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. They show how workers seek to form and join democratic and independent unions that are fundamentally opposed to bureaucratic leadership, compromise, and concessions.
Specific case studies dealing with both the Global South and Global North assess the context of local histories and the spatially and temporally located balance of power, while embedding the struggle in a broader picture of resistance and the fight for emancipation.
Contributors are: Anne Alexander, Dario Azzellini, Mostafa Bassiouny, Antonios Broumas, Anna Curcio, Demet S. Dinler, Kostas Haritakis, Felix Hauf, Elias Ioakimoglou, Mithilesh Kumar, Kari Lydersen, Chiara Milan, Carlos Olaya, Hansi Oostinga, Ranabir Samaddar, Luke Sinwell, Elmar Wigand.
Publication date: January 8, 2019
Acknowledgements
Note on Contributors
1 Introduction: A Return to the Shop Floor or How to Confront Neoliberal Capitalism
Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft
2 Workers’ Struggles and Autonomy: Strategic and Tactical Considerations
Mithilesh Kumar and Ranabir Samaddar
3 Autonomous Worker Committees in Marikana, South Africa: Journey to the Mountain
Luke Sinwell
4 Greece: Grassroots Labour Struggles in a Crisis-Ridden Country
Antonios Broumas, Elias Ioakimoglou and Kostas Haritakis
5 Fighting Against Capitalist Ownership and State Bureaucracy – Labour Struggles in Venezuela
Dario Azzellini
6 Revolts on Goose Island: A Long Fight Pays Off for Chicago Window Factory Workers
Kari Lydersen
7 The Egyptian Workers’ Movement: Revolt, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny
8 Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Workers’ Strike to Social Uprising
Chiara Milan
9 Sinaltrainal: Transforming the Workers’ Movement in Colombia
Carlos Olaya
10 A Fistful of Dollars? The Labour Dispute in the Babylon Cinema
Hansi Oostinga
11 New Workers’ Struggles in Turkey since the 2000s: Possibilities and Limits
Demet Ş. Dinler
12 Recovered Imaginaries: Workers’ Self-Organisation and Radical Unionism in Indonesia
Felix Hauf
13 The Revolution in Logistics
Anna Curcio
14 Sweat and Detergent not Bread and Roses: Behind the Shiny Surface of London’s Financial Industry, Latin Cleaners Struggle for Dignity
Elmar Wigand
References
Index
”The path through decades of working class defeat is much discussed but little studied. Azzellini and Kraft's book The Class Strikes Back seeks to change that [...] Everyone involved in and studying working class self-organizing needs to not only read this book but use it as a model for continuing this long overdue work.”
—Robert Ovetz, Journal of Labor and Society
“By offering a wealth of examples of workers’ autonomy in times of neoliberalism, ranging from manufacturing to logistics, and with an emphasis on migrants and the precariat, this volume rekindles faith in the transformative power of collective mobilization and worker solidarity in the twenty-first century.”
—Nico Pizzolato, Studies in Working-Class History
