Occupy, Resist, Produce
I wrote about “Game Theory” and the famous example of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” a few posts ago. The “Prisoner’s Dilemma” shows the conflict of maximizing one’s own interest against the common interest. This conflict and the tendency of self interest strategy to be the dominant strategy, has prompted many to declare the existence of a “selfish gene”, that no matter how much we talk about advantages of cooperation and value of common goods, the selfish gene will finally prevail and prevent any truly cooperative outcome to be realized.
In the fall of 2001, Argentina’s economy collapsed under the weight of foreign depth and as a result of IMF prescribed policies of extreme privatization, etc. When it was obvious that the bubble is bursting, the foreign investors and wealthy elite started pulling out their funds from the banking system, accelerating the collapse. The government froze all bank accounts in an attempt to prevent a complete catastrophe. In a short time, a country which was the model of stability and prosperity in South America turned into a poor and unstable country. Factories closed down, poverty and unemployment rose, and riots broke out.
Out of the chaos came a few attempts to establish a new order. A new order based on collective action and collective ownership. Factories that were abandoned by their owners and dismantled for selling them piece by piece, were taken over by the workers. They started creating collectives that operated the factories successfully. There were no bosses and no managers, and everyone got the same paycheck. Interestingly, their action was not driven by any particular ideology. It was born out of necessity to survive.
“The Take” is a documentary by a filmmaker/jounalist couple, Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, which shows the taking of one of these factories. Here is a link to the website for the movie with lots of articles and interviews.
Whether these experiments are successful in large scale may still be uncertain. But the success of these social experiments shows that there is hope that common interest can be the common objective, and trying to achieve that is not against human nature. Perhaps, one day we will see cooperation as a dominant strategy in human society, and exploitation will be something for the history books.
In the fall of 2001, Argentina’s economy collapsed under the weight of foreign depth and as a result of IMF prescribed policies of extreme privatization, etc. When it was obvious that the bubble is bursting, the foreign investors and wealthy elite started pulling out their funds from the banking system, accelerating the collapse. The government froze all bank accounts in an attempt to prevent a complete catastrophe. In a short time, a country which was the model of stability and prosperity in South America turned into a poor and unstable country. Factories closed down, poverty and unemployment rose, and riots broke out.
Out of the chaos came a few attempts to establish a new order. A new order based on collective action and collective ownership. Factories that were abandoned by their owners and dismantled for selling them piece by piece, were taken over by the workers. They started creating collectives that operated the factories successfully. There were no bosses and no managers, and everyone got the same paycheck. Interestingly, their action was not driven by any particular ideology. It was born out of necessity to survive.
“The Take” is a documentary by a filmmaker/jounalist couple, Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, which shows the taking of one of these factories. Here is a link to the website for the movie with lots of articles and interviews.
Whether these experiments are successful in large scale may still be uncertain. But the success of these social experiments shows that there is hope that common interest can be the common objective, and trying to achieve that is not against human nature. Perhaps, one day we will see cooperation as a dominant strategy in human society, and exploitation will be something for the history books.
posted by Mehrdad at
5:34 PM
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