Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over
When all looks lost, how do we get to work building a different kind of world?
In this episode, co-authors Dr. Dario Azzellini and Dr. Marcelo Vieta discuss their new book, Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over. Published by Routledge.
What are worker recouperated enterprises - and what can they teach us about democracy, creativity, and well-being in the workplace?
Listen Here!
Want to learn more? Some of the organizations, authors, and books mentioned in the episode:
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism
-
Alison Stratten (00:04)
Today I have the pleasure of welcoming to Academic Book Club the co-authors of Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work, Dr. Dario Azzellini and Dr. Marcelo Vieta Like all good books, Commoning Labour started with citations and tacos, two authors in conversation about the world. Although it wasn't exactly the book they first intended, the collaboration brought together 25 years of research.
Alison Stratten (00:29)
Over 30 international case studies in 18 countries to make visible and tell a collective story of everyday people who respond to crises by taking over workplaces and transforming them into cooperatives and organizations rooted to the communities in which they operate. Dr. Dario Azzellini is a documentary director.
Alison Stratten (00:49)
Professor and researcher in the Department of Development Studies at the Autonomous University at Zacatecas, Mexico, and visiting scholar at the ILR School at Cornell University. Dario's research interests include labor studies, local and workers' self-management.
Alison Stratten (01:06)
And social movements and protest.
Alison Stratten (01:09)
Dr. Marcelo Vieta is Associate Professor in the Program of Adult Education and Community Development and Chair of the Department of Leadership Higher and Adult Education at OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education at the University of Toronto.
Alison Stratten (01:25)
Marcelo's work explores how cooperation, solidarity, and democracy may be fostered in the workplace and in the community.
Alison Stratten (01:32)
Thank you wherever you are for listening. Let's get started.
Alison Stratten (01:37)
Thank you so much both for being here. ⁓ Let's begin with how you came to write the book and what authors and ideas inspired and informed your writing. Marcelo maybe we can begin with you.
Marcelo Vieta (01:48)
Great, yes, well, Dario and I had been writing, or Dario and I had been writing on
Alison Stratten (01:55)
Okay.
Marcelo Vieta (01:55)
these themes for years on our own. And we met in Zacatecas at a conference back in 2018, I believe. We had been citing each other and we finally met. And Henry Veltmeyer who was
Marcelo Vieta (02:12)
organizing, co-organizing the conference suggested to us, why don't you write a book? And he was editing The critical development series of Routledge. And he's like, well, submit the book for the critical development series in Routledge. So Dario and I, I think we went for a beer and tacos and we decided, yeah, let's do it.
Marcelo Vieta (02:29)
it took a while ⁓ because we're both very active in teaching and researching and had commitments already. Dario was traveling all over the world. I was, you know, getting tenure in my job. And ⁓ so it did take a while, but we finally ⁓ brought it together.
Dario Azzellini (02:45)
when we discussed all that, came up and said, OK, the workers should decide, but there's no real reason why only the workers should decide. In an ideal case, the community is part of the decision, the surrounding
Dario Azzellini (03:02)
Housing is part of the decision because it is affected by production. The producers of the raw material should be part of it. And the consumers. So just to make an example, mean, a factory, the workers can decide to maybe producing marmalade and they have money and put up a second production line. The consumers might ask them and tell them, know, instead of a second production line,
Dario Azzellini (03:28)
put more into the quality, put 10 % less sugar and make it a bit better. The surrounding community might ask them, you know what, I mean, it's fine, but like eight hours a day of smell of fruit is too much. Put a filter with the money first. So we see that the different interests, in the end, they should all come together. So our plan, how it evolved when we discussed the book was, okay, we're gonna buy, gonna...
Dario Azzellini (03:55)
talk about the workers, self-management, workers control, but also about the communes that are coming up, like in Mexico with the Zapatistas, in Rojava with Kurdistan, ⁓ in Venezuela and in other places. And there even some small ones, especially in the piquetero movement in Argentina and et cetera. So the idea was the community should be in an ideal case, the ones who decide. So
Dario Azzellini (04:18)
Our idea is like to expand this democracy workplace community and have like a real rank and file democracy that controls the economy. So the economy is the service of the people and not the other way around. Like it's today where the people have to serve the economy. And we did even write this book, but unfortunately, Routledge didn't want to publish 500 pages. ⁓ So we have it there in the backyard.
