Follow Us

AK Press

Revolution by the Book The AK Press Blog

Immanuel Ness on “Ours to Master and to Own”

Posted on August 17th, 2011 in Events

Join us at the AK Press warehouse for an exciting event with Haymarket Books author Immanuel Ness as he discusses his new book Ours to Master and to Own: On Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present. Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a founding member of the Lower East Side Community Labor Organization, an autonomous activist organization in New York City. His research and writing focuses on social and revolutionary movements, labor militancy, and migrant worker resistance to oppression. It promises to be a great event!

About the book (which we will have soon): From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and have 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. Looking at specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often under-appreciated 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 bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.