Political subjectivation and formation of class consciousness. The case of Sociedad Cooperativa Trabajadores de Pascual (1982-1985)

Abstract

This article presents the origins of Sociedad Cooperativa Trabajadores de Pascual (SCTP), cooperative of soft drinks and juices that originated in a labor strike between May 1982 and August 1985 in Mexico City. Specifically, it focuses on the processes of political subjectivation (Modonesi, 2010) from the process of antagonism that its workers-strikers experienced against the boss of the company, the corporate union leaderships (known as charros in Mexico) and the Mexican labor authorities of the time. The
theoretical argument is dedicated to the presentation of the links between experience and class consciousness as proposed by E. P. Thompson as a relational and historically determined process of political subjectivation.

The article is based on 12 in-depth interviews with workers, retired workers, two advisors (one man and one woman) of the Mexican Workers' Party that accompanied the Pascual workers' movement, as well as newspaper reports from the time and internal reports. of the first years of work as a cooperative.