In Venezuela experiences of self-management, workers control and co-management of the means of production and services can be found since the historical cooperativism to nowadays. The beginnings are in the early 20th Century. Carlos León, follower of the french Charles Gide, promoted the founding of cooperatives in Venezuela. The cooperative movement was victim of fierce repression. León was imprisoned in 1914 and exiled to Mexico in 1923. In the 1960’s the government as well as leftist organizations promoted cooperatives. Since 2000 there the Bolivarian government elected in late 1998 has launched different organizational efforts to achieve a democratization of property and management of means of production and take overs of work places by the workers and their collective administration. Initiatives like the strengthening of cooperatives and co-management can be found as well as the creation of social production enterprises (EPS), socialist enterprises, enterprises of social property, communal enterprises, workers councils and worker’s initiatives of workers control and workers councils.
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