- This event has passed.
CANCELLED- MDR’s ‘Archiving from Below’ discussion series
July 26, 2017 @ 8:00 pm - 11:00 pm BST
MayDay Rooms will be holding a series of events that will look at the problems of archiving radical politics and the politics of radical archival practices. The series will run along side a monthly reading group on radical archiving that will start in September.
Discussion one: Contemporary Workers’ Inquiry and Documenting Struggle
with Jamie Woodcock, Rona Lorimer, and more…
Join us for an evening of discussion around contemporary workers’ inquiries and how different approaches might effect how we document contemporary political struggles. When Marx first designed a 100 question survey on working conditions in 1880 for ‘Revue Socialiste’ he didn’t receive any replies. But since then a number of Marxists from various traditions have returned to the form, from CLR James, to Socialisme ou Barbarie, to Italian ‘workerists’, adapting the method to greater effect. Focusing on existing conditions and struggles within the workplace rather than how they might be agitation and organisation might take place from outside, these studies attempt to not only to document the confrontations of workers and capital, but engage workers with possibilities of resistance.
Jamie’s recent book Working the Phones is one of a number of recent revivals of these ideas, which look at workers’ conditions in contemporary West-European capitalism rather than just in the Fordist industrial production line. Jamie will be in conversation with Rona Lorimer, whose recent writings document her experiences on being a waitress during the uprisings in Paris last year, and others!