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 system 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.
Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers’ control, Ours to
Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes
of the old.

Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA.

Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

PRELIMINARY TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction
Dario Azzellini & Immanuel Ness


• Part I: Workers Councils: Historical Overview and Theoretical Debate
  Workers Control and Revolution, Victor Wallis
  Workers Councils in Europe–a Century of Experience, Donny Gluckstein
  The Red Mole: Workers’ Councils as a Means of Revolutionary Transformation, Sheila Cohen
  Workers Councils and Control: Contemporary Praxis in Latin America, Alberto Bonnet
  
  
• Part II: Workers Councils and Self-administration in Revolution: Early 20th Century
  Germany: From Unionism to Workers´ Councils: Revolutionary Shop Stewards 1914-1918, Ralf Hoffrogge
  Bolshevik Revolution: Factory Councils and Workers' Control, Mark-David Mandel
  Italy: Il Biennio Rosso Factory Councils, 1919-1920, Pietro Dipaola
  Workers Control and Councils in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939, Andrew Durgan
  
  
• Part III: Workers Control under State Socialism
  Yugoslavia Workers Councils—Successes and Failures, Goran Markovic
  Hungary: Workers Councils of 1956, Tamas Krausz
  Poland, Workers Councils 1950s/1980s, Zbigniew Marcin
  
  
• Part IV: Anticolonial struggle, Democratic Revolution and Workers Control
  Workers Control of Railways in Colonial Indonesia, 1945-1946, Jafar Suryomenggolo
  Algeria’s autogestion: From Self-management to State Bureaucracy, Sam Southgate
  Argentina, The Limits of Worker Control within the State: Mendoza- 1973, Gabriela Scodeller
  Portugal: Workers Councils 1974-75, Peter Robinson
  India: Post-Independence Worker Control and Self-Management, Arup Kumar Sen
  
  
• Part V: Workers Control against Capitalist Restructuring in the 20th Century
  US: Factory Occupations: Looking Retrospectively to the Future, Immanuel Ness
  Italian ‘Hot Autumn:’ Factory Councils and Autonomous Workers Assemblies, 1970s, Patrick Cuninghame
  Canada: Women and the British Columbia Workers Occupations, 1980s, Elaine Bernard
  Britain/Wales ‘Tower Colliery and Workers Control in Action: A Case Study',Russell Smith; Len Arthur; Molly Scott Cato and Tom Keenoy
  
  
• Part VI: Workers Control: Contemporary Era
  Argentinean Expropriated Factories: Trajectories of Worker Control under the Economic Crisis, Marina Kabat
  Venezuela: Reorganizing Work and Production, Dario Azzellini
  Brazilian Contemporary Recovered Factories, Mauricio Sardá de Faria & Henrique T. Novaes