Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy

the 1990s and then presents a series of conceptual typologies. These include seven “radical social innovations” that unpack workers’ uses of direct democracy, creative response to crises, reconsideration of divisions of labor, and development of solidarity. He also outlines six “recuperative moments” – in other words, what workers seek to recover (jobs, tools, machines, workplaces) – that ultimately help explain the prefigurative promises of autogestión. Part 3, in short, is a must-read for anyone interested in a thorough overview of the movement of recuperated businesses. Part 4 concludes the volume by discussing the social innovations of recuperated businesses as alternatives to capitalism. The main argument woven throughout this work is that Argentine worker-recuperated businesses have directly addressed capitalist exploitation and alienation through autogestión and prefigured a social reality that can help us rethink working class agency, cooperativism, and the possibility of radical economic change. Ultimately, this book is not only about what workers struggle against, but also about what they are fighting for: secure, meaningful, dignified work. In many ways, this is a rosy conclusion. But throughout the book, Vieta provides serious analyses of the very real challenges, tensions, and contradictions that recuperated businesses confront. Rather than offering an oversimplified view of workplace recuperation, Vieta explains and historicizes the “intractable systematic barriers” that workers confront in the process (31). In the end, Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina offers a hopeful interpretation of workplace recuperation, as one through which workers can unify the separation of labor and capital, take back their labor power, and cultivate their capacity to cooperate and build social wealth.