Doing Without the Boss: Workers’ Control Experiments in Australia in the 1970s

Experiments with workers’ control occurred in many countries during the late post-war boom period in circumstances of heightened industrial militancy and a crisis in employer and state authority. They are again popular under different conditions, especially in Argentina and Venezuela. Such episodes demonstrate that labour can exist without capital, whereas capital is always dependent on labour. This essential autonomy of labour from capital is a notion elaborated most cogently by ‘autonomist’ Marxists, especially Antonio Negri. His concepts of autonomy, self-valorisation and political crisis are used to describe and analyse Australian workers’ control experiments during the 1970s, focusing especially on the Sydney Opera House work-in of April-May 1972, the Whyalla Glove Factory occupation of November 1972 and formation of a workers’ co-operative that lasted until September 1973, and the Nymboida mine work-in and takeover under workers’ and union control from February 1975 to August 1979.