Workers Without Bosses - Workers' Self-Management in Argentina
argentina / uruguay / paraguay |
workplace struggles |
feature
Tuesday May 31, 2005 21:54 by José Antonio Gutiérrez D - WSM
Chilean anarchist analyises the consequences of the Argentinean rebellion
Argentina surprised the world on December 20, 2001, when a
spontaneous popular uprising obliged the former president, to resign. It seemed that all of a sudden the most prosperous economy of Latin America was on shaky ground. Popular assemblies flourished in almost every neighbourhood while the piqueteros went on the offensive.
The left felt over confident about an achievement in which really no group or party merited hardly any credit at all. Some people definitely thought that the December upheaval had gone further than it really had and that the revolution was around the corner. In reality the situation in Argentina has not improved at all with the ruling classes returning to the offensive while : 40% of the population is still living in poverty while hunger affects the stomach of 25% of the population.
We have to start thinking seriously of the sort of problems faced by the experiences of working class resistance in the
pre-revolutionary period - the relationship between property relations and management of production, for example, as clearly posed by the experience of the seized factories
The original battle cry of Argentinean people "Que se vayan todos" - We want all of them out - that expressed the will to break with the corrupt bureaucracies, with the political class, turned out with all of them staying in the end. These experiences also highlight many of the problems anarchists elsewhere face in the wake of popular risings and they show us that the building of a libertarian society is not a matter of repeating clichés and slogans.
Workers Without Bosses
Workers' Self-Management in Argentina
The last 30 years in Latin America have seen the introduction of
neo-liberal policies - structural adjustment programmes, austerity
measures, a shift from the industrialisation and "internal
accumulation" model to one that favours promiscuous financial
capital, free trade agreements and an increasing economic dependency
of the region on the USA. As usual, the people have suffered the
worst part of these policies - high levels of unemployment and
depression of wages and the standard of living. People's most
immediate and basic needs were expendable when it came to the real
priorities of local governments: the payment of the fraudulent
external debt & the maintenance of high levels of profits for
both the local and the foreign bosses.
In Latin America, due to the bosses' onslaught of the 80s and 90s,
we've reached a situation which is in sharp contrast with the
political scenario of the 70s and early 80s. We have moved from a
situation in which the working class was on the offensive, to one in
which the working class and the popular movement in general is on the
defensive. The 90s, in particular, have been characterised by a
fragmentation of struggles and by the lack of a sense of unity in the
fight of the different popular actors, and by an offensive of the
ruling class. But signs that a crisis is brewing for a model that has
run out steam are revealed by the different uprisings all over the
continent, in Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Per? and Argentina.
All these upheavals have a common sign: they indicate, in a
looming fashion, a new scenario, in which the popular movement has
the possibility once more of going on the offensive. The experiences
of the Argentinean people over the last three years are inscribed in
that context, and show, with all of its internal contradictions, the
potential and the limits of the current context of agitation in South
America. And, undoubtedly, the emergence of a new popular movement
expresses the strengthening of regional opposition to the economic
dictates of the international financial bodies. They show a new
favourable moment for the spread of revolutionary politics,
signalling a new path for the deliverance of the exploited and the
oppressed throughout the region.
The "Argentinazo"
Argentina surprised the world on December 20, 2001, when a
spontaneous popular uprising obliged the former president, Fernando
De La Rua, to resign. It seemed that all of a sudden the most
prosperous economy of Latin America was on shaky ground. But the
reality is that the symptoms of the Argentinean crisis were felt well
before that, and what happened was nothing but the expression of an
accumulative crisis that erupted into a "volcanic" popular anger on
that day.
The popular anger was the expression of a deep economic crisis,
common to all of Latin America, that sprang from the dictatorships of
the 70s and their process of de-industrialization, which worsened in
the 90s with the frantic introduction of neo-liberal policies by the
government of Carlos Saul Menem. By the end of the decade the crisis
was indisputable: unemployment was well over 20% and steadily
growing, there was total stagnation of the productive activities of
the medium and small industries, a persistent recession in the period
between 1996-2001 and an external debt that was out of control. These
were all clear symptoms that something was not working in the 'model
economy' of Latin America [1].
