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Models for Occupy: An Evening with Marina Sitrin
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2012-03-11 20:52:49
The Occupy Wall Street movement of last fall took as its inspiration several events of the previous spring—the massive
demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere that toppled longstanding and corrupt dictatorships, and the rallies in
Wisconsin against Governor Scott Walker’s attacks on public sector unions, reproductive rights, and the right to assemble
and protest itself. As part of our belief in “American exceptionalism,” we tend to see our actions as arising entirely from our
own situations, and we rarely use other countries’ successes as models for what we should do. Thus, the universal health
care provided by Canada and most of the European Union is rejected as unworkable even though those countries deliver
better care to most of their citizens at lower overall cost. A recent article in the New York Times revealed that most of the
world sees the U.S. Constitution as outdated, and newer constitutions in South Africa, Canada, and much of Europe have
been more emphatic in guaranteeing civil liberties, women’s rights, and the rights of minorities. While rights enshrined in
the constitution do not guarantee that they will be permitted in practice—the Times article cited the constitution of the Soviet
Union as an example—even the Founding Fathers recognized the need to update governing documents in response to
changing times. Hoping to find other models of dealing with economic crises in an
innovative and peaceful manner, I attended Marina Sitrin’s lecture, “Confronting Crisis: What Can We Learn from the
Argentine Experience?” in Troy on Friday, February 24, 2012. Sitrin, a postdoctoral fellow at City University of New York
Graduate Center’s Committee on Globalization and Social Change and the author of the 2006 book Horizontalism: Voices of
Popular Power in Argentina (AK Press), spoke about citizen and worker initiatives during Argentina’s 2001-03 economic
crisis and what they can teach the Occupy movement. According to Sitrin, “horizontalism” is the decision by neighbors and
workers to join together to solve economic problems themselves rather than wait for the government, corporations, or other
large institutions to solve their problems for them. The impetus for horizontalism came from the country’s total economic
collapse—the result of crushing military spending in the 1970s and 1980s (including a lost war) and irresponsible
privatization in the 1990s—which led to bank accounts being frozen, pensions confiscated, and the currency losing most of
its value. Factory owners abandoned their enterprises, and people could not buy food. Neighbors who had formerly kept to
themselves approached each other to barter and to establish community kitchens. Factory workers kept their factories
running after the owners left. These “recuperated” factories were able to sell their goods and pay their workers—first very
little and then, when the crisis ended, even more than the workers made under their former bosses. Many of those factories
are now operating ten years later as worker-owned cooperatives paying living wages. Horizontalism contains testimonies
from Argentine people who participated in self-help initiatives during the crisis
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HORIZONTALISM
eriod. SItrin’s interviewees come from all sectors of society—workers,
peasants, managers, and professionals—as well as from places all over the country. The movement began in Buenos Aires,
the capital, but some of its most effective initiatives took place in rural areas and smaller cities. As Sitrin spoke, I was struck
by how these acts of community building and self-management were once part of life in the United States as well. The idea
of people joining together to do for themselves what large institutions cannot helped farmers to survive for generations, and
led exploited workers to form labor unions that achieved living wages, shorter working hours, better working conditions,
and an end to child labor. Lest the talk (or this summary) be interpreted to highlight a “gumption deficit” between Argentina
and the United States today, it should be pointed out that the economic collapse in Argentina led to widespread starvation,
farmers on the U.S. frontier faced death if they did not work together, and conditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century sweatshops were horrific. Still, many people in the United States have expressed concern that they will not be able
to maintain their middle class way of life, or their children will not have the material comforts that they enjoyed.
Horizontalism points to alternative ways of defining and providing wealth, one that relies more on community and local
initiative, and on values of justice and respect for all.
