Immanuel Ness

Ness is editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Labor and Society, (JLSO), a quarterly peer-review social science publication founded in 1997 that examines global political economy, imperialism, workers and labor organisations, and assesses transformative social movements. JLSO editorial board includes scholars in academia and activists in labour movements throughout the world, including Marcel van der Linden, Frances Fox Piven, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and Samir Amin.{{cite journal |url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1743-4580/homepage/EditorialBoard.html|title=Journal of Labor and Society |journal=Working USA|doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1743-4580 |url-access=subscription}} Ness is general editor of the eight-volume International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, and the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, published from 2009 to 2016. His research primarily concerns the situation and politics of the international working class and, more generally, "the global poor", low-wage migrant labour or contractual and informal workers, mainly in the Global South.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} In 2013, he was a member of an eight-member delegation of the International Commission for Labor Rights investigation of worker repression in India’s auto industry.{{Cite web| title=Merchants of Menace - Repressing workers in India's new industrial belt | url=http://www.laborcommission.org/files/uploads/2FINAL_Merchants_of_Menace_lo_res.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221184411/http://www.laborcommission.org/files/uploads/2FINAL_Merchants_of_Menace_lo_res.pdf | archive-date=2014-12-21}} Brill, Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work,{{Cite web |title=Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work |url=https://brill.com/display/serial/PELW |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Brill |language=en}} Great Transition Initiative, Toward a Transformative Vision and Praxis, Planetizing the Labor Movement, April 2019,{{Cite web |date=2019-04-17 |title=Planetizing the Labor Movement {{!}} Immanuel Ness |url=https://greattransition.org/roundtable/workers-world-immanuel-ness |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Great Transition Initiative |language=en-gb}} His works include Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries,{{Cite web |url=https://www.politybooks.com/author-books?author_slug=immanuel-ness-2 |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=www.politybooks.com}} Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in the Global South,{{Cite web |title=Organizing Insurgency |url=https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343594/organizing-insurgency |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Pluto Press |language=en-US}} Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto 2015).{{Cite web |title=Southern Insurgency |url=https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335995/southern-insurgency |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Pluto Press |language=en-US}} Immigrants, Unions and the New U.S. Labor Market, and Guest Workers and U.S. Corporate Despotism (University of Illinois Press 2011).{{cite book|last=Ness|first=Immanuel|title=Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism|year=2011|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana, Illinois|isbn=978-0-252-07817-0|pages=232|url=http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/37xdd4ze9780252036279.html}} His numerous editing projects include the Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (Routledge). The four volume work was recipient of the American Library Association, Best Reference Source.{{cite book | url=https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38857 | title=The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism | date=14 February 2022 | publisher=Oxford University Press }}

This numerous edited volumes include: The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism (2021) with Zak Cope,{{Cite web |url=https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38857 |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=academic.oup.com |title=The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism |date=14 February 2022 }} Routledge Handbook of the Gig Economy 2022,{{Cite web |title=The Routledge Handbook of the Gig Economy |url=https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-the-Gig-Economy/Ness/p/book/9780367752903 |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Routledge & CRC Press |language=en}} and The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crisis, with Cecilia Menjívar and Marie Ruiz,{{cite book | url=https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27963 | title=The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises | date=10 September 2018 | publisher=Oxford University Press }} Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain with/ Jake

Alimahomed-Wilson (Pluto Press 2018), Ours to Master and to Own: Workers Councils from the Commune to the Present (Haymarket Books 2011/Neuer ISP Verlag 2013).{{cite book|last=Ness & Azzellini|title=Ours to Master and to Own: Worker Control from the Commune to the Present|year=2011|publisher=Haymarket Books|location=Chicago|isbn=9781608461196|pages=443|url=http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/ours-to-master-and-to-own}}{{cite book|last=Azzellini & Ness|title=Die endlich entdeckte politische Form|year=2012|publisher=Neuer ISP Verlag|location=Köln|isbn=978-3-89 900-138-9|pages=448|url=http://www.neuerispverlag.de/verz/azzellini_neu.pdf}} The volume covers 22 case histories of factory occupations and workers' councils over the past 150 years. His publications appear in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Turkish, Chinese, and Japanese. Ness is general editor of Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (Wiley Blackwell 2013), a 5-volume examination of human mobility from prehistory to the present.{{cite book|last=Ness & Bellwood|editor-first1=Immanuel |editor-last1=Ness |title=Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration|year=2013|publisher=Wiley Blackwell|location=Oxford, UK|isbn=9781444351071|pages=3472|doi=10.1002/9781444351071|url=https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/15693/1/EGHM%20-%20The%20Political%20Economy%20of%20the%20Refugee%20-%20paolo%20novak.pdf}}

He was a trade union organizer in the U.S. and labour activist in the Global South from 1989 to 2021. During this period, he learned to advocate on behalf of disconnected jobless workers to organize their own association directly at New York State unemployed offices. In 1990, he co-founded the New York Unemployed Committee (1990–1993),{{cite news|last=Brooks and Ness|first=New York Unemployed Committee|title=Unemployment Compensation – Burden on Jobless|url=http://www.finance.senate.gov/library/hearings/download/?id...a237|access-date=19 November 2012|newspaper=US Senate, Committee on Finance|date=24 June 1991}}{{Dead link|date=December 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} which successfully organized jobless workers at New York State unemployment centers to press for federal unemployment benefit extensions through public protests and demonstrations directed at national and state elected officials, in many cases, often members of the Democratic Party who had surrendered to Republicans during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Rallies were held in New York City, and with other jobless organizations in Washington, DC, and Kennebunkport, Maine in August 1991.{{cite news|last=Dowd|first=Maureen|title=Bush Chides Protesters on Excesses|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/17/us/bush-chides-protesters-on-excesses.html|access-date=19 November 2012|newspaper=New York Times|date=17 August 1991}}

