Autogestion

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Poster for autogestion

Autogestion or self-administration as a socially critical term describes the control of projects and companies by grassroots or council democratically organized groups, usually collectives .

Workers self-management

According to anarcho-syndicalist theory, workers' self-management is achieved through occupation of factories and land and, according to Marxist theory, through the transfer of private companies into "social" property (= "socialization"). The “capitalist stock corporations” are seen as transitional forms from the “capitalist mode of production” to the “associated”.

Argentina

As early as the 1960s and 1980s, there were first occupations by the workforce, including at Ford in the early 1980s. However, it remained with the occupations. In the mid-1990s, when the recession gradually set in in the country, the first takeovers of companies by the workforce (e.g. Yaguane or IMPA) took place. After the final economic collapse in Argentina in 2001, there were several factory occupations across the country after the companies were given up by their owners and some of them tried to clear out the factories. The reasons were partly economic problems that resulted from the crisis, but also intended bankruptcies / insolvencies in order to set up a new company with new employees elsewhere, others invested the capital extracted from the company in other more flourishing industries (especially agricultural exports), leaving some factory owners the country. In some cases, the takeover was negotiated with the former owners without occupying the company. Others speak of permanent works meetings or strikes in order to avoid the term occupation. Since in the overwhelming majority of the companies the management and large parts of the administration left the company together with the owners, more than 50% of the personnel costs could be saved, which made the companies profitable again. Almost all companies exist today as a cooperative , whereby they see themselves as the new generation of cooperatives widespread in Argentina. In contrast to traditional cooperatives, the works meeting is a decision-making body and every member has the same rights. The works meetings are usually held at least once a month. All company-relevant decisions are made there; there are only partial sub-groups for everyday business that cover certain work areas such as sales, administration, etc. However, the works meeting is always the final decision-making body and information body. Today more than 200 factories are still self-governing and employ more than 10,000 people.

Germany

From 1970 to 1990, the Süßmuth glassworks was owned by the workers and employees and was run in the 1970s in the spirit of autogestion.

From 1972 to 1982 Photo Porst practiced a self-management model. Workers' self-help in Frankfurt am Main has also been a model since 1975 .

In the period between 1979 and 2001 there was a large-scale field test of the alternative economy called the Third Way Action .

The bicycle manufacturer Strike-Bike in Nordhausen was self-administered. After the bankruptcy of the predecessor company of Biria AG, which was taken over by the Texan Lone Star Investment in 2005, the workers occupied a production facility and started producing on their own from 2006. At the end of 2010, Strike Bike filed for bankruptcy .

France

The factory of the watchmaker Lip in Besancon was occupied by the workforce in 1973 to prevent an impending closure and was in autogestion until 1974.

Yugoslavia

The system of socialist self-government, based on the teachings of Marx, was only applied and developed in socialist Yugoslavia from 1951 onwards. In doing so, the state waived detailed planning requirements and left the development, distribution and, in some cases, the pricing policy of their products to the companies. The working people chose their director on their own and determined wage and investment quotas. In practice, however, there were disparities and the influence of informal power groups ( technocrats , political cadres ) , also because of the uneven distribution of specialist knowledge .

Spain

Collectivization of companies in Catalonia

Company size, number of employees Condition for a collectivization
over 100 unconditional collectivization
50-100 if 3/4 of the workforce so wishes
under 50 if there is agreement between the workforce and the owner

E. Gerlach: Councilors in the Spanish Revolution , p. 42

During the Spanish Civil War , the idea of ​​the anarcho-syndicalist social revolution of the anarchist union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo was implemented on a broad basis. In the short period from 1936 to 1937, almost all of Catalan agricultural production, heavy industry , the public transport system and large parts of the service sector were self-managed by the workers. This collectivization happened spontaneously, it was not ordered from above. In some branches of the economy, such as heavy industry or agricultural production, it was possible to achieve strong increases in production, which among other things meant that for the first time in the history of Catalonia, the supply of the entire population with basic food could be ensured. Collective self-government focussed on Aragon , Levant , Castile , Extremadura and the free part of Andalusia . It is estimated that around 3 million people belonged to the collective farms.

