BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION | Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy | Wits Humanities Graduate Centre, Johannesburg | Thursday 5 February 2026 @ 4pm

Join us tor the launch of a new book – Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below.

Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy : Transformative Politics and Planetary Care from Below is in many ways the authors Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams’ manifesto – drawing on decades of scholarship, activism, and engagement with movements from the Global South.

It confronts the crises that ae defining our time: climate breakdown, inequality, and democratic erosion. It speaks not only to specialists but to thoughtful readers searching for credible and hopeful alternatives to a failing status quo. Retired trade unionist, Dinga Sikwebu will be in conversation with the authors.

About the book
Capitalism’s crisis is planetary. It is a system upending nature and society, causing many to live and work in despair. In Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy, Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams map a new transformative politics arising from inspiring worker cooperative systems that advance planetary care from below and that have the potential to undermine the capitalist status quo.
Based on extensive research across 15 countries, the authors examine case studies that explore transformative approaches to social reproduction, public power, nature, and territorial expansion in opposition to global hegemonic power.
Satgar and Williams show that, against all odds, people are experimenting with deep democracy and building systems of care that offer living alternatives to the planetary crisis.

About the authors
Vishwas Satgar is Professor of International Relations at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series
and is the principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the
Anthropocene project.

Michelle Williams is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg. She has co-edited with Vishwas Satgar various volumes in the
Democratic Marxism series. Her publications include Building Alternatives: The
Story of India’s Oldest Worker Owner Cooperative.