Whose factory, our factory! Whose world, our world!

In his summing up the recent anti-capitalist protests in London, Kpunk writes:

The climate change protest, meanwhile, is largely meaningless, since it is a protest that everyone can agree with, and therefore has no potential to generate political antagonism – who is in favour of climate change?

 

This seems to be untrue, and reveals, if I may be bold for a moment, a misunderstanding of the tactics, organisation and position of Climate Camp and the link they make between the issues of climate change and capitalism. But let us backtrack. The central point of the linked post as a whole seems to be that the turn-up-march-kettle-scuffle-home logic he finds in protests like those on April the 1st, that rely too much on the spectacle and too much on putting (vague) requests into the Big Other, are in the end politically ineffective. In contrast to this, the recent occupations of factories by workers have:

the potential to move beyond the model of protest towards some sort of direct action by workers which can create an effective antagonism over issues of ownership, control and property.

In a follow up post, kpunk clarifies that:

the occupation strategy has a potential to move beyond the logic of protest. Where protest by its very nature awaits recognition from a big Daddy Other that it, in an obvious Hegelian reversal, grants recognition to, the occupation can refuse recognition not only of the big Other, but also of the system of property that it represents.

Now, I cannot see how the current form of factory occupations moves beyond the logic of requests made to the Big Other, the logic of protest, that Kpunk identifies (without in any way wishing to diminish or belittle the vital struggle those involved are fighting on the ground). Indeed, if there is any form of protest that does not escape the logic of making demands of some Big Other, it is the factory occupations as they have occurred recently.

The occupations usually proceed in this manner: workers are laid off, workers occupy in protest of this in an attempt to get the bosses to not do this and open negotiations with them, bosses agree to negotiate, occupations end and negotiations begin often with another form of protest ongoing, such as pickets or strikes. Demands are then certainly made of the big Other, here the employers, the demand for negotiation with the intention of re-instating jobs, usually through standard bureaucratic unions. Factory occupation is then the continuation of negotiation by other means, or more accurately, the forcing of negotiations by seizing property albeit temporarily. The truth that such action does not threaten the system of property required such negotiation in the first place can be observed in what occurs at the end of even a successful occupation. The management and workers negotiate, then the workers return to work as before, in precisely the same roles, and with precisely the same distribution of property rights and power relations as occurred prior to the occupation. To Deleuzify, what is de-territorialised in the occupation is re-territorialised quite swiftly. Sure, important victories may have been won, workers have been won better pay deals and retained their jobs, which is, of course, very important, yet they are victories within the typical power relation Kpunk tells us needs to be overcome.  While one endorses victories of this kind, one also understands that some more radical solution is required in order to change the logic of the situation and prevent these cyclic kinds of struggle that continue to occur under the current union/worker/boss Big Other negotiation model.

So what is to be done? In the spirit of his very helpful suggestions with regard to teaching unions, and with absolute respect for those occupying and fighting for their jobs at this very moment, let me present the endgame of a truly successful occupation, the kind of occupation Kpunk rightly recognises is perhaps in seed here, an occupation that truly reconfigures the status quo. An occupation would not at all address demands at the bosses intended to keep jobs. The occupation would hold the space, then simply continue running the factory, but under complete worker control. It would essentially behead the corporation at the level of management. And why were this management needed in the first place? For example, those working in the less material elements of the company, in clerical sections, would simply organise those working in material labour to fulfil those orders in hand without involving the management at all – and why would they need to? – the computers containing details of the orders are there, as are the workers who would have produced the orders. Naturally there is a danger here of reproducing the power structures that were previously problematic, where these previously ‘bossed’ clerics become a new class of bosses, yet if the control by workers were imagined along the principles of something like participatory economics, that is, democratically run in a participatory or consensus based manner, ultimately non-hierarchically organised, with a reversal of the usual role specialisation, I think such things could easily be avoided. Indeed, within the market axiomatics at least, why would it matter to the other companies the factory does business with, or to the consumers, if suddenly the workers controlled an occupied factory? Providing orders were fulfilled, there would be in theory no real difference at the level of output, but profound differences at the level of internal organisation, which would be just, unalienated and self-managed. Whose factory? Our factory

.

