Between class and the market: Self-management in theory and in the practice of worker-recuperated enterprises in Argentina

ATZENI, M.; VIETA, M.

Routledge Companion to Alternative Organisation

Routledge

Lugar: Abington Oxford; Año: 2013; p. 47 - 63

Despite the existence of cultural prejudices and structural obstacles to workers´ self-management, historical recurrences of cases and events in which workers have taken direct democratic control of production and its administration proves that self-management can be a real, democratic and empowering organisational alternative to the authoritarian, top down and elitist structure of a traditional capitalist organisation. Indeed, history shows that workers´ self-management is one of the viable and available options for organising workplaces, and possibly the organisational structure par excellence for a more inclusive and equal alternative society. This chapter analyzes the theoretical challenges and empirical underpinnings of workers´ self-management. The first part of the chapter theorizes self-management as rooted in class based actions and struggle. The concept and practices of self-management are, we assert, structurally embedded within and generated by the same economic system to which it suggests an alternative. That is, self-management most often emerges from the struggles and contradictions inherent to the labour process within capitalism. More specifically, practices of self-management are rooted in the spontaneous, bottom-up and direct actions of workers struggling to go beyond the dominative, exploitative, and authoritarian nature of the capitalist workplace. Self-management is also characteristically transformative. It both prefigures alternative forms of organising work that are infinitely more democratic and humane than those proffered by the investor-owned and capital-managed firm, while fundamentally changing the values, attitudes, and behaviours of its protagonists as they transition from managed employees to self-managed workers. We also analyze the constraints and opportunities for workers´ self-management as an alternative organisational form in light of market competition.