---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Örsan Şenalp <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 9:43 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [historicalmaterialism] Deadline today: Call for Abstracts: Rethinking Working Class Self-Organization Beyond Unions, Parties, NGOs, and the State To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]
Begin forwarded message: *From:* "Historical Materialism News [email protected] [historicalmaterialism]" <[email protected]> *Date:* 1 augustus 2016 13:20:57 CEST *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* *[historicalmaterialism] Deadline today: Call for Abstracts: Rethinking Working Class Self-Organization Beyond Unions, Parties, NGOs, and the State* *Reply-To:* [email protected] Call for Abstracts: Rethinking Working Class Self-Organization Beyond Unions, Parties, NGOs, and the State IMMANUEL NESS, Brooklyn College CUNY, USA, [email protected] ROBERT OVETZ, SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY, USA, [email protected] The Journal of Labor & Society, in it’s 21st year, is issuing a call for the special issue “Workers Beyond Unions, Parties, NGOs, and the State?” to rethink how workers organize and struggle. Co-edited by Robert Ovetz, Ph.D., a political science lecturer San Jose State University, and Gifford Hartman, an independent San Francisco, USA based scholar, the issue seeks submissions from scholars, organizers, and activists critically reexamining the multiplicity of forms of class struggle outside of and inside unions, parties, NGOs, and the state happening around the world. The rapidly declining power and influence of unions are source of great concern. Their coninuous decline have presented both a threat and an opportunity. As the number of contingent workers explodes and union density worldwide remains stagnant or declines, the effort of workers to self-organize continues to grow. The absence or weakness of unions does not mean the absence of class struggle. Freed of the contract, workers are engaging in short, sharp disruptive direct action and strikes to shift the balance of power on the shopfloor and in the community. But these actions are often ad hoc, locally focused and unsustainable. Despite these limitations, workers are finding new ways to self-organize on the shopfloor and circulate their efforts throughout the social factory. The composition of capital’s power over the past 40 years has been a continual effort to respond to the dynamic recomposition of working class struggle. This issue would explore what working class recomposition looks like by examing case studies of efforts to devise new tactics and strategies of self-organization. Ideally, this issue will include critical analyses of a diversity of self-organized workers struggles from several critical regions. Among the struggles that could be potentially covered would be the following: - Brazilian Landless Workers Movement’s efforts to seize land and build a parallel social system - Spainish workers blocking evictions and foreclosures - Mexican workers seizure of an entire neighborhood to reorganization of it into an autonomous community - Bolivian miners, coca growers, and street sellers in El Alto who formed community councils that shut down the entire country in the early 2000s and propelled the MAS into power - Latin American women struggling over the Bolsa Família social wage in Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela - Industrial workers and miners in India, China, and South Africa who bypass established unions to self-organize their own wildcat strikes - Kurdish workers self-organized local governance and militias in Rojava, Syria during the civil war - Wildcat strikes in Egypt during the Arab Spring - Union backed service workers in the US who have been organizing to disrupt production, protest contingency, and raise wages without seeking to collectively bargain - Wildcat strikes by logistics workers (eg, truckers, longshore, warehouse, etc.) and public employees - European anti-austerity movements Why This Issue is Important The focus of this issue of the Journal of Labor & Society will be on worker organizing beyond unions, parties and NGOs that channel and constrain organizing over the “contract” and into the state through advocacy, elections and reform. These examples above are rich with several vital lessons for worker self-organization we wish to see explored in this issue. First, workers are contesting the organizational dominance of unions by bypassing and challenging the traditional model of unions limited to bargaining over wages, hours, grievances, working conditions, and labor law. Second, these struggles are also transcending parties, NGOs, and the state at a time of growing widespread resistance to the imposition of neo-liberal policy by labor, social democratic and left leaning parties backed by NGOs, unions, and ruling elites in Europe and Latin America. Such institutions divert conflict by harnessing workers to the state and capitalism thus diluting the power of self-organized workers. (S. Marcos, R. Zibechi, M. Glaberman, G. Esteva, and G. Rawick) Drawing on the autonomous marxist, anarchist, and syndicalist critiques of unions and the self-organization of workers (V. Burgmann, S. Lynd, H. Cleaver, and P. Linebaugh) this issue would explore how workers are devising new forms of organizing to confront capital at work and throughout the social factory (S. Federici, S. James, M. Dalla Costa, and M. Tronti) signaling a turning point in what it means to organize a “union.” The debate over whether unions should follow the “service” or “member organizing” model or through parties, NGOs or the state is moot. Workers are transforming their organizing into a global uprising that continues to disrupt the global accumulation and circulation of capital by transforming the struggle over work into a struggle to circulate class power into all spheres of life. As capital seeks to colonize all aspects of life so has working class struggle expanded to meet this threat. The question this issue seeks to explore is what is the form of the currently emerging recomposition of working class power? Publication Plans - After the solicitation of abstracts we will invite full manuscripts for publication in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of Labor & Society. - Abstracts (maximum 500 words, attached as .pdf or .docx files) due by August 1, 2016 - Invitation to submit full manuscript will be sent August 21, 2016 - Manuscripts (5,000-7,500) due February 21, 2017 - Special issue of the Journal of Labor & Society will be published in June 2017 - Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/deadline-today-call-fo... __._,_.___ ------------------------------ Posted by: Historical Materialism News <[email protected]> ------------------------------ Reply via web post <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/messages/3562;_ylc=X3oDMTJxazVzdnQ4BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5NjY4NTYxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTY3Njk2NARtc2dJZAMzNTYyBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3JwbHkEc3RpbWUDMTQ3MDA1MDUwNw--?act=reply&messageNum=3562> • Reply to sender <[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Deadline%20today%3A%20Call%20for%20Abstracts%3A%20Rethinking%20Working%20Class%09Self-Organization%20Beyond%20Unions%2C%20Parties%2C%20NGOs%2C%20and%20the%20State> • Reply to group <[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Deadline%20today%3A%20Call%20for%20Abstracts%3A%20Rethinking%20Working%20Class%09Self-Organization%20Beyond%20Unions%2C%20Parties%2C%20NGOs%2C%20and%20the%20State> • Start a New Topic <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/newtopic;_ylc=X3oDMTJmMXViaHFzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5NjY4NTYxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTY3Njk2NARzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNudHBjBHN0aW1lAzE0NzAwNTA1MDc-> • Messages in this topic <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/topics/3562;_ylc=X3oDMTM1MTZibWVhBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE5NjY4NTYxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTY3Njk2NARtc2dJZAMzNTYyBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTQ3MDA1MDUwNwR0cGNJZAMzNTYy> (1) ------------------------------ Save time and get your email on the go with the Yahoo Mail app <https://yho.com/1wwmgg> Get the beautifully designed, lighting fast, and easy-to-use Yahoo Mail today. 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