Η κεραμοποιία Ζανόν βρίσκεται σε μικρή απόσταση από την πόλη Νεουκέν της Αργεντινής. Πρόκειται για μια πόλη περίπου 250.000 κατοίκων, σε απόσταση 1000 χιλιόμετρων νοτιοδυτικά του Μπουένος Άιρες, που αποτελεί την «πύλη» εισόδου στις ατελείωτες εκτάσεις της Παταγονίας.

Η Ζanon ήταν για πολλά χρόνια ένα από τα μεγαλύτερα εργοστάσια της περιοχής και η μεγαλύτερη κεραμοποιία της Νότιας Αμερικής. Απασχολούσε εκατοντάδες εργαζομένους, στηρίζοντας σημαντικά την τοπική οικονομία. Στα τέλη όμως της δεκαετίας του ’90, και ενώ η Αργεντινή βυθιζόταν στην οικονομική κρίση, ο ιδιοκτήτης του εργοστασίου (ο ..Ζανόν δηλαδή) είδε τα κέρδη του να πέφτουν και άρχισε το λεγόμενο “downsizing”: απολύσεις, περικοπές μισθών και εργατικών δικαιωμάτων.

Από τότε ξεκινάει ο αυτοoργανωμένος αγώνας των εργατών της Ζανόν. Εκτός από την εργοδοσία, είχαν να αντιμετωπίσουν και την γραφειοκρατική ηγεσία του συνδικάτου των κεραμοποιών της Νεουκέν (SOECN), που στην ουσία δούλευε για τα αφεντικά. Αφού κατάφεραν να τους ξεφορτωθούν, αναλαμβάνοντας την διοίκηση του συνδικάτου, ξεκίνησαν τον αγώνα, με απεργίες και διαδηλώσεις στην πόλη. Το αποκορύφωμα της διαμάχης ήρθε τον Οκτώβρη του 2001, όταν η εργοδοσία απείλησε στην ουσία να κλείσει το εργοστάσιο. Οι εργάτες ξεκίνησαν απεργία διαρκείας, η οποία μετατράπηκε σε κατάληψη του εργοστασίου για να αποτραπεί η μεταφορά υλικών και μηχανών. Παράλληλα ξεκίνησαν δικαστικό αγώνα ενάντια στην διοίκηση, ο οποίος κατέληξε σε μια πρωτοφανή απόφαση υπέρ των εργαζομένων, που τους αναγνώριζε το δικαίωμα να παραμείνουν στις δουλειές τους και απαγόρευε στην διοίκηση να εκποιήσει ή να μεταφέρει τον πάγιο και κινητό εξοπλισμό του εργοστασίου. Μετά από τέσσερις μήνες αγώνα και περιφρούρησης του εργοστασίου, και με τον «αέρα» της λαϊκής εξέγερσης που είχε σαρώσει τον Δεκέμβρη-Γενάρη όλη τη χώρα, οι περίπου 270 εργάτες που είχαν απομείνει αποφάσισαν τον Μάρτιο του 2002 να επαναλειτουργήσουν το εργοστάσιο, αυτή τη φορά χωρίς αφεντικά και επιστάτες.

Επισκεφθήκαμε τη Ζanon το πρωί της 14ης του Απρίλη, μετά από 2 χρόνια συνεχούς λειτουργίας υπό εργατικό έλεγχο. Στην αίθουσα του τμήματος “prensa y difusion” (ας πούμε «τύπου και επικοινωνίας», στην ουσία όμως η πολιτική καρδιά του εργοστασίου), οι εργάτες που μας υποδέχθηκαν ήταν σε σχετική αναταραχή: το πρόγραμμα της ημέρας περιελάμβανε συμμετοχή σε λαϊκή συνέλευση και δράση των κατοίκων των φτωχών προαστίων της πόλης και δύο άλλες πολιτικές-συνδικαλιστικές συναντήσεις. Παρόλαυτα, ήταν ιδιαίτερα φιλόξενοι και εγκάρδιοι μαζί μας. Αφού μας προσκάλεσαν αμέσως στην λαϊκή συνέλευση, μία από τις πρώτες τους ερωτήσεις ήταν αν έχουμε κάπου να κοιμηθούμε, προσφέροντας φιλοξενία για το βράδι στο εργοστάσιο. Οι εργάτες της Ζανόν είναι, άλλωστε, ιδιαίτερα συνηθισμένοι σε επισκέψεις, καθώς εκατοντάδες «συμπαθούντες» από όλο τον κόσμο τους έχουν επισκεφθεί κατά καιρούς. Κοινώς, μην κλείσετε δωμάτιο στην πόλη, όπως εμείς, αν τύχει να επισκεφθείτε τη Ζανόν (λέμε τώρα!).

Γυρνώντας από τη λαϊκή συνέλευση (περισσότερα για αυτή αργότερα), κάναμε μια πρώτη περιήγηση στους χώρους του εργοστασίου. Το πρώτο πράγμα που εντυπωσιάζει είναι το τεράστιο μέγεθος του, πραγματικά αχανές. Το δεύτερο είναι το πόσο μηχανοποιημένη και αυτοματοποιημένη είναι η παραγωγή. Στις 3 γραμμές παραγωγής που είναι υπό λειτουργία (καθώς ένα μεγάλο μέρος του εργοστασίου παραμένει ακόμα αδρανές) η άργιλος μετατρέπεται, μέσω μιας ατελείωτης σειράς από ιμάντες, φούρνους, πρέσσες, κόφτες κλπ. σε πλακάκια για οικιακή χρήση (πατώματα, κουζίνες, μπάνια κ.α.). Σε αυτή την (ακατανόητη για εμάς) διαδικασία, η ανθρώπινη παρέμβαση περιορίζεται στον έλεγχο και σε λίγες μόνο επαναλαμβανόμενες δραστηριότητες, που μπορούν να γίνουν μόνο από ανθρώπινο χέρι.

Εδώ όμως τελειώνουν οι ομοιότητες με ένα κοινό εργοστάσιο. Ενώ οι μηχανές σφύριζαν και οχλαγωγούσαν, οι εργάτες δούλευαν στη γραμμή με χαλαρότητα και άνεση. Μίλαγαν μεταξύ τους, κάποιοι είχαν δίπλα το μάτε τους (το τυπικό αργεντίνικο ρόφημα) και άλλοι το κασετοφωνάκι τους ακούγοντας μουσική. Δεν είχαν κανέναν πάνω από το κεφάλι τους να τους επιβλέπει και να τους «διορθώνει», καθώς οι επιστάτες και «οργανωτές» της παραγωγής, που αριθμούσαν 50 άτομα πριν τον εργατικό έλεγχο, έχουν απολυθεί όλοι :-) Μετά από λίγη ώρα, ακόμα και ο ήχος του συναγερμού που έβγαζε ένα κυλιόμενο μεταφορικό ..πράγμα, ακουγόταν σαν ευχάριστη υπόκρουση. Δεν είναι τυχαίο, άλλωστε, που στα δύο χρόνια του εργατικού ελέγχου δεν έχει σημειωθεί ούτε ένα εργατικό ατύχημα.

Η ίδια χαλαρή ατμόσφαιρα επικρατούσε και στα υπόλοιπα τμήματα του εργοστασίου που επισκεφθήκαμε, από τα μαγειρεία μέχρι και την πύλη εισόδου. Για να μην υπάρξει παρεξήγηση, δεν πρόκειται για ένα κλίμα ευτυχίας και χαράς, η δουλειά εξακολουθεί να είναι επίπονη και βαρετή ίσως. Αυτό, όμως, που με σιγουριά διαπιστώσαμε, είναι ότι πρόκειται για ένα χώρο όπου κυριαρχούν οι άνθρωποί του, με ισότιμες και συντροφικές σχέσεις. Και όπου αυτό που οπωσδήποτε λείπει είναι οποιαδήποτε μορφή άγχους και πίεσης.

Την επόμενη μέρα, 15 Απρίλη, επισκεφθήκαμε πάλι τη Ζανόν και περάσαμε πολλές ώρες μιλώντας με τους εργάτες, τόσο για την ιστορία και τα αποτελέσματα του αγώνα, όσο και για την καθημερινή τους ζωή και την εμπειρία τους στο εργοστάσιο. Κανένας/μια τους δεν μπορούσε (και δεν ήθελε) να κρύψει την περηφάνια για αυτό που έχουν καταφέρει. Με τον αγώνα τους όχι μόνο γλίτωσαν την ανεργία, αλλά και έχουν βελτιώσει δραστικά τις συνθήκες εργασίας τους, τις ζωές τους στην ουσία. Έχουν οικοδομήσει σχέσεις συλλογικής και οριζόντιας διαχείρισης της λειτουργίας του εργοστασίου, με αποτέλεσμα να νιώθουν όλοι/ες δικό τους το εργοστάσιο.

Οι εργάτες οργανώνονται σε επιτροπές εργασίας, ανάλογα με το αντικείμενο της δουλειάς. Υπάρχει π.χ. η επιτροπή ασφάλειας, η επιτροπή τύπου και επικοινωνίας (prensa y difusion), επιτροπή πωλήσεων κ.α., ενώ κάθε παραγωγική γραμμή έχει τη δικιά της επιτροπή. Οι επιτροπές συνεδριάζουν σε τακτές ολομελειακές συνελεύσεις , ενώ ορίζουν και έναν συντονιστή, ανακλητό και προσωρινό, για αποφάσεις ρουτίνας ή διαδικαστικές που δεν μπορούν να περιμένουν συνέλευση. Ο συντονιστής, επίσης, κάθε επιτροπής την «εκπροσωπεί» στην γενική και καθολική συνέλευση των εργατών του εργοστασίου, που λαμβάνει χώρα κάθε δύο εβδομάδες περίπου και αποτελεί την ανώτατη «εξουσία». Καμία σημαντική απόφαση δεν μπορεί να παρθεί αν δεν εγκριθεί στην καθολική συνέλευση των εργατών. Οι αποφάσεις εκεί παίρνονται με πλειοψηφία, αλλά προσπαθούν να συνθέτουν τις απόψεις και όχι να επιβάλλεται απλά η πλειοψηφία.

Στα δύο χρόνια της λειτουργίας υπό εργατικό έλεγχο, οι εργάτες έχουν αυξήσει την παραγωγή του εργοστασίου από 20.000 τετραγωνικά μέτρα πλακακίων, σε 300.000, με 24ωρη λειτουργία του εργοστασίου σε τρεις βάρδιες. Υπάρχει προοπτική συνεχούς αύξησης της παραγωγής, καθώς η δυναμικότητα του εργοστασίου είναι περίπου για 1 εκατομμύριο τετραγωνικά μέτρα. Οι μισθοί τους, που διαφοροποιούνται λίγο ανάλογα με τα χρόνια εργασίας και το πόσο υπεύθυνη για την παραγωγή είναι η θέση τους, κυμαίνονται περίπου στα 1.000 πέσος, ένα πόσο που προσφέρει αξιοπρεπέστατη διαβίωση και είναι αξιοζήλευτο για την σημερινή οικονομική κατάσταση της χώρας (ο μισθός ενός πρωτοδιοριζόμενου εκπαιδευτικού είναι 550 πέσος).

