Cooperation against Capitalism’s Biases. Workers-Recuperated Enterprises in Italy during the Great Recession

This paper analyzes the case of workers’ buyout, which has emerged with increasing evidence in Italy over the last ten years, in order to reflect on sustainable alternatives to the capitalist mode of production. Worker-recuperated bankrupted companies, generally defined as recovered factories, have been linked to the Argentinean movement of empresas recuperadas, which produced in the early 2000s a strong social upheaval and a proliferation of companies occupied and restarted for production by the workers themselves. Italian and European recovered factories are, however, mostly the result of a workers’ buyout, an institutional process which allows the employees of a company in crisis to acquire the same by converting their own mobility allowances in share capital. The thesis that we intend to support here is that workers’ buyout provides an excellent example of the resilient capacity of individuals to react to crisis, partly counteracting the decline in employment levels and preserving their livelihoods, as well as a prospective alternative to the capitalist mode of production.