A-Infos (en) Italy, FdCA, IL CANTIERE #37 - "Recovered Enterprises: Working-Class Resistance to Ultraliberalism in Argentina. -- Interview by Damián H. Cuesta with Andrés Ruggeri" (*) (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Worker-led enterprise recovery (ERT) is a movement that, since its 
emergence in Argentina in the second half of the 20th century, has 
continued to grow, spreading to other countries in the Americas. The 
latest data indicate that the number of expropriated businesses 
currently existing in the Buenos Aires area alone is approaching half a 
thousand. However, with the arrival of the ultraliberal Milei 
government, dark storms are looming over these self-managed businesses.
At the Institute of Economic Sciences and Self-Management (ICEA), we 
asked Professor Andrés Ruggeri, director of the Worker-Recovered 
Businesses Documentation Program at the Faculty of Philosophy of the 
University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and coordinator of the International 
Workers' Economics Meetings, whose last meeting took place in October 
2024 in Barcelona, for his opinion on the topic. He is the author of the 
book "What Are the Recovered Businesses? Self-Management of the Worker 
Class," the latest edition of which (2017) was published in Spain by 
Descontrol.

To begin, to provide some context, what are we talking about when we 
talk about worker-recovered businesses (ERTs)?

Well, recovered enterprises is a term that arose here in Argentina 
around the 2001 crisis, a consequence of the neoliberal period we had 
been enduring since 1989, which exploded, producing a massive crisis. 
During that crisis, a series of factory occupations emerged that had a 
major impact on public opinion and, in particular, on popular labor 
organizations, which saw numerous workers occupying factories to put 
them back into production. This phenomenon began to be called, even at 
that time, by the very people involved, "enterprises recovered by their 
workers."
It's not a term that comes from the academic, political, theoretical, or 
ideological fields, but rather the way in which the protagonists of 
those events themselves chose to name what they were doing: recovering 
businesses that had gone bankrupt or closed, which were occupied and put 
back into production by their workers, generally in the form of worker 
cooperatives or through self-management practices.
From that moment on, this term began to be used in other countries, not 
only in Argentina, but also in Uruguay, Brazil, and so on. It has spread 
to the point of establishing itself as a term for those processes in 
which traditional, vertical, capitalist enterprises, with an owner and 
employees, become enterprises managed by the workers' collective, who 
manage to get them back up and running through various processes of 
struggle.

In line with what you just said, these mobilizations arise as a dramatic 
response by workers to a tragic economic and social situation, stemming 
from the neoliberal policies implemented in the 1980s and 1990s. In this 
sense, can we say that the ERT movement has been a process of maturation 
of the working class, directly proportional to the aggressiveness of the 
neoliberal policies implemented over the last twenty years?

Yes, certainly. In 2001, a crisis occurred that brought down the 
government, that of De la Rúa at the time, which represented the 
continuation of the Menem government, which had initiated the neoliberal 
process at that stage. Before then, however, there were others, such as 
the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. It was precisely during 
that period of dictatorship that the foundations were laid for the 
entire neoliberal model that would continue to this day. Now we have 
this well-known figure, Milei. There is continuity in all these 
processes and, in particular, in the 1990s a major transformation of 
Argentina's socioeconomic and labor structure was promoted. It was not a 
process unique to our country, but in Argentina it was particularly 
profound and, in just a few years, a large portion of the working class 
was left outside of wage labor relations, becoming unemployed workers, 
jobless workers. These workers initially began organizing themselves as 
piquetero movements (unemployed movements that organized pickets and 
roadblocks). Participants in these movements went out to block roads, 
highways, and so on; that is, a whole series of resistance processes 
took place, but outside the workplace. Therefore, these workers couldn't 
do much more than try to attract attention, demand some kind of response 
from the state, anything at all, but by then it was too late: not only 
had they lost their jobs, they had also been expelled from their 
workplaces. In the cases of the recovered businesses, however, unlike 
these other situations, the workers-who witnessed what was 
happening-decided not to abandon the factory when it closed, to try to 
maintain the place where they worked, even in the absence of the owners. 
So yes, answering your question, what happened can indeed be understood 
as a maturation process: initially, the vast majority of workers 
couldn't even imagine the possibility of remaining in their workplaces 
before being fired; while, at a certain point, in some very specific and 
concrete cases, this began to happen. Metalworking workshops in the 
southern part of Greater Buenos Aires began to propose the strategy of 
employment and the formation of cooperatives as a way to protect their 
jobs. In Patagonia, the Zanón ceramics factory, which later took the 
name Fasinpat ('factory without bosses' = factory without bosses), and 
several other very specific cases that initially had no connection to 
each other and remained isolated, began to unite with the great crisis 
of 2001, acquiring a common identity, and it was from then that the 
movement reached a new scale.