Η οικονομική ευημερία, όμως, δεν είναι σε καμία περίπτωση για αυτούς αυτοσκοπός. Δεν αυξάνουν την παραγωγή για να μεγαλώσουν τους μισθούς τους, αλλά για να προσλάβουν περισσότερο κόσμο. Από τους 270 εργάτες που ξεκίνησαν τον Μάρτη του 2002, έχουν φθάσει πια τους 350 με συνεχείς προσλήψεις, κυρίως ανθρώπων από τα τοπικά κινήματα ανέργων. Σε μια πόλη, αλλά και ολόκληρη χώρα, που χτυπιέται άγρια από την φτώχεια και την ανεργία, οι εργάτες της Ζανόν δείχνουν πραγματικά τι σημαίνει κοινωνικός χαρακτήρας της παραγωγής. Ζητούν κρατικοποίηση του εργοστασίου, με την έννοια όμως της κοινωνικοποίησης: η ιδιοκτησιακή μορφή να περάσει στην περιφέρεια της Νεουκέν, με διατήρηση της διαχείρισης στα εργατικά χέρια. Σκοπός του αιτήματος είναι τα κέρδη του εργοστασίου να διατίθενται σε δημόσιες λειτουργίες, δηλαδή σε προγράμματα υγείας, εκπαίδευσης και στέγασης στην περιοχή. Αλλά ακόμη και τώρα δεν κάθονται με σταυρωμένα χέρια, καθώς προσφέρουν δωρεάν κεραμικό υλικό σε νοσοκομεία και σχολεία της περιοχής, αλλά και στους φτωχούς οικισμούς της πόλης.

Ο έντονα πολιτικός χαρακτήρας της Ζανόν, φαίνεται καθαρά στις σχέσεις που οικοδομούν με τα κινήματα της περιοχής, ιδιαίτερα αυτό των ανέργων. Πέραν των θέσεων εργασίας που προσφέρουν, συμμετέχουν ενεργά σε κάθε κοινωνικό αγώνα της πόλης. Τον περασμένο Νοέμβρη, σε μια άγρια επίθεση της αστυνομίας σε κινητοποίηση ανέργων, αρκετοί από τους τραυματίες ήταν εργάτες της Ζανόν. Αυτή η σχέση αλληλεγγύης με την τοπική κοινωνία, έχει με τη σειρά της οχυρώσει τους εργάτες απέναντι στις απόπειρες καταστολής εναντίον τους. Τα τελευταία δύο χρόνια έχουν εκδοθεί τέσσερις δικαστικές αποφάσεις εκκένωσης του εργοστασίου και η αλληλεγγύη της τοπικής κοινωνίας τις έχει αποκρούσει όλες. Στην τελευταία και πιο σοβαρή απόπειρα εκκένωσης της Ζανόν, περίπου πριν ένα χρόνο, χιλιάδες άνθρωποι περιφρούρησαν για μέρες το εργοστάσιο, καθιστώντας τεράστιο το πολιτικό κόστος που θα είχε μια αστυνομική επέμβαση.

Έχοντας πια συνολική άποψη για τη λειτουργία του εργοστασίου, οι εργάτες δεν αγνοούν την προέλευση της πρώτης ύλης, ούτε όμως και το συμβολισμό της αισθητικής του προϊόντος. Πριν τον εργατικό έλεγχο, το εργοστάσιο εξόρυσσε την άργιλο από εκτάσεις που ανήκουν στους ιθαγενείς Μαπούτσε, με ένα εξευτελιστικό αντίτιμο 100 πέσος το χρόνο! Οι εργάτες τώρα αγοράζουν την άργιλο από άλλη τοποθεσία, χρησιμοποιώντας το νομικό πρόσωπο των Μανάδων της Πλατείας του Μάη (την οργάνωση των μανάδων των εξαφανισμένων αγωνιστών της περιόδου της χούντας 1976-83). Έχουν σταματήσει, επίσης, την παραγωγή μιας σειράς κεραμικών με «κυριλέ» αισθητική (κάτι απαίσια αρχαιο-μπαρόκ σκαλίσματα), και έχουν λανσάρει ένα νέο προϊόν, δική τους σχεδίασης, που απεικονίζει σύμβολα της κουλτούρας των ιθαγενών Μαπούτσε. Και πολύ πιο όμορφα είναι και μια κίνηση με την οποία ζητούν «συγγνώμη» και τιμούν την ιθαγενική κουλτούρα. Να σημειώσουμε ότι έχουν προσλάβει και περίπου 10 ανέργους από την κοινότητα των Μαπούτσε στην πόλη.

Μετά από δύο χρόνια λειτουργίας υπό εργατικό έλεγχο, οι εργάτες της Ζανόν έχουν βάλει πολύ γερά θεμέλια στον αγώνα τους και σχεδιάζουν για ακόμα παραπέρα. Αισθάνονται πια ασφαλείς από την καταστολή, έχουν επιτύχει ένα πολύ καλό επίπεδο διαβίωσης, αλλά δεν τους αρκεί αυτό. Ο αγώνας τους συνεχίζεται, γιατί είναι ένας αγώνας πολιτικός, που βλέπει – πέρα από τους εαυτούς τους – στην κοινωνική αλλαγή στην πόλη τους, της περιφέρειάς τους αλλά και ολόκληρης της Αργεντινής. Συμμετέχουν ενεργά στο κίνημα των επανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων, που έχουν φτάσει τις 200 στην Αργεντινή μετά την εξέγερση του 2001, διαφωνούν όμως με τον κοοπερατιβισμό σαν διέξοδο. Οι κοοπερατίβες στην Αργεντινή έχουν μεγάλη ιστορία και είναι ένα νομικό πλαίσιο απόλυτα συμβατό με το υπάρχον σύστημα, ένα πλαίσιο στο οποίο βλέπουν την απειλή του συμβιβασμού, της γραφειοκρατικοποίησης και της εγκατάλειψης του πολιτικού αγώνα. Συζητώντας με πολύ κόσμο στην Αργεντινή, καταλήξαμε στο συμπέρασμα ότι μάλλον έχουν δίκιο, καθώς είναι πολλές οι περιπτώσεις επανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων που παρουσιάζουν αυτά τα συμπτώματα. Ένα ακόμα κρίσιμο σημείο είναι ότι οι κοοπερατίβες οφείλουν να αποπληρώσουν τα χρέη του προηγούμενου ιδιοκτήτη ή να τον «αποζημιώσουν» για τον εξοπλισμό, κάτι το οποίο οι εργάτες της Ζανόν αρνούνται κατηγορηματικά να πράξουν. «Ο Ζanon μας χρωστάει πολύ περισσότερα μετά από τόσα χρόνια εκμετάλλευσης», μας είπε ένας από τους εργάτες.

Κάπου εδώ πρέπει να μπει μια τελεία, γιατί το κείμενο παραέγινε μεγάλο. Είναι πολύ μικρό, όμως, σε σχέση με τις εμπειρίες που αποκομίσαμε από αυτό το «γαλατικό χωριό» που λέγεται Ζανόν και που φιλοδοξεί να μετονομαστεί σε FASINPAT (FΑbrica SIN PATron – Εργοστάσιο Χωρίς Αφεντικό) :-) Μπορεί να απέχει γεωγραφικά τόσες χιλιάδες χιλιόμετρα και να φαίνεται μια μακρινή ουτοπία, αλλά δεν είναι. Είναι μια ουτοπία εν δράσει, ένα παράθυρο στις πιθανότητες που ανοίγονται για τις ζωές μας αν ξεμπερδέψουμε με τα παράσιτα που τις διαχειρίζονται.

Όλος ο κόσμος είναι περήφανος για τη Ζανόν.

Her farm looks like a mini rainforest, with a profusion of crops from ground level up to way above our heads.  The diversity of species and varieties is bewildering. There’s an array of jowar (sorghum or great millet), bajra (pearl millet), ragi (finger millet), red gram, green gram, til (sesame), sama (little millet), korra (foxtail millet), and a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. As we walk through this explosion of life, trying hard to avoid stepping on plants that would yield something precious, Nadimidoddi Vinodamma, softly explains her farming techniques and philosophy.

Nadimidoddi Vinodamma surrounded by jowar (sorghum) varieties on her farm. Vinodamma — who belongs to India’s most oppressed social category called Dalits (also known as the “untouchables,” or “Harijans”) — has turned on its head the logic of the so-called Green Revolution.

“I’m merely using knowledge handed down over generations, trusting the land and traditional seeds,” she says.

We are in Nagwar village, near Zaheerabad in the southern Indian state of Telangana, one of the nation’s driest regions. Here, on just three acres of rain fed land, with no chemical input whatsoever, Vinodamma has grown 45 crop varieties, produced enough food to feed her family for the whole year, and earned more than $3,000 selling the surplus produce. This, in a year where the region saw 40 percent less rainfall than normal.

With little fuss, Vinodamma — who belongs to India’s most oppressed social category called Dalits (also known as the “untouchables,” or  “Harijans”) — has turned on its head the logic of the so-called Green Revolution.

Ushered into India in the 1960s and still the reigning agricultural strategy in official circles, the Green Revolution hinges on converting “subsistence” farming into commercial production through the use of lab-generated hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, surface irrigation, and financial credit from the government. The Green Revolution undoubtedly increased crop production in the country, but it has also ruined soils, poisoned water and food (taking cancer levels to new heights in the intensively farmed areas), marginalized already small farmers, created indebtedness and economic desperation that’s driven more than 300,000 farmers to suicide in the past decade, and eroded precious genetic diversity in seeds and livestock breeds.

For decades, we’ve been sold the idea that the Green Revolution is the only way for Indian agriculture to “develop.” Organic, biodiverse agriculture and pastoralism, which was what Indian farmers traditionally practiced, will not feed the country’s growing population, we were told. We are still being told that. It is only when we hear of stories like that of Vinodamma, that we realize these are myths, shouted out as truths by an establishment and corporate entities that want to continue their domination of (not to mention profits from) India’s agriculture and food production systems.

I’m visiting Vinodamma’s farm with some colleagues from Kalpavriksh, an environmental organization that I helped cofound back in the 1990s, after hearing of her remarkable story from the Deccan Development Society (DDS), a local nonprofit that she’s a member of. Continuing with age-old farming traditions is not the only reason for Vinodamma’s success. DDS has been another major factor  too. For nearly three decades, the society has quietly worked with Dalit women farmers, all small or marginal landholders, to point the way to food sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, women’s empowerment, and community-led communications.

Her husband Vinayappa also ably helps Vinodamma on the farm. As we walk through their field, Vinodamma and Vinayappa point to five varieties of jowar (sorghum), telling us how one grows quite fast and with very little water (and is therefore called ‘poor person’s jowar’), another is good for diabetics, a third one has high productivity, and so on. They tell us how the harvesting will be staggered over a few weeks, as different crops have different maturing periods.

We ask them if their output this year is enough to feed the family the whole year. “Yes,” says Vinodamma beaming. “plus there is surplus to sell.” The only groceries they need to buy from the market are salt, sugar, coconut oil, soap and detergent, she says, and some vegetables during the February-April period or during drought years.

We notice some trampled jowar and bajra. “That’s been done by wild pigs,” Vinayappa tells us. “They sometimes get into the field, but even after the pigs and birds and other creatures have done their damage or taken their share, there is enough food for the family!” he says.

The couple use only vermicompost, cow dung powder, and dried neem (Azadirachta indica) powder as fertilizers.  “What about pests, what do you do when some attack a crop?” we ask. “We spray jaggery (sugarcane extract) water on crops, which attracts ants that will feed on pests,” Vinayappa says, “and we use neem oil and other natural products if there is a greater pest attack. For the last several years, there has been no serious pest problem.”

Noticing that the neighboring farm has only cotton growing in it, we ask why that farmer is not doing what Vinodamma and Vinayappa are. “He was attracted by the incessant advertisements, often featuring famous celebrities, that promise bumper cotton harvests and immediate wealth,” Vinodamma said. “But despite repeated applications of fertilizers and pesticides, his yield this year was so bad, he has suffered a financial loss.”

