Co-operative Struggles: Work Conflicts in Argentina’s New Worker Co-operatives

260 Pages·2021·3.019 MB·English

by  Denise Kasparian

Co- operative Struggles
Studies in Critical Social Sciences

Series Editor
David Fasenfest
(Wayne State University)
volume 203
New Scholarship in
Political Economy
Series Editors
David Fasenfest
(Wayne State University)
Alfredo Saad-Filho
(King’s College London)
Editorial Board
Kevin B. Anderson (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Tom Brass (formerly of sps, University of Cambridge)
Raju Das (York University)
Ben Fine ((emeritus) soas University of London)
Jayati Ghosh (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Elizabeth Hill (University of Sydney)
Dan Krier (Iowa State University)
Lauren Langman (Loyola University Chicago)
Valentine Moghadam (Northeastern University)
David N. Smith (University of Kansas)
Susanne Soederberg (Queen’s University)
Aylin Topal (Middle East Technical University)
Fiona Tregenna (University of Johannesburg)
Matt Vidal (Loughborough University London)
Michelle Williams (University of the Witwatersrand)
volume 13
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Cover illustration: Bust of Karl Marx, 1939, by S.D. Merkurov, at the Fallen Monument Park (Muzeon Park of
Arts) in Moscow, Russia. Photo courtesy of Alfredo Saad-Filho.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kasparian, Denise, author. | Rebón, Julián, writer of foreword. |
Barnett, Ian (Translator), translator.
Title: Co-operative struggles : work conflicts in Argentina’s new worker
co-operatives / by Denise Kasparian ; foreword by Julián Rebón ;
translated by Ian Barnett.
Other titles: Lucha ¿sin patrón?. English
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Series: Studies in critical
social sciences, 2666-2205 ; volume 203 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2021043027 (print) | lccn 2021043028 (ebook) |
isbn 9789004468580 (hardback) | isbn 9789004468641 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Cooperative societies–Argentina. | Labor
policy–Argentina. | Social conflict–Argentina.
Classification: lcc HD3468 .K3713 2022 (print) | lcc HD3468 (ebook) |
ddc 334.0982–dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043027
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043028
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill.” See and download: brill.com/brill-t ypeface.
issn 2666- 2205
isbn 978- 90- 04- 46858- 0 (hardback)
isbn 978- 90- 04- 46864- 1 (e- book)
Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents

