TAKING DESTINY INTO THEIR OWN HANDS:

AUTOGESTIÓN AND COOPERATION IN ARGENTINA’S WORKER-RECUPERATED

ENTERPRISES

MARCELO ALEJANDRO VIETA

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA

JUNE 2012

Marcelo Alejandro Vieta

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Abstract

Since the crisis of Argentina’s neoliberal model in the years spanning the turn of the millennium, almost 9,400 workers have occupied and now self-manage over 200 once-proprietary firms in distress, converting them overwhelmingly into worker cooperatives. As a result, Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises, or ERTs) can now be found throughout its economy, inspiring the imaginaries of workers the world over. In reappropriating firms that once employed them via projects of autogestión (self-management), ERT workers transform businesses into democratic and socialized productive entities, directly address Argentina’s chronic under- and unemployment, and return control to workers. Grounded in critical theoretical approaches, this dissertation explores ERTs’ “prefigurative” possibilities for alternative economic arrangements, as well as the tensions interlacing them from having to exist within competitive markets. To better understand this “dual reality” of ERTs, the dissertation deploys an interdisciplinary, two-pronged grid of inquiry—a macro-level “political economy of the working class” axis of research, and micro-level key informant interviews with ethnographic case studies of three exemplar ERTs. This approach allows the study to delve into ERTs’ historical conjunctures, workers’ self-activity within the labour process under capitalism, and the transformations of protagonists from managed employees to self-managed workers. Ultimately, the dissertation arrives at three major findings. Most broadly, it shows how ERT workers’ projects of autogestión and cooperation are consolidated and strengthened through their collective overcoming of crises within a “moral economy of work.” Second, it lays out ERTs’ “social innovations,” which include the democratic values and horizontalized production processes that re-contour their organizational structures, and the bonds of solidarity created between workers, ERTs, and surrounding communities. And third, it unravels six “recuperative moments” interweaving ERTs’ social innovations: the recuperation of workers’ labour-power, surpluses, capacities to associate and cooperate, the social production of social wealth, the labour process, and the division of labour. Practically, these findings point to viable paths beyond socioeconomic crises, exploitation, and alienation, for and by workers. Theoretically, they contribute to advancing sociologies and critical theories of work and labour; theories of alternative economics; and to our understanding of the formation and dynamics of worker cooperatives and labour-managed firms.

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Table of Contents Abstract Dedications Acknowledgements Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Glossary of Spanish Terms and Phrases Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores: An Introduction PART 1 WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING ARGENTINA’S EMPRESAS RECUPERADAS: RESEARCHING, THEORIZING,

AND HISTORICIZING AUTOGESTIÓN Chapter 1 Understanding and Researching Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores:

Reviewing the Literature and Mapping the Method Chapter 2 Makers of Their Own History: Workers’ Self-Determination and Autogestión Chapter 3 Conjunctures of Workers’ Self-Activity: Historically Situating Argentina’s ERTs PART 2 THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AUTOGESTIÓN IN ARGENTINA’S EMPRESAS RECUPERADAS Chapter 4 “Destiny in Our Own Hands”: Three Stories of Worker-Recuperations Chapter 5 “Occupy, Resist, Produce”: Commonalities in the Lived Experiences of Recuperating

Workplaces in Argentina Chapter 6 The Challenges of Autogestión in Argentina Chapter 7 Recuperating the Labour Process, Transforming Subjectivities: From Empleados to

Trabajadores Autogestionados and Compañeros PART 3 RECUPERATING AUTOGESTIÓN Chapter 8 Recuperating Autogestión, Prefiguring Alternatives: Some Possible Conclusions Appendix A Interview Protocol Appendix B Learning Indicators Appendix C Interviews Conducted and Meetings Attended Bibliography