December 2005
Argentina's
Worker-Run
Factories:
What Next?
"cooperatives will
never be able to
outcompete ordinary
capitalist enterprises"
  In November anti-capitalists were urged, via email, to send a letter of protest to the President of Argentina
about the threat to evict the workers cooperative, set up by former employees, that took over the bankrupt Bauen Hotel
in the centre of Buenos Aires two years ago and has been running it ever since.  When in December 2001 the Argentine economy and currency began a melt-down
many small and medium-sized enterprises went bankrupt or were simply abandoned by their owners. Faced with joining the already huge and growing army of unemployed, workers in some of these businesses took matters into their own hands. They occupied the workplace and resumed production on their own account.

 At the time some saw this as the beginning of a social revolution in which the  workers take over the factories and organise production without the bosses. A more sober assessment was that this was workers, in a crisis situation, reacting in a pragmatic fashion to try to ensure that they had some source of income to maintain themselves and their families.
But it did at least show, to any who might not have realised it, that workers can organise production without bosses.

This was not really a mass movement, but it currently involves some 200 enterprises employing in total a maximum of 10,000 people, i.e. the average "recuperated enterprise" as they call themselves (recuperated, that is, from bosses regarded as undeserving or even thieving) is one employing about 50 workers. And 10,000 less unemployed is a drop in the ocean compared with the total number of unemployed in Argentina which, even today, is still over 2 million.

The authorities, not wishing to aggravate an already disastrous economic and financial crisis, accepted this situation as a fait accompli and passed a law allowing workers cooperatives to play a part in rescuing failed businesses. Under this law, local and regional authorities were empowered to compulsorily acquire a failed business and authorise it to be run by a workers cooperative for up to two years pending a settlement with other creditors (the workers themselves were
often also creditors in respect of unpaid wages) or the former owners. Some recuperated enterprises went down this road. Others negotiated a lease with the former owners, which of course involved paying them a share of any profits. Others continued to operate outside the law.

The two years are now coming up, and with the Argentine economy having recovered a little and the social
and political situation stabilised, the authorities are beginning to enforce the law, which gives property rights
over a business either to the former owners or their creditors. A number of businesses taken over by the
workers in 2002 have already been recuperated back from them. Now, it appears, it is the turn of the Bauen Hotel. 

Evicting the bosses and organising production without them is one thing; escaping from the economic laws of the
market is another - as, within capitalism, it is not just a question of organising production, but also of selling
what is produced. Because of their precarious legal position, the workers cooperatives
running a recuperated enterprise have been at a competitive disadvantage.

They can't get proper bank loans and, because ordinary capitalist businesses are not too keen to deal with them,
often have to sell to them via a go-between (who naturally demands a share of the profits).

What the workers cooperatives, some of which  are organised in a Movimento Nacional de Empresas
Recuperadas, are now demanding is a stable legal framework; basically, that the state or regional or local
authorities compulsorily purchase the business they are running and legally hand it over to them. Thus, the petition
to the President of Argentina on behalf of the Bauen Hotel cooperative calls upon "the Argentinian government and
its legislators to act  immediately to . . . pass a law of definitive expropriation in favour of the Workplace cooperative B.A.U.E.N."

Apart from wanting to secure their own position, the broader vision of those behind the Bauen cooperative seems
to be an economy based on a network of worker-owned businesses. Even anarchists in Argentina, who might be
expected to look favourably on this, have criticised it:

"Cooperativism does not provide a real solution to the workers' situation. It is incapable of providing an
answer in the interests of all workers. At no time does it question the capitalist production relationships - it
questions only superficial features (monopolies, competition, etc.). Even less can a network of cooperatives
create a parallel subsystem to capitalism" (www.zabalaza.net/phorum/read.php?f=2&i=156&t=156).

Yes, cooperatives can only ever involve a minority of workers, and the more they are integrated into the capitalist
economy and its profit- seeking, the more their members will have to discipline and pressurise themselves in the way the old
bosses did - what used to be known as "self-managed exploitation".
...continued on page 11
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