Naomi Klein’s popular documentary La Toma (The Take) presented the phenomenon of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores (or firms recovered by their workers) to a wide international audience. However, Marcelo Vieta’s recent Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina is the first such comprehensive English-language review of ‘the largest movement in the world of worker-led conversions of capitalist businesses into cooperatives’ (xv). Klein’s contribution may have been the popularization of the idea, but this book will help bring a more detailed understanding on what ERTs are, where they originate and to what they contribute.In fact, it is actually quite unfair to call this book Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina, as its scope is far broader than a review of this concept in the context of Argentina. In fact, Vieta has written two books with this entry: firstly, an analysis of Marxist and other socialist theories on worker-self management and secondly, an application of this theoretical lens to the Argentine case, with a social history of Argentina thrown in for good measure.Driven by the slogan ‘occupar, resistir, producir!’, Argentina’s countercultural ERTs ‘have defied their numerical weight and have stepped up to the task of saving companies from closure, addressing under- and unemployment, stabilising local economies, and securing the social well-being of surrounding communities.’ (Ibid) This has given much clout and endorsement from communities across Argentina, as Vieta points out with countless examples from numerous case studies. Moreover, the more than 400 firms have a survival rate of ‘almost 90 percent’ (115), putting lie to the notion that entrepreneurship requires the presence of risk-taking investors. Indeed, Vieta’s greater purpose with the book is to point to this fact and the resulting opportunities for new ‘imaginaries’.Vieta, an Argentine-Canadian scholar with Italian roots, has been researching and teaching on the themes of social and solidarity economy, cooperatives, worker-recovered enterprises, critical theory and the sociology of work for decades. He has also long been involved with the International Workers’ Economy Network, amongst other projects as a pedagogue. Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina is rich in both theory and practice, and is a welcome contribution to the study of the phenomenon of workplace democracy that should interest a wide ranger of readers. Full: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/18742_workers-self-management-in-argentina-contesting-neo-liberalism-by-occupying-companies-creating-cooperatives-and-recuperating-autogestion-by-marcelo-vieta-reviewed-by-jerome-warren/ Let's hope Haymarket gets to publish this in an affordable paperback edition. Richard
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