Journal of Labor and Society最新文献

{"title":"Cross-Movement Strike Actions: Works Council and Communist Groups at the Bremer Vulkan Shipyard in the 1970s","authors":"J. Wolf","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10116","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Beginning in the early 1970s, various communist groups decided to become active at the Bremer Vulkan shipyard. The article shows that they did not immediately go for confrontation to older trade union structures but were willing to change the movement from within. With the support of a wildcat strike at the shipyard in 1973, the New Left raised the question of alternatives. As a result, the Social Democratic works council chairman resigned because of a lack of support from his colleagues, and in 1974 some communists were elected to the works council. I argue that there was no division into old and new but rather a diverse field of actors: a disparate group of workers with different occupational status, and political approaches; works councils and shop stewards with close ties to Bremen’s Social Democracy; and various communist groups that pursued very different policies and goals, sometimes joined forces, but basically fought each other—especially in conflicts—rather than taking joint action.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41773235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comparing the Two “Cold Wars” Through Gramsci, Althusser and Mao","authors":"Jude Kadri","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10115","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000There are three overlapping objectives in the article. The first objective is to present three different Marxist perspectives, while focusing on the interpretation of the base/superstructure dialectic which is the key to the understanding of Marxian political economy. The second objective is to make sense of the first and second “Cold Wars” based on the different interpretations of the base/superstructure dialectic. The last objective is to reassert the materialist essence of the base/superstructure dialectic by evoking Marx and his concepts of “Labor” and “Capital”. The three different perspectives are analyzed based on this reassertion. Through these three objectives, two deductions were made: the first deduction is that scientific Marxism requires the acknowledgement of the overdetermination of the economic base (its dominance in the last instance) in the analysis of abstractions, empirical and historical data. The “totality of the relations of production” within the economic base appears abstract in nature, but it represents the ontological category of “Labor” that defines human history since its beginning. It has a transhistorical essence. Human beings work together to produce their basic needs, according to historically specific (abstract) relations of production. The superstructure determines the specificity of the relations of production; it defines the “historical” side of the relations of production in the economic base. In the era of capitalism, “Capital” (the private appropriation of social wealth) is the dominant relation that comes to dictate the “totality of the relations of the production” within the economic base, through the superstructure. Total capital is then the real “subject” of history, and all abstractions gain purpose and practicality based on the class struggle between Labor and Capital. The second deduction relates to real history explained on the basis of the first deduction. Looking at the historical development of the class struggle against monopoly-finance capital (the centralized and concentrated capital) in the 20th century, the First Cold War never truly ended even though the global socialist ideology became weak and the ideological struggle against the imperialist superstructure watered down.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45860020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Union Networks to Lula Livre: an Analysis of US – Brazil Trade Union Solidarity Movements in the 21st Century","authors":"J. Silverman, Stanley Gacek","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10112","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The Brazilian and US labor movements are currently confronting common challenges related to changes in the overall structure and profile of the working class, the elimination of traditional sources of financing, and the weakening of allied political forces in the electoral arena. Considering these joint trajectories, the authors will examine recent efforts by US-based and Brazilian labor movement actors to create spaces for strategic collaborations, two-way learning, and mutual solidarity, to support common political goals and efforts towards union renovation. The article analyzes three contemporary cases of US-Brazil union solidarity networks, in order to better understand how transnational union activism influences national-level outcomes. The authors posit that the success of these forms of activism is dependent on objective limits created by external economic and political conditions, yet in some circumstances non-transactional solidarity is capable of producing unexpected positive outcomes for workers and their union organizations.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44974715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Principal Contradictions in the History of Capitalism","authors":"Torkil Lauesen","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10108","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article aims to analyze the development of capitalism over a period of 500 years by the use of Mao’s concept: “The principal contradiction.” It is not an article about philosophy; the principal contradiction is presented as a working tool for analyzing and development of strategy. The article distills history into epochs characterized by changing principal contradictions. The correct identification of the principal contradiction and its interaction with secondary contradictions is the starting point of the development of a strategy, which can influence the aspect of the contradiction, in the desired direction. Finally is the relation between the contradiction in the capitalist mode of production and its expression in the changing principal contradictions discussed.