Dario Azzellini (04:45)
And ⁓ at some point we're going to take it ⁓ magically out the hat like a rabbit and say, here is our book on communes and how they're connected to worker self-management.
Marcelo Vieta (04:56)
Yeah, if I may add just a sentence to that, the original theme of the book was recuperating workplaces and community spaces.
Dario Azzellini (05:04)
Yes.
Marcelo Vieta (05:05)
So we were wanting to look at how groups of people, workers, come together, take over and convert a workplace into democratic space, but also how communities do it in a larger perspective or scale when they
Marcelo Vieta (05:20)
literally take over the decision making and the ways of producing community. And so that's what the book originally was. And so we had to cut about a third out, which is the commune and community section.
Alison Stratten (05:31)
And tell me how, as co-authors, I'm fascinated by this, as co-authors, how do you make those decisions? Like explain to me how you decide which case studies are going to be included when that decision happens for Routledge how do you shift? Tell me a little bit, each of you, about the process of working together and how you as an individual approach the work with your own scholarship and then also negotiated or in collectively wrote, you know, re representing what you're writing about as well.
Marcelo Vieta (05:58)
Yeah, if I can kickstart this part, Dario, that
Alison Stratten (06:00)
Fees.
Marcelo Vieta (06:00)
okay? So Dario has volumes of writing that he came into this with and research. And I had my writing and research as well. And so we started by, yeah, and so we started by, well, what do you have? What do I have? What can we bring together? What needs to be reworked? What has crossover and what can we combine? So we started just
Marcelo Vieta (06:24)
throwing to each other, or sharing with each other different writings that we'd done. And then from there, started pulling out ideas and sections and rewriting and updating. That's kind of how we got started, right, Dario? Yeah.
Dario Azzellini (06:36)
Yeah, yeah, no, and
Dario Azzellini (06:37)
it worked exceptionally well. I mean, we never had any whatever discussions or anything about it. It was just always like, okay, put this here, put this here, add something here. I do something here. And it worked out super well, even if we have like slightly different styles in a way that like Marcelo likes to comment everything in the text. So you have like 3000 comments in the text were working.
Dario Azzellini (07:03)
And I am of the tendency trying to integrate immediately and solve the issues and not comment. But it worked super well. mean, it was like a fabulous collaboration.
Marcelo Vieta (07:15)
Let me just add to that that we
Alison Stratten (07:16)
Sorry.
Marcelo Vieta (07:16)
were never together writing this. He was in Germany,
Dario Azzellini (07:19)
Yeah.
Marcelo Vieta (07:19)
I was in Costa Rica, then he was in New York State and I was in Toronto and Argentina. So we were in different parts of the world, which made it more complex. But we got together with technology and that. But there were moments where Dario was writing and I was doing something else and then Dario was doing something else and I was writing. And so it tended to work out.
Marcelo Vieta (07:38)
that way as well. You know, like we were
Alison Stratten (07:40)
Yeah.
Marcelo Vieta (07:41)
patient with each other, which I think is really good as
Alison Stratten (07:43)
Yeah. Maybe and patient and equally busy, maybe, reading also
Marcelo Vieta (07:46)
Yeah.
Alison Stratten (07:47)
need relying on each other as well, right? When you get too busy.
Marcelo Vieta (07:51)
Exactly.
Dario Azzellini (07:52)
I think that
Dario Azzellini (07:53)
one thing that I think made it easier to work together. We have obviously a strong theoretical background, like things we think are correct and we use and analysis and etc. But I think that by doing loads of work in Latin America and in different places, we also both learn to look at what people really want to say and not what...
Dario Azzellini (08:19)
you might put as a kind of idea on what people say, because some of the terms we use have a different meaning in each country. So, workers control, control oberero, depending on the history of the countries or the debates or the languages has different meanings. So, not to stick with like... Not to stick with like...
Dario Azzellini (08:41)
simple graphics of ideas that you put on other people, like going deeper into it and that worked like very well. always could find like the common ground by like with this approach.
Dario Azzellini (08:56)
people think that first the law is done and then the things happen according to law. But that's not the way it happens. The way is that things happen and then the state comes and wants to regulate because it has to regulate everything because that's the state's function and the state's functioning.