The development of the crisis throughout the 90s lead to the
emergence of the unemployed workers movement as a new dominant player
in the popular struggles in Argentina. The Piqueteros, as they are
called, emerged in the middle of the 90s, as a new type of
organisation, demanded work through blockading of roads. They were
pretty much inclined to direct action and, in many cases, to
horizontal forms of organisation [2]. Soon they became a real
alternative to the bureaucratised trade unions and to the increasing
problem that an important segment of the working class was not
represented in the unions (due to them being marginalised through
their unemployment). This movement was the first ring in the bell of
a deep social crisis that was becoming deeper and deeper.
Apart from people's deteriorating living standards and the
increasing difficulties of the successive governments in dealing with
the worsening economic situation, it is necessary to consider a new
factor in order to understand the political crisis of that year: the
internal frictions between sectors of the bourgeoisie (ruling class).
One was represented in the new governing party (UCR, a liberal party)
and the other by the Peronists (PJ, a nationalist movement, with
populist strands, but with strong rightist trends). From the very
beginning of the De La R?a government the PJ started to use all of
their forces to oppose and destabilize his government (bosses'
confederations, unions and parliamentary opposition), as they saw in
this a plausible way to recover their lost power and political
influence, and pave the way to become the next government.
That explosive mixture of inter-bourgeois conflict - deep economic
crisis, suffocating external debt, middle class unrest, the
bankruptcy of the banks (which made the government impose a
"corralito" [3], a "fence", on the savings, as the people were
running to get their savings out of their accounts) and the
unbearable conditions of life for the working class - all exploded on
the 19th of December of 2001, when different actors (the unemployed,
middle classes, neighbours, etc.) came out to demand the end of
"corralito" and the resignation of the government. Suddenly
prosperous Buenos Aires was under siege by the suburban morochos and
negros (in posh Argentinean jargon, anyone whose colour of skin
happens to be darker than marble) coming from the poor slums, from
those sectors of Argentinean cities that certainly doesn't look like
a South American Italy [4].
The movement took over the streets, and after 48 hours of
struggles and clashes with the police, they toppled the unpopular
government of De La Rua. Immediately, popular assemblies flourished
in almost every neighbourhood in Buenos Aires while the piqueteros
went on the offensive. And the left felt over confident about an
achievement in which really no group or party merited hardly any
credit at all. Many in the left went further and tried to decipher in
the events of December a new revolutionary subjectivity, a new way of
doing a "revolution", confusing the toppling of a government with the
deep changes required to overcome capitalism in revolutionary terms -
this in fairness, was nothing but recycled old spontaneism. But that
revolutionary fight won't be won by the working class in the streets,
but in the factories, in the fields, mines and workshops; not by
toppling presidents, but by affecting the logic of capitalist society
and expropriating the bourgeoisie while destroying the State and all
other bourgeois institutions, building at the same time, from the
bottom up the new institutions of direct democracy.
The new economic situation
Some people definitely thought that the December upheaval had gone
further than it really had and that the revolution was around the
corner. In reality the political scenario is far more complex, with
the ruling classes returning to the offensive while the situation in
Argentina has not improved at all: 40% of the population is still
living in poverty while hunger affects the stomach of 25% of the
population. Unemployment is still no less than 21% and precarious
employment affects 70% of the working class. 10% of the population
takes 51.7% of the national income, and inequality is increasing - in
1991, the richest 20% in Buenos Aires was 17.5 times richer than the
poorest 20%; in 2003, it was 52.7 times richer. The external debt,
keeps growing, and was U$114,600,000,000 in May 2002, early this year
it was U$178,000,000,000 [5]. In this context, Argentina is still
drowning in a lasting crisis, with no hope of an end in the short
term, not even in a reasonably long period of time.
