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In their film Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler document forms of political participation in Venezuela. At the Alcasa aluminum plant in Ciudad Guayana, a textile factory in San Cristóbal, a tomato-processing plant in Altagracia de Orituco, a cocoa factory in Cumaná and a paper factory in Morón, the many layers of common ground are revealed: An uprising of “suppressed knowledge” (Michel Foucault) becomes visible. In a critical analysis of the state capitalism of the USSR and Cuba and social democracy’s employer shareholding model, worker cooperatives have searched for new forms of political activism after Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998.
Workers become the protagonists of their own story: “We don’t think like Commandante Chávez. Commandante Chávez thinks like we do,” says a worker at the Cumaná cocoa factory. This “new political culture” is stimulating a “production of subjectivity” (Maurizio Lazzarato) at companies, which is in turn constantly challenging the political actions of advocates and representatives. As a result the workers’ “co-administration” is regarded as nothing more than a transition to their total control and “self administration.” In the film the strategic goals of transformation are discussed: the relations of production, an independently organized worker’s democracy and wage equality.
As in Venezuela von unten (2004) 5 Factories thematizes the potential of discursive resistance?a web of political knowledge and local experience which enables the attainment of knowledge of past struggles and employing this knowledge in political action.
(Ramon Reichert)
Translation: Steve Wilder
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