All over the country, people—like the workers of Chicago’s New Era Windows—are building worker-owned cooperatives that root jobs in the communities that need them.
Britain in the 1970s was a period of crisis and polarisation. Workplace closure led to resistance by workers, which defined the relations between capital and labour for subsequent decades.
Some currents argue that the experience of small-scale self-management under capitalism is useful preparation. However, self-management is impossible without real socialist democracy.
Human alienation will disappear through the withering away of commodity production and social division of labour, through the disappearance of private ownership of the means of production.
The economic crisis that began in 2008 has put workers’ control and workplace democracy back on the agenda in the countries of the northern hemisphere.