The purpose of this blog is to provide analytical commentary on formal and informal labour organisations and their attempts to resist ever more brutal forms of exploitation in today’s neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Wednesday 6 December 2023

Contesting Musk: Swedish Tesla strike becomes a global conflict

What began as a local strike by 130 mechanics for a collective labour agreement (CLA) in the Swedish Tesla service workshops is escalating into a global conflict, argues Roland Erne in this guest post. According to the Swedish arbitrator for labour disputes, Tesla boss Elon Musk forbade his local managers to make any concessions to the trade unions, even though CLAs have been a central component in Swedish labour relations for decades. Clearly, Elon Musk feels infinitely powerful and thinks he can bring even Europe's strongest labour unions to their knees. 


Monday 4 December 2023

Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century through the Prism of Value: a review of the book by Carchedi and Roberts.

Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts are seasoned commentators on the changing fortunes of capitalism. In their latest, joint book Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century through the Prism of Value (Pluto Press, 2023), they bring these insights together and assess them through Marx’s theory of value and here especially the tendency of the falling rate of profit. In this blog post, I will discuss their main contributions as well as provide some critical reflections.