News & Events
Prof. Ranis was interviewed on Richard Wolff’s WBAI program “Economic Update” on September 16, 2016 concerning his recent book Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neoliberal Economy [available on WBAI archives].
Prof. Ranis’ book Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neo-Liberal Economy was published by Zed Books (London) in August, 2016.
Prof. Ranis, presented a paper on “Worker Cooperatives and the Role of the
State in the U.S. Social Economy” at the International Labour Process Conference, Berlin, Germany, April 4-6, 2016.
Prof. Ranis, presented a paper on “The Use of Eminent Domain in Establishing Worker Cooperatives in the United States” for a Research Workshop on Empresas Recuperadas at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 27-29, 2015.
Prof. Ranis, presented a paper on “Eminent Domain: Building Toward Worker Cooperatives in the United States” at the 14th Annual Conference of the Global Studies Association, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, June 12-14, 2015.
Prof. Ranis, representing the PSC/CUNY union, welcomed several of the Ayotzinapa parents who testified at the Graduate Center, CUNY on the disappearances of the 43 Guerrero, Mexico student-teachers. The event sponsored by the Caravana ’43 took place on April 24, 2015.
Prof. Ranis testified before the New York City Council’s Committee on Community Development on February 24, 2014 on the subject of developing and supporting cooperatives by municipal funding and subscribing to the use of eminent domain in cases of runaway enterprises and companies.
Prof. Ranis presented a paper on “Argentina in America: Promoting the Socio-Political Impact of Cooperatives by the Use of Eminent Domain in the United States” at the Seminar on Socialist Renovation and Capitalist Crisis: A North American-Cuban Exchange, University of Havana, June 24-28, 2013.
Prof. Ranis presented a paper on “The Need for Cooperative Education: View from the Workers” at the Labor and Working Class History Association’s 2013 National Conference (LAWCHA), New York City, June 6-8, 2013.
Prof. Ranis participated in the opening session on “Worker Control and Community Councils in Latin America” at the Labor and Working Class History Association’s 2013 National Conference (LAWCHA), New York City, June 6-8, 2013.
Prof. Ranis chaired a panel entitled “Worker Cooperatives: Challenging Capitalism and State Socialism while Building toward Participatory Socialism” at the 31st International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, May 29-June 1, 2013. His paper for the panel was entitled “Promoting the Socio-Political Impact of Cooperatives by the Use of Eminent Domain in the United States.”
Prof. Ranis presented a paper entitled “Factory and Enterprise Occupations, Worker Cooperatives and the Use of Eminent Domain in the United States” at the Conference on International Labor Process, Rutgers University, March 18-20, 2013.
Prof. Ranis was interviewed on November 20, 2012 by Rick Wolff. It was aired on November 24, 2012 on Wolff’s WBAI program “Economic Update.” The discussion centered on Ranis’ research on worker cooperatives in Argentina and Cuba and the feasibility of using eminent domain to establish cooperatives in the U.S.
Prof. Ranis wrote an article entitled “Worker Cooperatives: Creating Participatory Socialism in Capitalism and State Socialism” in www.DemocracyatWork.info, on-line, October 1, 2012 reprinted in Portside, October 9, 2012.
On August 2, 2012, Prof. Ranis, along with two other attendees, was interviewed by California Pacifica Station KPFK’s public affairs program on their “reflections on Cuba,” coming off a Conference on “Socialist Renewal and Capitalist Crisis” held in Havana, June, 2012.
Class Unconsciousness: Stop Using “Middle Class” to Depict the Labor Movement: Ranis Portside Labor List response, June 8, 2012:
20 years ago in 1992 I wrote a book entitled “Argentine
Workers: Peronism and Contemporary Class Consciousness”
in which I faced the same conundrum that Nelson
Lichtenstein writes of in his article “Class
Unconsciousness: Stop Using “Middle Class” to Depict
the Labor Movement.” It has disturbed me no end that
the term “working class” has disappeared from the U.S.
lexicon. In interviewing 110 Argentine workers from
teachers, telephone technicians, bank employees to auto
workers, electrical workers, metal workers and textile
workers I was faced with the need to categorize their
disparate and various social background and values. I
determined that for many members of the working class I
needed to change the term “middle class” from a noun to
an adjective so as to more clearly describe large
portions of the working class as “middle class
workers”. This change of terminology allowed me to
better categorize and describe increasing proportions
of the working class who, as professional, commercial,
service and government employees, were “middle class
workers” and indeed members of the working class. Their
differences were in sociological categories such as
educational attainment, cultural proclivities, leisure
pursuits and their places of work. However, they
clearly shared that they derived their living from
wages and fixed salaries, they had no control over
money capital, fixed capital nor managed labor power or
owned the means of production, nor did they participate
in the creation and execution of state ideology and
policy.
Social critics from Karl Marx to E.P. Thompson and Eric
Wright have observed the multiple factions of the
working classes. Marx himself saw that capitalism had
“converted the physician, the lawyer,the priest, the
poet, the man of science into paid wage labourers.”
The Argentine workers I interviewed conform to the
American worker today. They live by the sale of their
labor power,and receive less than the value of the
production and circulation of the goods and services in
which they are involved. That is their commonality and
their potential for indignation and rebellion.