Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina

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.

• AcknowledgementsTable of ContentsList of FiguresList of TablesList of Abbreviations and AcronymsGlossary of Spanish and Other Foreign Terms and PhrasesPrefaceIntroductionPART 1The Emergence of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores: From Workers’ Lived Experiences of Crisis to Autogestión1. ‘Destiny in Our Own Hands’: Three Stories of Workplace RecuperationsCooperativa de Trabajo Chilavert Artes GráficasCooperativa de Trabajo ‘Unión Solidaria de Trabajadores’Cooperativa de Trabajo de la Salud JunínMobilising Direct Action Strategies and Workplace Solidarity2. Empresas Recuparadas pos sus Trabajadores: Why, Where, What, and HowSection 1: The Emergence of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas (with Andrés Ruggeri)Section 2: ERT Types and Experiences of Workplace Conversions Around the WorldThe Emergence and Characteristics of Empresas Recuperadas: A Summation3. The Political Economy of Argentina’s Working Class: Historical Underpinnings of the Empresas RecuperadasSection 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 SummationPART 2Theorising and Historicising AutogestiónChapter 4The Stream of Self-Determination: Freedom, Cooperation, and the Recuperations of Living LabourSection 1: The Stream of Self-Determination and Modern Socialist ThoughtSection 2: Critical Theories of Labour and Capitalist TechnologySection 3: ERTs’ Six Recuperative MomentsCooperative Self-Determination, Recuperation, and Argentina’s ERTs: Looking Forward5. A Genealogy of AutogestiónSection 1: Autogestión and the Self-Determination of Productive LifeSection 2: Cooperatives, the Social and Solidarity Economy, and AutogestiónAutogestión and the Continuing Stream of Self-DeterminationPART 3The Consolidation of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas: Common Experiences, Challenges, and Social TransformationsChapter 6. ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’: Commonalities in the Lived Experiences of Recuperating Workplaces in Argentina (with Andrés Ruggeri)Section 1: From Workplace Conflicts to AutogestiónSection 2: The Strategies and Tactics of ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’Re-appropriating Relevant Laws, Deploying Cooperative Values7. The Challenges of Autogestión and ERT Workers’ ResponsesSection 1: Production ChallengesSection 2: An Ambivalent Relationship with the StateSection 3: Local and Transnational Solidarity Networks of AutogestiónOrganising Between ERTs and the Community to Collectively Overcome Challenges8. Recuperating the Labour Process, Transforming Subjectivities: From Empleados to Compañeros and Trabajadores AutogestionadosSection 1: Cooperatively Working and Democratising the ShopSection 2: Recuperating Cooperative Skills and Values, Informal Shop Floor Learning, and Transformed SubjectivitiesSection 3: Recuperating Social Production for Social WealthChallenging ERTs’ ‘Dual Reality’PART 4Recuperating Autogestión9. Recuperating Autogestión, Prefiguring Alternatives: Some Possible ConclusionsOn Workers’ Recuperations of AutogestiónThe Conjunctural Realities of Argentina’s ERTsAutogestión and Argentina’s ERTsRevisiting ERTs’ ‘Dual Reality’Revisiting ERTs’ Radical Social Innovations and Recuperative MomentsRevisiting the Definition of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus TrabajadoresClosing Thoughts, Continued OpeningsAppendix: Formal Interviews Conducted, Meetings Attended, and Cooperatives VisitedBibliography

This tome is certainly a valuable contribution to any scholar of workplace democracy and organizational democracy; yet also for practitioners or students of the international cooperative movement, working class history buffs and those searching for theoretical and practical examples of a post-capitalist imaginary that seeks to move beyond a system of wage labor and to a notion of social solidarity. Workers Self-Management in Argentina is a welcome addition to the surprisingly sparse empirical discourse on self-management and economic democracy. This is the most detailed analysis of the recent experiences in Argentina that this reviewer has encountered (there is a larger literature in Spanish).Jerome Warren, in: Marx and Philosophy Review of Books [Full review]"Workers self-management in Argentina provides a powerful contribution to literature surrounding labour movements, democracy in the context of industrial relations, and resistance to neoliberalism in the organisational environment. I would recommend the book to scholars in any of these relative disciplines. Furthermore, Vieta provides a key example of the way that ethnography and qualitative study particular in the field of industrial relations can bring the experiences of workers to the forefront of knowledge production in a way beneficial to wider elements of the discipline."Catherine Spellman, in: British Journal of Industrial Relations [Full review]"Marcelo Vietas recent Workers Self-Management in Argentina is the first comprehensive English-language review of the largest movement in the world of worker-led conversions of capitalist businesses into cooperatives (p. xv). [...] The book is a welcome contribution to the study of the phenomenon of workplace democracy that should interest a wide range of readers.In fact, it is actually quite unfair to call this book Workers Self-Management in Argentina, as its scope is far broader than reviewing this concept in the context of Argentina. In fact, Marcelo Vieta has written two books with this entry: firstly, an analysis of Marxist and other socialist theorieson worker-self management, and secondly, an application of this theoretical lens to the Argentine case, with a social history of Argentina thrown in for good measure. There is ultimately something for everyone in this book."Jerome Warren, in: British Journal of Industrial Relations [Full review]