Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present

Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present is a book by historian Immanuel Ness which covers notable episodes of workers' control across the 20th and 21st centuries in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Poland, Indonesia, Algeria, Argentina, Portugal, Britain, USA, Canada, India, Venezuela and Brazil as well as detailing some philosophical notes on workers' control and capitalism.
== Summary ==
=== Part I: Workers' Councils: Historical Overview and Theoretical Debate ===
==== Workers' Control and Revolution ====
==== Workers' Councils in Europe: A Century of Experience ====
==== The Red Mole: Workers' Councils as a means of Revolutionary Transformation ====
==== The Political Form at Last Discovered: Workers’ Councils against the Capitalist State ====
=== Part II: Workers' Councils and Self-Administration in Revolution: Early Twentieth Century ===
==== From Unionism to Workers’ Councils: The Revolutionary Shop Stewards in Germany, 1914–1918 ====
==== The Factory Committee Movement in the Russian Revolution ====
==== Factory Councils in Turin, 1919–1920: “The Sole and Authentic Social Representatives of the Proletarian Class” ====
==== Workers’ Democracy in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1937 ====
=== Part III: Workers’ Control under State Socialism ===
==== Yugoslavia: Workers’ Self-Management as State Paradigm ====
The role of workers' control within the economy of Yugoslavia - which practiced a form of market socialism - is discussed. The chapter argues that the heavy handed nature of state control and the lack of popular control over the state led to cynicism towards workers councils. It is argued that the top-down nature of the workers' control in Yugoslavia led to a strong desire for autonomy, which was exploited by nationalists and thus led to the Yugoslav Wars.
==== Give Us Back Our Factories! Between Resisting Exploitation and the Struggle for Workers’ Power in Poland, 1944–1981 ====
=== Part IV: Anticolonial Struggle, Democratic Revolution, and Workers’ Control ===
==== Workers’ Control in Java, Indonesia, 1945–1946 ====
==== From Workers’ Self-Management to State Bureaucratic Control: Autogestion in Algeria ====
==== The Limits and Possibilities of Workers’ Control within the State: Mendoza, Argentina, 1973 ====
==== Workers’ Councils in Portugal, 1974–1975 ====
=== Part V: Workers’ Control against Capitalist Restructuring in the Twentieth Century ===
==== Workers’ Control and the Politics of Factory Occupation: Britain, 1970s ====
==== Workers’ Direct Action and Factory Control in the United States ====
==== “Hot Autumn”: Italy’s Factory Councils and Autonomous Workers’ Assemblies, 1970s ====
==== Recipe for Anarchy: British Columbia’s Telephone Workers’ Occupation of 1981 ====
=== Part VI: Workers’ Control, 1990–2010 ===
==== Workers’ Control in India’s Communist-Ruled State: Labor Struggles and Trade Unions in West Bengal ====
==== Argentinean Worker-Taken Factories: Trajectories of Workers’ Control under the Economic Crisis ====
==== Workers’ Control under Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution ====
==== Brazilian Recovered Factories: The Constraints of Workers’ Control ====
== External Links ==
* Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present at Libcom