Dario Azzellini (09:14)
So we looked at it and we found out, example, that in Italy, the strikes in the metal sector had already achieved the 40 hour week at a certain point, but it was not national law. It became national law after that, when the unions had already achieved it. usually when, so you do it with the struggle and you win and you do like three steps forward and then comes the law which does one step back.
Dario Azzellini (09:41)
from where you got. So what we know now is there's no way that we wait for anyone, for any government, for any president, for anyone to solve this for us.
Dario Azzellini (09:51)
it's not about waiting. So it's the old talk about like, do you follow the law? Yeah, if we all have followed the law, will still have slavery. Women would not vote. We would work 60 hours a week. So there's no way that you can achieve something by following the law.
Dario Azzellini (10:10)
You have to do something and make the law follow you.
Marcelo Vieta (10:12)
Can I add to that?
Alison Stratten (10:13)
Wonderful answer. Please.
Marcelo Vieta (10:15)
Yeah, so to underscore that, one worker who was a leader in the Argentine worker recuperated enterprise movement told me once in an interview, We begin in illegality, right? We take over workplaces and illegality directly in violation of property rights. But because of how they've been dealt, how they've been exploited,
Marcelo Vieta (10:34)
and the circumstances which the capitalist system left them to, they feel it's also their right to have dignified work. And given the fact that they've been exploited so much, then they take over workplaces. the dignity of work and the right to decent work overrides property law. And that was at the beginning. It's at the beginning of each takeover.
Marcelo Vieta (11:03)
But then in Argentina, for example, judges started agreeing with workers and eventually the law was reformed in Argentina. So the bankruptcy law in Argentina was reformed specifically because of the workers of the Empresas Recuperadas and what they did 15 years before, what they'd been doing for 15 years. the new bankruptcy law changes in Argentina.
Marcelo Vieta (11:24)
which gives workers right of first refusal when a business is bankrupt or is going to close. The workers have a right to take it over. Not only that, but the workers then can use the work that they weren't paid to do as labor credit, so to speak, as kind of purchasing assets or purchasing currency to buy the...
Marcelo Vieta (11:47)
business or to take over the business. don't necessarily buy it. So that's one example to underscore what Dario was saying. Yeah.
Alison Stratten (11:54)
No, you you speak in the book about it unleashing about the unleashing of the worker creativity. And I think that speaks to that. This idea that these are these are the this starts in crisis or in abandonment or in right. And that but that in that crisis the hope is built through people working together and and finding that creativity and those transformative connections outside of the workplace, to their communities and to the cities that are around them.
Alison Stratten (12:20)
I think that that was so well expressed in the book as well, that hope from crisis.
Dario Azzellini (12:25)
It's also like in the world we live in, it's usually like workers are limited. The only thing they can negotiate us for is a raise. That's it. There's not much more space to negotiate anything. So workers don't come up with more because they also know that it doesn't make sense. But the moment you have a different setting, so like the workplace that is taken over.
Dario Azzellini (12:49)
and the workers can practically influence and decide on everything, they start talking, discussing and deciding on everything, on what to produce, how to produce, really, like what ingredients to use, if to change the production, how much work, how many hours, everything. and especially like issues of worker and of health become central.
Dario Azzellini (13:13)
once the workers have really the option to decide about it.
Dario Azzellini (13:18)
We have the example of Viome in Greece, which was producing chemical construction material. And once they took it over and they had a debate what to produce now, they decided against and decided to switch to organic household and personal hygiene cleaners, for example. So it also shows that workers, contrary to the general belief, have a strong consciousness.
Dario Azzellini (13:45)
and interest in obviously healthy and sustainable production etc. The issue is do they have the space to fight for it or to decide it or to introduce it or not?
Marcelo Vieta (13:58)
That's why we write that they're prefigurative of the kind of workplaces we need in our hope for and struggle for a just transition to a less impactful mode of production and mode of living. And what they do is they, and we use this concept a lot throughout the book is the concept of prefiguration that in the now, in...
Marcelo Vieta (14:22)
despite the challenges, despite the struggle against the unjust capitalist system, let's say, they are doing things, perhaps not everything, but some things that kind of foreshadow the world that we need and we want to see. And they're practicing it in the current moment. And they do that in an ethical way, or at least as ethically as they can do it, given the fact that they're also working within markets, because that's the system we have.
