Lucien van der Walt: labour & left history, political economy, unions + class struggles

This page collects and archives my writings and talks since the 1990s. It includes discussion documents for organisations and political debates; speech notes and talks; academic journal articles and books; short historical and contemporary analyses; and a few photos and other ephemera. Also translated stuff. Where the original PDF is available, I will usually include it. It’s a work in progress, with almost 250 entries, reflecting my main areas of interest:

Neo-liberal restructuring, including state-owned corporations and economic & social policy;
Trade unions and working class movements: history, politics, struggles, strategies;
Labour history, including global labour history;
Development strategies;
Anarchist & syndicalist, Marxist and left history and theory, including race and the national question.

You can check my Academia.edu page for more materials.

Bye for now.

Lucien

About me

I currently teach at Rhodes University, the Eastern Cape. I’m 10th generation South African. Also involved in union education, with a background in social movement and left-wing activism, the Workers’ Library and Museum, the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and the National Health & Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU). I have given 120-plus paper presentations, edited four journal specials, and produced four books, around 40 academic articles and book chapters, 20 reference entries, 130-plus shorter articles, and six research reports. I was Southern Africa editor for the 2009 'International Encyclopaedia of Revolution and Protest' (Blackwell). I won the 2008 international 'Labor History' thesis prize, and the 2008/2009 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) award for best African dissertation, for my PhD thesis on South African anarchism, syndicalism and black militants. My focus has been on South Africa, but I have also done research in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Recent Posts

[CHAPTER]: Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Revolução Mundial: para um balanço dos impactos, da organização popular, das lutas e da teoria anarquista e sindicalista em todo o mundo’

[CHAPTER]: Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Fora das Sombras: A Base de Massas, a Composição de Classe e a InfIuência Popular do Anarquismo e do Sindicalismo”

[ANALYSIS]: Lucien van der Walt, 2017, “Renewal and crisis in South African labour today: Towards transformation or stagnation, bureaucracy or self-activity?

[DISCUSSION]: Lucien van der Walt, ca. 2000, “For the Working Class, Against Bolshevism: Once more on the class nature of the Soviet Union in reply to cde C.M.”

[PHOTO]: With other committee members at the Workers Library & Museum, Johannesburg, ca. 2001

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