Is he then attracted to their way of farming, will he switch to millets and pulses?  He is definitely dropping cotton next year, Vinodamma replied, but it’s unclear whether he will try out yet another promised miracle with sugarcane, or emulate them.

A collective endeavor

Vinodamma is part of a sangham, a collective of Dalit women of her village that is affiliated with the Deccan Development Society. There are several such sanghams, with a total of about 3,000 women members, in 45 villages in the region. Through seed exchange, fund collection and management, knowledge sharing, collective labor, and other joint activities, the sanghams have overcome the barriers and limitations that each individual marginal woman farmer faces and helps them take back control over their lives.

As the umbrella organization, DDS assists the farmers in many ways including, helping them get loans, connecting them to banks, conducting participatory natural resource documentation and planning exercises, trying to get women ownership over, or rights to, lands they are cultivating, dealing with hostile or indifferent government officials and building relationships with helpful ones, providing information on the dangers of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified seeds, and marketing the farmers’ organic produce through a cooperative called Sangham Organics.

DDS has also been trying to get the area it operates in declared a Biodiversity Heritage Site, a status under India’s Biological Diversity Act 2003, that could provide the move towards sustainable farming greater security. Though the legal specifics are unclear, such a status could perhaps be used to check the entry or spread of genetically modified crops here (Bt Cotton is already being grown here, and the Society has actively documented it ill-effects). Unfortunately the State Biodiversity Board has been delaying making a decision on this.  

The demand for a Biodiversity Heritage Site status is partly an outcome of DDS’s involvement with other nationwide environmental networks and grassroots agricultural campaigns that are working to democratize biodiversity management and facilitate local, community-centered natural resource and biodiversity conservation initiatives across the country. One of these was a widely participatory national process of formulating India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, in the early 2000s.

It was as part of this process that DDS introduced the idea of biodiversity festivals in the late 1990s, which has since spread to many parts of India. The society still organizes a month-long mobile festival every January-February, which features wonderfully decorated bullock carts that display a selection of local seeds and traditional dishes, and includes discussions in dozens of villages about the importance of organic, sustainable, biodiverse farming, and the dangers of corporate control over food. These processes, and the sheer weight of the success of farmers like Vinodamma, are also used for advocacy at district, state, and national government levels.

One of DDS’s most important innovations is the parallel “Public Distribution System” (PDS) it has helped set up. The PDS is a decades-old, government-run program meant to provide access to cheap food grains, kerosene fuel, and other household products to the poor across India. Unfortunately it has so far only supplied poor quality materials and the system  is  ridden with corruption. (The national movement demanding a Right to Information law was partly spurred by the need to expose the misdeeds of PDS shop managers.) The society’s parallel PDS seeks to offer an alternative to the dysfunctual government program.

Tuljemma, another woman farmer and DDS member, explained how the system works. “Loans given to poor Dalit women farmers by DDS are repaid in kind, by say, a specified quantity of jowar. This jowar is then made available to the poor in each village, at subsidized rates. Not only does this offer econmic relief to the villagers, it also helps localize the food economy to some extent. This example has been used to advocate fundamental changes in the official PDS system across India, including its decentralization (in terms of democratic control) and localization (in terms of diverse foods relevant to local ecologies and cultures). A number of states are now considering such an approach.  

The society also runs a local agricultural science center (Krishi Vigyan Kendra) with help from government-appointed scientists, one of the few in India where the curriculum is set by farmers. And to help make the local organic food — especially millet-based products and dishes — more popular, DDS has set up a café and a Sangham Organics shop in Zaheerabad, a town close to Vinodamma’s village.

An all-round revolution

The importance of the model being pioneered by the Dalit women of DDS is manifold. Not only does it help small-scale, marginal farmers achieve food sovereignty and security, it’s also  a model most suited to India’s rainfed and dryland landscapes. There are also significant benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation. About 6 percent of India’s emissions come from the production and use of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers, which can be completely eliminated with organic biodiverse farming. Besides, a diversity of crops and techniques is more resilient to the vagaries of climate than are monocultural approaches.

The DDS initiative has, in fact, gone way beyond addressing food and agriculture issues. It has facilitated the transformation of the women into filmmakers, community radio managers, teachers, and much more. It helped start India’s first rural community radio station, Sangham Radio, in 2008, as well as a “Community Media Trust” that is run by the women farmers who double up as filmmakers.

All this has dramatically altered the triple marginalized status of Dalit women — as persons of lower caste, as women, and as small farmers  — in this region. The respect they have gained within their own communities, and in national and global circles, is palpable. Several DDS members have been able to travel to other parts of India and abroad to showcase their work.  Filmmaker and farmer Chinna Narsamma, for instance, has traveled to about 20 countries, showing her films, exchanging experiences with similar grassroots movements across the world. Or 13-year old Masanagari Mayuri, who made a film documenting the wisdom and knowledge of her elders that showed how her family’s farms are like school to her. Such exposure has help give several women the confidence to speak about, not only their crops, soil, and cuisine, but also about the national and global politics of food and agriculture.

Of course, there’s a lot more that needs to be done. One of the things DDS workers lament is the increasing privatization and English-orientation of the local education system that alienates youth from their cultures and ecologies. A holistic revival of India’s rural areas that covers the entire range of people’s needs and aspirations is beyond the scope of any single organization. DDS’s forays beyond agriculture, into media and communications, education, and health are providing partial solutions, but only partial. Despite this, stories of that of Vinodamma and other society members prove that building a healthy and successful livelihood based on ecologically sustainable and culturally rooted processes is possible within a generation. 

Introduction

Workers’ self-management and related forms of workers’ control over production is associated with periods of societal transformation. In its most advanced form it presents a challenge to capitalist property relations as part of a revolutionary process. Workers’ Councils, as a form of self-management, have occurred under capitalism but also in Communist command economy states (Ness and Azellini, 2011). The relationship between the practice of self-management and the class nature of the state is not, however, straightforward. The state, when perceived as an agent of coercion or control, may seek to either facilitate or suppress social movements which develop from below (Tilly,1978). Facilitation may be used to institutionalise and contain conflict, suppression may mean the use of force to dispel the movement. There remains strategic choice for the state because of the structural interdependency of state and capital.  The state may thus act to restrict or contain the potential for self-management, most trenchantly within capitalism by resisting any challenge to property relations. An example can be taken from the revolutionary turmoil of Germany in 1918, when in return for concessions on trade union rights and recognition of collective agreements, the social democratic leadership of the unions agreed not to touch existing property structures or advocate any socialisation of occupied factories (Grebing, 1969). Collaborationist Works Councils were established following the agreement between Hugo Stinnes for the employers and Karl Legien for the trade unions as an alternative to the revolutionary workers’ councils.  The state also reflects the balance of class forces, including factional tensions between sections of the ruling elite, which further complicates the relationship. For this reason it is vulgar to suggest that self-management should not be a legitimate project until the capitalist state is destroyed, just as we should not assume that the destruction of capitalism in state form would automatically lead to self-management and workers’ control from below.

This paper examines self-management in the wider context of political economy and the role of the state. Most literature focuses either on labour process analysis or social movement aspects of the phenomenon (see De Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2010 for a recent review). Self-management and workers’ control is also often viewed as a practice isolated from wider political economy. Most importantly,  there appears less emphasis on understanding the role of the state in shaping or re-shaping practice, or the state is even eschewed as an inevitably conservative and bureaucratic independent agent (e.g. Holloway, 2002) In developing our understanding we utilise a mix of contemporary documents and case study interviews in assessing our three country examples. First, we examine self-management in Titoist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Tito-Stalin split of 1948. Self-management was a central policy of the Titoist regime as it sought to distance itself from authoritarian and bureaucratic Communism and modernise its production capability as it turned towards western markets. Indeed, Yugoslavia has been used as a comparator yardstick in recent discussions of other experiments such as those in Chavez’s Venezuela (e.g. Lebowitz, 2001: 44-46).  To pursue this comparison, and make more sense of the role of the state and the market, we examine the particularities of the new movements for self-management and co-operative working in the contemporary Latin American arc of protest against neo-liberalism, focusing on both Argentina and Venezuela. The national specificities of each of these two countries is different, with the recovered companies which emerged ‘from below’ in Argentina contrasting with the movement ‘from above’ as part of Hugo Chávez’ Bolivarian Revolution and ‘Twenty First Century Socialism’ in Venezuela.  In our examples we record the contextual factors which shaped the movements, and isolate the state’s influence to either promote or contain them. In our conclusion we analyse factors of continuity and change, and discuss the state’s role in relation to these different episodes of workers’ self-management.

Some theoretical considerations

We outline here some key features which can be utilised to describe the concept and practice of self-management.

Spectrum, Trajectory?

Self-management is a slippery concept, and can be schematically located within a spectrum. It may simply consist of shared decision-making, or a co-operative venture containable within the capitalist mode of production. As Ramsay (1977) suggested, employers may utilise forms of worker participation (joint consultation, profit sharing etc.) as a way to demobilise worker militancy. In its most socially advanced form, however, it may embrace workers’ control over both production and decision-making, enabled by the eviction of management from the enterprise, and the socialisation of ownership as part of a wider socialist project. Self-management may address the ‘property question’ by means of a full-bloodied socialist project to overthrow capitalism. Within this spectrum, we discern a trajectory, whereby self-management may be seen as a mobilising force for social transformation away from capitalism, or, alternatively, forms of worker participation may be used by capital and/or the state in reverse trajectory to demobilise, contain or discipline worker militancy and self-determination. Along the spectrum, but in a transformative direction, the circuit of capital may be interrupted or even broken, as surplus is capable of being distributed socially rather than recycled in money or commodity form. De Peuter and Dyer-Witheford (2010: 30) construct a concept of ‘labour commons’ whereby the logic of such redistribution would act to create a ‘circulation of the common’ by which associated labour acts with redistributive motives, adding socialist principles to the practicalities of co-operative working. Self-managed factories may thus deviate from the capitalist social relations of production as they may replace capital as the mediator between the worker and their labour power. As such, self-management may not simply be seen as a technical exercise in workers’ decision making, but be seen in ideological terms, as an expression of challenge to the logic of capital.

_{Figure 1: Spectrum and Trajectory Towards Workers Control}

Such a dynamic is reflected in the writings of classical Marxists, albeit with caveats on the limitations of co-operative working.  For Marx, workers’ co-operation in self-management ‘was a practical demonstration that capital was not necessary as a mediator in social production’, (cited in Lebowitz, 2003: 89). Rosa Luxemburg similarly saw co-operatives positively as isolated units of ‘socialised production’ (Luxemburg, 1900). Both warned of the limitations of such projects still locked as islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism. For Marx, co-operatives ‘naturally reproduce, and must reproduce everywhere in their actual organization all the shortcomings of the prevailing system’ (Marx, 1967: 440). For Luxemburg, co-operatives were ‘totally incapable of transforming the capitalist mode of production’ and could only survive ‘by removing themselves artificially (authors’ emphasis) from the influence of the laws of free competition’ (Luxemburg, 1900). Thus, while self-management and co-operative working may challenge the circuit of capital, it struggles to do so permanently, and may only do so by existing artificially within the general logic of capital. Atzeni and Ghigliani (2007: 653) provide a fascinating empirical account of social processes within the over two hundred worker-recovered companies in Argentina. They conclude from their case studies that:

‘...the act of occupying a factory gives room to workers’ control of the labour process and to a more democratic, collective decision-making, but workers’ need to compete in the market reduces the sphere of collective decision, leading to centralisation of power and divisions between directive and productive workers, hampering the possibility for workers to enrich their job and avoid self-exploitation’.

