The Workers Economy Third International Meeting Mexico June 9-11
Analyzing and Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers and Self-Management
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, Mexico City

We invite workers, activists, and researchers from around the world to the Third International Meeting of the Workers’ Economy, taking place on June 9, 10 and 11, 2011 in Mexico City at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Xochimilco (UAM-Xochimilco). With a focus on “Analyzing and Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers and Self-Management,” this Third International Meeting aims to continue the discussions and debates concerning workers’ alternatives to global capital that began in Buenos Aires at the First and Second International Meetings of the Workers’ Economy in 2007 and 2009.

For the Third International Meeting, we propose bridging academic and intellectual contributions with the practices and ideas of workers, bringing together researchers, theorists, and political activists with workers from around the world. This Third International Meeting will continue the spirit of the past two International Meetings by systematizing workers’ experiences of exploitation, projects of alternative work organizations and institutions, and workers’ roles as leaders of their own economic destinies, while also aiming to collaboratively study resistances to capitalists’ management of the economy.

This time, the International Meeting will be held in Mexico. For the organizers, this means consolidating the space of debate that the past two encuentros have generated and accentuating its international character. Mexico is a country where neoliberalism has rampaged against the people and provoked many workers’ struggles and myriad social movements of protest. They need support. The Third International Meeting in Mexico will, in particular, be drawing attention to these struggles and reinforcing them.

Topics of debate will include, but are not limited to:

1. Analysis of the capitalist management of the economy and proposals for global self-management.

2. The new crisis of global capitalism: analysis and responses from the perspective of the workers’ economy.

3. Self-management: the historical assessment.

4. Self-management in its present stage: its problems and potential. Recuperated factories, cooperatives, and attempts at self-management by social movements.

5. Self-management and gender: creating democracy.

6. The socialist experience of workers and analysis of its past and future.

7. The challenges of trade union experiences within neoliberal global capitalism.

8. Informal, precarious, and demeaning work: social exclusion or reconfiguration of work in global capitalism?

9. The universities, the workers and the movements: debates about methodologies and practices of mutual construction.

The Third Meeting will take place over three days, with morning and afternoon sessions, and will be open to the public. There will be plenary sessions and workshops with the presentation of papers, videoconferencing, and a final plenary with discussion and conclusions.

Organizing Committee:

Area Work Studies of the Department of Social Relations of the Autonomous Metropolitan University at Xochimilco and the Open Faculty Program of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires.

Co-organizers (confirmed to now) are the following:

Center for Global Justice, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Institute of Philosophy, Havana, Cuba.

Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana.

Autonomist Argentina Project (http://www.autonomista.org).

Program of Anthropology and the History of the Capital-Work Relation in the Contemporary Context, Center for Advanced Studies, National University of Cordoba.

Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly (http://www.workersassembly.ca/).

Deadline for sending 250-500 word summaries/abstracts of papers: March 31, 2011

Deadline for sending complete presentations: April 29, 2011.

Contacts:

centrodoc@gmail.com (Centro de Documentación de Empresas Recuperadas, Programa Facultad Abierta, UBA, Argentina).

andres.ruggeri@gmail.com (Andrés Ruggeri, Director, Programa Facultad Abierta, UBA, Argentina)

marcoagomez.gomez@gmail.com (Marco Augusto Gómez Solórzano, Director del Área de Estudios del Trabajo de la UAM-Xochimilco, México)

cpacheco@correo.xoc.uam.mx (Celia Pacheco, Directora Departamento de Relaciones Sociales, UAM-X, México).

For English correspondence and paper submissions: vieta@york.ca (Marcelo Vieta, York University, Toronto, Canada). Please indicate “The Workers’ Economy” in the heading of your email when submitting papers.

More information on the “La economía de los trabajadores” and for proceedings of the previous editions of the 2007 and 2009 Meetings, please go to: www.recuperadasdoc.com.ar