Regarding the attitude of political elites toward recovered businesses, 
you argue that while neoliberal governments in Argentina pursued 
policies of strangulation, the Kirchner-led social-liberal governments 
(to give them some name) maintained a relationship of tolerance, or 
rather, disinterest. But now, how do the ERTs deal with the threat of an 
ultraliberal government led by a "madman" like Milei?

Yes, it's a much worse government than any that came before. An 
ultraliberalism so unbridled that, while it has some similarities with 
previous ones, it's not comparable.
We're trying to stay ahead of the curve, to understand how to better 
organize the movement because it's very dispersed and fragmented across 
different organizations. It's important to keep in mind that the ERT 
movement has been evolving for over thirty years, and in that time, as 
you said, the state has implemented different policies.
What I can tell you is that, so far, the government has only spoken out 
once, not directly from Milei, but through his spokesperson, Adorni. 
This spokesperson spoke out against cooperatives in general, claiming 
they were a cash cow that we Argentinians financed, as if cooperatives 
were state-run organizations and as if they were a product of political 
corruption. This is the general view they have of cooperatives. But I 
think that, with regard to the ERT, they don't even really know what 
they're dealing with. If they manage to put together a government with 
any coherence, it's only a matter of time before they address it.
For now, they're nothing more than a ragtag bunch of improvised actors, 
a sort of rock-star platform-as he likes to call himself-of the most 
grotesque far right, which nevertheless remains a huge business 
opportunity for megacorporations, a total destruction of everything 
public, and an unrestrained attack on workers... Undoubtedly, when the 
time comes, sooner or later they'll set their sights on recovered 
businesses and self-management, and we'll wait for them there.

In your book, What Are the Recovered Businesses?, you describe the 
various obstacles and challenges workers face from the moment they 
decide to occupy and expropriate their workplaces. One of these key 
moments, given its existential nature, is the occupation and subsequent 
resistance to judicial persecution. What is this process like?
It's quite complicated to understand these judicial issues, because 
first and foremost there's an economic process, a grassroots economic 
process, and a workers' struggle. There are businesses that fail, 
businesses that close, but those closures were usually the result of 
fraudulent maneuvers by entrepreneurs.
Argentina is a country with a fairly developed industry, one of the 
largest in Latin America, although far from European levels, yet with a 
relatively significant production capacity. When neoliberal governments 
opened the country to imports, they eliminated all barriers protecting 
industry and adopted a maneuver on the exchange rate, the famous 
convertibility, which consisted of equating one Argentine peso to one 
dollar, a completely fictitious and artificial measure. Its effect was 
that it became much cheaper to import than to produce. Therefore, most 
industrial entrepreneurs began to transform themselves into importers, 
generally importing the same products they previously manufactured. In 
this new situation, entrepreneurs considered both their factories and 
their workers as an economic burden. So they proceeded to get rid of it 
as cheaply as possible, avoiding paying benefits, covering debts, and so 
on. Fraudulent bankruptcy was the way to avoid all these expenses. The 
workers suddenly found themselves without a job.
The factory closed or gradually deteriorated in processes that could 
last months or years. Machinery was not repaired, wages were paid late, 
and so on. In short, the entrepreneurial tactic consisted of getting the 
workers to leave on their own.
Before that point, the factory occupation occurred: the workers did not 
want the plant to be auctioned off; they wanted to continue using it as 
a productive asset and a labor resource. And this is where the legal 
contradiction arises: what comes first, private property (in reality, it 
wasn't even a question of defending private property, but rather of the 
profit deriving from its auction) or the right to continued employment?
Here we already encounter an initial complexity, because in many of 
these cases, the owners themselves, using a series of truly intricate 
maneuvers, presented themselves as creditors and, faced with the 
workers' occupation of the factory, reacted by denouncing them as usurpers.
For their part, the workers asserted their right to work, defending 
their jobs, trying to keep the machinery because that was their 
livelihood. It's unknown now (he's referring to the ERTs, which are 
experiencing this process under Milei's government), but at the time, 
thanks to the resistance of the occupying workers, these conflicts were 
brought to the legislative assemblies of the various provinces and 
expropriation laws were passed.

