Marcelo Vieta - Böcker

This book investigates the return of workers’ self-management in recent decades as responses to recurring neoliberal crises. In particular, the book homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (WREs), a promising form of workers’ self-organization whereby workers restart troubled, bankrupt, or shuttered companies as cooperatives or other forms of democratic workplace.The book argues that WREs are prefigurative of new forms of work based on equality and sustainability. Framed by the concepts of autogestión, the labour commons, and prefigurative ethico-political practices, the book argues that WREs contribute to the construction of more directly democratic community economies. Drawing on a range of contemporary case studies from numerous countries in the Global South and North, as well as new theories of workers’ self-management, the book contributes a critical development, political economic, and class-struggle Marxist perspective to the re-emergent labour question within anti-systemic social movements, while theorizing the transformative nature of WREs for workers, work organizations, and communities.Bringing a class-analysis back into current discourses and debates concerning democracy at work and alternatives to global capital, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of development studies, labour studies, political economy, sociology of development, sociology of work, and political science.

In Workers ' Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on the emergence and consolidation of Argentina 's empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (ERTs, worker-recuperated enterprises), a workers ' occupy movement that surged at the turn-of-the-millennium in the thick of the country 's neo-liberal crisis. Since then, around 400 companies have been taken over and converted to cooperatives by almost 16,000 workers. Grounded in class-struggle Marxism and a critical sociology of work, the book situates the ERT movement in Argentina 's long tradition of working-class activism and the broader history of workers ' responses to capitalist crisis. Beginning with the voices of the movement 's protagonists, Vieta ultimately develops a compelling social theory of autogestión -- a politically prefigurative and ethically infused notion of workers ' self-management that unleashes radical social change for work organisations, surrounding communities, and beyond.

For too long, cooperatives have been considered marginal players in the global economy, and as unrealistic venues for the aspirations of new and experienced members of the labour force. This marginalization shows in business, municipal and legal discussions, and curricula, where cooperative structures are rarely mentioned, let alone presented as viable options.Cooperatives at Work presents a range of success stories in employee ownership and worker owned-and-governed cooperatives. The authors further show how such firms embody important and highly contested ideals of democracy, shared equity, and social transformation. Throughout this volume, the authors present a range of practical lessons, strategies, and resources based on their pioneering, international research.This latest volume in The Future of Work series has a strong ethical stream, consistent with yearnings for more inspired forms of business revealed in many public opinion polls. The book is future-oriented, using contemporary as well as historical examples to teach lessons that are not necessarily time-bound. It is essential for anyone seeking a window onto the future of cooperative entrepreneurial practice and grassroots democracy.