Workers' Self-Management in Argentina

Contesting Neo-Liberalism by Occupying Companies, Creating Cooperatives, and Recuperating Autogestión
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-26896-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 199, 644 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 1225 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

In Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on the emergence and consolidation of Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (ERTs, worker-recuperated enterprises), a workers’ occupy movement that surged at the turn-of-the-millennium in the thick of the country’s neo-liberal crisis. Since then, around 400 companies have been taken over and converted to cooperatives by almost 16,000 workers. Grounded in class-struggle Marxism and a critical sociology of work, the book situates the ERT movement in Argentina’s long tradition of working-class activism and the broader history of workers’ responses to capitalist crisis. Beginning with the voices of the movement’s protagonists, Vieta ultimately develops a compelling social theory of autogestión – a politically prefigurative and ethically infused notion of workers’ self-management that unleashes radical social change for work organisations, surrounding communities, and beyond.

See inside the book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vieta, Marcelo

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Revolutionäre Gruppen und Bewegungen, Bewaffnete Konflikte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Glossary of Spanish and Other Foreign Terms and Phrases

Preface

Introduction

PART 1

The Emergence of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores: From Workers’ Lived Experiences of Crisis to Autogestión

1. ‘Destiny in Our Own Hands’: Three Stories of Workplace Recuperations

Cooperativa de Trabajo Chilavert Artes Gráficas

Cooperativa de Trabajo ‘Unión Solidaria de Trabajadores’

Cooperativa de Trabajo de la Salud Junín

Mobilising Direct Action Strategies and Workplace Solidarity

2. Empresas Recuparadas pos sus Trabajadores: Why, Where, What, and How

Section 1: The Emergence of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas (with Andrés Ruggeri)

Section 2: ERT Types and Experiences of Workplace Conversions Around the World

The Emergence and Characteristics of Empresas Recuperadas: A Summation

3. The Political Economy of Argentina’s Working Class: Historical Underpinnings of the Empresas Recuperadas

Section 1: The Rise and Consolidation of Argentina’s Working Class (1900–89)

Section 2: Argentina’s Neo-liberal Turn and the After-effects of Socio-Economic Crisis (1990–2016)

Section 3: Working-Class Recomposition and New Forms of Self-Managed Workers’ Organisations (2001–17)

ERTs and the Political Economy of the Working Class in Argentina: A Summation

PART 2

Theorising and Historicising Autogestión

Chapter 4
The Stream of Self-Determination: Freedom, Cooperation, and the Recuperations of Living Labour

Section 1: The Stream of Self-Determination and Modern Socialist Thought

Section 2: Critical Theories of Labour and Capitalist Technology

Section 3: ERTs’ Six Recuperative Moments

Cooperative Self-Determination, Recuperation, and Argentina’s ERTs: Looking Forward

5. A Genealogy of Autogestión

Section 1: Autogestión and the Self-Determination of Productive Life

Section 2: Cooperatives, the Social and Solidarity Economy, and Autogestión

Autogestión and the Continuing Stream of Self-Determination

PART 3
The Consolidation of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas: Common Experiences, Challenges, and Social Transformations

Chapter 6. ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’: Commonalities in the Lived Experiences of Recuperating Workplaces in Argentina (with Andrés Ruggeri)

Section 1: From Workplace Conflicts to Autogestión

Section 2: The Strategies and Tactics of ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’

Re-appropriating Relevant Laws, Deploying Cooperative Values

7. The Challenges of Autogestión and ERT Workers’ Responses

Section 1: Production Challenges

Section 2: An Ambivalent Relationship with the State

Section 3: Local and Transnational Solidarity Networks of Autogestión

Organising Between ERTs and the Community to Collectively Overcome Challenges

8. Recuperating the Labour Process, Transforming Subjectivities: From Empleados to Compañeros and Trabajadores Autogestionados

Section 1: Cooperatively Working and Democratising the Shop

Section 2: Recuperating Cooperative Skills and Values, Informal Shop Floor Learning, and Transformed Subjectivities

Section 3: Recuperating Social Production for Social Wealth

Challenging ERTs’ ‘Dual Reality’

PART 4
Recuperating Autogestión

9. Recuperating Autogestión, Prefiguring Alternatives: Some Possible Conclusions

On Workers’ Recuperations of Autogestión

The Conjunctural Realities of Argentina’s ERTs

Autogestión and Argentina’s ERTs

Revisiting ERTs’ ‘Dual Reality’

Revisiting ERTs’ Radical Social Innovations and Recuperative Moments

Revisiting the Definition of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores

Closing Thoughts, Continued Openings

Appendix: Formal Interviews Conducted, Meetings Attended, and Cooperatives Visited

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Marcelo Vieta, Ph.D. (2012), York University, is Assistant Professor of Workplace and Organisational Learning and the Social Economy at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on critical theory, workers’ control and self-management, and on the social economy and social movements in Italy, Canada, Argentina, and Latin American.