Workplace Occupation and the Possibilities of Popular Power in Chile and Argentina, 1972-6
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Abstract
The recent wave of occupations has had a transformative effect on radical politics, but as Michael Hardt (2015) has noted, 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. Following debates on space and occupations (Halvorsen 2017a; Vasudevan 2015; Risager 2016), I unpack the possibilities for popular power that emerged using approaches from critical labour studies (Atzeni 2010; Azzellini 2016) and autonomist Marxism (Zibechi 2012; Negri 2005). 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.