Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work
When Workers Take Over
1st Edition
Published on 28. August 2025
328 pages
978-1-040-39403-8 (ISBN)
Description
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 autogestion, 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.
Bringing a class-analysis back into current discourses and debates concerning democracy at work and alternatives to global capital, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of development studies, labour studies, political economy, sociology of development, sociology of work, and political science.
The book argues that WREs are prefigurative of new forms of work based on equality and sustainability. Framed by the concepts of autogestion, 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.
Bringing a class-analysis back into current discourses and debates concerning democracy at work and alternatives to global capital, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of development studies, labour studies, political economy, sociology of development, sociology of work, and political science.
Reviews / Votes
"In this book, commoning comes alive through a comprehensive discussion of workers' and communities' self-management practices around the world. The conventional model of command-and-control management and exploitation is turned upside down, means of existence are reclaimed from the market and the state, and work becomes embedded in the meaningful praxis of collective life-a much-needed ray of light in these dark times."Massimo de Angelis, University of East London, author of Omnia Sunt Communia
"The world shakes as the US empire and its domestic capitalism decline together, as BRICS rise and Europe falls, and as climate change and artificial intelligence all add up to reorder nearly everything. Most of those who think, teach, and manage workplaces (private and state) mostly continue unperturbed to accept and simply assume the employer vs employee mode of organizing workplaces. This important book joins a growing literature that breaks with all that. Workers can and already have taken over and run workplaces democratically, collectively, and successfully. The theories and empirical records based on those practices are available. This book takes them important steps further. It shows how and why ending the employer-employee organization of workplaces is a necessary part of real solutions to capitalism's accumulated and unmet problems."
Richard D. Wolff, The New School, host of Economic Update
"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."
Alessandra Mezzadri, SOAS, University of London
"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
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
1 Line drawings, black and white; 1 Illustrations, black and white
File size
2,67 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-39403-8 (9781040394038)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€206.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Book
07/2025
Routledge
Unfortunately, price unknown
Available (delivery time upon request)
Persons
Dario Azzellini, PhD in Political Science and in Sociology, is Visiting Research Fellow at the ILR School, Cornell University, USA. Azzellini's over 20 books, 11 films, and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters focus on labour, self-management, sustainability and just transition, social transformation, and global political economy, many of which have been translated into various languages. He is also the founder of the multilingual website workerscontrol.net. Follow his work at www.azzellini.net
Marcelo Vieta, PhD in Social and Political Thought, is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education and co-director of the Centre for Learning, Social Economy and Work at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Canada. He has published award-winning books and dozens of articles and book chapters on workers' self-management, economic democracy, cooperativism, and the social and solidarity economy. Follow his work at www.vieta.ca
Marcelo Vieta, PhD in Social and Political Thought, is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education and co-director of the Centre for Learning, Social Economy and Work at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Canada. He has published award-winning books and dozens of articles and book chapters on workers' self-management, economic democracy, cooperativism, and the social and solidarity economy. Follow his work at www.vieta.ca
Content
Introduction: Recuperating Workplaces and Community Spaces Part 1. Setting the Conceptual Stage: Recuperating Productive Life, Democratizing Work 1. Class Still Matters: Autogestion, Living Labour, the Moral Economy of Work, and the Labour Commons 2. A Conceptual Review: Workers' Self-Management, Workers' Control, and Autogestion 3. A Historical Perspective: Key Debates in Autogestion Part 2. Mapping the Experiences of Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Latin America 4. 'Occupy, Resist, Produce': Argentina's Worker-Recuperated Enterprises Set the Stage 5. Between the Social and Solidarity Economy and the State: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Brazil and Uruguay 6. Cooperatives, Co-Management, and Workers' Councils: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Venezuela Part 3. Mapping the Experiences of Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Europe and the Rest of the World 7. Labour-Conflict Conversions Amid Wider Cooperative Movements: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Italy and France 8. Workers' Responses to Rising Austerity and Social Challenges: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in the Rest of Europe 9. Inklings of a Larger Global Movement: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in the Rest of the World Part 4. Worker-Recuperated Enterprises as Labour Commons: Contradictions and Possibilities 10. Recuperating the Commons 11. Commonalities in the Lived Experiences of Worker-Recuperated Enterprises 12. The Dual Realities of Worker-Recuperated Enterprises 13. Worker-Recuperated Enterprises and Workplace Democracy as Labour Commons
