Composing the social factory: An autonomist urban geography of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Through the creation of an original theoretical framework, this paper demonstrates the value of a deeper engagement between autonomist Marxism and (urban) geography. By spatialising arguably the autonomists’ key theoretical contribution – class composition – the paper develops the ideas of technical and political spatial compositions. These dialectically intertwined concepts provide a framework with which to analyse the relationships between shifting urban spaces and struggles, and clarity is therefore added to another key autonomist concept, the evocative yet nebulous ‘social factory’. Applying these to Buenos Aires, the paper focuses on various spatial conjunctures, exploring their emergence and the immanent potentials for radical spatial politics they afford and preclude. In particular, the paper provides a detailed reading of the complex role Buenos Aires’ ‘informal’ settlements play in both perpetuating and resisting a neoliberal, financially extractive economy. The benefit of a ‘spatial composition’ framework is twofold: it provides a periodising heuristic with which to originally and usefully approach urban struggles, and, in unpacking the ‘social factory’, it can be applied widely as a form of radical geographical praxis. The paper thus makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to an exciting, emerging autonomist (urban) geography, as well as to studies of Buenos Aires.

Multiplying Labour, Multiplying Resistance: Class Composition in Buenos Aires’ Clandestine Textile Workshops

“…Second, despite their suitability for the task, explicitly autonomist analyses of the “informal” and “unfree” migrant labour found in garment workshops worldwide are rare (Campbell ); such an approach sharpens our understanding of labour conditions and resistance in these workshops while honing compositional analyses themselves. Third, and finally, the paper illustrates the benefits of a geographical engagement with these expanded autonomist ideas (see Brown ; Clare ; Gray ; Marks ), here, in particular, through a spatialisation of the “multiplication of labour”.…”

“…Central to all this work, however, was class composition analysis, which is categorically non‐teleological and centres the diverse struggles and subjectivities of a heterogeneous working class (Wright ). Re‐engaging with, spatialising, and thus expanding, this autonomist idea can provide a renewed commitment to class struggles in‐and‐beyond the workplace (Brown ; Clare ; Gray ). A compositional (re)turn can also guard against the vagaries that haunt some autonomist thinking, where a commitment to detailed and reflexive analysis is replaced by an alluring yet vague conceptual architecture (Leonardi ).…”

“…As mentioned, capital’s leveraging of non‐class structures like gender, race, and migratory status determines technical compositions, while these fractures or solidarities fundamentally shape political compositions’ capacity for re‐ or de‐composition. Despite this, much work on class composition fails to be properly intersectional (Clare ), a tendency that is galling given the crucial insights of autonomist feminists (Barbagallo ): there is thus a need to focus in detail on the roles that race, indigeneity, and nationality play in shaping contemporary class compositions—something that an engagement with migration forces class composition to do.…”

“…The spatiality of the talleres also multiplies labour, showing how technical compositions, as well as socially reproductive infrastructures, are always spatial (Clare ). Following repeated high‐profile tragedies—perhaps most famously the March 2006 fire that killed six Bolivians (one pregnant woman and five children) living in a clandestine workshop in the middle‐class neighbourhood of Caballito —pressure has been placed on Buenos Aires’ changing governments to increase workshop inspections and enforce labour standards.…”

“…The embedding of so many talleres in Buenos Aires’ villas is thus a deliberate socio‐spatial strategy (Clare ; Gago ) that affords: access to cheap, vulnerable labour; the ability to minimise outside interference; control far beyond the workplace; and the heightened extraction of absolute surplus value. Similar consequences stem from the significant number of talleres that exist, clandestinely, in formal neighbourhoods: such workshops hide in plain sight, and are typically situated in, or near to, neighbourhoods with high migrant populations .…”