In recent meetings on the workers' economy, the need to demand a legal 
framework that recognizes this form of expropriation by workers of 
failed companies has been discussed. How has progress been made in this 
area? Has the ERT movement defined a regulatory model that recognizes 
self-managed work?
There's a certain consensus that self-managed work should be recognized 
as a different form of labor, with its own modalities, logic, 
legislation, system of rights, social security, healthcare, conflict 
resolution, and so on. Intervening in any way in the legislation of 
capitalist forms of production by introducing a form of collective labor 
and collective ownership is, of course, very difficult, because it 
represents a profound break with the logic by which capitalist society 
is organized, with its legislative and legal forms. But this is, in a 
way, what is being set as the objective.
There are bills-some more advanced, some less so, some in between-a bit 
of everything. There are debates on the question of financing: whether 
everything should come from the organizations' own activity or whether 
there should also be public support for certain issues. Generally, it 
arises as a question of justice: if capitalists receive subsidies, why 
shouldn't the self-managed economy also receive its share? It's not a 
matter of arguing that it should be state-funded, but rather that it 
should share in the same distribution of resources as others.

Once workers have overcome the expropriation, the moment of productive 
recovery arrives. In the book, you comment that workers have had to 
rethink concepts like "economic viability" or "economic objectives." 
What would be the keys to this redefinition?
Yes, this is a truly interesting and strategic debate: why are we doing 
this? In the case of recovered businesses, it's clear that the primary 
objective is to work, to have a means of subsistence. The entire 
struggle begins with that first, fundamental step. There may be cases of 
businesses that, after being occupied, end up becoming places that 
aren't strictly speaking productive, but that generate highly valuable 
cultural and social experiences. However, the first step is to recover 
work activity, so that workers can live a dignified life.
And it is here that the question of viability emerges, as a direct 
consequence. In capitalist terms, it's not "feasible" for a group of 
workers to "merely" get a factory up and running and live well. This 
isn't what capitalism means by success-that is, reaching certain levels 
of accumulation.
It often happened that engineers, economists, and technicians would 
visit the recovered businesses and say, "This isn't feasible," "When 
this or that happens, you won't be able to cope." And, indeed, sometimes 
certain limitations emerge in the long run. For example, when it comes 
to renovating machinery, making significant investments, or looking for 
a larger or smaller facility: that's where those limitations arise. But 
the very concept of feasibility must be rethought: Why renovate a 
factory? Why self-manage a business? To accumulate capital or to allow 
its members to live with dignity?
And it's not just a matter of rethinking what it means to live with 
dignity-which is a whole debate in itself-but also what the social and 
environmental impacts of what is produced are, what the relationship 
that business has with the local area is. In this sense, the challenges 
facing ERTs within capitalism are enormous. Generally, workers try to 
keep working, and then these debates emerge: what is feasible and what 
isn't? What is desirable for a more just society? How does an ERT relate 
to the community? Ultimately, this necessarily leads to a redefinition 
of the very concept of business.
Everyone is accustomed to thinking of a business in capitalist terms: a 
production center owned by an entrepreneur. It would seem that the sole 
person responsible for the business is the entrepreneur. However, the 
business is actually an organization in which multiple social relations 
exist. The business, by itself, does not exist: it has a network of 
exchanges with other economic organizations, it generates secondary 
economic activity with a multitude of people, and so, little by little, 
we can "peel back the layers of the onion" and see the entire social 
network surrounding an economic organization. Recovered businesses make 
all this visible.

I'm thinking of the social revolution of 1936 in Aragon and Catalonia, 
and the all-encompassing proposal of the CNT, which brought the 
self-management of economic organizations to macro-scale, beyond the 
local level (but starting from the local). And thinking a little about 
your experience with business recovery: have you encountered cases where 
businesses with a large number of workers were recovered and which, 
let's say, were part of an economic dynamic at the national or even 
international level?
Some factories with 100, 200, even 400 workers have been recovered. And 
in those cases, generally, yes, there are challenges, very significant 
challenges, because this requires a very large level of economic 
activity and capital to sustain itself. You have to consider that a 
factory with today's technology, employing 400 people, is equivalent to 
one with several thousand workers 30 or 40 years ago. These are 
significant levels of production. And here the question arises: how to 
maintain an economic activity capable of supporting 400 or 300 workers. 
Cases like these require thinking in terms of much greater complexity 
than a small workshop or a simpler factory.
There have now been three decades of worker expropriations in Argentina, 
and given their imperative necessity in the face of the impending 
collapse, it seems that this space is too narrow for us to address all 
the aspects we would like to continue discussing.
Yes, there's still much to discuss, no doubt, but there are moments, 
debates, where we can do so.
Perfect, then we'll see you there.
Interview conducted by sociologist Damián H. Cuesta, for the Institute 
of Economic Sciences and Self-Management (ICEA) - 
http://www.iceautogestion.org/index.php/es/

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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