Workers' self-management
Encyclopedia
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, the Spanish Revolution
Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
, Titoist Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
under Ahmed Ben Bella
Ahmed Ben Bella
Mohamed Ahmed Ben Bella was a soldier and Algerian revolutionary, who became the first President of Algeria.-Youth:...
, the "recovered factories" movement in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
(in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, fábrica recuperada), the LIP factory in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in the 1970s, the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation
Mondragón Cooperative Corporation
The MONDRAGON Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, its origin is linked to the activity of a modest technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters...
which is the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
's largest corporation, AK Press
AK Press
AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, etc.
In Argentina's recovered factories movement, workers took over control of the factories in which they had worked, commonly after bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, or after a factory occupation
Occupation of factories
Occupation of factories is a method of the workers' movement used to prevent lock outs. They may sometimes lead to "recovered factories," in which the workers self-manage the factories.They have been used in many strike actions, including:...
to circumvent a lockout
Lockout (industry)
A lockout is a work stoppage in which an employer prevents employees from working. This is different from a strike, in which employees refuse to work.- Causes :...
. The Spanish verb recuperar means not only "to get back", "to take back" or "to reclaim" but also "to put back into good condition". Although initially referring to industrial facilities, the term may also apply to businesses other than factories (e.g. Hotel Bauen
Hotel Bauen
The Hotel Bauen is a recuperated business located at 360 Callao Avenue in Buenos Aires run collectively by its workers, serving both as a hotel and as a free meeting place for Argentine leftist and workers' groups...
in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
).
English-language discussions of this phenomenon may employ several different translations of the original Spanish expression other than recovered factory. For example, recuperated factory/business, reclaimed factory, and worker-run factory have been noted. The phenomenon is also known as "autogestion," which comes from the French word for self-management (applied to factories, popular education
Popular education
Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
systems, and other uses). Worker self-management may coincide with employee ownership.
Workers' self-management is often the decision-making model used in co-operative economic arrangements such as worker cooperative
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
s, workers' council
Workers' council
A workers' council, or revolutionary councils, is the phenomenon where a single place of work or enterprise, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates.In a system with...
s, participatory economics
Participatory economics
Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system proposed primarily by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist Robin Hahnel, among others. It uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and...
, and similar arrangements where the workplace operates without a boss. This model of decision making does not involve consulting all employees for every tiny issue in a time-consuming, inefficient and ineffective manner. Real-world examples show that only large-scale decisions are made by all employees during council meetings and small decisions are made by those implementing them while coordinating with the rest and following more general agreements.
Theory
Autogestion was first theorized by Pierre-Joseph ProudhonPierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
during the first part of the 19th century. It then became a primary component of some trade union organizations, in particular revolutionary syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
which was introduced in late 19th century France and guild socialism
Guild socialism
Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds. It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was strongly associated with G. D. H...
in early 20th century Britain, although both movements collapsed in the early 1920s. French trade-union CFDT
Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail
-External links:*...
("Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail") included worker self-management in its 1970 program, before later abandoning it. The philosophy of workers' self-management has been promoted by the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW) since its founding in the United States in 1905.
Critics of workers' self-management from the left, such as Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé is a French political theorist associated with left communism.In collaboration with other left communists such as François Martin and Karl Nesic, Dauvé has attempted to fuse, critique, and develop different left communist currents, most notably the Italian movement associated with...
and Jacques Camatte
Jacques Camatte
Jacques Camatte is a French writer who once was a Marxist theoretician and member of the International Communist Party, a primarily Italian left communist organisation under the influence of Amadeo Bordiga, which denounced the USSR as capitalist and aimed to rebuild a "true" Leninism...
, do not admonish the model as reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
but simply as not progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
in the context of developed capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. Such critics suggest that capitalism is more than a relationship of management. Rather, they suggest capitalism should be considered as a social totality which workers' self-management in and of itself only perpetuates and does not challenge - despite its seemingly radical content and activity. This theory is used to explain why self-management in Yugoslavia never advanced beyond the confines of the larger state monopoly economy, or why many modern worker-owned facilities tend to return to hiring managers and accountants after only a few years of operation.
History
One significant experiment with workers' self-management took place during the Spanish RevolutionSpanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
(1936–1939).
In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, Titoist
Titoism
Titoism is a variant of Marxism–Leninism named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of...
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
advocated a socialist version of autogestion, leading to a break with Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, which practiced central planning and state ownership of industry. The economy of Yugoslavia was organized according to the theories of Tito and - more directly - Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj also known under the pseudonyms Sperans and Krištof was a Yugoslav communist political leader, economist, partisan, publicist, and full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts...
. Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n scientist Branko Horvat
Branko Horvat
Branko Horvat was a Croatian economist and politician. He worked a long time at the Institute of Economic Sciences, the former Planning Institute of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...
also made a significant contribution to the theory of socialism (radničko samoupravljanje) as practiced in Yugoslavia. With the exception of a recession in the mid-1960s, the country's economy prospered under Titoist Socialism. Unemployment was low, the education level of the work force steadily increased. The life expectancy (which was about 72 years) and living standards of Yugoslav citizens was nearly equal to the life expectancy and living standards of citizens of “western” capitalist countries such as Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. Due to Yugoslavia's neutrality and its leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...
, Yugoslav companies exported to both Western and Eastern markets. Yugoslav companies carried out construction of numerous major infrastructural and industrial projects in Africa, Europe and Asia.
After May 68 in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, LIP factory, a clockwork factory based in Besançon
Besançon
Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...
, became self-managed starting in 1973, after the management's decision to liquidate it. The LIP experience was an emblematic social conflict of post-68 in France. CFDT
Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail
-External links:*...
(the CCT as it was referred to in Northern Spain), trade-unionist Charles Piaget led the strike in which workers claimed the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
. The Unified Socialist Party
Unified Socialist Party (France)
The Unified Socialist Party was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. It was originally led by Édouard Depreux , and by Michel Rocard .- History :...
(PSU), which included former Radical Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès France was a French politician. He descended from a Portuguese Jewish family that moved to France in the sixteenth century.-Third Republic and World War II:...
, was in favour of autogestion or self-management.
In the 1970s, the Spanish Legitimist Carlist movement split among the supporters of Don Carlos Hugo
Carlos Hugo of Bourbon, Duke of Parma
Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma and Piacenza was the head of the House of Bourbon-Parma from 1977 until his death...
's new Carlist Party
Carlist Party
The Carlist Party is a Spanish political party that considers itself as a successor to the historical tradition of Carlism. The party was founded in 1969, although it remained illegal until 1977, following the death of the dictator Franco and the democratisation of Spain.The secretary-general of...
, confederalist and autogestionary, and his brother Sixto Enrique de Borbón
Sixto Enrique de Borbón
Prince Sixtus Henry of Bourbon-Parma is considered Regent of Spain by some Carlists who accord him the titles Duke of Aranjuez, Infante of Spain, and Standard-bearer of Tradition.-Early life:...
's Traditionalist Communion, extreme-right.
South America
In October 2005 the first Encuentro Latinoamericano de Empresas Recuperadas ("Latin American Encounter of Recovered Companies") took place in CaracasCaracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, with representatives of 263 such companies from different countries living through similar economical and social situations. The meeting had, as its main outcome, the Compromiso de Caracas (Caracas' Commitment); a vindicating text of the movement.
History of Argentina
The history of Argentina is divided by historians into four main parts: the pre-Columbian time, or early history , the colonial period , the independence wars and the early post-colonial period of the nation and the history of modern Argentina .The beginning of prehistory in the present territory of...
's southern province of Neuquén
Neuquén Province
Neuquén is a province of Argentina, located in the west of the country, at the northern end of Patagonia. It borders Mendoza Province to the north, Rio Negro Province to the southeast, and Chile to the west...
, drastic economic and political events occurred where the citizens ultimately rose up. Although the first shift occurred in a single factory, bosses were progressively fired throughout the province so that by 2005 the workers of the province controlled most of the factories.
In the wake of the 2001 economic crisis, about 200 Argentine companies were "recovered" by their workers and turned into co-operatives. Prominent examples include the Brukman factory
Brukman factory
Brukman is a textile factory in Balvanera, Buenos Aires, Argentina . Currently under the control of a worker cooperative called "18 de Diciembre", it is among the most famous of the country's "recovered factories".-Background:...
, the Hotel Bauen
Hotel Bauen
The Hotel Bauen is a recuperated business located at 360 Callao Avenue in Buenos Aires run collectively by its workers, serving both as a hotel and as a free meeting place for Argentine leftist and workers' groups...
and FaSinPat
FaSinPat
FaSinPat, formerly known as Zanon, is a worker-controlled ceramic tile factory in the southern Argentine province of Neuquén, and one of the most prominent in the recovered factory movement of Argentina...
(formerly known as Zanon). As of 2005, about 15,000 Argentine workers run recovered factories.
