Journal of Cultural Economy, https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2018.1544164
RECUPERATING AND (RE)LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF AUTOGESTION IN
ARGENTINA'S EMPRESAS RECUPERADAS WORKER COOPERATIVES
This article homes in on the recuperative and learning dimensions of
Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores worker
cooperatives (ERTs, worker-recuperated enterprises). Drawing on the
author’s sociological, ethnographic, and political economic work with
Argentina’s ERTs since 2005, the article theorizes autogestión – the
collective self-management of associated labour – from its take up by
ERT movement protagonists. The article explores and theorizes how ERT
workers come to practice autogestión, what they actually take back in the
process of occupying and controlling the formerly capitalist workplaces
that had employed them, and how their projects of cooperative
production are ensconced in a ‘language of autogestión’ – recuperating
and (re)learning other economic notions and practices against and
beyond capitalocentric discourses. Grounded in a class-struggle Marxist
perspective, the paper ultimately proposes that ERT workers collectively
recuperate three overarching dimensions of productive life from capital:
(1) the self-valorization of living labour, (2) cooperation in the labour
process, and (3) the socialization of surpluses and wealth. These
recuperations of autogestión, the article concludes, (their ‘language of
autogestión’) offer evocative suggestions for envisioning less-exploitive
forms of work, more socially just and democratic workplaces, and for
challenging and beginning to move beyond neoliberal logics.