Further thoughts re: "Bosses were never fired in Argentina" and other questions
(Thanks to my friend, Emily Ladue, for making me think this through a bit more).
While Néstor Gorojovsky makes a good point (re: bosses have never being fired in Argentina's recovered factories movement), his comment addresses only part of the equation. As my friend Emily put it to me in an email: "[Gorojovky's] point that [no recovered enterprises ever fired] their bosses seems a bit irrelevant when the movement is analyzed, because they are actively doing away with bosses in a creative, and non-reactionary way". While I think both are correct, I think Emily's observation is more useful long-term, although Gorojosvky's conjunctural observation must not be ignored. This is particularly important when the inevitable question "Is Argentina's recovered enterprises movement exportable?" is posed.
That bosses have never been "fired" (yet) does speak to an important point that both Andres Ruggeri and Carlos Martinez reiterated throughout the fabricas recuperadas course that they taught at UBA this summer: the initial "tomas" (takes) and the early days of each factory's subsequent occupations weren't originally about taking over the factory for good and certainly not, initially anyway, about revolution or working for another possible world. Indeed, finding another job - albeit increasingly difficult in Argentina - is certainly much less risky than actively resisting the state and the juridical establishment. Indeed, as Andres put it, none of the "recuperaciones" (recoveries of enterprises/workspaces) were initially about kicking out the boss, which supports Nestor's contention. Each occupation was, rather, at the beginning of each struggle, about getting back the money each worker was due in back pay or securing their jobs (this is the case, according to Andres, in every single workspace recuperation in Argentina). Only within the process of occupying and resisting their workspaces - especially during the many months of occupation and afterwards, when the workers started the work process under self-management and after they started to see their own and other legal expropriations come to fruition - did many of the protagonists subsequently discovered the possibilities that open up to them in a world without a boss. This realization happened in the process of doing, in the moment, in the act of revolting and resisting and struggling.
This leads me to think about other related issues: Is the revolution possible when the ERTs (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores) are still so enmeshed within the capitalist marketplace? Are the ERTs pointing a way through to a new type of alternative economy of solidarity? (Philosophically, I think they are but, in practice, at this early stage anyway, I don't think they are showing the way yet.) Or are the ERTs simply trying to survive the best way they know how within the current capitalist system, given their small numbers, and leaving the revolution to a future date? (This, I think, is closer to the reality for most workers at ERTs. In fact, most workers, my interview data is showing, might not even be thinking about anything more radical than guaranteeing that their families are fed and that their bills are paid. What the ERT movement leadership thinks, I discovered, is often not as pragmatic as what most ERT protagonists on the shop floor are thinking about.) What's the next phase of ERTs going to look like? Are alternative economies of solidarity that act autonomously from the nation state and global capitalism possible and are ERTs pointing the way ? (Establishing "economies of solidarity" is one of the visions of MNER's leadership, for example; click here to see another post on this. MNER would like to think that their more autonomist vision is they way to this solidarity economy. MNFRT (the other umbrella movement of recovered factories that split from MNER in 2002) seems to mostly be about securing work within the structure of the existing nation-state.) Can we simply export Argentina's model to Canada, the US, and the rest of the global north wholesale without taking into account the conjunctural realities of Argentina? The rate of new ERTs tended to peak during the 2001-early-2003 period, at the height of the economic crisis and external debt default in Argentina - and the rate of recoveries has now plateaued? Why? (Are ERTs being coopted by the state? Is the recovering Argentinean economy "normalizing" the situation in Argentina, effectively silencing the most-radical, civilizational changing possibilities inherent in the ERT movement? And, why haven't factories and workspaces been recovered to the same extent in North America and Europe after similar recesionary crisis periods (i.e., think of the dirty-thirties or the pulp and paper crises in Canada in the '90s)? What makes Argentina (and Uruguay and Brasil and Venezuela) so different?
Anyway, these are some of the questions I'm currently grappling with and that I hope to begin to answer during my PhD dissertation work. Thanks to Emily and Néstor for helping me articulate them.