The inference is that to be successful and sustainable, self-management, or workers’ control, must be combined with a conscious socialist political project to overthrow capital and to construct a workers’ state.

The state

While classical Marxists have drawn caveats on the sustainability of self-management and workers’ control within capitalism, others have been more circumspect. The caution focuses on the nature of the state and the assumed (by Marxists) need to overthrow the (capitalist) state to achieve workers’ control of the productive process. Hahnel and Albert (1991) and Albert (2003), from an anarchist perspective, introduce the concept and guide to practice of ‘participatory economics’, or ‘Parecon’.  Parecon is presented as an alternative to both capitalism and what is described as ‘co-ordinationism’, or rather Communist command economy planning. Participatory economics presents a programme for which the constraints and disciplines of the market may be overcome by an alternative framework of indicative pricing and negotiated planning ‘from below’. The challenge to the power of capital, and hence the capitalist state, is avoided by assuming that a system of participatory economics could be achieved by a ‘long march’ which emphasises ‘councils of workers and consumers’ as intermediary institutions (Hahnel and Albert, 1991)

[i]

. Transformation is seen as something which gradually evolves from below rather than something which challenges capital and state power directly in an historical moment of confrontation. The prescribed process of emancipation or liberation echoes Holloway’s (2002: xi-xii) ‘open Marxist’ critique of classical Marxism to ‘change the world without taking power’. Holloway’s vision is that ‘the rejection of the notion of taking state power is part of a deeper process...in which people refuse to bow to the logic of capital, in which they decide to stop creating capitalism and do something sensible with their lives’. He argues that the society we should aspire to should be neither in the reformist or revolutionary tradition of assuming power but should instead be a ‘non-power’ society based on direct rather than representative democracy ‘..where power relations are dissolved’. The question of how power is achieved, or arrested from the state, is deliberately left open, subject to a constant process of self-education ‘You cannot build a society of non-power relations by conquering power’ (Holloway, 2002: 17). This voluntaristic interpretation of the revolutionary process, on closer reading, also appears to downplay class as an agency of transformation. Holloway argues, for example, that ‘Social discontent today tends to be expressed far more diffusely, through participation in non-governmental organisations...through the individual or collective concerns of teachers, doctors or other workers......(and) in the development of autonomous community projects of all sorts’ (2002: 21). More recently, in addressing problems of ‘social cooperation’ under ‘Twenty First Century Socialism’,  Lebowitz (2012) has further stretched the analyses of  state power by differentiating between the state in its form of ‘vanguard Marxism’ - equivalent to the Stalinised command economies, and the conditions necessary for the development of a ‘genuine Marxist socialism’ from below. In these interpretations the state is continually viewed with suspicion, a potentially hostile force. For Holloway the possibility of a ‘workers’ state’ is viewed with equal hostility, an oxymoron which is ‘absolutely absurd’ (Callinicos and Holloway, 2005: 122).

Endogenous or exogenous?

In refining our understanding the relationship between state, labour and capital we must accept that many examples of self-management can be driven by exogenous shocks as well as by endogenously generated ideological projects. The development of workers councils in 1918/1919 Germany, the soviets in revolutionary Russia, or the cordones in 1970s Chile may well be seen as cases whereby worker co-operation and solidarity emerged endogenously as an ideological expression of emerging revolutionary class struggle and consciousness among workers. In contrast, the key driver for the worker occupation movement in Britain in the 1970s was an exogenous shock as British employers and state sought to restructure British industry in the face of economic crisis and soaring inflation. The same might be true of the ‘recovered factories’ movement in Argentina, whereby the movement from below was initially a defensive reaction to job loss, albeit a reaction that ignited expressions and emerging ideologies of worker solidarity as it progressed. The relationship between the two processes must therefore be conditioned by interplay within the productive forces of the base and the ideological and social forces of the superstructure. Within both spheres the state also acts to preserve and encourage the ‘national interest’, and seeks to create an environment that is conducive for capital accumulation within the wider world economy. Self-management may pose a threat or an opportunity to such accumulation, and the state’s response will reflect both regional and national specificities as a result. Specificities will in turn, as Martinez Lucio (2011:657) suggests, reflect historically developed workplace/labour movement legacies, repertoires of protest, traditions and discourse which may even include ‘sabotage’ and direct action as a motivating force rather than participation and control.

It is to these specificities that we now turn to further our analysis. In each of our cases we first present some contextual detail of self-management, before addressing the ideological impetus and trajectory of the project and the role of the state in determining outcomes.

Yugoslavia under Tito: A Reverse Trajectory?

Post war Yugoslavia was a testament to the success of Tito’s Communist partisans in defeating the Axis occupation. In the liberated areas,

‘...the old order was overthrown and a new popular administration constructed around liberation committees. ...a hierarchy of committees would control a whole town or territory, complete with postal service, health service, and publicly controlled industry’ (Swain and Swain, 1993: 17-18).

Seizure of factories and productive facilities was by military means, and enterprises were taken into state ownership ex post facto. The state was framed within the historic split between Stalin and Tito, which isolated the fledgling Yugoslavia from the Soviet Bloc. The final split came in January 1948 when Tito stationed troops in Albania to provide help to the communist partisans fighting in Greece. Stalin had already promised the Allies that he would not support the fight for a Greek Communist government, and so this break of ‘discipline’ by Tito was a move too far. Stalin then insisted that the Yugoslav communists should surrender foreign policy initiatives (including in the Balkans) to the Soviet Union. Following negotiations between Stalin and Yugoslavia’s emissary Milovan Đilas in Moscow, the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party rejected Stalin’s proposal on 1 March 1948.

The Yugoslav State

Tito characterised the Soviet Union in terms of an unhealthy relationship between Party and State whereby ‘ ..the Party in the Soviet Union is becoming more and more bureaucratic and is growing to be part and parcel of the bureaucratic state apparatus, becoming identified with it, and simply a part of it’ (Tito, 1950: 14). Đilas, the Montenegrin Vice President of the Republic and one of the key intellectuals of the Yugoslav Communist Party, denounced the Soviet Union as ‘state capitalist’, inferring that a counter-revolution had taken place under Stalin within the socialist motherland (Swain and Swain, 1993: 73). In terms of overall policy Tito had expressed no previous preference for anything other than the orthodox Stalinist position. He became General Secretary of the Yugoslav CP in 1937, at the height of the Moscow Trials, and his Government after 1945 was built on solidly Stalinist principles of one-party rule, the deliberate development of a leader-cult, and ‘socialism in one country’ (Đilas 1969: 14). The Government’s economic and political programme followed the Stalinist command model. Ministries determined output and prices in a drive towards capital accumulation over consumption. The rigid command structure of the partisan army was carried over into everyday life and social organisation. In the process a privileged nomenklatura was confirmed (graphically described by Đilas in 1957 in The New Class). As was common in other Stalinist states, there was no legal right to strike.

It is in this context, to help create further distance from the ‘Stalinist Bureaucracy’, that the party leadership under Tito developed the theory and practice of self-management (samoupravljanje). The ideology framed by the Slovenian intellectual and party leader Edvard Kardelj alongside Đilas and Boris Kidrič  and enacted by the Government in 1950. As reported in The Programme of the League of Yugoslav Communists (published 1959):

 Our own experience, and that of other socialist countries, has shown that when the management of the economy is exclusively in the hands of the State machinery, the inevitable result is a growing tendency towards greater centralisation of power and closer amalgamation of State and Party machinery: they grow stronger and strive to divorce themselves from society and impose their power upon it. (page 21 cited in Lane 1976: 144).

Further insight is provided in Tito’s speech to the Yugoslav Parliament, when he introduced the legislation (Workers Manage Factories in Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, 1950). Tito refers to the writings of Marx, Lenin and Engels, but also to the discourse of ‘socialism in one country’ associated with Stalin. He focused on Marx’s predilection of the ‘withering away of the state’ as a necessary transition from socialism to communism:-

How do things look in the Soviet Union thirty-one years after the October Revolution? The October Revolution made it possible for the state to take the means of production into its hands. But these means are still, after 31 years, in the hands of the state. Has the slogan “the factories for the workers” been put into practice? Of course not. The workers still do not have any say in the management of the factories....The workers only have the possibility and the right to work but this is not very different from the role of the workers in capitalist countries. The only difference for workers is that there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union and that is all. 

Self-management, in Tito’s vision, was intended to fulfil the dual role of de-bureaucratisation of the state by limited decentralisation of decision-making on the one hand, and raising the consciousness of the peasant to that necessary for an industrial worker on the other. The combination of Tito’s two political aims suggests that self-management was a modernisation project, necessary to enable capital accumulation within the new state. . The contradiction between command economy Stalinism and de-bureaucratisation unfolded with the reality of practice. Tito also foresaw self-management as a vehicle for a disciplining force on workers in the enterprise:-

The role of the trade unions under the new conditions where the working people are taking part in the management is somewhat altered....The work of trade unions will also be eased by the fact of the workers becoming acquainted with the process of management of production...In any case, this will contribute a great deal to the stabilisation of work discipline in the factories, mines and other enterprises.

An ideological assertion was made by the Communists that workers’ councils represent a harmony of interests within the enterprise. This assertion flowed from the consideration that, as private property was abolished, there should be no conflict of interest between workers, management of enterprises and the (workers’) state. In concrete terms, the purposes of self-management were referred to by Tito as they were expressed in Article 27 of the Bill on the Participation of Working Collectives. The management board of the factory, elected by the enterprise Workers’ Council :-

.....undertakes steps to improve the production of the enterprise, especially as regards the rationalisation of production, increasing labour productivity, lowering the costs of production, improving the quality of the products, decreasing waste; makes decisions on work norms in the enterprise..... 

The emphasis was on self-management of an enterprise to increase its internal efficiency, to improve quality, and to impose discipline. The market orientation of the project would fulfil the purpose of allowing Yugoslav industry to trade with the west, given its new found isolation from the Soviet bloc (Lydall, 1984: 67).

A reverse trajectory?

A second feature of self-management was therelationship with the market and dubiety over the role of ordinary workers in the decision-making structure of the enterprise. This contradiction emerged in 1957 when the regime was shaken by a strike in the coal mines at Trbovlje which, as Wilson (1979: 117) records, led to fear in the regime as it ‘might easily have spread to other mining districts’. The strike presented an alternative way forward for ordinary workers to achieve their goals of better living and working (Marinković, 1995), and challenged the official ideology. Partly in response, a law agreed that year gave more discretion to the Workers’ Councils to determine how the ‘social product’ (i.e. profit) of individual enterprises might be distributed between investment and wages.  A contemporaneous turn to foreign trade led to a period of capital formation and the growth of the economy. Reforms in 1965 were intended to further liberalise the economy and provide a solution to the emerging crisis of corporate and national indebtedness. Banks were given the freedom to run along ‘capitalist’ lines, and to invoke discretion when granting credit to individual enterprises. In 1969 a further major strike took place among dock workers in Rijeka, and in 1973 a strike of 2,000 workers took place in the Zmaj factory in Belgrade (Shabad, 1980). Strikes once again developed towards the end of the 1980s when strikes were finally allowed legality (USDS 1987, 1988). The problems of the economy, this time that of a rapid rise in the rate of inflation to 150 per cent, were again met by further market-based liberalisation. This included the expansion of private investment and the encouragement of further foreign direct investment.

