Juan Pablo Hudson, Acá no, acá no me manda nadie: empresas recuperadas por obreros 2000-2010, Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón Ediciones, 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 978-987-25185-8-5.
Acá no, acá no me manda nadie examines worker-recuperated enterprises that emerged in Argentina in the early 2000s through the subsequent development and transformation of self-management, rather than focusing primarily on the initial moment of recuperation. Drawing on Juan Pablo Hudson’s long-term engagement with cooperatives, particularly in Rosario and the surrounding area, as well as his fieldwork, interviews with workers, and everyday observations, the book focuses on the problems confronting workers’ self-management roughly a decade after enterprises were occupied and production was resumed.
One of the book’s central concerns is that the disappearance of the boss does not eliminate economic constraints or the discipline of the market. In the statement that gives the book its title, a worker from Herramientas Unión explains that neither a boss nor the state gives him orders anymore, describing this as “complete self-management,” while at the same time acknowledging that he is governed by “the rules of the market.” Problems such as lack of capital, access to raw materials, technological renewal, competition, sales, and dependence on orders continue to shape the room for manoeuvre available to worker-managed enterprises.
Hudson also traces the institutional and organisational transformations that self-management undergoes over time. Some practices abolished during the early stages of recuperation as symbols of managerial discipline may be reintroduced by workers as the enterprises become more stable. In some cooperatives, the reintroduction of time clocks recording workers’ arrival and departure, or the gradual transformation of assemblies from continuous decision-making mechanisms into bodies convened mainly in exceptional circumstances, demonstrates that the initial forms of self-management do not necessarily remain unchanged.
This transformation also brings with it questions concerning administrative councils, the delegation of responsibilities, and the emergence of new hierarchies. As enterprises grow, administrative duties and leadership positions become more pronounced, and the concentration of managerial responsibility in particular individuals can generate new tensions within the cooperative. Similarly, the hiring of new wage workers by expanding cooperatives produces an important contradiction: cooperative members who previously worked under the supervision of bosses may now find themselves supervising the labour process of newly hired workers.
The book is not limited to the internal organisation of individual enterprises; collective organisation among recuperated enterprises, leadership problems within the movement, and relations with the state also form important parts of the discussion. Through organisations such as MNER and FACTA, Hudson examines cooperative members’ participation in decision-making at the movement level, the delegation of responsibilities to particular individuals, and the difficulties of building lasting collective structures among enterprises. The expansion of financial and institutional support from the state, meanwhile, creates significant opportunities while simultaneously raising questions of autonomy, bureaucracy, and whether these resources can be used to strengthen collective organisation.
In these respects, Acá no, acá no me manda nadie is an important study that approaches workers’ self-management not as a process completed through recuperation, but as a dynamic social relation that must continually be reconstructed and that generates its own internal contradictions. By making visible the tension between the economic survival of enterprises and the maintenance of democratic workers’ management through everyday problems such as market pressures, labour discipline, delegation, leadership, and new wage labour, the book makes a particularly valuable contribution to the literature on worker-recuperated enterprises and workers’ self-management in Argentina.