While Néstor Gorojovsky makes a good point (re: bosses have never being fired in Argentina's recovered factories movement), his comment addresses only part of the equation. As my friend Emily put it to me in an email: "[Gorojovky's] point that [no recovered enterprises ever fired] their bosses seems a bit irrelevant when the movement is analyzed, because they are actively doing away with bosses in a creative, and non-reactionary way". While I think both are correct, I think Emily's observation is more useful long-term, although Gorojosvky's conjunctural observation must not be ignored. This is particularly important when the inevitable question "Is Argentina's recovered enterprises movement exportable?" is posed.
That bosses have never been "fired" (yet) does speak to an important point that both Andres Ruggeri and Carlos Martinez reiterated throughout the fabricas recuperadas course that they taught at UBA this summer: the initial "tomas" (takes) and the early days of each factory's subsequent occupations weren't originally about taking over the factory for good and certainly not, initially anyway, about revolution or working for another possible world. Indeed, finding another job - albeit increasingly difficult in Argentina - is certainly much less risky than actively resisting the state and the juridical establishment. Indeed, as Andres put it, none of the "recuperaciones" (recoveries of enterprises/workspaces) were initially about kicking out the boss, which supports Nestor's contention. Each occupation was, rather, at the beginning of each struggle, about getting back the money each worker was due in back pay or securing their jobs (this is the case, according to Andres, in every single workspace recuperation in Argentina). Only within the process of occupying and resisting their workspaces - especially during the many months of occupation and afterwards, when the workers started the work process under self-management and after they started to see their own and other legal expropriations come to fruition - did many of the protagonists subsequently discovered the possibilities that open up to them in a world without a boss. This realization happened in the process of doing, in the moment, in the act of revolting and resisting and struggling.
This leads me to think about other related issues: Is the revolution possible when the ERTs (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores) are still so enmeshed within the capitalist marketplace? Are the ERTs pointing a way through to a new type of alternative economy of solidarity? (Philosophically, I think they are but, in practice, at this early stage anyway, I don't think they are showing the way yet.) Or are the ERTs simply trying to survive the best way they know how within the current capitalist system, given their small numbers, and leaving the revolution to a future date? (This, I think, is closer to the reality for most workers at ERTs. In fact, most workers, my interview data is showing, might not even be thinking about anything more radical than guaranteeing that their families are fed and that their bills are paid. What the ERT movement leadership thinks, I discovered, is often not as pragmatic as what most ERT protagonists on the shop floor are thinking about.) What's the next phase of ERTs going to look like? Are alternative economies of solidarity that act autonomously from the nation state and global capitalism possible and are ERTs pointing the way ? (Establishing "economies of solidarity" is one of the visions of MNER's leadership, for example; click here to see another post on this. MNER would like to think that their more autonomist vision is they way to this solidarity economy. MNFRT (the other umbrella movement of recovered factories that split from MNER in 2002) seems to mostly be about securing work within the structure of the existing nation-state.) Can we simply export Argentina's model to Canada, the US, and the rest of the global north wholesale without taking into account the conjunctural realities of Argentina? The rate of new ERTs tended to peak during the 2001-early-2003 period, at the height of the economic crisis and external debt default in Argentina - and the rate of recoveries has now plateaued? Why? (Are ERTs being coopted by the state? Is the recovering Argentinean economy "normalizing" the situation in Argentina, effectively silencing the most-radical, civilizational changing possibilities inherent in the ERT movement? And, why haven't factories and workspaces been recovered to the same extent in North America and Europe after similar recesionary crisis periods (i.e., think of the dirty-thirties or the pulp and paper crises in Canada in the '90s)? What makes Argentina (and Uruguay and Brasil and Venezuela) so different?
Anyway, these are some of the questions I'm currently grappling with and that I hope to begin to answer during my PhD dissertation work. Thanks to Emily and Néstor for helping me articulate them.
posted by Marcelo Vieta at
7:51 PM
