In terms of prospects for emancipation, the dawn of the twenty-first century is framed by the waning of the main alternatives that sought during the twentieth century to transform the capitalist system. The crisis of real socialism and social democracy, and the power of the expanding neoliberal system with its negative consequences for social inequality, promoted a search for new alternatives. These included various ways of recreating the traditions of co-operativism and self-management.
Argentinaâs 2001 neoliberal crisis became a genuine social laboratory in the search for a solution âright here, right nowâ to the exclusion created by the system. Direct action and autonomy came to be the hallmarks of a citizenry that ceased to delegate the defence of its social identities to the institutional authorities. Worker-recuperated enterprises began to spread during this widespread crisis. Against a backdrop of high unemployment and social dislocation, groups of workers stood up and defended their jobs. To do this they had to change the patterns of what was pre-established. A far cry from passiveness and the individualisation of suffering as a way to deal with unemployment, these workers occupied the factories and got them into production.
Rather than being restricted to an exception or anomaly of the crisis, these processes of social innovation and conversion of capitalist enterprises built on workersâ associated production continued and developed over the following years. Limited as they are in numbers (about 400), they have had a significant impact in the public arena. Social sciences and political debate were no strangers to this tendency and gave rise to an abundance of research and articles, while also sowing the seeds of local and international debates that varied in the fruits they bore. While the phenomenon spread to other countries in Latin America and the rest of the world, in their degree of development and form â as a social movement â las recuperadas (recuperated enterprises) have remained closely associated with Argentina.
At a local level, they involved a heterodox renovation of old-school Argentinian co-operativism. Workers disobeying unemployment advanced on production. In ways more adaptive than utopian, workers put together new co-operatives, which, unlike a significant part of traditional co-operativism, did
A few short years later, in the wave of Latin American progressive governments â one of the most significant critical responses to the global neoliberal hegemony â the creation of co-operatives took on a new role. During the so-called political cycle of Kirchnerist governments,1 co-operative creation was used as a meaningful tool in the social policy of inclusion and the fight against extreme poverty. In this context, various programmes incorporated association in worker co-operatives as a prerequisite for their beneficiaries.
Unlike recuperated enterprises, this wave of co-operativism promoted the formation of co-operatives more through the initiative of the state than civil society. This enabled this organisational form to spread, and mitigated or circumvented the problem of market insertion, but with widely differing and complex results, particularly in relation to the venturesâ autonomy and their capacity to innovate for social change. Thus, whether the initiative comes from workers or from governments critical of neoliberalism, worker co-operativism has emerged in latter-day Argentina as an alternative to unemployment, but its very development fuels the hope in the area of theory and action at the global level that it will play a prominent role in the field of alternatives to capital.
Denise Kasparianâs book, Co-operative Struggles: Work Conflicts in Argentinaâs New Worker Co-operatives, is one of the most original and polished pieces of research into these issues. It sets out to chart the new experiences of co-operativism from an unprecedented angle, at the intersection of the organisation of the socio-productive process and social conflict. Revisiting the old Marxist axiom that every mode of production is a mode of confrontation, the book poses the question of conflict in the new forms of work.
Unlike the mainstream of labour conflicts, it sets out to broaden the study of contentious events towards non-wage relations. Unlike the dominant approaches to the field of social and solidarity economy, conflict appears not only as a struggle for self-management but as a result of it. Far from being a territory where contradictions and tensions are extinguished, in self-management,
Based on comparative case studies complemented with different data sources, Kasparian adopts a critical stance to develop the analysis of the various socio-productive forms taken by the new co-operatives, as well as how they structure and are structured by social conflict. On the way, she steeps herself in a rich use of social theory. Her touchstone is Erik Olin Wright and his neo-Marxist approach but, with the heterodoxy required by the research, this is enriched by the use of other approaches from social theory. Diverse perspectives on economic sociology, the social and solidarity economy, social conflict and collective action are deployed on the way. The thesis is developed and specified masterfully and readably as we turn the pages, inviting us to read and to press ahead in this field of research with open minds.
Denise Kasparian is a sociologist, with a Ph.D. in Social Sciences, and a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas [National Scientific and Technical Research Council] (conicet). She set out on her adventure of knowledge at the Instituto Gino Germani [Gino Germani Institute] of the Universidad de Buenos Aires [University of Buenos Aires] (uba), where she still passionately pursues her research and teaching work today. Her work focuses on the fields of self-management, co-operativism, and the social and solidarity economy. She is, without a doubt, one of the most promising young writers in Argentinian sociology. Co-operative Struggles is her first magnum opus. The book is drawn from her doctoral thesis, first published in Spanish in 2020 by Editorial Teseo and the Faculty of Social Sciences, uba, in Argentina, and defended with the highest honours at the uba in 2017. This new English version of the book will surely facilitate circulation of the knowledge contained in Kasparianâs work to new frontiers. I firmly believe that reading it will broaden the horizons of understanding of the challenges faced by co-operativism and self-management through its identification of the problems, dilemmas and strengths of âworking without bosses.â As a rigorous and unequivocal exponent of emancipatory social science, she expands our toolbox for social change. I would therefore extend this invitation to the reader to explore her pages and enjoy your reading.
I refer to the government cycle ushered in by the presidency of Néstor Kirchner (2003â07) of the Partido Justicialista [Justicialist Party] (pj) and the Frente para la Victoria [Front for Victory] (FpV), and continued by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (PJ-FpV, 2007â11 and 2011â15).