Marcelo Vieta (14:48)
I like how we tackle the concepts, ⁓ the key concepts the beginning and the history, we historicize the key concepts, we divide them up into two chapters, concepts like autogestión prefiguration, self-management, ⁓ the labor commons, the moral economy of work. So we ⁓ these are some of the concepts we use, we could
Marcelo Vieta (15:05)
have a podcast for each of them. one that really strikes me that I've been working on for a long time and that we both have and we brought to the book is the notion of autogestión which I learned from the workers in Argentina 25 years ago when I started interviewing them. 20 years ago, something like that. Anyway, a long time ago.
Marcelo Vieta (15:28)
I prefer it to self-management, worker self-management in English. And I'm glad Dario does as well. We used it throughout. We also use self-management interchangeably. But what's powerful about that is it has an ethics within it it has, gestion literally means, it's from the Latin, it means to gestate or to manage or literally to gestate. It's the same root word as gestation.
Marcelo Vieta (15:50)
So to self create, to reproduce and self create. And for me, and then auto is self, like a collective self. So for me, bringing those together really kind of conceptually synthesizes what is at stake and what the process is of them taking over workplaces. It isn't just about at the beginning, it is about saving jobs and it is about livelihoods, but ultimately becomes something much more. It's about the,
Marcelo Vieta (16:15)
self-direction and the self-control of one's collective life with others in the community and the ability to, as Dario said, decide what, how, and when to produce.
Marcelo Vieta (16:29)
and there's a last thing I wanted to say is that the one thing that really kind of tapping into what Dario was saying before. So workers self-control a workplace, for example.
Marcelo Vieta (16:39)
they also decide if they don't want to produce something because if producing something is damaging to them or perhaps that they feel like they'd have to put in too many hours, let's say it would take too much time, too much sacrifice, it would sacrifice, they can choose not to and they often do. And so, a more traditional workplace would say, why would you do that? You have to until it's done and it doesn't matter.
Marcelo Vieta (17:08)
You know, it's almost like one's state of being, one's wellbeing isn't considered. Well, in these workspaces, it is considered and it is probably more important than the mere economic decisions.
Alison Stratten (17:20)
Yeah, it adds in a g also an environmental concern as well that that is possible and things that wouldn't have been that would just be cost cutting under another another kind of system.
Marcelo Vieta (17:30)
Yeah, as a lean.
Dario Azzellini (17:31)
I think that also
Dario Azzellini (17:32)
the autogestion, the term also reconnects these special type of cooperatives to what the cooperatives originally were. They were the self-organization of the working class to solve their own problems and with their own means. That's the origin of the cooperatives. And I think that the term self-management pushes what is happening there.
Dario Azzellini (17:58)
in my feeling in the wrong direction, in the direction of management. And unfortunately, over the past decade, like a lot of, for example, cooperative studies in universities moved from social sciences to economics, which is then simply a different business model, but not anymore a different social model like it was in its origins.
Dario Azzellini (18:24)
as self-construction of the working class. And I think that like this term, auto-gestion brings these cooperatives, these specific type of cooperatives back again and links it again to the origins of the cooperative movement. There was not just having many owners instead of one. mean, there was a social idea and the political idea behind it.
Marcelo Vieta (18:48)
Yeah, which predates unions, actually. Cooperatives were the initial kind of working class organization, and then came official unions. I wanted to also make sure that we, the other point, the other concept point that we conclude the book with, but that, again, know, threads throughout the book is in part four, we bring in the notion of the commons and then conclude with
Marcelo Vieta (19:11)
in a grounded theory way, conclude by proposing the notion of the labor commons, that labor itself, work itself, should be considered a commons rather than a function of wage labor, of going to work, punching in, punching out, of capitalism. Actually, as labor predates capitalism, the commons predates capitalism. Both are...
Marcelo Vieta (19:34)
taken up, usurped, and appropriated in the value chain and the production of value for capitalism. But it always was linked to community, and workers and communities always controlled, decided how labor and the commons operated. And so this is in a way, what we're proposing is this is a return to that.
Marcelo Vieta (19:56)
but we're putting forward this concept of the labor commons to be a concept that can not only in these spaces, but in other spaces can be actually used as a, deployed or taken up as a way of understanding what's at stake, the control of our own creativity and productivity. I don't know you want to say more about that, Dario.
