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.
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”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
Other books edited by Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft
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Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela
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Ours to Master and to Own
Edited by Dario Azzellini and Immanuel Ness