When De La R?a was toppled by the popular uprising (followed by
the short government of Rodr"guez Saa), Duhalde, assumed the
presidency, and the whole mission of his government was to preserve
"normality", i.e. to preserve the institutions and the economic
model; in short to guarantee a transition....to more of the same. And
the new president, Kirchner, who was inaugurated in 2003, has
followed this trend: keep denouncing neo-liberalism, but leave
capitalism untouched. Denounce the international pressure on the poor
countries yet keep prioritising the payment of the external debt over
raising the living standards of the population. And most of all, he
keeps repressing the popular movement, playing the game of divide and
rule as well as demonising the protests. Despite the illusion of some
leftists, who internationally see a progressive trend in Kirchner's
style of politics, his government is actually more of a desperate
attempt to preserve the old world and its institutions, albeit an
attempt disguised in different clothes.
The experience of the factories under self-management
As a product of the last few decades of the neo-liberal model and
its financial emphasis, industrial activity has fared poorly and this
has naturally meant the decline of Argentinean industry. The first
experiences of "f·bricas recuperadas" (reclaimed factories)
happened seven years ago, in the moments of deepening economic crisis
in Argentina, well before the social explosion of the 19th and 20th
of December.
They were the expression of a working class on the defensive,
trying not to lose their jobs, trying not to fall into unemployment.
They were far from being the expression of a working class on the
offensive.
The first of the occupied factories, the cold-storage enterprise
YaguanÈ, was taken in 1996; then, in 1998, came IMPA, and then
in the year 2000 90 metallurgist workers from the Buenos Aires
district of Avellaneda seized the GIP metal company. They formed the
Cooperative "UniÛn y Fuerza" (Unity and Strength), and in
January 2001, after paying compensation, opened a factory in a place
which over the last years had seen more than 1,000 enterprises go
bankrupt [6]. That year, the tiles company from NeuquÈn,
ZanÛn, and the textile factory Brukman in Buenos Aires, were
both abandoned by their respective bosses and seized by the workers.
Brukman was seized on December 18th, just one day before the
"Argentinazo". ZanÛn has increased productivity and created new
working posts (250 workers now run the factory). Jacobo Brukman, the
ex-owner of Brukman, expelled the workers on April 18th last year,
but in October 2003, the company was finally declared bankrupt,
expropriated and given back to the cooperative of workers "18 de
Diciembre", so the workers could start production once again, while
singing "Aqu" est·n, estas son, las obreras sin patrÛn"
(Here they are, these are the workers with no boss)...
In the meantime, the owner had destroyed the machinery, and the
workers were camping for six months outside the factory, preventing
the attempts of the boss to restart production with scab labour [7].
Today, there are some 170 seized enterprises, and 10,000 workers are
taking part in that experience of collective work. In all of them
managerial hierarchies have disappeared and the income is shared
equally by all workers. In the past, some companies spent 65-70% of
their revenues on bosses' and managers' wages.
When the "Argentinazo" came, in December 2001, the seized
enterprises started weaving a network of solidarity around them
through the many activists that started giving them strong support.
The popular assemblies opened their doors to them as well. Soon they
started to organise to fight collectively for the demands that they
had in common. The first thing was to change the law regarding
bankruptcy. This law states that, after an enterprise is declared
bankrupt, its machinery and facilities should be auctioned in no more
than 4 months time, in order to pay the creditors. And in the cases
where workers have seized the factories, where compensation has been
requested and otherwise, the owner can reclaim his property after a
while. The workers claim that this law favours the payment of the
debt over the right to work or the continuity of production.
The government currently is preparing a modification of the law,
widely rejected by the workers as it would allow a shareholder model
in the enterprises, which attacks the demand of the workers that
every one of them should enjoy a working condition free of
dependency.
The enterprises organised in the MNER (National Movement of Seized
Enterprises), that have taken the legal form of cooperatives, demand
modifications to this law. Some enterprises that aren't organised in
this movement demand the application of Article 17 of the
Constitution (the most prominent of which is ZanÛn - Brukman
was also among them, before switching to form a legal cooperative
last year). This article states that expropriations can take place
when the public benefit demands it. They declare that, just like when
there is an expropriation to build a road there should be
expropriations of some enterprises in order to create more
employment. This is the main controversial issue in a broad movement
that is united by the will of the workers to keep their employment,
but at the same time, of changing radically the relationships of
dependency, hierarchy and exploitation, into relationships of mutual
aid and equality (wages are all equal in those factories).
