Worker mutualism in an age of entrepreneurial capitalism

ABSTRACT

In this Keynote Address to the 30th AIRAANZ Conference in Sydney, the author identifies three vital and promising models of worker mutualism. These models show that worker mutualism is thriving, even in an era of entrepreneurial and hyper-individualistic capitalism. Indeed, we are at a moment of recovery and reconfiguration for labour and labour movements globally. The three models of worker mutualism are set within a larger context. The author challenges three mythic narratives: labour decline, working-class conservatism and the association of the rise of new forms of work with rising economic inequality that keep scholars from thinking clearly about worker mutualism and entrepreneurial capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Worker mutualism
• entrepreneurial capitalism
• emotional proletariat
• precarious
• global labour movements

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dorothy Sue Cobble

Dorothy Sue Cobble is a distinguished professor of history and labour studies at Rutgers University. Dorothy Sue Cobble specialises in the history of work, social movements and social policy in the twentieth century. Her award-winning books include, most recently, Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (2014). She has held research fellowships from Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Endowment from the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and other funders. In 2016, the Swedish Research Council awarded her the 2016 Kerstin Hesselgren Chaired Professorship at Stockholm University.