Dario Azzellini (20:15)
And it's
Dario Azzellini (20:15)
also, think that like the labor commons is also, it's an interesting concept ⁓ also to show the absurdity of capitalism, where a lot of work is simply, or labor power is simply lost because it's not bought, or it is hidden and not recognized because it's unpaid. ⁓ I mean, that's, there's nothing more absurd for like
Dario Azzellini (20:40)
than capitalism if you look at what it is getting out of the work that is done. I it's absurd. And I think that this concept of labor commons works on both sides. And one's showing a different type of work, and on the other side also showing the waste of labor power, of human energy, of creativity that is there with capitalism.
Marcelo Vieta (21:07)
the other concept we use recuperation, but it's it's never the same. So once it's been through the system, it's never the same, but it recuperates. It's always going to be transformed and changed. It's a becoming. But it it tries to return to some fundamental quality that has also always been there, has been appropriated by capitalism and now is being reappropriated by by workers and communities.
Dario Azzellini (21:31)
I would like to ask you something as an attentive reader. is very
Dario Azzellini (21:37)
crucial, I think, for us in the book is to the centrality of conflict. It's not about harmony, it's about conflict.
Alison Stratten (21:45)
well as a reader, I will answer that you did communicate that very well. I think actually that was one of the things I most most impacted me is the ability to find that hope in the face of crisis. This is something also that we've spoken about before, Marcelo, is that many things start with crisis, but that we must be we have to be aware of where we are. We have to see
Alison Stratten (22:07)
where we are in the world, but that this isn't to be hopeless. This is to face, right? That combination of the resistance with the care. and that the resistance comes from a deep care and the community and the labor and the people. yeah. So yes, I think you did communicate it very well.
Dario Azzellini (22:22)
What surprised you most? What did you like best? What was
Alison Stratten (22:25)
What surprised me most? What surprised
Dario Azzellini (22:27)
most impacting for you?
Alison Stratten (22:28)
that was what mu most impacted me, which is the fa to be able to face that and deal with the tension. The tension of, you know, which is something else that Marcel has written about, the tension of operating within systems that we seek to resist is a real tension. And and I think worker recuperated enterprises as that transformative part is painful and hard and labor and work. And and I think that so yes.
Alison Stratten (22:55)
I think it was communicated very well. That's what I learned.
Marcelo Vieta (22:57)
Yeah, I'll be-
Alison Stratten (22:57)
I was surprised 'cause I'm still learning. So I learned about lots of different cooperatives that I wasn't familiar with. So that's what I learned. Yeah.
Dario Azzellini (23:03)
Thank you.
Marcelo Vieta (23:04)
The
Marcelo Vieta (23:04)
important one thing that underscores this is like if you ask most of these workers, would say, I don't know how many most of them, they never this they never envisioned this. This wasn't a preset plan. This is how it differs from more traditional cooperative where a group of people get together and have a common interest and set up a co-op. So in these situations, we call them labor conflict recuperations. That's that's what we call them. They're rooted in labor conflict. They didn't have this. They
Marcelo Vieta (23:31)
They were okay at the time working nine to five, maybe more, maybe less, some more, some less, but that's what they signed up for. They signed up for a job. And it's when various circumstances that revealed to them that they were being exploited came to the surface that they do this dramatic, radical thing of taking over a workplace and then converting it to co-op and then going through that whole days and weeks and months and maybe years sometimes of
Marcelo Vieta (23:57)
reconstituting their working lives. They didn't need that at the beginning, right? They didn't need that. then given that there was no other options, that transforms them. And then so they work through that crisis and that struggle and those tensions. And they learn in the process what we call learning and struggle. brought that into the book. So they learn in that process and then they become better for it ultimately, but they have to transition all that crisis and tension.
Marcelo Vieta (24:24)
and struggle.
Dario Azzellini (24:25)
But it's interesting,
Dario Azzellini (24:26)
there's some elements that are obviously inherently present in this struggle. So one is not to recognize the private ownership over the means of production. They take it over because they think they have a right, they recuperate it because it belongs to them. So this is like a big step, it's not a small step to simply...
Dario Azzellini (24:48)
There couldn't be a more obvious contradiction between labor and capital and the interests of labor and capital. mean, they feel it suddenly in their whole body, flesh, blood, family, neighborhood. It's
Marcelo Vieta (25:01)
That's right. It is really felt embodied. is.
Dario Azzellini (25:04)
not anymore like something that you can make go away with a bonus or convince them that if they get 50 cents more now or whatever.