Thus, in the middle of a crisis, under the motto "Ocupar,
Resistir, Producir" (To Seize, To Resist, To Produce), the workers
have spontaneously showed the world their skills to keep society
going, once the employers have fled.
Problems and prospects
a. Relations between the political actors and the
new emerging social movement
The Argentinean upheaval in December 2001 wasn't headed by any of
the leftist parties. Many of those parties and groups undoubtedly had
a presence in many of the working class organisations but the
rebellion happened spontaneously and was autonomous of those
organisations.
This opened a new scenario for organisations born right out of
that revolt, like the popular assemblies, that tried to search for a
type of politics quite different to the one of the traditional
parties (both to the left and right). But remaining with spontaneity,
they were unable to develop a political project that could have given
coherence in the long term to the whole experience of organisation
from the bottom up. And on the other hand, most of the leftist
parties insisted in assuming the traditional link between political
groups and social movement - one in which the social movement assumes
a passive role, and the "political" actor is the one that assumes all
responsibility.
The intuition of the people rejected this; but intuition is not
enough, and sooner or later, they ended up "accepting" the
traditional role of the official or leftist parties, or the
experiences they had built were drowned in their own contradictions.
This was, dramatically, the case with most of the popular assemblies.
Thus, the original battle cry of Argentinean people "Que se vayan
todos" - We want all of them out - that expressed the will to break
with the corrupt bureaucracies, with the political class, turned out
with all of them staying in the end.
And at this point, an anarcho-communist alternative has a lot to
say, for this current is the one that, in rejecting the State and
traditional forms of politics, in advocating direct democracy and
direct action, had more to offer to the Argentinean people. And
anarcho-communism was the political current that could have played a
key part in giving a political framework to the development of a
strategic revolutionary and political programme for the people, based
on their own experiences, but using the resources given by previous
revolutionary international experience, from which anarchism is
nurtured. Such an alternative is still to be built, but definitely
many comrades are working on that task in Argentina.
b. Property and management.
One of the main debates in the left around those enterprises is
what immediate solution to follow which would be in harmony with a
revolutionary project - should the factories be in the hands of the
workers themselves as cooperatives, or should they should be managed
by the workers, but owned by the State. A quote from an article in EN
LA CALLE, paper of the Argentinian anarcho-communist group OSL
(Socialist Libertarian Organisation), poses the problem in very
accurate terms and links it to the anarchist alternative:
"In this context, various leftist currents tried to install the
debate workers control vs. cooperatives. 'We fight for
nationalisation... we don't want cooperative... thus, we don't have
the ghost of competition haunting us...' said Celia Mart"nez, of
Brukman's internal commission (then candidate for the Trotskyist PTS
[8]), confusing the legal status of cooperative, needed for
expropriation, with the political prospects of cooperativism. Their
proposal consists of demanding expropriation with no payment, that
the Sate provide initial capital, that takes the task of paying
salaries and, in some cases, that it buys production. In other words,
that the State gives, but the workers plan and manage. Expropriation
makes necessary that workers adopt a legal status like, for instance,
cooperative. But despite Brukman, Zanun, Ghelco, Panificaciun 5,
Grisinupolis, among other 150 seized factories adopted this status,
the problem is far from being a legal one.
Statisation under worker's management is only possible in the
context of a State subject to the workers and people's power (to
understand this strategy doesn't mean to share it). To demand to the
bourgeois state that expropriation wouldn't be a solution in the
capitalist context, but that would transform it into exercise of
workers' power by giving the factories back to the workers
themselves, taking charge over wages, giving an initial capital,
taking into account that the same State-government was the architect
of the situation in which those workers are now, and also that the
workers' movement is in a purely defensive phase, is nothing but an
illusion.
