The Take (review)

The economic implosion of Argentina just after the start of the new millennium led many Argentines to take creative measures just to survive. This romantic Canadian film production, made by self-proclaimed anti-globalization activists, looks at one of these measures. Its focus is on the takeover of closed plants by worker cooperatives, which then proceed to return them to activity. Worker-run plants are posited as a potential alternative to globalization.

The centerpiece of the film is the takeover of a closed factory, Forja San Martín, by laid off workers and their subsequent efforts to acquire legal permission to run the plant, efforts that were ultimately successful. The film is enjoyable. The examination of the process is interesting, as is the information on several other worker-run plants. However, the nature of the process is not explored very deeply. Where do the workers who have been laid off for a very long time get the money for their lobbying trips to La Plata, in what looks like a chartered bus? How do they get the provincial legislature, composed of what the filmmakers consider a despised class, to legitimize their takeover of the plant?

Although the film is interesting, it would be difficult to use in a class. It never mentions why the workers are going to La Plata, instead of Buenos Aires. It provides very little background on Argentina, the economic collapse and its political context. The collapse is blamed on rapid globalization, but we learn little or nothing about the specifics of the Argentine case beyond former President Carlos Menem's tight embrace of the economic ideas pushed by the International Monetary Fund. The president during the collapse, Fernando de la Rúa, is not mentioned. Although Peronism is discussed and a good deal of attention is paid to the election of 2003, the film fails to mention that both Néstor Kirchner and Menem are Peronists. We also are not shown the full extent of the misery and anger felt by the millions affected by the collapse. More problematical is that it is difficult to see a new type of citizen participation having a major impact in Argentina (the key theme of the movie), either in the economic or in the political sphere, in the near future. The desperation that marked the worst of the crisis has seemingly passed. Politics has changed, but it does not seem driven by popular participation. Worker takeovers of factories have not had a large impact and therefore do not appear to be a very promising world model.

While the film might be used in class to make an argument against globalization, it does not do a very good job of showing why the collapse happened nor the misery that ensued. Perhaps it could be used to demonstrate the hardiness of the human spirit, in that people can come up with solutions to their most basic problems. Obviously, the filmmakers are looking for a new economic strategy to offer as an alternative to globalized world capitalism. It is unlikely, however, that they found it in the takeovers of factories in Argentina.