Dario Azzellini (25:17)
It is not only a contradiction, but it's obviously an antagonism. So it cannot be solved in a different way than either kick the workers out and have repression or the workers take over and control it. Simple. So I think that it's, it's, it's the interesting thing that like during the struggle, with these people that obviously did not sign up to like take over the means of production and et cetera, but suddenly
Dario Azzellini (25:44)
The situation makes these things very, very clear for them and also who they can rely on.
Alison Stratten (25:51)
How did workers react to being in the book? What's the reaction when you go to interview at a factory and tell them that you're a researcher?
Marcelo Vieta (25:58)
My experience is that they want their story to be told. When I did my interviews, that's what they constantly told me. And I would ask them, they would have to sign consent forms. This is going to be published. yeah, yeah, we want our story to be told. You can use our names. You can use our names. Nobody told me don't use my
Alison Stratten (26:13)
Well, I assume you're
Alison Stratten (26:14)
not publishing against their will, but I was just curious. Yeah.
Marcelo Vieta (26:17)
No, but nobody told me because I've done other interviews
Marcelo Vieta (26:20)
where anonymity has been, has been, yeah, has been desired.
Alison Stratten (26:21)
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.
Marcelo Vieta (26:24)
The only, the only time was when there was an iffy situation that they didn't want, you know, that there was something kind of problematic or something like that. But when it was about their story, their greater story and communicating that, yeah, they were excited about it.
Alison Stratten (26:37)
And Dario as a filmmaker, is that your been your experience as well as a researcher and filmmaker to the stories that you share?
Dario Azzellini (26:43)
Well, yeah, definitely.
Dario Azzellini (26:44)
they not only that they want the story to be told, I mean, also that they want to appear with their names usually, like which is then a big contradiction with all like these ethical committee interview laws that exist in some countries like the US, Canada or the UK and the Netherlands. They
Marcelo Vieta (27:05)
Ethics boards.
Dario Azzellini (27:07)
don't exist in Germany or Italy or Spain or anywhere.
Dario Azzellini (27:10)
I think they're complete nonsense because either you have the ethics or it doesn't matter what you tell them. they wanted to put all these people anonymized. I had the same problem now with the research with the unions in Colombia and Just Transition, where they wanted to put all the names as anonymous, not even the union they were in.
Dario Azzellini (27:32)
And obviously all the workers wanted their names in the union in the
Dario Azzellini (27:36)
in places where you can be easily the subject of repression, it's often better the more people know your name and know what you're doing and not the opposite because you can't, I mean, you won't hide from whatever the bullies of the owner or from the military, from the police and from the Secret Service, you can't hide anyway. They know what you're doing.
Dario Azzellini (27:59)
So it's better to have your name published as many times as possible. mean, that's an easy mechanism. Because there's also one thing... I think we have very similar approaches to the interviews, where we have long, half-directed, semi-directed interviews and have them rebuilding.
Dario Azzellini (28:17)
their story and what happened. And this is crucial. This is crucial like in factories, but also in communities, for example, because it's often the first time they have to count the, they have to tell the whole story because as long as you're only speaking to people that have experienced the same, you don't tell the full story again, because you always assume that the other person
Dario Azzellini (28:41)
has gone through the same and knows what you're talking about, even if you just say two words or half a sentence.
Dario Azzellini (28:47)
So also the interviews are helping them to systematize their knowledge, to situate their knowledge and experiences and contribute to the creation of a common story that does not exist until
Dario Azzellini (29:03)
It's outspoken, even if many people think it exists before, but it does not. I think that's why, and the workers obviously notice that when they're doing the interviews. So that's why I have them like that. They really like it to do the interviews. then they like, usually, if you go several times to the same factory, it happened to me several times that you go there and you have an appointment with one person to do the interview.
Dario Azzellini (29:27)
But like three other people come up and I want to interview too, interview me too or whatever. The other thing also is that it helps to promote debates in the factory. Because obviously it's not normal that they are interviewed. So if you interview one worker, you can be sure that when the interview is finished or when they're sitting in the cafeteria or whatever, the other workers also, what did they ask you? What did you tell? Why?
Dario Azzellini (29:51)
So I think it's part of the ⁓ whole process. We also try to support with the work we're doing. a of the stuff I'm doing in interviews is not necessarily that important for the work I will be doing. But it helps the workers to rebuild their story.