On the other hand, Cooperativism is not a project that gives a
definite solution to the workers' problems. It is far from giving an
answer to the bulk of the workers, according to their interests. It
never questions the capitalist relationships of production, it only
questions superficial features (monopolies, competition, etc.) it is
less feasible to create, through a network of cooperatives, a
subsystem parallel to capitalism.
The idea of workers' management of production and society implies
that the only power in a revolutionary society is that of the
organisations of the working class. This workers' management should
be understood as the abolition of all power exercised by a minority,
the abolition of bourgeois power, that is to say, the abolition of
any form of State. We, the workers, shouldn't just assume the
workers' management in the fields, factories and workshops, but also,
in the rest of society" [9]
Thus, according to the comrades, the solution was not in one or
the other as political projects (cooperativism, or workers'
management with Statisation), but in providing the conditions for
workers not to lose their jobs - i.e. by assuming the legal status of
cooperative (without politically assuming cooperativism) - to retain
the capacity for self-organisation and in the collective search of a
global alternative way of organising society, understanding that
whatever reforms we can win now are only partial steps that need to
be complemented by the struggles given by other actors in the popular
struggle.
c. Towards a Society Free of Managers and
Capitalists?
The Argentinean experience, despite the many contradictions and
problems they face, shows unequivocally the superfluous nature of a
ruling class, or of a class of managers. Whenever the bosses proved
unable to administer the industry and to keep it producing, the
workers organised and demonstrated that they can do it as well - and
better. The history of the exploited's movement is full of such
examples (Chilean industrial networks, Spain and its industrial and
rural collectives during the Revolution, Soviets and Workers'
Councils in Russia in 1917, etc.) and the Argentinean experience
shows us once again that the working class has lost nothing of its
intrinsic capacity after a century and a half of proletarian
struggle. It shows us the fundamental factor of production: without
workers, bosses are unable to run industry; without bosses, workers
can do it better.
These experiences also highlight many of the problems anarchists
elsewhere face in the wake of popular risings and they show us that
the building of a libertarian society is not a matter of repeating
clichés and slogans. There are no easy answers, and the
experiences will vary greatly according to the local factors, taking
into account the much-dismissed legal problems, economic limitations
and local history of working class resistance. The revolution doesn't
happen overnight, but it is the accumulation of different factors,
happening in different places and times. We have to link them all in
a coherent way with a revolutionary and anarchist strategy, which
demonstrates the importance of building an anarchist organisation, as
we anarcho-communists advocate [10] to serve as a catalyst for the
people's struggles. Pure spontaneity is not enough.
We have to start thinking seriously of the sort of problems faced
by the experiences of working class resistance in the
pre-revolutionary period (the relationship between property relations
and management of production, for example, as clearly posed by the
experience of the seized factories; the relationship between the
popular movement and the political organisations). We have to
consider the concrete conditions of the struggle and the
particularities wherever the struggles are happening, in order to
have clear policies and practical answers. And at the same time,
being able at a programmatical level to understand the different
struggles and to link them together in order to pave the road towards
the libertarian revolution.
All of these experiences prove that the anarchist aspiration of a
society free of managers (both economically and politically [11]) and
capitalists is not a lofty utopia, but a real possibility, rooted in
the present, in the capacities of the working class itself. Again and
again history proves that the moment for social justice and freedom
is ripe, here and now, and that all we have to do is prepare the
moment, organise and fight to make it a reality sooner rather than
later. Therefore, when anarchists demand the impossible, all they
show is that the realm of the possible is wider than what the
bourgeoisie would like us to believe. And we demonstrate that every
social experience, every revolutionary action in the constant
movement of the oppressed against their oppressors, which requires
the organised forces of anarchism to take a paramount role,
highlights new problems, new perspectives, while laying, in the very
corpse of the capitalist regime, new bricks in the building of the
society free of managers and capitalists.
by José Antonio Gutiérrez D
Footnotes
1 Hombre y Sociedad No. 14, Suplemento. Diciembre 2001.
2 Though over the last couple of years, there has been an
increasing tendency in some piquetero tendencies to
bureaucratisation.