The majority of strikes were about pay, but were short-lived as most factory ‘managers/directors’ (who were appointed or elected by the Workers Councils) quickly conceded to the workers’ demands. The significance of these unofficial strikes is that they exposed an underlying division between state, party and enterprise management (the self-management ‘class’), and rank-and-file workers. Basic wage levels set within centrally-fixed limits, but enterprises were free to establish top-up bonuses, and in this fashion the role of the centre was confirmed.  Lane (1976: 152) reviews the evidence of decision-making structures and concludes that ‘Studies which have examined the participation of various groups also show that the workers’ council is not the source of effective power in the enterprise’. A hierarchy of power and authority existed with top management and party and union officials exhibiting most power, and workers through the workers’ council being the least influential. Kolaja (1965: 67) suggested that ‘in both factories [studied] the workers’ council fell under the influence of the director who was also a prominent member of the League [of Communists] organisation’. In 1967 the process of separation was deepened when firms were given the right to retain part of their foreign earnings from exports (thus releasing them from the obligation to cross-subsidise other firms through transfers of earnings via the central bank). Foreign-owned companies were allowed to invest in Yugoslavia, subject to a maximum 49 per cent holding of assets. Such market-based liberalisation had the side effect of increasing unemployment as firms laid-off workers in less profitable areas. The resultant unemployment among sections of workers in turn acted to increase inequality among workers in general (Lydall, 1984: 84).

As Yugoslavia built bridges with western market capitalism, self-management proved useful in terms of enterprise innovation, worker discipline, control and direction. In effect the pull of the market confirmed self-management as little different from the employee participation or ‘industrial democracy’ experiments which had run in parallel in western capitalist enterprises. As more powers to retain and redirect surplus were given to self-managed enterprises, so too were those enterprises forced into competition with one another and with those in the western markets. So while the state wished to enable self-management as a modernisation project, it contemporaneously imposed market discipline, thus negating the possibility of ‘commons’ as the logic of capital prevailed.

If the ideology and political economy of the state had corrupted self-management ‘from above’, what might happen within a liberal democracy when workers control came ‘from below’? We now turn to the British example to explore this question.

1970s Britain: A Blocked Trajectory?

The 1970s was a period of heightened industrial and political unrest in western Europe at the faltering end of the post-war economic boom. Factory occupations occurred throughout , most notably in France in 1968, in revolutionary Portugal in 1974/75, and in Britain in 1972 and beyond. In Britain the economy was in deeper crisis, exhibiting higher inflation than competitors, a weak currency and with the Labour Government in 1974 turning to the IMF for a $4bn loan. Post-war economic expansion had been marked by a growth of TUC affiliated union membership from 9.3 million in 1950 to 11.2 million twenty years later. As trade union power had increased, so too had the network of independent shop stewards, creating a duality of power between trade union leaderships and the rank-and-file (see Upchurch et al, 2009: 81-112).  Restructuring inevitably posed a threat to trade union power. It also threatened the material base of the weak corporatist industrial relations polices pursued by successive post-war governments.

Exogenous shock, endogenous movement

The shock of factory closures sparked rank-and-file led work-ins, occupations and worker co-operatives.  A movement developed, crystallising ideologically around the politically left-leaning Institute of Workers Control (IWC) and left Labour Party leaders such as Tony Benn. Alternative political visions were promoted, including an ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’ of import controls, a siege economy and alternative production per se. (Cooley, 1982).  An internal IWC debate between the two positions of revolution or reform came to a head following the occupation and work-in of the Upper Clyde shipyard in 1972 and the subsequent wave of over 260 factory occupations in the engineering industry (Tuckman, 1985: Darlington and Lyddon, 2001). An article in Socialist Register by Richard Hyman (1974) exploded the debate, when he challenged the ‘reformist’ position of the IWC as untenable. The majority position in the IWC favoured an extension of workers’ involvement through practices of ‘co-determination’ not dissimilar to the system of Mitbestimmung found in West German Works Councils (Coates and Topham, 1974). Hyman argued, in contrast, that workers’ control could only be achieved by challenging the power of capital directly.

Each perspective demands wholly different strategies; yet within the IWC literature the issue appears fudged and confused. The lack of clarity on this point, it seems to me, reflects a more general ambivalence on the issue of reform and revolution (Hyman, 1974: 249-250).

This apparent ‘fudge’ posed indirectly the role of the state, or rather the lack of ambitions towards the state from the ‘reformist’ position of the IWC.

The State Debate

The theoretical ‘debate’ within the IWC appeared locked within the Left’s traditional ideological divide between revolution and reform. A polemical argument gathered pace between the academics Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas. For Miliband (1969), writing in The State and Capitalist Society, the state was to be explained as a sociological phenomenon whereby its machinery is used by the ruling elite to protect and gain its riches from the working class. Holloway (2002) later echoed this view, by eschewing all state power, in either its capitalist or non-capitalist form. The question of how this machinery of state can be captured remained unexplained. As Barker (2007) suggested, a satisfactory explanation to this problem was neither provided by Poulantzas.  He argued that socialist transformation involves two parallel processes, a parliamentary campaign combined with the development of self-management towards ‘democratic socialism’:

...how is it possible to radically transform the State in such a manner that the extension and deepening of political freedoms and the institutions of representative democracy (which were also a conquest of the popular masses) are combined with the unfurling of forms of direct democracy and the mushrooming of self-management bodies? (Poulantzas 1978: 256)

The political formation of this co-existence remained obscure,  ‘the answer to such questions does not yet exist—not even as a model theoretically guaranteed in some holy text or other’ (1978: 264-65). Poulantzas had adopted the Althusserian position of the post-1968 French Communist Party (PCF), which had made an ideological shift and dropped the Marxist concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the development of its ‘Eurocommunist’ position. This position, anti-Stalinist in intent, was rooted in the proposition that all attempts to construct workers’ direct control over the state would lead to despotism. Indeed, instead of rehearsing projects of workers self-emancipation from below, Poulantzas presented a reformist ‘check’ on such processes by embracing the simultaneous continuance of bourgeois democratic forms in the guise of parliamentary, representative democracy. ‘If we base everything on direct, rank-and-file democracy...sooner or later, (it) inevitably leads to statist despotism or the dictatorship of experts...if workers’ councils form their own state power...it is not the withering away of the State or the triumph of direct democracy that eventually emerges, but a new type of authoritarian dictatorship’ (1978: 255, 264).

A Blocked Trajectory

The workers’ occupation movement in the UK began to fade as the occupations were defeated and workers’ take-overs of such workplaces as the motor cycle manufacturers Norton Villiers or the Scottish Daily News proved unsustainable. This was despite some limited Labour Government support in1974 under the influence of the new left-wing Secretary of State for Industry, Tony Benn. The support, however, was partial and limited to ‘compensate the owners for the workers takeover in the purchase of usually obsolete plant and equipment’. (Tuckman, 2010: 31). The demise of the factory occupations and worker co-operatives related to their inability to escape the logic of capital. As Clarke (1977: 373) noted ‘the co-operatives were impelled to conform to many of the practices of private industry on matters of pay, hours, intensity of work, management control and so on... pay was generally lower than in outside industry’. As an alternative to worker co-operatives the TUC, in talks with the Labour Government, supported the 1974 and 1977 Bullock Reports on Industrial Democracy, which sought to place workers’ representatives ‘on the board’ of both nationalised industries and large private enterprises. However, the more militant wing of the trade union movement rejected such calls for being too collaborationist, and the key moment of industrial ‘democracy’ passed by (McIlroy et al, 1999).

However, a new era of neo-liberal prescriptive ideology and practice also began to redefine the landscapes of political economy. Within Latin America, a new wave of factory occupations occurred in Argentina, and a revival of ‘Bolivarian’ socialism was generated in Venezuela which included the enablement of workers co-operatives. It is to these that we now turn.

Argentina: A fragmented trajectory

Argentina’s experiment with autogestion emerged during 2001 in the midst of economic and political crisis in which the government announced the largest sovereign debt default ($93bn) in world history. Argentineans responded with social uprisings which removed four Presidents in two weeks. Millions of citizens began to collectively participate in self-organised actions designed to reclaim control over the decisions that affected their daily lives, including neighbourhood assemblies, pots and pans protests, piquete road blocks, community soup kitchens and barter clubs. An estimated 10,000 employees in over 160 factories, hotels, hospitals and other industries decided to restart the production process themselves by ‘recovering’ the workplaces that their bosses had abandoned. While participants in the worker-recovered companies (ERTs in Spanish) may not have possessed a clearly-defined ideological agenda, self-management in Argentina did contain an expansive political edge inspired by the ideas of autonomy, removal of hierarchy and promotion of horizontal decision-making (Dinerstein, 2007) as the people demanded the removal of the entire political class.

Exogenous shock, endogenous movement

Workers’ self-management has been interpreted as a defensive response by non-unionised employees to preserve their jobs motivated by the desire to confront the injustice of having remained unpaid for many months (Monteagudo, 2008). More positively, it has been presented as evidence of anti-power (Holloway, 2002). This is signalled by the recovery of autonomous spaces left by the abandonment of both the state and the traditional reformist agents of political parties and  trade unions. Most workers felt betrayed by the CGT (Argentina’s only legally recognised union confederation), because it had used its corporatist prerogative within the Peronist government to tacitly support structural adjustment.  The more pluralist CTA confederation, established by dissident unions in 1992 and which opposed President Menem's neoliberal reforms (Serdar, 2012), also remained paralysed when confronted with the radicalisation of workers’ and other social movements (Svampa, 2007). The ERTs emerged out of the tension between workers’ perceived right to work and the business-owner’s legal right to maintain possession of the firm - a contradiction which could not be satisfied. Autogestion in Argentina was thus the product of the synthesis of two contradictory processes – on the one hand as a collectivist class response to defend jobs, and on the other an individualist ‘save yourself’ mentality inculcated in workers’ minds as part of the neoliberal project. The movement  allowed workers to improve their personal material circumstances whilst also engaging in a political project that sought workers’ control through the National Movement of Recovered Companies (MNER).

Role of the state

The response of the state was initially ambiguous (Rebón, 2004). Under President Duhalde, support for recovered factories was limited only to those ERTs viewed as his political allies. Things changed in May 2003 with the election of President Nestor Kirchner, who positioned himself on the side of the social movements and was voted in on a populist, left-leaning Peronist ticket.  He legitimised the existing ERTs through the introduction of favourable microeconomic policies (Svampa, 2007). The state’s broadly supportive position can be explained because firstly it is clear that the principle goals of the project aligned closely with the professed ‘National-Popular’ objectives of Kirchnerismo. Supporting autogestion helped to give credence to the government’s narrative against neoliberalism. However, in reality Kirchnerismo helped to embed the Argentine economy in global capitalism and reproduced an unequal class structure (Wylde, 2011). The policies that the Argentine government enacted have been used as tools to depoliticise the movement through the process of institutionalisation. The 2004 Programme for Self Managed Work (PTA) provides subsidies to the ERTs, and in this way the political goals of the movement have been exchanged for the recognition of their practical aspirations (Dinerstein, 2007). The Kirchner government launched a series of social projects (Planes) that have led to the creation of some 13,000 state-sponsored cooperatives employing 300,000 (Silveira, 2011). However, within these cooperatives the degree of workers’ control is more limited than in the ERTs as they are run by administrative councils rather than workers’ assemblies and are heavily reliant on state patronage (Orgaz, 2005). The attempted containment of autonomous movements confirms the Kirchners’ famously-stated desire for the restoration of a ‘normal capitalism’ after the crisis, and also exemplifies a return to traditional segmented neo-corporatist practices of social control historically favoured by Peronist governments (Etchemendy and Collier, 2007). The sympathetic state role is also attributable to the fact that at no point has the existence of the ERTs fundamentally challenged the capitalist nature of property relations. In over a decade since the birth of the movement, only 12 per cent of recovered companies have been granted permanent legal expropriation (Facultad Abierta, 2010) whilst the remainder possess some form of temporary status. The state has also failed to adequately support self-managed enterprises in terms of marketing their products (Svampa, 2007).

