Chapter 1: Labour as a vital necessity and alienated labour: an introduction -- Chapter 2: Workers' councils and the limits of cooperativism: a look at István Mészáros’s contribution -- Chapter 3: Factory committees: attempts at self-management during the early years of the Brazilian military dictatorship -- Chapter 4: The exhaustion of the "civilizing" phase of capital and the historical need for an education beyond capital -- Chapter 5: An overview of urban associated labour in Brazil: upsides and downsides of self-management in the productive microcosm -- Chapter 6: Cooperation and Cooperativism in the São Paulo Landless Rural Workers (MST): an analysis of actions by the capitalist state to block the educational potential of associated labour. -- Chapter 7: Associated Labour as an educational principle and school education: notes from recovered factories in Brazil and Argentina -- Chapter 8: The National Solidarity Economy Training Centre: the contradictions of self-managed education inthe Solidarity Economy Movement -- Chapter 9: The political economy of the “Green Revolution”, Agroecology and the Agroecology Schools of the Landless Rural Worker Movement (MST) -- Chapter 10: Notes on social movements and education: challenges of the struggle between capital and labour in Brazil.

The book focuses on different practices of associated labor in Brazil and Argentina, in the case of the workers’ recuperated factories, over the past 40 years. Novaes analyses labor practices from a critical Marxist perspective as a reaction to the misery of neoliberalism. Deindustrialization, austerity programs, increasing commodification and international competitiveness have severely deteriorated the living and working conditions of the majority of Latin Americans. However, alternative labor, production and educational practices have developed in this increasingly ruthless neoliberal capitalism. Although they are still small, they indicate a potential way out of the capitalist mode of production. Novaes directs his special attention to the “education beyond capital,” which has accompanied these alternative labor and production practices (from alternative job training in recuperated companies and the movement of landless rural workers MST). Henrique Tahan Novaes is Professor of Philosophy and Sciences at UNESP Marília São Paulo, Brazil.