Producing the Collective Subject: Anarchist Practices at the People's High School in Buenos Aires

This paper analyzes the experience of a “people’s high school” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the ways that it engages with anarchist-inspired practices and ideas.  In 2001, Argentina experienced a political and economic crisis that gave rise to hundreds of social movements opposing the neoliberal status quo, including “movements of unemployed workers” (MTDs) and factory takeovers. These 2001 movements encompassed much experimentation with the idea of social movement itself, as they abandoned the old political party structures and incorporated social relationships into their political agendas. While many such movements have since dropped their autonomist orientations in favor of aligning themselves with Kirchnerism and the presidential administrations since 2003, other movements remain staunchly independent and committed to alternative models of social change (referring to themselves as part of the “independent left”). One such organization, the people’s high school (bachillerato popular) of the MTD Barracas, uses a non-hierarchical structure and consensus-based decision-making as one of the primary vehicles for organizing grassroots social change within the movement and the neighborhood. Based on a year of participant observation, I examine how the movement enacts these anarchist organizational forms. I argue that the successful outcome of such organizational practices is the creation of a collective subject, which is only produced at the school when these structures are combined with meaningful emotional interactions among activists. Thus this paper sheds new light on how and why some uses of consensus seem to fall flat or collapse into frustrating bureaucratic formulae, while other movements succeed in using such anarchist principles to meaningfully integrate participants into decision-making processes. Within a context of marginalization and oppression in an Argentine shantytown, the people’s high school is using anarchist practices to create alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.