Finally, the National Institute for Cooperativism and Social Economy (INAES) has helped to further incorporate and normalise the radical goals of many of the recovered companies. However, in 2003, divisions over  political strategies caused the movement’s national coordinating body – the MNER to splinter and the rival National Movement for Worker-Recovered Factories (MNFRT) was founded in an attempt to move away from the MNER’s preferred strategy of using direct confrontation and street mobilisations (Ranis, 2005). In this sense it can be said that Argentina’s self-management project was established ‘from below’, but during the last decade has since largely been assimilated and co-opted ‘from above’.

A fragmented Trajectory

Most of the original ERTs have thrived since 2001 and workers’ self-management has now expanded from 161 into 205 workplaces (Facultad Abierta, 2010). This has occurred in the face of enormous legal, financial and operational hurdles such as being saddled with the failed enterprises’ huge debts, inheriting broken machinery, and legal precariousness. For many individual ERTs this has only been possible because they have pragmatically sought to succumb to legal institutionalisation in order to gain tax advantages and access to credit (Ranis, 2005), whilst simultaneously pursuing defiant acts of resistance that break with the logic of capital and resist the ruthlessness of market competition.

For example, despite the legal requirement as companies with ‘cooperative’ status to implement managerial hierarchies, the authenticity of workers’ control has largely been preserved, with 88 per cent of ERTs regularly staging workers’ assemblies as their sovereign body. However, in terms of a ‘labour commons’ the recovered companies have had little choice but to integrate into the market economy. Yet although they have been forced to maximise their own efficiency in order to remain competitive, but rather than generate profit many of the ERTs instead commit to generating new sources of work, maximising wages or to establishing social projects in the local community. Indeed creating jobs has remained a priority, with four fifths of such enterprises having added to their workforce in recent years (ibid. 2010). For example whilst a large number of traditionally-organised Argentinean factories executed a wave of redundancies when output fell during the 2009 global slowdown, in the equivalent ERTs, workers collectively decided to prioritise the protection of jobs and cut down their own working hours, reduced production or lowered their salaries (Magnani, 2011). Although debates exist about whether or not workers are submitting themselves to the practice of self-exploitation (Heller, 2004; Svampa, 2007), favourable interpretations are that the ERTs are proactively challenging the circuit of capital. Perhaps the most celebrated example of the recovered companies in Argentina, FaSinPat ceramics factory in Neuquén has increased its workforce by 85 per cent since 2001 (and not only donates its tiles to nearby community centres and hospitals but has also built a complementary health clinic in a poor local neighbourhood

[ii]

. Half of all ERTs pay all their workers an equal ‘wage’, whilst two thirds insist on an equal length for the working day. Where wage differentials do exist, they were found to be largely marginal and symbolic (Facultad Abierta, 2010) and where self-managed companies have consolidated their operations, workers now receive higher rates of remuneration than they do in equivalent traditionally-organised companies (Magnani, 2011).

Finally, what remains clear is that whilst much of the workers’ self-management movement has been at least partially co-opted by the state, in particular those workplaces which experienced a lower intensity of “struggle” or state violence at their inception (Coraggio and Arroyo, 2009), for those elements which have resisted neocorporatist containment,  today it offers  a counter-hegemonic alternative and a direct challenge to market-based capitalism in Argentina. For example the Red Gráfica (Graphics Network) is an initiative that brings together fifteen cooperatives (eleven of which are ERTs) at different points in the supply chain of the printing and design industry. It is successfully neutralising market competition in its industry by sharing resources and expertise, as well as negotiating favourable terms with suppliers or even arranging closed-shop supply or bulk-purchase agreements with other network members (Giuffrida, 2011). This process of exerting collective control over certain productive sectors reflects the organisational evolution of the recovered companies’ movement and has also arisen as a response to its ideological fracturing and the frustrated attempts of its various national umbrella networks to coalesce around the same political project. Other examples are starting to emerge in different industries (La Vaca, 2007), and although relatively small-scale, they illustrate that the social logic that facilitates productive links between recovered companies requires not only techno-productive needs but also a measure of political will. If the ERTs have succumbed to varying degrees of state cooptation since 2001 then their trajectory can be described as “fragmented.” Yet those that currently exist ‘as islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism’ but which remain more ideologically pure have built a number of bridges to link them over troubled waters

Venezuela: Endogenous Development?

In Venezuela workers’ self-management emerged as a top down process, as part of the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by Hugo Chávez in 1998-1999. This process, renamed 21^st century Socialism in 2005, has been funded by booming oil revenues (Karl, 1997). Indeed, the state is the nations’ landlord, which means that it ‘can charge a royalty to international oil capital to produce on its subsoil’ (Purcell, 2011: 569). Historically there had been a fusion between the economic and political domains, which allowed the development of a rentier capitalist class - notably managers from the state enterprise Petroleos de Venezuela, PDVSA (Coronil, 1997). To maintain social peace, the state redistributed a fraction of oil revenues to the middle class and to a much lesser extent the working class through social programmes.

The Chávez State

The pact between oil company and state exploded in the early 1980s as the result of three series of pressures: the rise of external debt from 1983, falling oil revenues, and the exhaustion of the redistributive system. PDVSA produced as much oil as possible, opened up to foreign capital, and escaped taxation through creative accounting (Hammond 2011: 364). There was no longer a political commitment to reinvest oil revenues in the social economy, which had been at been at the core of Venezuela’s democracy. It was in this context that Hugo Chávez, a military man of humble origins, attempted a coup in 1992. Although the coup failed, Chávez became a symbol of the rise of the oppressed. When he became President in 1998, he inherited a deeply impoverished and highly polarized country. Chávez had no real distinctive political agenda at first, apart from the promise to break away from neo-liberal policies and to place human needs at the heart of all economic activities.

There are three distinct phases in the political reform process. In the first phase (1998-2003), market relations were kept in place (Lebowitz, 2006). The government’s priority was to stabilise the social and economic situation through the Plan Bolivar 2000 (which was directly managed by the armed forces). When Chávez was elected, the price of oil had hit a low point, further undermining the state of the economy. In 2000 Chávez persuaded OPEC members to abide by their quotas (Hammond, 2011: 365).  The government then promoted a mixed economic model where cooperatives and small family businesses could coexist with privately controlled circuits of production and distribution.  The creation of cooperatives was seen as a key instrument for achieving a transition to an endogenous model of economic development based on the satisfaction of human needs in the community.

Endogenous Development?

In the second phase (2002-2005), the Bolivarian Revolution became radicalised. It became clear that the political opposition, supported by the employers association FEDECAMARAS, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela, CTV, and PDVSA, would do everything in their power to force Chávez out of office. The government response was to take  a more anti-business stance. Chávez announced that 1,149 enterprises were to be expropriated. In the event, the government did not implement a systematic expropriation policy. Moreover, the Venezuelan labour movement did not demonstrate a strong capacity to occupy/and manage expropriated factories, in contrast to its Argentinean counterpart.

Crucially, the government wanted to keep direct control of the some of the most strategic sectors of the economy, especially the oil industry, PDVSA.  As a result, the government resisted workers’ calls for self-management and repossession, arguing that it needed to grant special status to the organisation because of its strategic importance (Azzelini 2009: 13). 2005 was also a crucial year in that the government openly declared its commitment to 21^st Century Socialism, by which they meant the participation in the decision-making process of excluded or semi-excluded sectors of the population as opposed to the traditional working class (Ellner 2012). For Chávez, what mattered was not the form of property relations,but whether enterprises reinvested their resources in the community forsocial needs. In this socio-productive model, social enterprises (empresas de produccion social, EPS) were meant to lead to the adoption of ‘socialism of the 21^st century’, by opposition to the socialism of the 20^th century as experimented by the Soviet Union (a model of state capitalism) or workers’ self-management in Yugoslavia (Alvarez, 2009).

Another key element of the emergency response to the economic and social crisis of 2002-2003 was the creation of the Missions. The Missions, Barrio Adentro and Mercal, for example, were originally set up in the municipality of Caracas to attend to health and alimentation needs. In February 2003 the city asked the Cuban government to send Cuban doctors to deprived neighbourhoods, the barrios. The programme was piloted  and then rolled out nationally. The Mission Mercal provided subsidised food in government-sponsored cooperatives.  From 2004, the government used the massive windfall in oil revenues to fund the expansion of the Missions by creating a mission each time it identified a new social need. In the Mission Vuelvan Caras  the aim was to create a model of endogenous development based on local socio-economic projects. The contours of the whole project could be defined by six principles and objectives:1) The state should assume a pro-active role in the economy through the nationalisation of strategic industries; 2)economic development should be endogenous; 3) the state should promote participatory democracy through Communal Councils; 4) civic engagement of the people in the revolutionary process; 5) market-led mechanisms should ultimately disappear and be replaced by  alternative forms of social relations  based on the socialisation of revenues: and 6) new values of altruism, solidarity and social utility of work should be promoted as an alternative to consumerism and individualism. 

The development of the Bolivarian Revolution can thus be analysed as an initial counteraction against an endogenous political threat in 2002/2003. The political mobilisation of socially excluded people was crucial for the survival of the Presidency, leading to a war of position between pro and anti-Chavistas. During the Presidential re-elections of 2006 Chávez asserted the socialist character of the Bolivarian Revolution, which was later confirmed in the 2007-2013 Plan. Booming oil prices led to an increase in rent revenues and enabled the government to experiment its vision of 21^st century socialism on a large scale. 

The last and third period (2007-2010) consisted in an acceleration of the radicalisation process.. As usual, the President attempted to regain the political ground by launching a series of initiatives. First, confronted with a phenomenon of massive desertion in the Mission Vuelvan Caras, the government officially replaced it with the Mission Che Guevara in 2007. This corresponded to an official recognition of the failure of the cooperatives on the grounds that they were not conducive to socialism. Second, in 2007-2008 the Chavista government expropriated strategic sectors including electricity, steel, cement and telecommunications (Ellner, 2012: 111).

There had been a substantial increase in the number of registered cooperatives, from 400 before 1998 to 131,050 in 2006. It must be noted, however, that 60/70 per cent of these registered cooperatives are in fact not economically active (Hintze, 2010: 96). Initially the development of cooperatives corresponded to massive job creation programmes through the injection of micro-credits in the local economy. Left to their own devices, a sizeable majority of these cooperatives and endogenous development projects would simply not survive. Cooperative members often lack administrative and technical skills and are unable to compete with their capitalist counterparts, even with the massive injection of microcredit (Piñeiro, 2009: 841-842). There is a strong element of window dressing for micro-development projects which, on closer inspection, are the functional equivalent of occupational welfare programmes (Hintze, 2008, Piñeiro, 2009). According to a representative of the Direction of Cooperatives (SUNACOP), the real purpose of the cooperatives is not to increase national production and to diversify the economy, but to give local people a sense of purpose and a job, consistent with the Marxist perspective that underlines the ‘Bolivarian revolution’:

“Cooperatives represent a new way of life, a means to improving people’s living standards, a way of giving people a job full of dignity and exempt of exploitation.”

