"The Take"

A couple years ago, Avi Lewis, Naomi Klein and a small film crew traveled to Argentina. They were there in the days after Argentina had declared bankruptcy; the factories were shutting down; unemployment skyrocketed. People routinely experience not months of unemployment, but years.

This documentary follows the occupation of the Forja San Martin, a forge and auto parts factory near Buenos Aires. They themselves are but one of hundreds of factories taken over by the workers, and turned into worker controlled co-operatives. Through out the film, as these workers are interviewed in their factories, we see and hear what true democracy could look like. "I don't know why accounting was so hard for the bosses" one garment worker says, "how to pay the bills, buy materials and pay wages. It's addition and subtraction. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but I think we could run the country this way".

The amazing thing about this revolution, is that it is not ideological. There is no grand van-guard leading this. There is no centralized philosophy. There is only common sense-which leads these people to the conclusion that they have no need of managers or executives. The amazing thing about "Marxism" is that it is really common sense. Marx was not the leader of some van-guard political party. He was an analyst of capitalism. His conclusions, that wealth stolen from the many to enrich the few, would leave the world, over time, destroyed-and the People arisen in revolution.

And here it is. No central authority...just the belief that we the Workers know what's up. That we ourselves have no need of the managers' bullshit nor the executive's priviledge. I don't believe they are getting ahead of themselves, I believe that is how we should lead the counry. Our courts, our Congress and legislatures, our executives-all as corrupt as corrupt can be. Perhaps a year or two from now, when we in the "First World" feel the boot of the IMF on our necks, when we too are now going on three years of unemployment, then we too may join the ranks of workers around the world, reclaiming it for ourselves.

Already in the US, a mass movement is under way. Lead for the most part by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, they are leading sit-ins in foreclosed homes. They are moving homeless people and families into abandoned homes, and are breathing new life into squatters' rights.

It is easy for us to feel no progress has been made here in America-but we have the most finely polished propogand machine and Politburo ever! If the corporate news showed us what we have accomplished and what we are doing, we would feel so empowered we'd take the world back overnight. Until then, let's continue supporting the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the Industrial Workers of the World, and all our groups that are helping us organize our oncoming direct democracy.