Drawing on a theoretical approach that focuses on the concepts of class action and workers’ participation, the author identifies, in both historical developments and contemporary empirical evidence, the elements that explain the emergence of workers’ self-management in the form of recuperated enterprises in Argentina.

A historical analysis spanning several centuries has shown that external conditions, in the form of systemic and structural factors, provide the general prerequisites for the emergence of workers’ self-management, while internal factors exert a direct influence on the sustainability of such a process. The relationship between these general structural and systemic conditions and the sustainability of workers’ self-management is mediated by institutional/organizational and action-related factors, which have an immediate impact on both the possibility of its emergence and the stabilization of workers’ self-management.

To gain insight into the relationship between internal factors and the sustainability of workers’ self-management, economic, organizational, and value-related factors were examined. Based on an empirical analysis of the everyday functioning of recuperated enterprises, the hypothesized role of internal factors was largely confirmed.