Their are numerous historical precedents of this kind of action, not limited to the post-1968 experiments at the LIP factory with such things. But let us bring it up to the present day. In the aftermath of 2001 crash of the Argentinean economy, a number of workers simply took over the factories that were being shut after going bankrupt, installed the kind of worker self-management I have been discussing and got on with it. According to Znet, there are now “15,000 workers in almost 200 democratic workplaces” that operate in this manner, so-called fábricas recuperadas, recovered factories. This movement is the subject of a Naomi Klein’s 2004 documentary The Take. The slogan of the movement is quite simple, and entirely relevant to the discussion of requests directed at the Big Other – "Stop Asking". Indeed, the first move in these situations is to break out of the usual structures of union/employer relations, where the traditional unions on mediate the will of the companies to the workers and engineer their obedience. The other slogan is also significant “Occupy, Resist, Produce” – the occupied factory must work without bosses and put food on the table for it’s workers/new owners (another great LIP slogan along similar lines “C’est possible: on fabrique, on vend, on se paie!”.

The most significant success story of the movement is that of Zanón, a maker of ceramic goods that now operates under the excellent cooperative name FaSinPat, a shortening of Fábica Sin Patrón, workers without bosses. It is the largest ceramic floor tile factory in South America and is still running today successfully. Such a victory was not without struggle, especially after the attempt by former owner Luis Zanón to reclaim the factory through the courts after the restructuring of the Argentine economy in 2004. This resulted in a battle on two parallel fronts: a mass mobilisation of other sympathetic unions, the local community (who FaSinPat invest much time in supporting – they built a free health clinic in three months for a poor area that had been petitioning the government for such things for twenty years) and even the local Catholic Church who jointly threatened a general strike if the workers were evicted,  and a parallel legal battle between the workers and the owners, the government and the likes of the IMF and World Bank. During this 2004 skirmish examples of solidarity were astounding – the teachers union called a strike opposing the eviction of the workers, and proceeded to blockade the roads around the factory. This struggle was hard and often violent, the old owners of the factory not being opposed to using private security forces to employ the tactics of intimidation, kidnap and torture, particularly of vulnerable female workers, tactics which obviously only made for an absolutely rightly enraged movement against such human rights abuses even more solid in their opposition. In addition, FaSinPat suffered systematic lockdown, with other companies initially refusing to trade with the subversive cooperative, partly in loyalty with the factories former owner. In October 2005, FaSinPat won their legal battle and were permitted to run the factory co-operatively for a year. Once this time was up, another legal scrap and another mobilisation against the powers that be was necessary, which resulted in another victory – FaSinPat is now recognised as a worker legal entity until 2010 at least. Naturally, when this (totally unneeded and repressive) license expires, FaSinPat will agitate for an extension while continuing to run the factory, which considering their level of organisation at this point, will hopefully be an easier task this time around. Rather than dull grey neoliberals and even some mainstream socialists telling us such organisations are not possible and much less efficient, we should point to such examples – since restarting production in 2002, FaSinPat have actually produced 50% more than they did before the closures and this is without government handouts and facing the fierce opposition mentioned. Elsewhere in Argentina, workers run a chocolate factory. Naysayers who observe that such models will never scale should be aware that the Basque Countries largest employer, the Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa, is run entirely as a workers co-operative, the 7th largest corporate entity in Spain, employing 103,731 people, it’s revenue is €16,377 million (2007 figures). The largest Spanish owned supermarket chain in the whole country, Eroski is part of the collective and made €218 million profit in 2007 according to it’s annual review [PDF]. Note that in the UK, the Suma collective are quite an incredible example of a worker controlled co-operative whole-saler, who make delicious snacks I like to eat from my local health food shop. I am suggesting then that Fábricas recuperadas as a tactic should be brought to the UK – most simply because it takes the problem at it’s root, not it’s symptoms.

