I'm re-posting this because I think the concepts and discussion are important. I'm also adding some links to some recent related diaries to help round out the concepts.
The recent events at the Republic Window and Door in Chicago have motivated me to finish this diary.
Between 1999 and 2003 Argentina faced a severe economic crisis. While the underlying causes were different in detail they faced a national capital liquidity freeze not unlike our own. In the midst of the crisis there was a little known phenomenon which I find inspiring in our present situation.
As factories went bankrupt workers occupied some of them and continued operating the businesses. Their action came to be encapsulated in the adage:
OCCUPY, RESIST, PRODUCE...
The slogan was originally coined in Brazil:
In 1997 hundreds of thousands of landless peasants banded together and occupied over 200 stretches of unused land in Brasil. In addition, 140,000 families have been resettled on land following direct action over the past 10 years. They are Brasil's, and in Noam Chomsky's eyes, the world's most important social movement. Over 90 % of Brasilians agree with what 'Movimento Sem Terra' do. Now the focus is on the cities and the centres of power. I hung out with MST recently, here's what I learnt...
Do or Die Issue 7
The maxim gained currency in Argentina during the financial crisis from 1999-2003. Essentially global capital pulled out of Argentina and there was no money to do business. Much of the was the result of monetary policy and the IMF. A good explanation of the background economics can be found here at commondreams. Many manufacturers went out of business and shuttered their factories, some of which were the primary source of employment in their town or village. In a surprisingly broad array of industries, workers in some factories took it into their own hands to reopen and manage the enterprises. Pottery Makers, Printers, Textile Workers, Beverage Makers and Hotel Workers took over the means of production with the support of their local communities and often the opposition of the police and former factory owners. Overall the movement was successful and as of 2007 there were over ten thousand workers employed in the "recovered factories" or fabrican sin patrones (factory without bosses) It strikes me that this is a model very worthy of consideration in view of our current manufacturing/capital crisis.
Unsurprisingly Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein were on this back in 2003. In 2004 they produced a documenary film "The Take" in 2004. The following is from an article of the same title as this diary, published in 2007 in the New Statesman. Full article here.
There were many popular responses to the crisis, from neighbourhood assemblies and barter clubs to resurgent left-wing parties and mass movements of the unemployed, but we spent most of our year in Argentina with workers in "recovered companies". Almost entirely under the media radar, workers in Argentina have been responding to rampant unemployment and capital flight by taking over businesses that have gone bankrupt and reopening them under democratic worker management. It is an old idea reclaimed and retrofitted for a brutal new time. The principles are so simple, so elementally fair, that they seem more self-evident than radical when articulated by one of the workers: "We formed the co-operative with the criteria of equal wages and making basic decisions by assembly; we are against the separation of manual and intellectual work; we want a rotation of positions and, above all, the ability to recall our elected leaders."
Oh, you mean CEO's don't get million dollar bonuses? In actual practice, some of the cooperatives do have a pay scale but "decisions by assembly" includes the valuation of labor whether manual or intellectual.
Just think about the place you work. How much of the productive capacity of your workplace go to perks for the financial class in the name of profits? What would it be like in the place you work if basic decisions were made by assembly, wages were equal or at least more obviously fair, and if the profits were invested in your local community? Seems like management might be taking a little pay cut. We will never be able to develop an economically sustainable, let alone environmentally sustainable, economy as long as the driving force is corporate greed. There has to be a new paradigm and I think the Argentinian model points to a very hopeful direction.
The recent discussion of "to shop or not to shop" as a means of economic stimulus has frankly stuck in my craw. I can't help be reminded of gwb's famous proclamation after the Twin Towers attacks. That our national dialog has been reduced to this unimaginative banality is a sad triumph for the linguistics of consumerism. We can only consider two outcomes in the crisis of the Big Three automakers, enormous capital infusion by the government or bankruptcy and the collapse of the entire supporting industry. Hell, maybe I should go buy an SUV so all those union workers can keep paying their mortgages and the CEO's can keep flying to Washington in their private jets.(not that I could.)
The relationship between labor and capital has been grossly oversimplified and politicized in our national dialog. Corporations vs. Unions, Minimum Wage and Immigration become demagogic fodder for instilling knee jerkery. The concept of trickle down economics has permeated our national thought process in the last twenty years but it's really a sparkle pony way of saying that capital/wealth produces job and economic growth. In fact it is labor which produces capital. And, while modern financial practices and industrialization have obscured it, in the collective consciousness it has been well understood by many. Henry Ford at the emergence of American Industry knew that the workers and producers would be the strength of the American industrial economy, to paraphrase "If I don't pay the workers enough to buy my cars the who the hell is going to buy them."
We face a fundamental crisis in which market systems have been established by the trickle down narrative for thirty years and in fact find ourselves in the position of the tail wagging the dog. So we watch as credit dries up and companies go out of business. But those factories haven't lost their productive capacity, nor have the workers their skill. The usurious nature of the financial system sucked all the productive effort into a nebulous whirlwind of upward redistribution and inflationary profit taking.
According to U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2006 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, as of 2005 the median income in the U.S was $24,325. Meanwhile according to the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency, in a 2006 report, the average American worker produced $63,885 worth of gdp. So at least half of us are getting ripped off at least $39,560 a year. That oughta buy a nice little starter home. (granted you would really have to dig in to the means, medians and averages with full data to see the actual corollary but the point is clear)
I think it possible, though unlikely, that the SBA, or other agency could implement a progressive policy and loan program to encourage collective cooperative ownership as a means to maintain our country's productive capacity and employment. As the bankruptcies increase many small factories will be reduced to liquidation values. To invest, now, in the manufacturing ability of the American Worker will have a vastly greater return, and not only in economic terms, than all the good money pissed down Wall Street after the bad. There could be very specific requirements in terms of fair wages, employee ownership, and community reinvestment.
I also think there could be a national coordinated grassroots effort to coordinate labor (not just union) action with the particular goal of appropriating closed factories and restoring the means of production to the workers, banker balances be damned. I realize this is a little radical but extreme times call for extreme measures.
The third possibility I see, is that we will see more local spontaneous actions like we're seeing in Chicago and this was the actual pattern in Argentina. My only fear is that the American Worker has been so long in his corporate cage that when the door is opened he'll walk to look over the savanna, turn around and walk back in. I hope I'm wrong.
I have been considering this diary since we first started hearing about the Big 3 bailout, but it was the UEW occupation of Republic Window and Door in Chicago which spurred me on to complete it. I would love to see the UEW take control of production and sell their windows and doors for back wages. They should have the right. Not that the current owners shouldn't be held accountable. I am glad to see that PE Obama is supporting their protest. I seriously hope he could be inspired to promote or support worker owned model as a viable alternative to the failed corporate model.
One way or the other it's time for direct action.
Links:
Argentine Lessons
Occupy, Resist, Produce: Worker Cooperatives in Argentina
Occupy, Resist, Produce Brasil's Landless Peasants - Movimento Sem Terra
Update:
Added links:
Some of these diaries, like my own, went under the radar. They present significant related ideas and some items for progressive economic action.
NBBooks lays out the social and economic contrast between "real industry" and "usury, rent and speculation"
BobboSphere looks further at the Republic Windows saga and the workers hope of buying the factory
And StrandedWind points to a progressive model of banking currently in formation