Is infrastructure a critical aspect of self-organized entrepreneurial activity?

Abstract

The limitation of capitalist principles and ethics has long been an issue for self-organized enterprises. Even though capitalist modes of labor organization, administration, and management are expelled from the workplace, issues of growth, investment, production, and circulation remain exposed to dominant forms of production. Nevertheless, communities of solidarity, along with spatial and techno-material settings, constitute the infrastructure of commoning practices in those endeavors. We compare the cases of the factory occupation movement in Argentina and the occupation of the Vio.Me. factory in Greece (2010), where a shift to self-organization emerged in the context of the Argentinian and Greek economic crises. We focus on struggles revolving around the use and ownership of spatial-material infrastructure and the production of use-values, highlighting the emancipatory potential of self-organization. Space and objects appear as a contested terrain, while at the same time, material settings are transformed, through the collectives’ participation in networks of distribution and solidarity.