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Recovered enterprises from the South to the North
Reclaiming labor, conflict, and mutualism in Italy
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Abstract
Since the global crisis of 2008, Italy has witnessed several recoveries of failed private enterprises led by workers trying to escape the precarization of life under austerity. Some see this phenomenon as linked to the highly politicized occupations that took place in Argentina during the crisis of 2001. Italian recoveries, however, are usually far less controversial affairs carried out under the aegis of the state. What explains this difference? Looking at exceptions within the Italian case provides some answers. For example, a protracted conflict between workers (labor) and ownership (capital), the building of links with transnational struggles (including the Argentinian one), and the rediscovery of past working-class values such as mutualism all appear to be factors that can generate collective responses to austerity.
Contributor Notes
Giovanni Orlando is Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Turin. The central question that inspires his work is how cities and regions that are characterized by processes of peripheralization have changed during the long transition to “late(st) capitalism.” He has explored two foci of this transition: the spread of unsustainable models of production and consumption in the agri-food sector, and the abandonment of Keynesianism in favor of neoliberalism in the manufacturing one. Email: giovanni.orlando@unito.it