... Venezuela’s Worker Control Movement and the Plan Socialist Guayana

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Revolutionary Democracy in the Economy? Venezuela’s Worker Control Movement and the Plan Socialist Guayana

By Ewan Robertson

Source: Venezuelanalysis.com

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/revolutionary-democracy-in-the-economy-venezuela-s-worker-control-movement-and-the-plan-socialist-guayana-by-ewan-robertson

Introduction: Christmas at Grafitos

Walking into the plush corporate style boardroom, I greeted workers from the Grafitos del Orinoco factory before sitting down to conduct the interview. On the white board next to the door, the latest decision of the workers’ factory assembly was still in evidence: whether to pay themselves an end of year bonus. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the workers had reached an almost unanimous consensus, with only one of the factory’s’ fifty-five workers not in favour.

The sound of meat sizzling on the barbeque, salsa music and laughter drifted in from the factory yard below. It was the December 2011 Christmas party for workers and their families, and they had plenty to celebrate. By their own admission, after a long struggle against the former boss and a trial and error learning process in self-management, the workers at Grafitos had succeeded in consolidating one of the most advanced and successful worker-run factories in the Guyana region, eastern Venezuela. I had previously visited the factory with activists in April 2011, and as part of an investigation into the worker control movement in the region, had returned to see how the workers at Grafitos were getting on.

Excerpts:

In 2005 the first worker controlled factories came into being when the Chavez government expropriated paper factory Invepal and valve factory Inveval in January and April of that year respectively, after workers launched occupations against the former owners. The factories were established in “co-management” with the state, whereby workers owned 49% and the state 51% of the factory and administration was shared between the two. Of the two factories, Inveval developed the deepest worker participation, with decisions made in weekly worker assemblies and a factory council formed in January 2007.[ii]

Finally, by what has been achieved so far, Venezuela’s worker control movement demonstrates to the world that workers can indeed collectively self-manage their factories and workplaces, and that capitalist hierarchies and divisions of labour are not the only, nor best, way of organising economic life. By running production in a collectively democratic manner, workers’ alienation from their labour and the unfair distribution of produced resources can be overcome, while leading to the greater education and consciousness of workers. Such a model can also benefit society as a whole, as production is geared toward the needs of society and not profit for capitalists, and lays the basis for deeper economic and social transformation. In the context of austerity being imposed by an elite upon peoples across Europe and North America as a result of the latest crisis of capitalism, worker control in Venezuela is another example of not only how another, better, world is possible, but also what that world could look like.