Everyday antagonisms: Organising economic practices in Mercado Bonpland, Buenos Aires

Victoria Habermehl

doi:10.1177/2399654419887745

Abstract

In 2001, Argentina experienced a profound social political and economic crisis. In response, a broad and diverse social and economic movement was created, involving autonomous politics, horizontal organisation, autogestion, neighbourhood assemblies and state rupture. The creation of alternative economic systems played an important role in this challenge to capitalist hegemony, producing a different and more humanising kind of economics focused on the provision of opportunities for more stable, sustainable and dignified production. This paper uses an innovative theoretical approach, drawing on both Marxism and diverse economy literature, to explore data collected during empirical research between 2013 and 2016 into a solidarity retail market in Buenos Aires, the Mercado de Economía Solidaria Bonpland. It argues that such interventions in the interstices of capitalism offer a radical and alternative solution through a politics of everyday antagonism. By insisting on economic plurality in the present via a series of oppositions and compromises, the Mercado both drew attention to the failings of capitalism, and created a genuine and visible social and economic alternative.

Highlights

In the late 1990s, Argentina experienced severe recession, culminating in a profound fiscal debt crisis, which peaked in 2001 (Zibechi, 2008)
This paper aims to explore the challenges and potentials inherent in acts of making an economy that is resistant to both value extraction and economic crisis, focusing on a small retail market, Mercado Bonpland, in Palermo, Buenos Aires
In Argentina, the practice of autogestion is foundational to political movements emphasising self-management and autonomy, which reflect ‘the politics of direct democracy’ (Sitrin and Azzellini, 2014: 32) as well as movements of self-managed factories (Fishwick, 2019; Ozarow and Croucher, 2014; Ruggeri and Vieta, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

In the late 1990s, Argentina experienced severe recession, culminating in a profound fiscal debt crisis, which peaked in 2001 (Zibechi, 2008). Established by the Palermo Viejo Assembly in 2007 in an abandoned municipal market space, the market encompasses 17 organisations operating their own stalls and selling products from fruit and vegetables and dried foods to drinks, books, pottery, clothes and artisanal products. Those involved aim to develop communal ways of organising that are ‘autogestive,’ i.e. they involve a form of communally organised production that aims not to extract surplus value from labour, create less exploitative working conditions and more dignified work, ‘to self-create, selfcontrol and self-provision . This paper will examine these processes of production in more depth, tracing the networks of autogestion on which they draw, and exploring the ways in which a process of antagonism and compromise underlies these attempts to develop an alternative politics of everyday life in the city

Objectives

Methods