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41842914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"it Freelancers as Knowledge Workers: Shifts in Working Conditions and Work Autonomy in Crowd Work","authors":"L. Nierling, Bettina-Johanna Krings, Leon Küstermann","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10113","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000New forms of work via online platforms—here referred to as crowd work—have caused big shifts in the organization of work. This article addresses the question as to how the institutional and organizational conditions in crowd work have had an impact on it freelancers working at a platform in Germany. The article starts with a literature review on the settings of it freelancers in the 1990s—forming a spirit of optimism towards the it sector—which is followed by a review of current developments in crowd work with regard to worker’s autonomy and organizational control. We complement these findings with a qualitative interview case study from the year 2020 about the platform Upwork. Our aim is to analyze how previous expectations from the 1990s are related to societal and organizational processes of today. Based on our results we argue that for it freelancers closing processes, both on societal and organizational levels, prevail in the context of crowd work.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43928191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/24714607-26010000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-26010000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":"408 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136340884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Imperialism and Resistance in the Middle East: A Theoretical Catharsis in the Making?","authors":"Nima Nakhaei","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10111","url":null,"abstract":"In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes, “the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point” (Garcia Marquez, 2014: p. 1). From the perspective of the Middle East, we are precisely at such conjuncture, ‘when the world is so recent.’ That is the least because we witness a unique articulation of three structural crises. First, the structural crisis of neoliberal imperialism has crystallized in a ‘world disorder’ characterized by financial and economic crises (Duménil and Lévy, 2013), intensification of intra-imperialist rivalries and the rise of new global powers, revolutionary openings and counter-revolutionary setbacks (Alnasseri, 2009). Second, the post-Cold War order in the Middle East, characterized by the unparalleled deepening of the United States’ strategic depth in the region, is in disarray. As Jacob Mundy puts it in his contribution to this issue, “the North Atlantic’s intellectual classes now appear to have reached a near-universal consensus that the United States’ preeminent global position is coming to an end. There is equally as much conviction among both supporters of American hegemony and its critics that US policies towards the Middle East since 2001 have played an important role in laying the groundwork for this profound shift in geopolitics” (Mundy, 2023). This is in part reflected in the unsettled nature of the Arab revolutions and counter-revolutions, the relative weakening of the United States’ geo-strategic depth in the Middle East and the increasing influence of new global and regional powers. Last but not the least, ‘domestic’ crises of hegemony have unfolded in various social formations in the Middle East. The ongoing national uprising in Iran since September 2022, the crisis of the ‘occupation regime’ in Iraq since Journal of Labor and Society 26 (2023) 1–13","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49187424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“The Sun is Shining in Salameh”: An American Communist Observes the Nakba","authors":"Gabriel Polley","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10110","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper investigates the writing of A.B. Magil, a journalist for the Communist Party of the USA. In Palestine in 1948, he witnessed the birth of the State of Israel and, correspondingly, the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Magil had unfettered access to Jewish military commanders who later joined Israel’s political elite, but also to Palestinian prisoners of war and Communist politicians. He reported from recently ethnically cleansed towns and villages without seeming to recognise the enormity of what had taken place. A close study of Magil’s coverage throw into relief subsequent shifts in the Western left’s understandings of imperialism, (settler-)colonialism and resistance. After returning to the US, he continued his commentary on the Middle East, his later writings revealing how leftist sympathies for Israel were tested throughout the 1950s, including by the Suez Crisis, though without a re-evaluation of the circumstances of Israel’s creation.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48266888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Theoretical War: Accounting for American Imperialism in the Middle East","authors":"Jacob Mundy","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10106","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This review surveys two decades of academic research on the question of contemporary imperialism and holds it up against the historical record of America’s increasingly violent entanglements in the Middle East over the course of the previous half century, though particularly since 2001. While early contributions to this literature emerged from a different context than the one they often sought or were expected to explain, others attributed a simplistic and problematic understanding of the relationship between US foreign policy and the political-economy of petroleum. Later contributions then eschewed a close analysis of imperialism in the Middle East in favor of a broader accounting of the dynamics of global capitalism. This review ultimately critiques the widespread assumption that the vitality of hegemony and capital must be assessed in relation to their ability to secure control and homogenous conditions of reproduction. A more robust understanding must be based in an approach that views the economic and the political not as fundamental units of analysis but as sites of struggle in the historical and contemporary constitution of imperialism.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48026229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Berry, Joe and Helena Worthen. Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education","authors":"Robert Ovetz","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10077","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48346937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}