3 A demand that was mostly felt by the middle class.
4 A large proportion of the population of Buenos Aires are
descendants of Italian immigrants.
5 EN LA CALLE, Buenos Aires, No. 52, june-july 2004.
6 CNT, No. 301, May 2004.
7 CNT, No. 298, February 2004.
8 Trotskyist party.
9 EN LA CALLE, Buenos Aires, No. 49, Septiembre 2003.
10 The efforts of our comrades of OSL in Argentina, of OCL in
Chile, and of the WSM in Ireland, among others who have grasped the
spirit of the "Platformist" current of anarchism, are directed in
this way.
11 Regarding to a society "free of political managers", that is,
where the State as an institution is abolished, the Argentinean
experience of the Popular Assemblies give a good insight into that,
as just like the workers in the seized factories took production and
their workplace into their own hands, people in many neighbourhoods
of Buenos Aires took the political affairs in their own hands in
those horizontal spaces of self-organization.
From Red and Black Revolution No 8
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4This article in Italian:
When the author says
'anarcho-communism was the political current that could have played a key part in giving a political framework to the development of a strategic revolutionary and political programme for the people, based on their own experiences'
We have to wonder -- why did it not do so? IS it a matter of a tradition too narrowly based? I've heard that the piquetero movement have large autonomis strads within it. Is ths author's implicit dismissal of 'street based' direct action that is not in the workplace linked to the refusal to look at the existing autonomous currents in the Arg revolution?
I think the author is right in saying that anarchist-communism can bring insights to the situation in Argentina. One insight which I think it can bring is to explore the limitations the workers movement has, particularly the way in which the capitalism is reinforced by the workplace occupations themselves. Some questions anarchist communism might ask is:
How can the movements reorganize the economy so that the new forms of workplace organization don't reinforce capitalist relations and capitalist imaginaries? What practical measures and theoretical frameworks can the movements work from/toward that can challenge the market economy, and institutationalize a directly democratic economy? Can workplaces which formerly made business suits, now make something else? Can a balloon factory begin to make contraceptives? Can a hotel which previously hosted bourgeious tourists begin to provide low/no-income housing or social space? Can economic decisions begin to be made by communities larger than particular workplaces? In other words, how could the movement take steps toward "municipalizing" the economy? A really groundbreaking article that explores the necessary shift from collectivism to municipalization is by Murray Bookchin. It's located here: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/gp/perspectives2.html
Cheers,
Rob Augman
As my access to internet is not that frequent as I'd like it to be, I'll reply to comrade Lazlo's comments right now, so I apologise for the delay... and I apologise as well for my English, that being fairly good (and probably because of that), still can cause some misunderstandings, and I've the intuition that some of the comrade's misunderstandings can be caused because of the linguistical problem. Fortunately, a comrade that knows me -and with whom I've discussed these issues in the past- could answer some of the issues already for me:
http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=57313#57313
But still I'd like to add and to correct some views of his reply to Lazlo that can be a bit inaccurate.
Comrade Lazlo quotes a part of the article in which I mention that anarcho-communism could have played a bigger role in the upheaval, and then wonders "why did it not do so?" And this is the big question that our comrades in Argentina had been wondering, trying to identify where the problem lay, and had been trying to overcome it in practical terms.
Why? The truth, is that all of the political actors (anarchists and non-anarchists) were weak, and that opened a wide field for a certain type of "spontaneous, apoliticised" action, but that could perfectly identify some of the root of the problem. As for the anarcho-communists, the movement is still small, is still developing, and certainly the insurrection was a master school for developing further. It is important to adress that our weakness is due to the fact that we are still growing; the weakness of other political actors is because they are declining -the fact, is that if this crisis would have happened back in the 70s, a revolutionary party would have conquered power instead of the old and decadent PJ.