The phenomenon of fabricas recuperadas ("recovered factories") is not new in Argentina. Rather, such social movement
Social movement
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....
s were completely dismantled during the so-called "Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
" in the 1970s. Thus, during Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May-July 1973), a rather moderate and left-wing Peronist, approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.
Many recovered factories are run co-operatively and all workers receive the same wage
Wage
A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by workers in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to workers and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees...
. Important management decisions are taken democratically
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
by an assembly of all workers, rather than by professional managers.
The proliferation of these "recoveries" has led to the formation of a recovered factory movement, which has ties to a diverse political network including socialists, Peronists, anarchists and communists. Organizationally, this includes two major federations of recovered factories, the larger Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas (or National Movement of Recuperated Businesses, or MNER) on the left and the smaller National Movement of Recuperated Factories (MNFR) on the right. Some labor unions, unemployed protestors (known as piquetero
Piquetero
A piquetero is a member of a political faction whose primary modus operandi is based in the piquete. The piquete is an action by which a group of people blocks a road or street with the purpose of demonstrating and calling attention over a particular issue or demand...
s), traditional worker cooperative
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
s and a range of political groups have also provided support for these take-overs. In March 2003, with the help of the MNER, former employees of the luxury Hotel Bauen
Hotel Bauen
The Hotel Bauen is a recuperated business located at 360 Callao Avenue in Buenos Aires run collectively by its workers, serving both as a hotel and as a free meeting place for Argentine leftist and workers' groups...
occupied the building and took control of it.
One of the highest difficulties such a movement faces is its relation towards the classic economic system, as most classically managed firms refused, for various reasons (among which ideological hostility to the very principle of autogestion) to work and deal with recovered factories. Thus, isolated recovered factories find it easier to work together in building an alternative economic system and thus manage to reach a critical size and power which enables it to negotiate with the ordinary capitalistic firms.
See also
|
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a Grammy Award-winning classical music chamber orchestra based in New York City. It is known for its collaborative leadership style in which the musicians, not a conductor, interpret the score.... Paris Commune The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution... Participatory economics Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system proposed primarily by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist Robin Hahnel, among others. It uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and... Popular education Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular... Unified Socialist Party (France) The Unified Socialist Party was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. It was originally led by Édouard Depreux , and by Michel Rocard .- History :... United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives is a federation of worker cooperatives in the United States. USFWC was founded at the U.S. Conference of Democratic Workplaces in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2004..... Worker cooperative A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which... Workers' control Workers' control is a term meaning participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, Communists, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, and has been combined with various... Workers' council A workers' council, or revolutionary councils, is the phenomenon where a single place of work or enterprise, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates.In a system with... Workplace democracy Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in all its forms to the workplace.... 1971 Harco work-in The 1971 Harco work-in was an action undertaken by workers at a steel plant in Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia. The work-in was the culmination of a protracted industrial dispute between the owners of Harco Steel and the workers at the Campbelltown site... (a four-week "work-in" by Australian steelworkers) |
Further reading
- For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America, PM Press, by John Curl, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60486-072-6
External links
- Argentinian workers preparing to defend control of factory, April 26, 2005
- THE NEW RESISTANCE IN ARGENTINA, by Yeidy Rosa
- Self-management and Requirements for Social Property: Lessons from Yugoslavia by Diane Flaherty
- Worker self-management in historical perspective by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer
- Sources Of The Democratic Deficit In The Yugoslav System Of "Self-Government" by Dan Jakopovich
- Movimiento Nacional de Fabricas Recuperadas (National Movement of Recovered Factories, Spanish only)
- The Worker-Recovered Enterprises in Argentina: The Political and Socioeconomic Challenges of Self-Management Andrés Ruggeri, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Official site for El Cambio Silencioso, book on recovered factories by Esteban Magnani (Spanish and English mostly)
- The Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises: Cooperatively Reorganizing Productive Life in Hard Times (Labor Studies Journal, 2010) by Marcelo Vieta
- http://www.tectum-verlag.de/9912_Kristina_Hille_Die_%93empresas_recuperadas%93_in_Argentinien._Selbsthilfe_von_Erwerbslosen_in_Krisenzeiten_%93Reaktivierte_Unternehmen%93_Arbeiterselbstverwaltung_%93Soziale_Bewegungen_%93Cono_Sur%93_Peronismus_Gewerkschaften_Wirtschaftskrise_Insolvenz_Enteignung.Selbsthilfe von Erwerbslosen in Krisenzeiten. Die empresas recuperadas in Argentinien, by Kristina Hille]