CfP new journal: "Historical Materialism: Workers and Capital"

Historical Materialism: Workers and Capital is a new journal launched by Historical Materialism

The journal's starting point is a shared understanding that Marxism can provide important conceptual tools for understanding - and intervening in - the relation between workers and capital. This open-access journal aims to cultivate rigorous, critical, and strategic inquiry into labour and work, broadly defined, without allegiance to any one Marxist tradition or variant. Marx demanded the ‘merciless criticism of everything that exists.’ For us, that must also include Marxism itself. In this light, the journal does not begin from fixed theoretical positions, but insists that work and workers must be the point of departure. 

As editors of this new journal, we believe that there is a growing need for a journal that focuses on workers. There has been a proliferation of new research on work, both within and beyond the university. Political journals like Notes from Below and Long-Haul have published contemporary inquiries and workers' writing. At the same time, the workplace has reemerged globally as a crucial site for building power in anti-authoritarian, ecological, anti-imperialist, and anticapitalist struggles.

While many journals include work or workers within their scope, they are often neither radical nor Marxist in their approach. This means that the question of work is not understood within a framework that allows for critical reflection, integration into a wider understanding of capitalism, or connection to strategic concerns. Centering the question of work within a broader commitment to Marxist critique, materialist analysis, and political strategy is, therefore, what makes this journal unique. 

While we start with open questions, our research does not begin from a blank page. For the first issue, we are particularly interested in reflections on what we’ve learned - and failed to learn - over the past years and decades in our research into work, class composition, and struggle: What concepts and theories have been useful? What frameworks or assumptions need rethinking? What new developments - economic, technological, ecological, political -  challenge our conceptions? What questions should we think seriously about for future inquiries? 

We want to collectively ask what it means to focus on workers in our analysis of capitalism. This is both about what new empirical research can teach us about the current conjuncture, but also considering the intellectual and political implications of such an undertaking. There have been huge transformations for industrial, service, unpaid and rural workers, particularly with contemporary changes relating to digital technology and broader economic restructuring. These developments have opened up new modalities of class struggle while exposing the limits of certain organisational and strategic orthodoxies. The central aim of Workers & Capital is to reorient international working-class struggle around these new realities. 

Our "ruthless criticism" needs, of course, to be extended beyond Marxism and the research communities that we are part of. Across academic disciplines, research on work increasingly relies on taken-for-granted concepts, frameworks, and methodologies - many of which are indifferent or even hostile to the project of building workers’ power or fostering meaningful political intervention. We welcome contributions that aim to demystify and critically interrogate these mainstream discourses, while developing grounded, radical alternatives of our own.

To address these questions, we encourage contributions that develop critical theories to make sense of data and build new arguments about the changing organisation of work. Our aim is to develop a critical conversation that draws from analyses of contemporary workplaces, workforces, sectors, and production more broadly. This is not about answering all of the questions of work and strategy, but developing a sober, critical and materialist assessment of the difficult realities of the conjuncture.

In doing so, we aim to develop a crucial aspect of the broader Historical Materialism project: creating a space where Marxist analysis can engage with organisers and scholars alike. We want to bridge the gap between Marxists inside and outside the university, encouraging dialogue across disciplines, contexts, and roles - from trade unionists and workplace militants to researchers and theorists. The journal is intended as one part of this project, alongside the stream at the annual Historical Materialism London Conference and the expanding international network of conferences.

This first call is intended to be broad and open.  We invite submissions on the following, non-exhaustive, topics:

• The changing nature of work across industries and occupations.
• Changing trends in capítal mobility and types of capital 
• The persistence and limits of inherited or mainstream theoretical categories and organisational practices
• Strategic dilemmas in contemporary labour organising
• The relationship between media, data, and labour discipline in digital capitalism
• Peripheral and precarious labour in the Global South and North
• Old and new migration patterns in the global division of labour and their impact on the organisation of work and workers
• Workers’ responses to the climate crisis, authoritarian neoliberalism, precarious living and technological displacement
• The continuities-discontinuities between “traditional” Taylorism and contemporary algorithmic management, with a focus on the question of whether capital is still organising labour

The deadline for submitting abstracts of 300 words max is the 31st of October 2025.

Please submit abstracts through this form.

If the abstract is accepted, the deadline for submitting the first draft is the 3rd of April 2026, with the aim of publishing the first issue of the journal later in 2026.

We follow a similar format to the main Historical Materialism journal for submissions. The word limit for articles is between 8,000 and 12,000 words, including references. They are submitted for anonymous peer review. We invite peer reviewers and then discuss each piece as the editorial board, making the decision based on both the reviews and our collective discussion. Our aim is to develop a rigorous and critical process of reviewing, while remaining both comradely and constructive. The publication is open-access and freely available to read online in multiple formats. 

We particularly invite new writers and those outside the university. If you are interested in contributing but would like to discuss any part of the process, please contact us.