Profile

Professional career

• 05/2022 - 02/2023
  Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Soziologie, Bereich Arbeits-, Industrie und Wirtschaftssoziologie, FSU Jena
• since 05/2023
  Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Global and European Studies Institut, Bereich Global Dynamics of Resource Use and Distribution, Universität Leipzig

Workers' Councils and Workers' Control

The labour movement has always produced alternatives to the capitalist way of production. According to Marx, workers' cooperatives of the early 19th century showed "that the capitalist as a functionary of production [...] has become superfluous", but at the same time the cooperatives must "reproduce all the defects of the existing system". Gramsci describes the factory takeovers in northern Italy following the Russian revolution in 1917 as a "first form [...] that strives for self-regulation in the workers' state", but also the subsequent failure of the factory councils and their integration into the fascist modernisation of the economy. Contemporary factory takeovers are also analysed on the one hand as an entry into the exit from capitalism, while at the same time these attempts are attested to be self-exploitative and to have a short survival period.

In the seminar, we want to gain an overview of the history of factory councils, factory takeovers and attempts to exercise workers' self-management within the capitalist economic system. Using global examples, with a focus on Italy, we will explore the following questions: In which situations and why have attempts at workers' self-management repeatedly emerged in the history of the labour movement globally? Why did they fail? What forms of factory takeovers and self-management occur today and what potential is attributed to them by the protagonists and their observers?