F oreword
The Democratisation of Conflict viii
Julián Rebón
A cknowledgements xi
L ist of Illustrations xii
I ntroduction 1
1 T he Question of Work Conflicts in New Co- operatives 3
2 D imensions of New Social Conflicts in Co- operative Socio- productive
Contexts 9
3 T he Challenge of Comparing Paradigmatic but Non- equivalent
Experiences: Studying a Whole That Acts as a Whole 15
4 T he Structure of the Book 18
1 C o- operatives ‘Made in Argentina’
The Process of Enterprise Recuperation by Their Workers 20
1 T he Socio- genesis of the Processes of Enterprise Recuperation 21
1.1 When Worker Resistance Becomes an Offensive Movement 21
1.2 The Widespread Crisis of 2001– 2002, or Adding Fuel to the
Fire 23
1.3 The Movement of the Flames 26
2 T he Evolution of Enterprise Recuperation Processes 29
2.1 T he Fuel of the Growing Economy Keeps the Flames of
Production Moving 31
2.2 The Moral Economy of Work in the Continued Presence of
Enterprise Recuperations 33
2.3 “Argentina Is One Big, Recuperated Factory”: Public Policies for
Recuperated Enterprises 36
2.4 The Movement’s Fragmentation, Co- operative Convergence and
Union Rapprochement 42
2 I ncubated Co- operatives
Co- operative Formation under the Argentina Works Programme 48
1 S ocial Schemes with Work Requirement: From Workfare to the
Argentina Works Programme 50
2 T he Mediation of Unemployed Workers’ Organisations: Civil
Associations, Productive Units and Co- operatives 56
vi Contents
3 T he Dual Logic of the Argentina Works Programme’s Socio- genesis:
Creating Jobs and Co- ordinating Local Politics 60
4 I nduced Co- operatives? The Struggle of Unemployed Workers’
Organisations 62
4.1 The Evolution of the Argentina Works Programme 65
4.2 The Intensity and Dynamics of Contentious Action 67
4.3 The Demands and Forms of Contentious Action 70
3 K eeping and Having a Job
A Milestone in Constitutive Conflicts 76
1 ‘ Occupy, Resist, Produce’ … and Have! 76
2 F rom ‘Induction’ to the ‘Co- operative without Brokers’ 89
3 A Comparative Lens on Constitutive Conflicts 97
4 T he Recuperated Enterprise and Social Power in Production 105
1 R ecuperators, Activists and the ‘Born and Bred’ 106
2 P roperty Relations: Social Possession and Differential Appropriation
of the Fruits of Labour 110
3 T he Logic of Production and the Issue of Sustainability in
Recuperated Enterprises 120
4 T he Political Dimension: Between Self- management and
Delegation 125
5 S ocial Groupings and Potential Antagonisms: Opportunity Hoarding,
Enterprise Projects and Work Generations 134
5 T he Argentina Works Co- operative and State Power in Production 139
1 T he Labour and Socio- spatial Precarity of Argentina Works
Programme Workers 140
2 P roperty Relations: Social Possession and Autonomy 142
3 T he Logic of Production: Between Subsistence and Political
Accumulation 148
4 T he Political Dimension: State Power and Co- management 156
5 S ocial Groupings and Potential Antagonisms: State Officials,
Co- operative Members and Activists 162
6 T he Production of Co- operative Conflict 166
1 B oard Removals: Conflicts over the Running and Expansion of the
Productive Process 168
2 R egulations, Sanctions and Exclusions: From ‘Founder Members’ to
‘Founderer Members’ 182
Contents vii
3 “ We Fought over the River Module”: The Conflict over Autonomous
Work 190
4 B etween Subsistence Consumption and Political Accumulation in the
Social Organisation 199
5 A Comparative Lens 206
7 C onclusions 210
1 T he New Twenty- First- Century Co- Operativism and Its Struggles
Around Work 210
2 W hat Patterns of Conflicts Are There without Bosses? Towards a
Theory of Unrest in Worker Co- operatives 214
3 F rom Prelude to Present: A Toolbox for New Research
Questions 222
B ibliography 225
I ndex 242
Foreword

The Democratisation of Conflict
Julián Rebón
In terms of prospects for emancipation, the dawn of the twenty-f irst century
is framed by the waning of the main alternatives that sought during the twen-
tieth 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.
Argentina’s 2001 neoliberal crisis became a genuine social laboratory
in the search for a solution ‘right here, right now’ 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-r ecuperated 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 workers’ associated production continued and developed over the follow-
ing years. Limited as they are in numbers (about 400), they have had a signif-
icant 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 arti-
cles, 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 – as a social movement – 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
Foreword: The Democratisation of Conflict ix
not split property and work. Instead, they formed worker co- operatives, the
associational form with most ruptures as compared to capitalist enterprises.
In contrast to past experiences, these enterprises were not born from scratch
steered by the ideals of the old co- operative movement, but from the conver-
sion of capitalist enterprises by groups of employees seeking to preserve their
jobs, even at the expense of having to change their employment category.
A few short years later, in the wave of Latin American progressive govern-
ments – one of the most significant critical responses to the global neoliberal
hegemony – 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 associa-
tion 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 cir-
cumvented the problem of market insertion, but with widely differing and
complex results, particularly in relation to the ventures’ 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 Kasparian’s book, Co- operative Struggles: Work Conflicts in Argentina’s
New Worker Co-o peratives, 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 organi-
sation 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-m anagement but as a result of it. Far from being a terri-
tory where contradictions and tensions are extinguished, in self-m anagement,
1 I refer to the government cycle ushered in by the presidency of Néstor Kirchner (2003– 07)
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, 2007–1 1 and
2011– 15).
x Foreword: The Democratisation of Conflict
they acquire new forms and are structured by new cleavages. Conflict pres-
ents itself as an operator inherent to the social organisation, and its character
changes with the organisation. The thesis developed by Kasparian proposes
that the democratisation of production implies the democratisation of con-
flict, not its disappearance. The class cleavage around working conditions
tends to be displaced by a more horizontal, less stratified and aggregated con-
flict more diversified in the themes of its claims.
Based on comparative case studies complemented with different data
sources, Kasparian adopts a critical stance to develop the analysis of the var-
ious 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 her-
self 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 perspec-
tives 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 Científicas 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 pub-
lished 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 Kasparian’s 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 ‘working without bosses.’ 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.