Workplace occupation and the possibilities of popular power in Chile and Argentina, 1972–6

ABSTRACT

The recent wave of occupations has had a transformative effect on radical politics, but, to date, many have been restricted in their social and spatial expansion. Reflecting on these challenges, this article examines workplace occupation in the coordinadoras interfabriles in Argentina (1975–6) and the cordones industriales in Chile (1972–3) to understand how they overcame barriers to such expansion. Starting from debates in critical geography and social movement studies on space and occupations, I unpack the possibilities for popular power that emerged in this period by using approaches from critical labour studies and autonomist Marxism. First, I outline the generative role of the workplace in producing these possibilities in a context of wider social change. Second, I demonstrate how the capacity for expansion lay in the simultaneous capacity to disrupt and reconstruct social relations derived from solidarities that exceeded the existing physical space of occupation.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace occupation
• popular power
• autonomist Marxism
• Chile
• Argentina

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Adam Fishwick http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1552-3731

Notes

1. It is important to note that the argument of this article does not intend to diminish the importance of these public occupations. As explained in a recent article reflecting on the Nuit Debout movement in France, they are sites that ‘have shown evidence of an iterative learning process in which new techniques of protest and communication have been passed from site to site’ (Shaw, 2017, p. 124). Hence, while the issue of the social and spatial expansion of these occupations remains an important challenge to be overcome in the contexts in which they arise, their potential global impact and influence should not be understood as limited in the same way.

2. See, for example, Atzeni and Ghigliani (2007) or Ozarow and Croucher (2014) on the challenges faced by worker-recuperated enterprises in Argentina and their re-insertion as cooperatives into the capitalist market.

3. On a methodological note, there is a relative scarcity of printed materials from this period. A deliberate aim of the coups was to erase these episodes from history (Erickson, Peppe, & Spalding, 1974, p. 121; Löbbe, 2006a, p. 262). Some have overcome this via oral testimonies from surviving participants (Gaudichaud, 2004; Castillo, 2009; Löbbe, 2006a), but as time passes this becomes increasingly difficult. Hence, while using testimony available in secondary sources, the printed material I collect aims to contribute to a recovery of this radical historical memory.

4. The characterisation of this period is often understood as being driven by increasing tensions between the self-activity of the working class and the trade union bureaucracy. What we can observe in both cases, albeit in different ways, is the limits of institutional modes of representation. These, in the most critical reading, can be understood as existing primarily to reinforce control over workers, existing to negotiate the price of labour power rather than to contest the social relations that underpin this exploitation under capitalism (Atzeni 2010, pp. 6–8).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Fishwick

Adam Fishwick is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies and Public Policy. He is interested in the relationship between work, labour protest and development in Latin America and has conducted research on Chile and Argentina. He has published recently in journals including Geoforum, Development and Change and Labour History and is co-editor of Austerity and Working-Class Resistance: Survival, Disruption and Creation in Hard Times (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2018).