While the collective management was successful at the company level, there were considerable economic difficulties, among other things because the government represented different political concepts and rejected a plan to collectivize the entire economy. In Catalonia, on the other hand, the first legal anchoring of workers' self-government in history was achieved. According to this law, the companies were divided into two groups: in the collectivized companies , works councils were elected, which in turn elected a director; the private companies were working control councils set aside. The industrial councils were created as higher-level administrative units , in which four works councils, eight trade unionists and four specialists appointed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs worked together. Foreign capital, banks and trade were excluded from collectivization.

Essential areas of collectivization, including the strong arms industry in Catalonia, were nationalized under pressure from Stalinist supporters of the PCE and some land cooperatives were even occupied by the military. Although many collectives remained, these were later completely smashed under the Franco dictatorship .

Economic analysis

In economics , the attempt to build an economic system from self-managed companies was followed with interest and analyzed with the instruments of neoclassical theory . The first such analysis was made by B. Ward. Ward assumes that the workers in the self-governing companies have uniform wages and want to act rationally to maximize their hourly wages. He comes to the conclusion that such an economy is not Pareto-Optimal . One consequence is unemployment , since the (economically sensible) hiring of additional workers would lower the hourly wages of those already employed in certain cases.

As a result, a number of other theoretical considerations were made. J. Vanek in particular further developed Ward's model. Essential aspects of worker self-government that are discussed are:

The effects of wage differentiation (or equality of wages)
If the wages of the self-managed enterprise are above the market wages, it is rational to pay new workers only the market wages. This is in conflict with the (often postulated) principle of equality.
Conflicts of Interest
The interests of the individual worker are not the same as those of the company. This is particularly evident when the company is making a loss. As long as the fixed costs are covered by the proceeds, it makes sense for the individual to leave the company. This increases the losses that those who remain have to bear.
Different time horizons
The individual worker leaves the company at an individual point in time and tries to maximize his cash flow during this period. However, the company persists. For example, a worker who is about to retire will reject an investment that makes sense for the company in the long term, but generates start-up losses in the short term (in the time up to retirement).
Financing issues
The interests of the workers, the creditors and the company are also different when it comes to the question of the financing structure. For example, it is often not rational for workers individually to inject capital (or to contribute to self-financing by waiving wages) or to assume personal liability for external funds.

Self-management in the alternative movement

Self-managed businesses

Self-managed companies are companies that are managed by employees in collective self-management. In a narrower sense, the term means establishments that have emerged from the alternative movement .

The characteristic of self-governing companies is the non-hierarchical , grassroots organization. In self-managed companies, important decisions are made on an equal footing, mostly based on the principle of consensus . This distinguishes them from cooperatives , which in addition to the general assembly have a management board and, above a certain size, a supervisory board . The self-governing businesses of the alternative movement therefore did not see themselves as a direct successor to the production cooperatives. Overall, the self-governing companies tend towards denationalization, decentralization and de-bureaucratisation , in some cases also towards de- professionalisation . In the 1980s there was a heated debate as to the extent to which state subsidies were compatible with the project goals.

The first of these self-managed projects emerged in the early 1960s, but as an alternative form of economy they only spread in the context of the student movement of the 1960s and became a movement of their own with the New Social Movements of the 1970s. Self-managed businesses were most widespread in the 1980s. The regional focus was initially on Frankfurt am Main and Berlin , which were also the centers of the student movement. Due to the different terminology used, among other things, estimates of the number of “alternative” or “self-managed companies” and employees differed widely. In the mid-1980s they ranged from 3,000 to 12,000 companies with 2,500 to 100,000 employees in the Federal Republic.

The visible prelude to a self-confident discussion of self-administered projects was the Tunix Congress from January 27 to 29, 1978 in the West Berlin Technical University of Berlin , at which, among other things, the Tageszeitung was launched, which became one of the best-known self-administered companies. The Berlin city magazine zitty and the paved beach were other well-known examples in self-managed media companies. Infrastructures such as the self-help network , the Contraste magazine and the Ökobank quickly emerged .

Political motives played a central role in the founding of most self-governing businesses, while unemployment was secondary.

The collective from Oktoberdruck in the 1990s

In the course of the 1990s there was growing realism in the self-governing businesses, which were increasingly market-oriented . While the form of the company organization became less important, the ecological orientation of the products became more and more important.

A company that has been organized according to principles of self-administration to this day is the Berlin company Oktoberdruck .

