Self-Management as a Tool to Organize Counter-Hegemony

Abstract

The basic premise in this article is that human beings cannot exist outside the “community”, that is, outside organization, and that organization molds human life in its material form and it is shaped by it (DUSSEL, 2002). Therefore, the question is the following: if we are somehow organized why not organize counter-hegemony from the bottom and start inside the dominant regime itself? The purpose of this essay is to discuss a certain way of organizing that may contribute to the construction or organization of a counter-hegemony against the current regime. The Gramscian argument is here used, that is, the construction of a (counter) hegemony occurs through the organization of consent without resorting to violence or coercion yet through ideological construction with the understanding that it is in the ideology and through ideology that a class may exert its hegemony over the others, that is, it may assure adhesion and consent (GRAMSCI, 1978). The paper attempts to show that organizations with self-managing proposals essentially carry the germ cell of counter-hegemony because they are based on horizontal practices and democratic organizations that have broken the strong hierarchical, asymmetric and clientelistic relationships which prevailed for centuries.