[iii]

The official explanation from senior Government officials for the failure of Vuelvan Caras is that individuals were motivated by ‘greed’, as they received a monthly allocation to be part of the programme or micro-credits. This moral argument served to justify the official rejection of Vuelvan Caras and its replacement by the Mission Che Guevara. In fact, the cooperatives faced tremendous difficulties in getting access to circuits of distribution controlled by big corporations (Elia, 2006:76, Piñeiro, 2009). Second, the constitution of cooperatives reflected a culture of amateurism both on the participants' and the government’s side (Elia, 2006: 77). Third, a phenomenon of massive desertion occurred as a result of irregularities in the payment of the monthly allowances. From 2005, approximately 15,000 students quit the Mission. One interviewee explained in this respect:

“From 2005-2006 we witnessed a movement of massive desertion. Field work studies showed that people became tired, especially as they had to deal with inefficiency in public administration and implementation “

[iv]

.

Finally, as Hintze (2008) suggests, the programme suffered from a lack of continuity in terms of political orientations, especially as there was a high degree of turnover at the executive level. This process of permanent change became a clear obstacle to programme consolidation.

Conclusion

In this paper we have sought to explore the relationship between the state and movements for self-management and workers’ control. In doing so we have located our analysis in contemporaneous political economy, noting a spectrum of self-management in practice and a trajectory of development (or retreat). What is clear is that the state, far from having a neutral or passive role, has often sort to shape developments, especially at our key points of trajectory when (capitalist) property relations are threatened or when the circuit of capital is fractured or interrupted. In such instances the role of the state cannot be ignored, or reduced to a ‘non-power’ position whereby the question of state power and the manufacture of ideology based on state power is sidestepped. In our British case an exogenous shock of industrial restructuring led to an endogenous movement for ‘workers’ control’, exemplified by occupations of factories and other workplaces and a campaign to enhance the theory and practice of self-management. However both the occupations and the intellectual movement stumbled as the British Labour government sought to deflect and contain the momentum by the creation of passive forms of ‘industrial democracy’ that sought to bring workers ‘on the board’ but left managerial prerogative and capitalist property relations intact. Support for practical projects was minimal and the intellectual movement, perhaps thrown off course by a weak state response, was similarly thrown into confusion by a ‘fudged’ debate between the exigencies of revolution or reform. This debate challenged and engaged (albeit without definite conclusion) with contemporary theories of the state from Miliband and Poulantzas.  The trajectory towards workers’ control was nevertheless blocked, and the movement receded. In Argentina, the state acted in not dissimilar fashion towards the emerging movement ‘from below’. As in Britain, the movement of recovered factories was initially spurred by a defensive reaction to an acute financial and industrial crisis, but this time firmly located within neoliberal prescriptive restructuring. Following the exogenous shock an endogenous movement developed, which not only challenged capitalist property relations but also began to exploit potential fissures in the circuit of capital, creating genuine alternatives to the logic of capital. Forms of participatory democracy began to take centre stage, circuits of capital were fractured through the establishment of  ‘commons’ and the theoretical debate between state and ‘non-state’ power coagulated. However, the momentum for transformation appeared subsequently to be blocked, and the circuit of capital restored, as the neo-Peronist Kirchner governments incorporated the movement from below by legislation designed to normalise capitalist property relations. Alternative forms of co-operative projects were initiated by the state which blunted the ideological challenge of the movement from below. In effect the role of the state appeared crucial in slowing down and then blocking the trajectory.  In Venezuela, were see a more complex arrangement between state and movement locked into the peculiarities and specificities of the ‘Bolivarian’ revolution. The state has played an active role in encouraging and shaping endogenous projects designed to both modernise industry and also to raise consciousness among the masses. However, the project appears stalled by a lack of ‘real’ self-determination, and is in effect an exogenously produced endogeneity prone to the risk of failure. Finally, in our first example of Cold War Yugoslavia, we see a reverse trajectory of movement away from socialised production to the primacy of the market. We suggest that the Titoist state had constructed self-management from above in its early years ideologically to distance itself from the Soviet alternative but also as a modernisation and disciplining project on a small but growing proletariat. All the weaknesses of self-management were contained in the contradictions between top down authority, still in the Stalinist mode, and a developing class-based divide within the enterprise that denuded self-management of any radical edge. The strategy of survival chosen by the Yugoslav state within the world economy was to introduce market principles into self-managed enterprise, which eventually restored the (capitalist) circuit of capital and full capitalist property relations in post Tito times. As such we see in the Chavista self-management and worker co-operative apparatus an emerging bureaucracy that has echoes of the Yugoslav self-management class. The ‘turn to the market’ was a strategic choice of the Yugoslav state leadership, restricting and containing the opportunities for ‘commons’ in much the same way as the Argentinian state has operated in contemporary times. In all three cases the state has actively intervened to shape or re-shape processes of self-management as part of a strategic choice to reconstitute the nature of the state in the interests of capital accumulation. The state’s adjustment to wider political economy has in such fashion played a crucial role in determining the trajectory and position on the spectrum of self-management.

In summary, our survey would suggest a defining, rather than marginal role for the state. This is not to say that self-management cannot offer a transformative vision towards full workers’ control and socialised production, but rather that this vision cannot be understood in isolation from an understanding of the nature of the state, and neither can it be accomplished without facing the realities of state power. 

Την Παρασκευή έγινε η παρουσίαση της 4ης Πανεθνικής Έρευνας για τις Ανακτημένες Επιχειρήσεις στην  Αργεντινή, από το πρόγραμμα “Ανοιχτή Σχολή” της Σχολής Φιλοσοφίας και Λογοτεχνίας του Πανεπιστημίου του Μπουένος Άιρες. Η τελετή έγινε στο ξενοδοχείο Bauen, στη διασταύρωση των οδών Callao και Corrientes, όπου γιορτάστηκε και η ενδέκατη επέτειος της κατάληψης του ξενοδοχείου από τους εργαζόμενους. Η επέτειος συνέπεσε επίσης με τη δημοσιοποίηση δικαστικής εντολής, η οποία δίνει στους εργαζόμενους 30 ημέρες για να εκκενώσουν το ξενοδοχείο.

Η ιστορία του Bauen θα μπορούσε να διαβαστεί επίσης ως μια παραβολή για την άνοδο, τη στασιμότητα και την κατακόρυφη πτώση του νεοφιλελευθερισμού. Ο Marcelo Iurcovich το έκτισε το 1978 με ένα δάνειο από την Εθνική Τράπεζα Ανάπτυξης (BANADE) μέσω της "Ανεξάρτητης Αρχής του Μουντιάλ 78", ενός οργανισμού φτιαγμένου απ' τη δικτατορία για τη χρηματοδότηση έργων του Παγκόσμιου Κύπελλου Ποδοσφαίρου. Το διάταγμα 1261/77 απέκλειε την διαφάνεια στη διοίκησή του οργανισμού, και για αυτό μέχρι σήμερα δεν έχει γίνει λογιστική αποτίμηση των οικονομικών του Μουντιάλ του 1978. Ο Iurcovich έκτισε το ξενοδοχείο χωρίς να βάλει καθόλου χρήματα από την τσέπη του, και ποτέ δεν επέστρεψε καν την πρώτη δόση του δανείου.

Η δεκαετία του '80 ήταν η χρυσή εποχή του Bauen: μετά τον πύργο στην οδό Callao, ο Iurcovich έκτισε τη σουίτα Bauen από πίσω, στην οδό Corrientes. Κατά τη διάρκεια της δεκαετίας του '90, το ξενοδοχείο φιλοξένησε συνεδριάσεις του Περονισμού καθώς και διάφορες τελετές μετά την επανεκλογή του Κάρλος Μένεμ το 1995. "Κατά τη διάρκεια της ιστορίας του ως εταιρεία του κεφαλαίου με τον Iurcovich, το ξενοδοχείο Bauen ήταν το ξενοδοχείο των ελίτ. Μετά τη εργασιακή διαμάχη, μετατρέπεται στο αντίθετο του: είναι το σπίτι του λαού. Δεν υπάρχει συνέλευση του κόσμου της εργασίας ή της κοινωνικής οικονομίας που να μην έχει περάσει από εδώ», λέει ο Federico Tonarelli, εργαζόμενος στο Bauen και πρώην πρόεδρος του συνεταιρισμού που το διαχειρίζεται. Επιπλέον, κάθε χρόνο, το ετήσιο φεστιβάλ τατουάζ, το μεγαλύτερο στη Λατινική Αμερική, γίνεται στο χώρο του ξενοδοχείου, ενώ πέρυσι έγινε και η εκλογή της Μις Τρανς (http://bit.ly/1dgM6yH).

Το μεγαλείο του Bauen αρχίζει να φθίνει κατά τη διάρκεια της δεκαετίας του '90: η διαδικασία ανοίγματος της αγοράς επιτρέπει στις νέες διεθνείς αλυσίδες ξενοδοχείων να εκτοπίσουν τον ανταγωνισμό. Το 1997, η Χιλιανή επιχείρηση Solari αποφασίζει να αγοράσει το ξενοδοχείο για 12 εκατ. δολάρια και αρχίζει να το διαχειρίζεται, αν και τελικά πληρώνει μόνο τη πρώτη δόση των 4 εκατ. ευρώ. Στο μεταξύ, ο Iurcovich δημιούργεί μια νέα επιχείρηση, Mercoteles, η οποία αρχικά διοικείται από τον κουνιάδο του (ενω τώρα πλέον διοικείται από τον γιο του). Λίγες μέρες αφού δημιουργήθηκε, η Mercotel αγόρασε το Bauen: Ο Iurcovich πούλησε το ξενοδοχείο στον εαυτό του, ενώ η Solari κατέρρευσε, οδηγούμενη σε χρεοκοπία το 2001, κλείνοντας το ξενοδοχείο και απολύοντας τους 80 εναπομείναντες εργαζόμενους μετά από μια μακρά διαδικασία εκκένωσης. Έτσι αρχίζει η νομική διαμάχη για την κυριότητα του ακινήτου η οποία συνεχίζεται μέχρι σήμερα.

Η χώρα στις φλόγες

Τίποτα από τα παραπάνω δεν είναι παράξενα για τη γενικότερη κοινωνικό/οικονομική κατάσταση της χώρας εκείνη την εποχή: οι εργάτες του Bauen δεν ήταν οι μόνοι που δεν είχαν καμία πηγή εισοδήματος. 30 από αυτούς αρχίζουν να δημιουργούν σχέσεις με το αναδυόμενο κίνημα των ανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων, ενθαρρύνονται από την εταιρία γραφικών τεχνών Chilavert, και σχηματίζουν έτσι συνεταιρισμό για να ανακτήσουν το ξενοδοχείο. Ο ακαδημαϊκός Andrés Ruggeri παρακολουθεί από κοντά το κίνημα των ανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων από την αρχή του το 2002, οπότε και ιδρύθηκε το πρόγραμμα “Ανοιχτή Σχολή” το οποίο συντονίζει. Ο Ruggeri μας λέει ότι «στη αρχή το πρόγραμμα μας δεν είχε ένα σαφή στόχο. Η ιδέα ήταν να συνεργαστεί με τα κοινωνικά κινήματα της εποχής: τους πικετοφόρους, τις λαϊκές συνελεύσεις, όχι μόνο τα ανακτημένα εργοστάσια. Πολύ γρήγορα όμως αναπτύξαμε μια καλή σχέση με την IMPA και είδαμε το δυναμικό αυτών των εταιρειών. Ποιο ήταν αυτό το δυναμικό; Ο 'εργαζόμενος', που ως υποκείμενο είχε ηττηθεί και απουσίαζε από τους αγώνες στη δεκαετία του '90. Επρόκειτο για την επιστροφή των βιομηχανικών εργατών, των κλασσικών εργαζομένων. Γι' αυτό επικεντρωσαμε το ενδιαφέρον μας σε αυτούς", λέει ο Ruggeri. Μία από τις πολλές δραστηριότητες του προγράμματος (για το οποίο μπορείτε να διαβάσετε περισσότερα εδώ: http://bit.ly/1d8ftYD) είναι η έρευνα πάνω στις ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις.

