We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, March 28, 2016

Workers Control in Venezuela and Beyond: An Interview with Dario Azzelini

Click here to access article posted on LeftEast by Marko Miletic about his interview with Azzelini. The article includes a 34:21m film made by Azzelini and an associate that takes us into one worker-run factory in Italy to learn how workers manage their enterprise.

With the daily neoliberal assaults on workers all over the world, we sometimes forget about the operations of enterprises that workers have created in narrow spaces of the capitalist world. Then, too, these receive very little publicity probably because the workers are too busy and the capitalist world does not want us to know about their activities. The participants in this interview are two activists that are very much involved with worker enterprises, and they share their valuable experience and insightful ideas with us. 


The interviewer Marko Miletic



Marko Miletić is a political activist from Belgrade, Serbia. He is member of Kontekst collective, and Social Center October. He is member of editorial board of portal masina.rs.














Dario Azzelini

Dario Azzellini is assistant professor for sociology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, writer and documentary director. He holds a PhD in political science and a PhD in sociology. His research and writing focuses on democracy, social movements, self-management, popular power, migration and racism. Azzellini published several books, essays and documentaries.

Dario Azzelini is a theoretician and political activist splitting time between Berlin and Caracas. He recently stayed in Belgrade to participate in the conference “Let’s bring socialism back into the game“. That gave us an opportunity to talk about different topics he addresses in his work – ranging from the question of Maduro’s election loss, the interrelation of art and politics, to cases of recuperations of workers’ factories throughout Europe.