Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890-1910

When the Argentine economy collapsed in 2001, many were surprised by the factory takeovers and neighborhood assemblies that resulted. But workers' control and direct democracy have long histories in Argentina, where from the late nineteenth century and well, into the twentieth, anarchism was the main revolutionary ideology of the labor movement and other social struggles.

Most histories of anarchism in Argentina tend toward dry analyses of labor politics, lists of union acronyms, and the lik...