All english articles

Dario Azzellini at "Our common social future: Commoning and sharing for society, the environment and the economy. A program for a democratic, participatory and transformative social protection". Asia-Europe People's Forum, Barcelona, Catalonia, June 8-10, 2018

The case for commons and social commons

What are commons? Who can develop commons? Is commoning based on harmony?

A Preview of the Future

Workers’ Control in the Context of a Global Systemic Crisis

One of the ‘concrete utopias’, as Ernst Bloch called them, realistic possible concepts for a better world, that can already be found in the here and now, are ‘recuperated companies’. Focusing on the examples of the worker-controlled factories RiMaflow in the industrial periphery of Milan and Officine Zero in Rome this text allows a glimpse of how society could be organised differently.

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Implementing social commons

IMPLEMENTING SOCIAL COMMONS

- The centrality of economic and social rights

German Jaraiz Arroyo, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla

- The centrality of culture for social commons

Julie Ward, MEP

- Practical implications of adopting a commoning approach to social protection – options for activism and policy development

Labour: Dario Azzelini

Gender: Elisabetta Cangelosi

interview with Dario Azzellini

Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela

“The communes should be the space in which we are going to give birth to socialism.” – these were the words of Hugo Chávez in one of his famous presidential broadcasts. To discuss the Venezuelan communes and the new forms of participation, as well as its successes, difficulties and contradictions, we have interviewed Dario Azzellini*. He has investigated and documented theses issues throughout the Bolivarian Revolution. His book Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela has recently been released in paperback by Haymarket Books.

interview with Dario Azzellini

Challenging capitalism through workers’ control

A common feature in every crisis situation, from the upheavals of the early 20th century to the neo-liberal re-structurings of the late 20th century, is the emergence of workers’ control – workers organising to take over their workplaces in order to defend their jobs and their communities.

Dario Azzellini in: Latin American Utopias: Past and Present, Edited by Juan Pro

“The Commune in Venezuela: A Utopian Prefiguration”

In an age in which fears about the future predominate (in the form of dystopias, ecological catastrophes and terrifying Sci-Fi scenarios), utopia is reappearing as the bearer of hope for the fate of humanity. Latin America has historically been a fertile ground where utopian projects, movements and experiments could take root and thrive, and this constitutes one of the region's major contributions to world history.

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Book launch

We are organizing a book launch event for 3 recent books examining the political and social dynamics of precarious work -- with case studies from Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the US. Shannon Gleeson, Lowell Turner, and Jérôme Gautié (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) have kindly agreed to serve as discussants. The books are:

* Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft, eds. The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century. Brill, 2018.

Is democracy working?

The term democracy is generally used as a synonym for liberal democracy, which is far from being the only possible form of democracy; indeed, it is even questionable whether liberal democracy was ever intended to be truly democratic. For centuries, liberals and democrats have been fierce opponents. Liberals only accepted democracy when it was limited to the political sphere, excluding it from the economic and social sphere. Liberal democracy became the new form of governance of the emerging production model (industrial capitalism).

Are we heading for another economic crash?

No doubt we are heading for another economic crash because capitalism is always heading for another economic crash. It is the nature of capitalism to increase surplus capital and then destroy it again through a crash or war, in order to restart the accumulation process once again. After every crisis, as historical data shows, the rich get richer and capital concentration grows. The cycles from crash to crash are becoming shorter as the accumulation of surplus capital becomes faster.

Analysis regional elections in Venezuela 2017, October 19, 2017

Venezuela - Chavismo wins 18 out of 23 regional governments, opposition 5. The governing PSUV and allied parties won in the states of Amazonas, Apure, Aragua, Barinas, Bolívar, Carabobo, Cojedes, Delta Amacuro, Falcon, Guarico, Lara, Miranda, Monagas, Sucre, Trujillo, Yaracuy, and Vargas. The opposition alliance MUD won 5 states: the Democratic Action (AD) party won Anzoátegui, Merida, Nueva Esparta, and Táchira; Primero Justicia won the strategic oil rich northwestern border state of Zulia.

Building 21st Century Socialism from Below

Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela

Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela
A sweeping, insightful history from below of the Bolivarian Revolution and its efforts to build socialism in the 21st century.
Too often the story of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution is told with an excessive focus on former president Hugo Chávez. In this history from below, Dario Azzellini turns our attention toward the ways workers, peasants, and the poor in urban communities have led the struggle for 21st century socialism.

An outline

ALBA – an alternative regional alliance?

Various regional integration initiatives have emerged as a counterpoint to the advance of globalisation. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is of interest from the perspective of the European left, because cooperation and integration take a very different shape in ALBA from other regional alliances. The three basic principles of ALBA are complementarity, solidarity and cooperation.  That in itself is a marked difference from the European Union (EU) with its four fundamental freedoms (the free movement of people, goods, services and capital).

Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century

The Class Strikes Back

The Class Strikes Back

The Class Strikes Back examines a number of radical, twenty-first-century workers’ struggles. These struggles are characterised by a different kind of unionism and solidarity, arising out of new kinds of labour conditions and responsive to new kinds of social and economic marginalisation. The essays in the collection demonstrate the dramatic growth of syndicalist and autonomist formations and argue for their historical necessity.