Οι μελέτες αυτές δείχνουν μια ανάπτυξη του κινήματος. Το 2001 υπήρχαν 36 ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις καταγεγραμμένες σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα. Το 2004 είχαν γίνει 163 ενώ το 2010 υπήρχαν 247. Αυτή τη στιγμή είναι περίπου 311 και απασχολούν 13.500 εργαζόμενους συνολικά. Γιατί ο αριθμός τους συνέχισε να αυξάνεται μετά το τέλος της κρίσης; Ο Ruggeri λέει, "οι ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις έχουν ήδη αποδείξει τη βιωσιμότητα τους: εκπληρούν το βασικό τους στόχο, που είναι να διατηρηθούν οι θέσεις εργασίας, και πολλές φορές καταφέρνουν ακόμα περισσότερα. Επιπλέον, παρόλο που η κρίση ξεπεράστηκε, οι εταιρείες συνεχίζουν να χρεοκοπούν: είναι κάτι φυσιολογικό για το καπιταλιστικό σύστημα. Η διαφορά πλέον είναι ότι οι εργαζόμενοι έχουν υιοθετήσει την ανάκτηση και αυτοδιαχείριση των επιχειρήσεων ως ένα αποτελεσματικό εργαλείο και μια πιθανή διέξοδο. Αυτό είναι κάτι που τις προηγούμενες δεκαετίες δεν αποτελούσε μέρος του οικονομικού και ιδεολογικού μας ορίζοντα". 

Ανάμεσα σε αυτές τις εταιρίες βρίσκει κανείς όλες τις δραστηριότητες. Οι περισσότερες ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις είναι μεταλλουργικές, αν και η αναλογία τους μειώνεται: σήμερα είναι 61, που αποτελούν σχεδόν το 20 % του συνόλου. Αλλά υπάρχουν και δύο ναυπηγεία, 31 εταιρίες γραφικών τεχνών (οι οποίες συσπειρώνονται στην ομοσπονδία "Δίκτυο Συνεταιριστικών Τυπογραφείων"), 26 υφαντουργικές, ακόμη και μέσα μαζικής ενημέρωσης, κέντρα υγείας, εταιρίες ψύξης και ένα ορυχείο.

Και τώρα, ποιος μπορεί να μας βοηθήσει;

Η παρουσίαση των αποτελεσμάτων της μελέτης έγινε στη Σάλα Bolivar: αυτή είναι μόνο μία από τις 6 που έχει το ξενοδοχείο, επιπλέον από το αμφιθέατρο, τα 220 δωμάτια (εκ των οποίων τα 170 βρίσκονται σε λειτουργία), το μπαρ, την πισίνα και το σολάριουμ (τα δύο τελευταία ακόμη δεν έχουν ξανανοίξει). Ο αγώνας του Bauen για αυτοδιαχείριση αντανακλάται στην λειτουργία του. Το ξενοδοχείο δεν κλείνει ποτέ και οι 130 εργαζόμενοι του χωρίζονται σε τρεις βάρδιες. Παίρνουν τις σημαντικές αποφάσεις στις συνελεύσεις, και τις λιγότερο σημαντικές τις παίρνει ο υπεύθυνος κάθε τομέα, που επιλέγεται με γνώμονα την εμπειρία του στη συγκεκριμένη θέση εργασίας και το σεβασμό που οι συνάδελφοι του έχουν για αυτόν. Πώς μοιράζονται τα κέρδη του ξενοδοχείου; Ο Federico λέει ότι "ενώ ορισμένες ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις αποφασίζουν ότι όλοι οι εργαζόμενοι αμείβονται ακριβώς το ίδιο, εμείς θεωρούμε ότι υπάρχουν θέσεις ευθύνης που αξίζουν καλύτερή αμοιβή. Ωστόσο, στον ιδιωτικό τομέα η ψαλίδα είναι πολύ μεγαλύτερη: η μισθολογική διαφορά μεταξύ ενός διευθυντή και ενός ασκούμενου μπορεί να είναι 10 προς 1, ενώ εδώ είναι 3 προς 1 στην καλύτερη περίπτωση. Προφανώς υπάρχει και μια οικονομική αναγνώριση για τους συντρόφους που κατέλαβαν το εργοστάσιο το 2003, γιατί χωρίς αυτούς δεν θα ήμασταν εδώ."

Η προηγούμενη απόφαση δικαστηρίου, το 2007, υπεγράφη από την δικαστή του εμπορικού δικαίου Paula Hualde. Αποφάσισε ότι το ξενοδοχείο ανήκει στην αλυσίδα Mercoteles και απαίτησε την εκκένωση του από τους εργαζομένους σε 30 ημέρες. Την ημερομηνία της οριστικής εκκένωσης οργανώθηκε μία συναυλία με 4000 παρευρισκόμενους μπροστα στην είσοδο του ξενοδοχείου, για να αποτραπεί μία πράξη που τελικά ποτέ δεν ευοδώθηκε. Ο δικαστικός μαραθώνιος των εργαζομένων συνεχίστηκε: προσπάθησαν να ασκήσουν έφεση κατά της απόφασης, αλλά το 2009 το Εμπορικό Επιμελητήριο επιβεβαίωσε την ιδιοκτησία της Mercoteles. Παρουσίασαν μια καταγγελία στο Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο, η οποία απορρίφθηκε το 2012, αφού υπήρχε ήδη δεδικασμένο. Ως τελευταία επιλογή, κατέθεσαν μια ποινική καταγγελία κατά του Iurcovich και ζήτησαν από τη δικαστή Hualde να αυτοανακηρυχθεί αναρμόδια, αφού η ίδια είχε δικάσει και την υπόθεση πτώχευσης της εταιρίας Solari, και να διαβιβάσει την υπόθεση στο Ομοσπονδιακό Ποινικό Δικαστήριο. Η δικαστής ποτέ δεν ανακηρύχθηκε αναρμόδια, αλλά ανέστειλε την εντολή εκκένωσης. Το 2013 η ποινική υπόθεση παραγράφηκε: η δικαστής Hualde θα πρέπει να εκτελέσει και πάλι την απόφαση του 2007. Έτσι, δόθηκε χτες στη δημοσιότητα ένα διάταγμα που -και πάλι- ορίζει ότι οι εργαζόμενοι έχουν 30 ημέρες για να εκκενώσουν το χώρο.

Απαλλοτρίωση;

«Μέσα στα πλαίσια του νόμου δεν μας μένει καμία εναλλακτική λύση. Η τελική απόφαση είναι ξεκάθαρη: για τη δικαιοσύνη, το ξενοδοχείο ανήκει στη Mercoteles και η δικαστής επιδιώκει να κλείσει μια επιτυχημένη εταιρεία με 130 εργαζόμενους: Αυτό που συμβαίνει είναι στα όρια της τρέλας. Αυτή η κατάσταση μόνο πολιτικά μπορεί να επιλυθεί, αλλά δεν βλέπουμε καμία πολιτική βούληση στο Κογκρέσο», λέει ο Federico. Το τελευταίο σχέδιο νομού για να απαλλοτριωθεί το ξενοδοχείο προς όφελος των εργαζομένων παρουσιάστηκε το 2012, και δεν βρήκε μεγάλη απήχηση μέσα στο κοινοβούλιο. "Εμείς υποστηρίζουμε ότι αν το κράτος κάνει απαιτητά τα χρέη που συνήφθηκαν από τον Iurcovich για την κατασκευή του Bauen, το ξενοδοχείο ανήκει στο κράτος. Και εμείς δεν θέλουμε το κράτος να μας το χαρίσει: να καθίσουμε να βρούμε μια λύση, είτε να το νοικιάσουμε, είτε να μας το παραχωρήσει προσωρινά, είτε να πάρουμε ένα δάνειο, ένα δάνειο για 20 χρόνια για να αγοράσουμε το ακίνητο."

"Η δικαστής Hualde γνωρίζει ότι η κατάσταση είναι περίπλοκη, και το 2012, μας προσκάλεσε σε μία ακροαματική διαδικασία συμβιβασμού με την Mercoteles. Εκεί ο Iurcovich πρότεινε να μας προσλάβει όλους και πάλι, το οποίο είναι για γέλια αν αναλογιστούμε όλα όσα έχουν συμβεί."

Η έκθεση της “Ανοιχτής Σχολής” αποκαλύπτει το νομικό καθεστώς των ανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων με βάση ένα δείγμα που περιλαμβάνει 31 από αυτές. Το ξενοδοχείο Bauen  αποτελεί μέρος του 25,8% των επιχειρήσεων που έχουν καταθέσει πρόταση απαλλοτρίωσης στο κοινοβούλιο και περιμένουν να εγκριθεί. Οι προοπτικές δεν είναι ενθαρρυντικές : μόνο στο 16% των περιπτώσεων η ιδιοκτησία απαλλοτριώθηκε υπέρ των εργαζομένων, σε ένα 9,7% έχουν άδεια από το πτωχευτικό δικαστήριο για να εργάζονται προσωρινά και ένα 16% λειτουργεί με το χώρο παραγωγής κατειλημμένο.

Ο Ruggeri υποστηρίζει ότι αυτή η νομική επισφάλεια "είναι το κύριο μειονέκτημα των ανακτημένων επιχειρήσεων. Δεν έχουν την κυριότητα της εταιρίας, ούτε και πρόσβαση σε δάνεια, και βρίσκονται σε διαμάχη με τους πρώην ιδιοκτήτες. Ούτε βέβαια έχουν στην διάθεση τους κεφάλαιο: αυτό που έχουν είναι παλιά ή κατεστραμμένα μηχανήματα και εγκαταστάσεις, και βεβαίως το εργατικό δυναμικό. Επιπλέον, το διοικητικό, τεχνικό ή εμπορικό προσωπικό συχνά είναι το πρώτο κομμάτι των εργαζομένων που εγκαταλείπει τον αγώνα, αφού είναι πιο εύκολο να βρουν δουλειά αλλού. Σε αυτή την περίπτωση, όσοι έχουν απομείνει πρέπει να αποκτήσουν νέες δεξιότητες που πιθανόν δεν φαντάζονταν καν ότι υπήρχαν, γιατί ήταν εκτός του αντικειμένου τους. Από την άλλη, οι πιο ενοχλητικές πτυχές της εργασίας εξαφανίζονται: η εκμετάλλευση, η κακοποίηση. Ανακτάται η αξιοπρέπεια της εργασίας. Αλλάζει ο ρυθμός και το εργασιακό κλίμα. Οι εισπράξεις σταματάνε να προορίζονται αποκλειστικά για τη συσσώρευση κεφαλαίου και την ευημερία του αφεντικού, και έτσι μπορεί να γίνεται καλύτερη διανομή. Αναστρέφεται αυτή η επιχειρηματική λογική της παραγωγής πλεονάσματος με κάθε θυσία, και εμφανίζονται τα ανθρώπινα στοιχεία: Αναδύεται μια αίσθηση αλληλεγγύης, την οποία μπορεί να αντιληφθεί κανείς παρατηρώντας τον μεγάλο αριθμό πολιτιστικών κέντρων και λαϊκών σχολείων που λειτουργούν μέσα στις ανακτημένες επιχειρήσεις”.