Dario Azzellini (30:12)
So I think that like thinking in these two dimensions and that's why then they are really like keen on giving interviews.
Alison Stratten (30:19)
Yeah, that's a great answer. Thank you. Thank you. Those are wonderful. I'm gonna ask you one final question while we wrap up. So authors often write the books they wish they could see in the world or wish they could read. I wanna ask each of you what kind of books you wish you were reading now and yeah, where your mind is imagining and wandering these days. Either of you can answer first.
Marcelo Vieta (30:41)
Yeah, I want to read about, I like history. I think, and we didn't really talk about key authors that inspired us. So I'll bring it back to that.
Alison Stratten (30:50)
Please.
Marcelo Vieta (30:51)
It's obvious if you start reading the book that one author that has influenced Dario and I immensely is Karl Marx. And not necessarily because we would call ourselves Marxist, although maybe we would, but
Marcelo Vieta (31:03)
It's not because and we're not trying to be there's no orthodoxy to I think, but because of the proposition of how labor is centralized is so important in, you know, the labor of people in creating the world, the labor of working people in creating the world, not politicians, not empires, not but history. So keep going back to history. And this is my kind of Marxist roots here, at least methodologically.
Marcelo Vieta (31:29)
history is written by, at least traditional history, is written by, you know, the elite.
Marcelo Vieta (31:36)
don't want to know anymore about the Egyptian gods and ancient Egypt and the pharaohs. I want to know about that agricultural worker kind of working the Nile every season. so that's a type of book that I'd like to read. And I'm taken by those books that do attempt to kind of recapture and reconstruct the past of working people. And increasingly, you see more of that in kind of
Marcelo Vieta (32:01)
revisions of history from a bottom-up perspective.
Alison Stratten (32:04)
Yeah, like a almost
Alison Stratten (32:05)
a canon cur correction, right? Like that kind of idea. Yeah, that's
Marcelo Vieta (32:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
Marcelo Vieta (32:09)
So I'm really taken by that. And I'm hoping that we're also operating in that spirit that future generations will be able to also see what, you know, average working people, people day in and day out, you know, struggling to make a living and how important their work is and how much they're transitioning and transforming the world and how much potential is there and how much they've, yeah. So just I...
Marcelo Vieta (32:30)
That's what my hope is for this book and as I kind of look for those books that kind of get into that from the past, right?
Alison Stratten (32:37)
Thank you. Great answer.
Dario Azzellini (32:37)
think
Dario Azzellini (32:38)
this connects us with E.P. Thompson obviously and another influence, ⁓ which
Marcelo Vieta (32:41)
Yeah. Another. E. Thompson. Yes.
Dario Azzellini (32:45)
is like not only the history from below, but also like the whole moral economy, that we like put into this analysis.
Dario Azzellini (32:53)
one of the book I want to read, I would like to read now is kind of mixture of historical examples, discussion and contemporary debates. How can workers stop war and militarization? That's I think that's absolutely a crucial.
Dario Azzellini (33:11)
issue and book that I would really like to read. What else? I think that like thinking about like the commodity chains of cooperatives and recuperated workplaces is an interesting thing I would like to read. I would like to more about like different
Dario Azzellini (33:29)
different cultural systems of labour of commons that we don't have access to,
Marcelo Vieta (33:33)
Me too.
Dario Azzellini (33:35)
like very or very little access to.
Alison Stratten (33:38)
Yeah. Thank you, both of you. I learned so much from your book and I appreciate you both sharing your very busy time to be here for an interview. ⁓ there'll be information for anyone who wants to learn more about Marcelo and Dario's work and also links and show notes on the website and a link where you can purchase the book. I do have a copy. It is hardcover and a little expensive, but Routledge is gonna get this first. So we'll have paper back before we know it.
Alison Stratten (34:04)
Thank you so much to both of you. I appreciate you.
Marcelo Vieta (34:07)
Thanks, Allison.
Dario Azzellini (34:08)
It's a nice thing. great.
Alison Stratten (34:10)
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Academic Book Club. Like, subscribe, and all that good stuff and visit academicbookclub.com to learn more about new and upcoming titles.
Alison Stratten (34:23)
Have feedback or suggestions from this episode? Ideas about who we have to speak to next? Reach out anytime and say hi on Instagram or by email to info at academicbookclub.com. Keep reading, take care.
Alison Stratten (34:38)
And talk soon.