Video & Audio:

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The Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy (ECWD): Contemporary Crisis, Recuperated Workplaces and Self-Management

June 11, 2017 11:40 am – 1:10 pm

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Left Forum, The Resistance: Cooperatives - path to a different society or alternative business model? Chances and risks of workers' self-management in capitalism

Room:1.114

Timeslot:

SUNDAY June 4th Session 6: 12:00pm - 1:50pm

Dario Azzellini in: Towards just and sustainable economies The social and solidarity economy North and South, Edited by Peter North and Molly Scott Cato

"21st century socialism? Venezuela’s solidarity, social, popular and communal economy"

With capitalism in crisis - rising inequality, unsustainable resource depletion and climate change all demanding a new economic model - the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has been suggested as an alternative. What can contribute in terms of generating livelihoods that provide a dignified life, meeting of social needs and building of sustainable futures? What can activists in both the global North and South learn from each other?

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OCCUPY - RESIST - PRODUCE, kinoki mikrokino #222

 Massenentlassungen und Fabrikschließungen als Folge der seit 2007 andauernden Finanzkrise haben die Frage nach der Arbeiter_innen-Selbstverwaltung neu gestellt. Oliver Ressler und Dario Azzellini untersuchen in der Dokumentarfilm-Trilogie OCCUPY, RESIST, PRODUCE drei Beispiele von Fabriksbesetzungen, in Mailand, Rom und Thessaloniki, die sich in erfolgreiche Experimente zur Neuerfindung der Arbeit im 21. Jahrhundert entwickelt haben. Die gesamte Trilogie ist zum ersten Mal in Wien zu sehen:

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Mikhail Karikis, Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler Artists’ Film International

Ain’t Got No Fear (2016) by Mikhail Karikis (b. 1975, Greece) was created with a group of boys from the industrial marshland of the Isle of Grain in South East England. With the sound of a neighbouring power plant being demolished as their beat, the boys rap about past memories and possible futures, while questioning notions of territory and authority. Meanwhile, author-filmmaker Dario Azzellini (b. 1967, Germany) and artist Oliver Ressler (b.

Workers Control From the Commune to the Present

Ours To Master and To Own

Ours To Master and To Own

From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the sytem by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition.

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Repair: Resource

The economic crisis that began in 2007-8 led to layoffs on a massive scale, leaving thousands of newly unemployed workers with little hope of another job. Their response put workers’ control back on the agenda in Europe. For many years beforehand, factories had been occupied and recuperated almost exclusively in Latin America.
 

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Dizziness – Navigating the Unknown

In cooperation with CCA Ujazdowski Castle Warsaw, Diagonale´17, MEGAPHON and the Institute for Differential Psychology, University of Graz. Supported by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Dizziness - A Resource (FWF-Peek) and the David Herzog Fund of the Styrian Universities. 
Curated by: Katrin Bucher Trantow, Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond

 

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OLIVER RESSLER. PROPERTY IS THEFT

Property is theft! (La propriété, c’est le vol!, the famous declaration made by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840, has the impact of a political slogan and serves as the title of Austrian artist Oliver Ressler’s first survey exhibition in Romania. The crisis of Neoliberalism, Oliver Ressler’s favourite theme throughout his activity over the past twenty years, points to the fundamentally economic understructure of all present social and political imbalances.

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26 February 2017: Everything Under Control

In most cases an occupation is not a deliberate step towards workers' control but a means of workers' struggle against the closure of a production site or company or the relocation of production to another country. Occupy, Resist, Produce focuses on the rare, better organized cases where the purpose of the struggle is to bring production under workers’ control.

Constituent and Constituted Power: Reading Social Transformation in Latin America

Popular Sovereignty and Constituent Power in Latin America.

Democracy from Below.

Economic Update with Richard Wolff, democracy at work

Economic Update: Trump Explained

Economic Update is a weekly program hosted by Richard D. Wolff and is played on over 60 stations nationwide. Wolff takes complex economic issues and empowers listeners with information to analyze their own financial situation as well as the economy at large. By focusing on the economic dimensions of everyday life - wages, jobs, taxes, debts, and profits - the program explores alternative ways to organize markets and government policies.

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Chavista rank&file storm National Assembly.

What's up in Venezuela: Parlamentary coup?

 Very complex and complicated situation in Venezuela. We hear the recall referendum is called off? The National Assembly and its opposition majority want to impeach Maduro? On monday Chavista rank and file stormed the National Assembly in order to prevent the right wing majority to impeach President Maduro.

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Who Throws Whom Overboard? Oliver Ressler

Oliver Ressler

SALT Galata
Who Throws Whom Overboard? is a major presentation of Oliver Ressler's works
dating from 2004 - 2016, and his  rst in Istanbul since the exhibition An Ideal Society
Creates Itself at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in 2005.
Who Throws Whom Overboard? brings together photographic works, wall texts,  lms
and installations addressing migration, borders, citizenship, capital and alternative
economics. The exhibition does not suggest that these “issues” are related in terms