Ness' work is rooted in understanding production and manufacturing as essential to understanding the labour movement and capitalism. Fordism is viewed as an exceptional period which is not the norm; rather the dispersal of industry has pushed the development of contractors and dispersed work sites. In this way, in 1998, he co-founded the Lower East Side Community Labor Coalition in New York City with members of progressive and leftist local groups, which mobilized low-wage workers with support of UNITE Local 169, a labor union in the neighborhood that was previously affiliated with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.{{cite news|title=Community Labor Coalition Scores Victory in New York|url=http://www.theactivist.org/archive/archives/sp00/activism/community_labor_coalition.html |access-date=19 November 2012|newspaper=The Activist: Culture, Politics, Action|quote=2001 Archives}} The campaign expanded into a successful effort to mobilise Mexican and Latino immigrant workers along with Mexican workers and the Mexican American Workers Association (AMAT), a workers' center in New York.{{cite news|last=Dominguez|first=Jerry|title=Union Square Awards 2003|url=http://www.unionsquareawards.org/social-justice-orgs/33-2003/233-mexican-american-workers-association|access-date=19 November 2012}} He helped organise large Mayday demonstrations in New York City, centered around authentic-worker led mobilizations for immigrant rights from 1999 to 2001, often culminating in mass arrests of street theatre and protests by New York City police, setting a precedent of immigrant leadership and participation in the US organization of the annual worldwide labour holiday.{{cite journal|last=Wilson|first=David|title=Superbario Eludes NYC Police on Mayday|journal=Indypendent|date=May 2001|volume=7|pages=5|url=http://www.indypendent.org/sites/default/files/indypendent_issue_7.pdf|access-date=19 November 2012}}{{Dead link|date=December 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

Ness has been a consistent advocate for opening admission to colleges and universities and lowering tuition and fees at City University of New York (CUNY).{{Cite news |last1=Hartocollis |first1=Anemona |last2=Moynihan |first2=Colin |date=2010-12-20 |title=With This Tuition Rise, Quieter CUNY Reaction |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/nyregion/20cuny.html |access-date=2023-07-25 |issn=0362-4331}} Following appointment as visiting professor at the University of Hyderabad in January 2016, Ness refused the academic position upon his arrival and actively joined a student strike, mass pickets, and demonstrations at an outdoor encampment to protest structural discrimination against Dalit students that was the cause of the suicide of Rohit Vemula, a graduate student. His refusal to serve as a visiting professor gained national attention in India. Yet Ness maintained,

“In India, the major contradiction and division is the difference between permanent and contract, and it plays itself out in furthering the super exploitation of the labour force of this country.”{{Cite web |title=The Labour Story that Big Media is Not Telling You |url=https://thewire.in/labour/labour-trade-unions-strike |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=The Wire}}{{Cite news |date=2016-02-22 |title=A place so pure you could eat... someone alive |language=en-IN |work=The Hindu |url=https://www.thehindu.com/thread/article8268343.ece |access-date=2023-07-26 |issn=0971-751X}}

In 1990s, his research became more critical of traditional unions, and he began to participate in advancing rank-and-file self-activity outside of traditional structures through new forms of autonomist Marxist unions. His advocacy included solidarity efforts with new and independent unions that had few or limited links to trade union centers and affiliates. Much of his organizing, advocacy, and research since 2015 has focused on a rejection of utopian and idealist notions propounded by social democrats, anarchists, Western Marxists, and through applying an anti-imperialist state-centered Marxist approach rooted in unequal exchange between the rich countries of the Global North and poor countries of the Global South, which comprise 85% of the world’s population. Ness is formulating a reconceptualization of the centrality of the working class as a social force in building disciplined workers parties, accountable to mass workers and actually existing socialist states (AES).{{Cite web |last=Ness |first=Immanuel |date=2022-12-26 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism: Interview with Immanuel Ness |url=https://anti-imperialist.net/2022/12/26/the-oxford-handbook-of-economic-imperialism-interview-with-immanuel-ness/ |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Anti-Imperialist Network |language=en-GB}}

• Ours to Master and to Own: Workers Councils from the Commune to the Present (Haymarket Books 2011/Nuerer ISP Verlag 2011)
• Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (2004, Sharpe Reference){{Cite journal |last1=Keane |first1=Ellen M. J. |title=Review of Encyclopedia of American Social Movements |journal=Reference & User Services Quarterly |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=258–259 |date=2005 |issn=1094-9054 |jstor=20864374 |df=mdy-all }}
• Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell Publishers 2009)
• The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (Wiley-Blackwell Publishers 2013)
• New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism (2014, PM Press)
• The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism ed. with Zak Cope (Palgrave Macmillan 2016)

• Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries (Polity 2023){{Cite web |title=Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries {{!}} Wiley |url=https://www.wiley.com/en-ae/Migration+as+Economic+Imperialism%3A+How+International+Labour+Mobility+Undermines+Economic+Development+in+Poor+Countries-p-9781509554003 |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=Wiley.com |language=en-ae}}
• Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in the Global South (Pluto: 2021){{Cite book |last=Ness |first=Immanuel |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1k531hp |title=Organizing Insurgency: Workers' Movements in the Global South |date=2021 |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=978-0-7453-4359-4 |jstor=j.ctv1k531hp}}
• Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto 2015)
• Guest Workers and U.S. Corporate Despotism (University of Illinois Press 2011)
• Immigrants, Unions and the New U.S. Labor Market (Temple University Press 2005)

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• [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7701-5903 Immanuel Ness]

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Category:Living people

Category:Brooklyn College faculty

Category:Trade unionists from New York (state)

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Category:1958 births