This chapter discusses self-managed enterprises in Latin America with a focus on Argentina, analysing how they emerge, their implications for community economies, and their role in la econom'a de los trabajadores (the workers’ economy).
Social and solidarity-oriented and self-governed processes of organizing economic life have
existed since humans have collaborated to survive. However, the conscious demand and con-
ceptual realization of the social aspects of the economy only arose in Western thought with
the emergence of a primarily market-based exploitative economy and the enclosed commons,
forcing working people into capitalism’s system of production and exchange (McMurtry,
2010; Polanyi, 2001 [1944]).