Self-administration in the nonprofit area

In addition to the commercial-oriented companies, there are numerous self-governing institutions that are oriented towards the common good and are independent of the state and can be assigned to the non-profit area (the so-called third sector). These include self-administered cultural centers , women's centers and women's shelters or psychosocial centers. In the autonomous scene there are the autonomous centers and autonomous youth centers . In the broadest sense, self-help institutions such as housing projects and shared apartments are among the self-administered forms of alternative movement.

literature

General

Workers self-management

  • Workers' self-government - councils - syndicalism . (1973) (2nd edition) - Berlin (W.): Karin Kramer Verlag
  • Kamil Majchrzak and Sarah Graber Majchrzak: self-management and workplace democracy in the People's Republic of Poland - claims and contradictions , in: Axel Weipert (ed.): Democratization of the economy and state - studies on the relationship between economics, law and democracy from the 19th century until today , NoRa Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86557-331-5 , pp. 141-169.

Catalonia (Spain)

Yugoslavia

see article workers self-management

Argentina

  • Viviana Uriona: Factory occupation in Argentina. Between survival strategy and ideology ; in: CONTRASTE 259, Volume 23, April 2006, p. 11.
  • Anne Becker: "Occupy, produce, defend!" Interview with Guillermo Robledo , managing director of the occupied aluminum factory IMPA, in: Latin America News Number 367 - January 2005 [3]
  • Zbriger, Brian: WORKERS 'CONTROL AND SOCIAL ECONOMY IN ARGENTINA'S RECUPERATED ENTERPRISE MOVEMENT , UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL 2007 - Master's thesis on the topic of empresas recuperadas in Argentina ( PDF )

Self-management in the alternative movement

  • Burghard Flieger: Achieving more together. Cooperation and networking of alternative economic companies and projects. Association for the Promotion of Social Policy Work eV, 1995, ISBN 3923126921 .
  • Michael W. Bader: Beyond Capitalism and Communism. Theory and practice of the economic model of the Achberger School. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8305-3682-6 .
  • CONTRASTE - monthly magazine for self-administration
  • Contraste (Ed.): Bunte Seiten 2002/2003 , Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-924085-06-4 (300 pages A4 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladimir I. Lenin: About the cooperative system. January 1923, in: Lenin Werke, Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1973, Volume 33, Pages 453 to 461 [1]
  2. ↑ Ernest Mandel (Ed.): Workers' control, workers' councils, workers' self-administration, European publishing house, Frankfurt am Main, 1971
  3. ↑ Zbriger, Brian: WORKERS 'CONTROL AND SOCIAL ECONOMY IN ARGENTINA'S RECUPERATED ENTERPRISE MOVEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL 2007 - Master's thesis on the topic of empresas recuperadas in Argentina
  4. ↑ Heinz Michaels: The experiment Süssmuth. The workers' hut. The time 5.1.1973, online
  5. ↑ See Michael W. Bader: Beyond Capitalism and Communism. Theory and practice of the economic model of the Achberger School. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2016
  6. ↑ Ulrike baureithel: We own the factory. Friday May 31st, 2018
  7. ^ E. Gerlach: Councils in the Spanish Revolution , in: Politikon Vol. 1: Class struggles, self-administration & councils in Europe Verlag Association, Hamburg 1974, p. 42
  8. ^ E. Gerlach: Councils in the Spanish Revolution , in: Politikon Vol. 1: Class struggles, self-administration & councils in Europe Verlag Association, Hamburg 1974, p. 43
  9. ↑ The following presentation is based on: Ernst Fehr: Economic theory of self-administration and profit sharing, Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-593-33939-0
  10. ^ The firm in Illyria: market syndicalism. American Economomic Review 1958, vol 48, page 566 ff.
  11. ^ J. Vanek: The general theory of labor-managed market economies. Cornell University Press, Ithaca-London 1970
  12. ^ A b c Frank Heider: Self-managed companies in Germany , in: The social movements in Germany since 1945 , edited by Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York 2008, p. 514.
  13. ^ A b c Frank Heider: Self-administered companies in Germany , in: The social movements in Germany since 1945 , edited by Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York 2008, p. 515.
  14. ^ A b c d Frank Heider: Self-managed companies in Germany , in: The social movements in Germany since 1945 , edited by Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York 2008, p. 516.
  15. ^ Frank Heider: Self-managed companies in Germany , in: The social movements in Germany since 1945 , edited by Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York 2008, p. 517.
  16. ^ Frank Heider: Self-managed companies in Germany , in: The social movements in Germany since 1945 , edited by Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York 2008, p. 524.