Jasper Bernes discusses worker self-organization, labor time accounting and the revolutionary potential of workers' councils.
Shownotes
Jasper’s personal website:
Jasper at UC Berkeley:
https://english.berkeley.edu/people/jasper-bernes
Commune Magazine:
Bernes, J. (2025). The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising. Verso Books.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/977-the-future-of-revolution
Bernes, J. (2020). Planning and Anarchy. South Atlantic Quarterly, 119(1), 53–73.
https://jasperbernes.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1190053.pdf
on Worker’s councils:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_council
on Council communism:
https://libcom.org/article/council-communism-introduction
on the Paris Commune:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
on Rosa Luxemburg and the Mass Strike:
https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/43964/rosa-luxemburg-and-the-political-mass-strike
Nunes, R. (2021). Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization. Verso Books.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/772-neither-vertical-nor-horizontal
Find the quote “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” at the end of Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Group of International Communists (1990) [German original 1930] Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm
second, revised edition from 1935, published in English in 2020:
https://arbeitszeit.noblogs.org/files/2023/04/GIC-Fundamental-Principles-2.-Ed.1935-1.pdf
on Jan Appel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Appel
on Labor Time Calculation/Accounting:
https://arbeitszeit.noblogs.org/en-GB/basics/
Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/
on Communization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communization
Noys, B. (Ed.). (2012). Communization and its Discontents: Contestation, Critique, and Contemporary Struggles. Minor Compositions.
on Gilles Dauvé:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Dauv%C3%A9
on the law of Value in Marx:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_value
on Paul Mattick:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mattick
Roth, G. (2014). Marxism in a Lost Century: A Biography of Paul Mattick. BRILL.
Mattick’s introduction to the 1970 reprint of the German first edition of “Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution”:
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