well each 'recovered factory' or 'fasinpat' is a unique case obviously. in some cases the owners just left the country after the currency crash and resulting political stability and the gov't just awarded the workers the property in absentia. in other instances the owners left, the workers moved in and nobody really every came calling for the factory back. in other instances there have been tremendous legal battles as there are a variety of creditors clamouring for a piece of the pie. those are the tricky ones since what's obviously best for the country is to have a thriving workplace, not liquidate the machinery for spare parts to pay back a french bank.

the government is *not* the owner, the workers are. i don't think you could find a syndicalist out there who would regard state-ownership as anything but a massive economic regression.

the other thing to realize, as well, is that the situation in argentina since 2001 has been pretty much unlike anything we in the north are even remotely familiar with (well, except for maybe the post-versailles economy of germany). pretty much the entire underpinning of the economy collapsed virtually over night. massive currency devaluation and bank freezes wiped out the individual savings of the entire country and *huge* amounts of infrastructure were just completely abandonded as the wealthiest 2% of the population took anything that vaguely resembled a liquid asset and left.

in some respects it does mirror the situation in eastern spain shortly after the franco uprising. the fear of an impending civil war resulted in a very significant portion of the owning class just upping and leaving for france over the weekend. on monday morning in barcelona, after the unions and militia had ousted the falange, thousands of workers showed up to their jobs to find the owners gone, the safe full of payroll and all the machinery still there. the result was a collectivized economy built on a wild mix of syndicalism, anarchism and traditional spanish collectivist ideas. hell, even the barbers collectivized.

i think that here in north america where collectivist tradition is very weak most people have a hard time differentiating the multiple models of non-capitalist economic organization. things are pretty much seen as a dichotomy of capitalist or bolshevik-style state socialism. heck, i live in a part of the country where there's a lot of agriculture and, by extension, a lot of agricultural co-ops (mostly purchasing and marketing co-ops, but some production too)... but god forbid you should propose to a farmer that he is engaging in a non-capitalist form of economic organizing. he'll call you a dirty red and run you off his land!