilidad, no sólo existe, sino que, además, tiene sentido y pertinencia en la situación social que vive el mundo..."
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3. Videos/Audios (English)
ILPC 2025, Santiago de Chile: Keynote Lectures 3 - Matt Huber - Darío Azzellini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gUY_641as4
00:00:00 - 00:49:40 Matt Huber, Syracuse University, USA, Proletarian Ecology in an Age of Planetary Production
00:50:00 - 01:43:45 Dario Azzellini, Cornell University, USA, Putting Work at the centre of the socio-cological transition
01:44:00 - 01:59:00 Comments Eric Campos, CUT Chile (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile)
01:59:30 - 02:50:00 Discussion Matt Huber, Dario Azzellini and Eric Campos
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4. Interviews and journalism (German)
Dario Azzellini. 2025. "Selbstverwaltete Betriebe als Chance?" − Buchvorstellung und Gespräch mit Renate Hürtgen über die Schwierigkeiten der Arbeiterkontrolle. In: express, 8/2025
http://www.azzellini.net/journalistische-artikel/selbstverwaltete-betriebe-als-chance
https://www.express-afp.info/express-8-2025-erschienen/
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5. Talks/Conferences (Buggerru/Sardinia)
June 3-10, 2026 in Buggerru, Sardinia (Italy)
Labor Transfer School 5 - Registration is now open!
LabourTransfer is an independent, not for profit, international initiative of global labour scholars interested in collaborations, synergies and knowledge exchange between academia and social organizations, aiming at producing emancipatory knowledge on labour and social issues. LabourTransfer gives participants a chance to exchange their research interests with academics, labour activists, artists, journalists and trade unionists from all over the world. LabourTransfer is not a traditional academic summer school or a training centre for trade unionists but a co-learning, strategizing, and networking place for labour activism and social justice.
The programme of the school changes every year, reflecting on applicants’ expertise and on the political priority givento specific topics. We can anticipate that this year the programme will intend to cover, in workshop format, the following issues:
• trade union power in a time of fascism and crisis
• just transition and labour
• labour and social reproduction
• understanding and comparing regional and sector-specific labour struggles in global contexts
• labour, journalism and art
• labour law and activism
• labour and technological changes
• understanding past struggles for winning in the future
• Dock workers, labour and anti-war movement
Note: Registration closes on November 27!
To read the call, register, and view past programs:
https://www.labourtransferschool.org/
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Dario Azzellini
https://www.azzellini.net https://www.workerscontrol.net
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