Workers’ Inquiry: Views from Ireland, Germany, England, and the United States

Workers’ inquiry—for “the class to whom the future belongs!” Workers are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, demanding control over housing, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy. Recently immigrant workers, agricultural, cafe and grocery, digital platform, arts and culture, and education workers, and others in Ireland, Germany, England, and the United States have shared their struggles through workers’ inquiries. A Workers’ inquiry is a strategic intervention to grasp power in the workplace, informal work groups and divisions within the class, forms of mutual aid and informal organization, “organic” leadership, and can aid organizing efforts and develop workers’ own class consciousness. Beginning with a historical overview of Marx’s “A Workers’ Inquiry” from 1880 and a new form of “proletarian literature” that emerged in 1947 as The American Worker pamphlet, our discussion will examine recent workers…