Freedom and Necessity: self-management enterprises and the economics' socio-political construction

Author(s)

Henrique Zoqui Martins Parra

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2002-10-31

Examining board members

Maria Celia Pinheiro Machado Paoli; Cibele Saliba Rizek; Paul Israel Singer

• Advisor: Maria Celia Pinheiro Machado Paoli

Abstract

From a theoretical perspective, throughout a reflection on the rigid separation between ends and means, freedom and necessity, the following thesis intends to investigate the possibilities and the limits for democratic creation inside productive relations that are under the rules of the reproduction sphere. From the empirical perspective, the worker´s self-management enterprises - that arose from the 90´s Brazilian labor´s world transformation context – introduce moral elements into the labor relation in a contradictory way. What does come out of conflict between the management and political logics? What are the dilemmas posed by those experiences? Those questions are analysed in three dimensions: production relations; workers, and the socioeconomic context that selfmanagment enterprises are embeded in. As the discussion departes from the contradictions (internal and external) lived by the self-management enterprises, it shows the economic field and the conditions of efficiency as a socio-political construction.The last part of the text interrogates self-management enterprises and Solidary Economy emergence from the following crossroads: the relation between the creation of democratic spaces and the labor relations de-regulation process; theory and reality construction; technique and politic, and between survival and creative actions. To conclude, the thesis proposes that is the very fact that self-management enterprises introduces a discontinuity into the lives´ management order (non-political, non-human) that creates the potential to constitute democratic spaces that might, or might not, be accomplished. (AU)