Now let us return to the Climate Camp protest. While it is the case that all mainstream politicians accept the place of the issues of climate change as an element of the political landscape, and that no one is in favour of climate change, Climate Camp specifically rejects all the solutions proffered by this very mainstream and does so emphatically. Climate Camp is far from a protest everyone can agree with, if that everyone are mainstream politicians or greenwashing mega-corporations. All their solutions – carbon offsetting, so-called clean coal, weak carbon tariffs etc – are explicitly rejected by Climate Camp. The solutions proposed – at a big picture level, the complete restructuring of the economy along sustainable lines, which will result in drastic (and necessary) lifestyle  changes – is far from something everyone can agree with – witness Richard Madeley’s scarcely sane reaction to their summer 2007 protest at Heathrow. Indeed, the very protest that kpunk critiques, the Climate Camp London on the 1st of April, is precisely not a protest everyone can agree with – it is opposed directly to the solutions to the problems of climate change offered by mainstream politics, the international carbon exchange market. It is against the idea that a market solution will both reduced emissions, our world is far too important to be left to markets that have already have demonstrated in the financial crisis to be wildly inefficient and unjust. The central marketising concepts of capitalist realism are shunned as solving the problem of climate change, just as capitalist realism and the will to money is shunned as being a cause of the problem of climate change in the first place. The opposition to climate change is an opposition to neoliberal capitalism as such, as any activist I’ve ever met involved with Climate Camp will tell you, and their website confirms this: “in 2009 climate camp’s hitting the city, concentrating on the underlying cause of climate change, airport expansion and coal-fired power stations: our economic system”.

More vitally for the on going discussion of tactics, Climate Camp is organisationally one of the most successful examples of late left-wing politics and cannot therefore be dismissed. Climate Camp operates on an entirely non-hierarchical and democratic basis, using the models of consensus and working groups that are sufficiently robust to organise and mobilise thousands of people, nationally and internationally. Consensus decision making is easily mocked (jazz hands), yet to watch it being done a large scale with an experienced facilitator is a sight to behold. Climate Camp operates on a local, national and an international level. Each major city or area of the country has it’s own local meetings that carry on the general themes of climate justice. These local groups then come together at regular (I think bi-monthly) national gatherings that are hosted by each of the local groups. The level of outreach to local campaign groups where the camp is hosted (for example, those protesting runway expansion at Heathrow), the level of media relations where almost every person interviewed is absolutely on message and precise, the level of coordination in direct action where everyone can have a role (from locking yourself to stuff and throwing yourself in the way of bulldozers to playing in a protest ubiquitous samba band) and the level of training in this direct action are all quite stunning. Climate Camp is media savvy, with voices such as George Monbiot in the corporate press, has superb legal support teams and the ears of a number of MPs when the police get heavy-handed as they did at Kingsnorth last year. And when Climate Camp does occur, even for a brief period as on April the 1st, the Camp is a entirely different space, quite unlike anything else: a place of learning, discussion and solidarity, an attempt to create a new system within the shattered husk of the old that manages a tricky combination of optimism, pessimism, idealism and action.

Kpunk is absolutely right that the aftermath of the financial crisis is a unique situation and the left must plan to win. But in planning to win, the Left must exploit the resources available to it, particularly those new resources of resistance developed on the anarchist left since Seattle. It must not only say that (to use the alter-globalisation catch-phrase) another world is possible, but show examples of where that world is already occurring in miniature. As my friend likes to say, we must show the “seeds beneath the snow in the harsh winter of the present” – the organisation of Climate Camp, co-operatives and the Fábricas recuperadas movement are three excellent ‘seeds’ – we must then cultivate them so they might ‘germinate, … put forth shoots, … and eventually flower’.

Advertisement