But still this is not enough; the main issue has been the lack of a strategical thinking among the anarchists everywhere, and at last, we are adressing that problem in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and in other countries. To put it simple: the fact that the anarcho-communist movement (or the left), were too weak to become the generator of such an insurrection, does not mean that when it happened spontaneously it doesn't pose massive opportunities for us, and that we cannot use them for the revolutionary & libertarian development of events.
Once again, we have been adressing this issue, but still we have a long way to go: certainly, we recognise that we have to move beyond mere insurrectionalism, but still the anarcho-communist approach is respectful and a good counterpart for the essentials that the "spontaneous insurrection" has to give -the creative impulse and the initiative of the masses, and the febrile rank and file activity that was unleashed. Some of these problems, around spontaneity and strategy, programmes and insurrection, that had been largely theoretical in the recent anarchist movement, are nowadays posed by practice in the Latin American social movement.
About being too narrow to fully appreciate the utter meaning of spontaneous revolt, I have to just refer to events in Argentina: the power vacuum was used by the bugeoisie for its own advantage under the figure of Kirchner, that has the best credentials for the job -a radical past, a progressive talk and a conservative practice, that doesn't go beyond cosmetic measures, mainly, regarding to Human Rights issues over the dictatorships of nearly three decades ago.
It was necessary not only to sweep away the government, but also to affect the structures of power in society, both at a political and economic level -intuitively, the people created their own institutions in defiance ot the old ones, but an anarcho-communist programme would have gone beyond definace, to revolutionary changes. Once again, we saw that spontaneity could topple the government (as in Ecuador, as in Bolivia -though this last is a peculiar situation, anyway), and that spontaneity CAN creat new social structures and new forms of struggle. But mere spontaneity -vital as it is- can't hold the ground for these advances for long, and less can it give them a strategic dimenssion. And that is the sole relevance of being an anarchist militant, to play that role among the masses.
Comrade Lazlo goes on saying, "I've heard that the piquetero movement have large autonomist strands within it", and obviously, what he has heard, has been biased. This is a complete distorsion of reality, created mainly by the uneven access to internet of different groups -and by the fact that usually, the bulk of the people in struggle, at least in South America, wouldn't bother in updating on indymedia, apart from some reduced militant or activist groups. In South America the access to internet is very restricted to many, and those media -no matter how autonomous they are- reflect a bias and a distorsion based more on access to internet than in real presence on the struggles. Therefore, as comrades overseas depend on these media to try to have an idea of what's going on in different countries, the opinion of the international activists communities end up reflecting this bias -not taking into account a pathology in the left (including many anarchists) of trying to depict reality according to our dreams, instead of according to reality. This is true even for the occupied factories: we talk mainly about a bunch of them, in a universe of around 200, and we are eager to generalise on the basis of the few -not taking into account that some of them are linked to the parties of the establishment. With this, I don't want to invalidate the fact that the very act of their occupation has been playing a progressive role, and that some of them (the most publicised) definitely do have a more active role in the resistance, but in the article, I wanted to highlight the fact that things are slightly more complex on field than on many articles (including mine).
Going back to the autonomist strand, it is definitely a not so important actor: their presence was mainly limited to the MTD (piquetero movement) of Solano.
Finally, comrade Lazlo states the following question: "Is the author's implicit dismissal of 'street based' direct action that is not in the workplace linked to the refusal to look at the existing autonomous currents in the Arg revolution?" I already refered to the autonomist currents; and as it goes for the street based direct action, I wouldn't dismiss it at all; people close to OSL died fighting on December 2002, and we know in our own country anarchists that have died fighting the repressive forces on the streets, and our organisations have taken part in this form of struggle, so how could we be dismissive?
My sole point was not to fetishise a certain form of action, and to focues more on the content of the struggle and on the less spectacular aspects of social reconstruction -how we change this society from its very foundations. Without challenging the material basis of capitalism, as the Argentinian experience shows, no matter how radical our talk and street direct action is, we won't get even near there of the sort of revolutionary changes our times demand.
Hope to have been clear enough this time, and I'm waiting for any further comments, disagreements or discussions.
Sincerely yours and of Social Revolution,
Jose Antonio Gutierrez