It was very simple, they explained. They either had to take over the factory and make it work themselves, or they would be unemployed and starving out on the street. Ernesto, Gil and Shahar ranged in age from 30 to about 50, and were talking to us in the spare office of Chilavert Artes Graficas, their printing factory in Buenos Aires.

All three had once been employees of this printing factory. They did beautiful work, making art books and art reproductions, but the factory was poorly run and went bankrupt. Threatened with a lock-out and unemployment, they started occupying the factory in April of 2002. Now they and other former employees are in the process of making the presses work again and running the printing shop as a workers' collective.

During their occupation, they have printed a book called Que Son Las Asambleas Popular, a collection of essays about Argentina's new movement of asambleas, popular neighborhood assemblies. It was the asambleas that gathered people to defend the factory when the police attacked it in May, trying to expel the workers and repossess the factory and the equipment. In August, the situation with the police was now a stalemate, but the workers still took turns staying in the factory overnight to defend it.

I had to stop and think about what they were saying for a minute. It was simple. It did make perfect sense. And according to the logic of capitalism, it was totally subversive, and revolutionary.

The 115 workers of the Brukman textile factory in Buenos Aires were equally as straightforward. They occupied the factory on December 18, 2001, only one day before the social explosion of December 19 and 20. They had skills, they needed to provide for their families, and people wanted what they made. And 10 months later they were still working in the four floors of the factory, selling the suits they made, having their asambleas there, and taking turns sleeping there to defend it.

It seemed perfectly logical to ask them "Do you prefer working with a boss or without one?" Running the factory themselves was challenging, they said, but they liked it much better.

All over Argentina, factories are being occupied, and not just to win demands from employers. In most cases, there is no more employer, and the workers are trying to figure out how they begin operation and production themselves. So far, Argentina's social movements of workers, asambleas and piqueteros desocupados (unemployed picketers) has been strong enough to defend and support them. The numbers of occupied factories is growing, and the movement is getting more organized and coordinated. "On the 20th of December, everything changed for us," said Ernesto of the Chilavert printing factory. "We went from being 8 people struggling by ourselves to being part of a whole social movement."

The Zanon ceramics factory is the largest occupied factory. It is located several hundred miles southwest of Buenos Aires, and is the largest employer in the province of Neuquen. It was one of the largest ceramics factories in Argentina and they are determined to restart production. They are working closely with organizations of unemployed workers, and on August 7 announced the creation of 10 new jobs, shared among the different piquetero desocupado groups. All workers are paid 800 pesos per month, all decisions are made in a workers' asamblea, and various committees of the asamblea (production, supplies, sales, administration, security, maintenance, social action, health and safety) arrange the details of production.

"Our problem is that materials are very expensive for us, and there is a monopoly on newsprint," says Ernesto of Chilavert. "If the occupied factories could buy and sell from each other, we could do much more." Zanon and Brukman are the most established occupations and are leading the efforts to organize the movement of occupied factories. They held the first encuentro national de fabricas ocupadas on April 13 at the Brukman factory, and issued a declaration that Zanon would start a plan "of public works, controlled by workers, to construct schools needed by teachers and students, public hospitals, and housing." Brukman resolved to start making sheets for hospitals and overalls for children. Zanon also held a regional planning meeting on August 10, and the second national encuentro will take place on September 7.

The priority for the movement of fabricas ocupadas is solidarity and coordination between all of Argentina's progressive social movements. In the call for the encuentro, they declare that "now more than ever, the struggles of the piqueteros, asambleistas, the ahorristas estafados (people who have lost their savings), and the workers need to multiply and be coordinated. The workers occupying their factories and struggling to produce under their own control are struggling for genuine work and will not permit one more person to become unemployed." Their encuentros are open to all who want to participate.

They are many occupied factories, no one seems to know exactly how many. A list posted to Argentina Indymedia on August 26 included 28 different factories, but omitted at least 4 of the most well-known examples. Some that have been participating in the national encuentros are: the Rio Turbio coal mine in Santa Cruz, the Junin medical clinic in Cordoba, the Grissinopolis bread factory, the Panificaion Cinco bread factory, the Perfil magazine, Pepsico Snacks, Emfer, Renacer, Ingenio La Esperanza, Frigorifico Fricader, Ghelco, and La Baskonia.

Some of the occupied factories (such as Zanon and Brukman) operate under workers' control, while others are more conventional (and therefore legal) cooperatives. Sebastian from Indymedia Argentina says that the September 7 encuentro may determine what route the fabricas occupadas movement will choose to take.

What does it mean? The declaration of the April 13 encuentro said that, "we will exercise and defend the right of workers to use our own hands to solve the current social disaster and increasing unemployment." So far, they are actually doing that. At the Asamblea de Flores Sur I met a woman named Barbara, who told me that "on the 20th of December, a revolutionary process started in Argentina. And I think that if the unemployed, the occupying workers, and the asambleas can come together, them we can make a revolution." Can the people of Argentina do that? For their future and ours, I hope so.

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Background on the situation in Argentina:

Guido Galafassi. "Argentina on Fire: People's Rebellion Facing the Deep Crisis of the Neoliberal Market Economy." Democracy & Nature, July 2002. www.democracynature.org/dn/vol8/guido_argentina.htm

David Rock. "Racking Argentina." New Left Review, September/October 2002. www.newleftreview.net/NLR25104.shtml