Babak Amini

Marxism is not as alive today as it was during the two preceding centuries; even now, however, Marx’s ideasideas of Karl Marx continue to engage the intellect, imagination, and conscience of humanity across the world. This edited collection brings together some of the most important contributions to one of the largest international Marxist conferences hosted in 2018 on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Divided into two broad categories, the writers in this volume not only engage critically with the ideas of Marx, but also present novel approaches to the re-appropriation of Marx’s ideasthese ideas for the unique challenges of the 21st century. Taken together, this book depicts the state of research on Marx and Marxism around the world and offers new paths for researchers and activists in the coming years.

The notion of “workers’ control” has been used to cover a wide range of phenomena, from limited workers’ supervision of working conditions to a full workers’ management of the social relation of production. Insofar as it is used within Marxism, the notion is utilized in this chapter in opposition to the most hegemonic forms of Marxism in the twentieth century to trace the conceptual genesis of a vision of communist society based on Marx’s notion of a “society of free and associated producers”. The chapter illustrates the extent to which the idea of “workers’ control” finds different expression in Marx and some of the Marxist theorists between 1871 and the February Revolution.