Esteban Magnani's website and book El cambio silencioso

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Argentina, I'm currently reading Estaban Magnani's El cambio silencioso: empresas y fábricas recuperadas por los trabajadores en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2003) (The Silent Change: Enterprises and Factories Recovered by Workers in Argentina) . This was the first book published on the recovered factory movement in Argentina (for another good book on the subject, see
Sin patrón: fábricas y empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (Without Bosses: Enterprises and Factories Recovered by Their Workers). Besides being an independent journalist and author, Magnani was also a crew member (Argentinean field producer) on Lewis and Klein's The Take.

Magnani takes the reader on a facinating journey into the praxical realities at the heart of Argentina's recovered factory movement since Dec. 2001. In the first half of the book, Magnani details the history of the movement and its connections to Argentina's neoliberal restructurations and disastrous failures of the 1990s; briefly touches on the greater historical imperatives of worker takeovers and worker managed workspaces; delves into how new subjectivities are being forged within the direct democracy at the heart of the recovered factory movement; outlines the main theoretical pillars of the recovered workspace movement; and details the parallel economy and new social structures it is undergirding in Argentina. The second part of the book relies on the plethora of interviews and personal on-site observations Magnani made while a crew member on The Take to evocatively illustrate the everyday experiences of the movement via five exemplar case studies: Zanon, Union y Fuerza, Confecciones Brukman, Chilavert (the factory I'll be interning at starting next week), and Instituto Comunicaciones.

The book has yet to be translated into English. Perhaps with permission of the author, I'll be able to translate some passages or even a few chapters. While the entire book is very pertinent in documenting this newest iteration of the history of worker control and workers' struggles, the book's introduction, chapters 1 and 2, and the conclusion seem to me particularly relevant for the current global social justice literature with reference to Argentina's workers' struggles.

• El cambio silencioso
• Esteban Magnani