"Workers of the World, Unite!" The epigraph of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' Communist Manifesto, penned more than a century and a half ago, is finding a new incarnation. Globalization, as many critics and activists have argued in recent years, not only expresses new power by capital, but it also makes possible new dimensions of working-class activism, as workers in one part of the world economy find themselves connected to workers in another part of that world economy.

Facilitated by new means of communications, such as the internet and video, they begin to explore ways of learning from each other, of uniting with each other, of acting together. This marvelous new documentary film, The Take, provides an important vehicle for such efforts.

Throughout its course, The Take ties the global with the local, links analysis with action, explores the connections between neighborhood and shopfloor activism with electoral politics, and offers the experiences of one group of workers as a subject to be studied, critically, by workers the world over. This is a far cry from both the romantic "third worldism" of the 1960s and 1970s, on the one hand, or, on the other, the privileging of the jobs and actions of workers in the Global North which has been the perspective of most unions in the United States. Here, it suggests, is a material experience. Learn from it what you can.

"We are the mirror to look into," one worker wrote to Naomi Klein. "We are where the rest of the world is going."

As the film opens, the camera pans a deserted factory while a voice tells us: "Welcome to the globalized ghost town. This is Argentina. It could be anywhere. But in the rubble, something is growing. Jobs are being taken back." The narrators take us on a quick, sky-high tour of Buenos Aires. Office towers, modern glass buildings, sleek and impressive. It all seems so familiar.

"Blinking signs encourage you to shop," the narrator says, "bank towers encourage you to save." And then we learn that people who ate fast food, like us, had jobs and savings accounts, like us, have been reduced to picking through garbage. The "most prosperous middle class in Latin America" has been driven into poverty ? through the implementation of the policies of the International Monetary Fund, "El Modelo," the model of debt, privatization, and corporate hand-outs. In the wake of Argentina's being turned into a "capitalist wild west" in the 1990s, the government announced it could not repay its debts, the largest sovereign debt default in world history, and half the country slipped below the poverty line.

But they have not gone quietly. And while they started with protests, they have gone farther. This is what makes their situation so interesting.

Early in the crisis, coincidently the same week that Enron announced its bankruptcy, the news spread that international capital and their local allies had removed $40 billion in cash from the country's banks. The government announced that banks were being closed and that depositors would have limited access to their own savings. Millions of Argentinians poured into the streets. Armed with pots and pans, they organized themselves into roving pickets (the "piqueteros") and established road blocks to disrupt business as usual. Crowds attacked ATMs and besieged banks demanding access to their savings. Political turmoil rapidly spread, and, to the tune of cries that "All of them must go," five men shuttled in and out of the country's presidency in a three-week period.

"There is only so much protesting can accomplish," says the narrator. None of these presidents was willing or able to address the root causes of Argentina's crisis, let alone provide a practical strategy for recovery. But in the factories, beyond the polling place, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the streets, an answer began to be found. Out of desperation, but with imagination and courage, some workers began to fashion a solution, while other workers found inspiration in their exposure to the actions taken by the first groups.

"Occupy. Resist. Produce." became the new watchword of the movement.

The Take focuses on an auto parts factory, Forja San Martin, as its workers seek to carry out this watchword. Cameras follow veteran workers who return to their empty factory, three years after it has closed. "Even the pigeons are gone," one remarks.

Inspired by the actions of other workers, especially Zanon Ceramics and the Brukman Suit Factory, and linked to the National Movement of Recovered Factories, the workers seek to establish a legal basis for their occupation. Their first claim is that they are owed back wages, their second is that the owner (who agrees to be interviewed on film!) has been stripping the factory's resources, selling off machinery and raw materials. They also explore the claim raised by Zanon Ceramics' workers that years of public subsidies to its former owners mean that the factory now belongs to "the public."

This claim of legitimacy is a central part of the movement's strategy, and The Take follows the workers' efforts to establish it from the shopfloor, where they rely upon their experience and their expertise to construct an inventory of what was once there but is now gone, to the courts, where they seek to have their claims upheld, to the national political arena, where they seek to prevent the return to office of the president who had collaborated with the IMF in the 1990s and has promised to restore the private property rights of the owners of expropriated factories, and, finally, to the local political arena, which seems more sympathetic to workers' concerns.

On the shopfloor, The Take enables viewers to eavesdrop on the workers' fascinating discussions about how to reorganize the factory. They organize themselves into a cooperative, decide that they will themselves provide the management of the production process, that all will be paid equal salaries, and that all decisions will be made by a general assembly of the workers. We also see committees of workers visit other occupied factories in pursuit of orders for products, discussing how to dovetail their production together. Other committees attend delegate gatherings of the Movement of Occupied Factories which, by the end of the film, include 200 workplaces (schools and health clinics, as well as factories) and employ 50,000 workers.

In the courts, Forja San Martin's workers seem like fish out of water. The very buildings and rooms in which they must plead their case reek of foreign territory, from the architecture and the d?cor to the rules of behavior. But the workers persist and seem to, at least for the time being, hold their own.

National politics is yet another arena, a complex, even divisive space. The Take offers viewers a very unflattering perspective on Carlos Menem, who was campaigning, after his release from prison for corruption, to regain the presidency. Menem has considerable charisma and his campaign claims the legacy of Peronism and evokes nostalgia for the days of economic growth before the profound collapse of the late 1990s. The filmmakers find one of the Forja workers who supports Menem, even though he has promised to end the experiment of factory takeovers and return all private property to its former owners.

By engaging with this worker, the filmmakers enable us to better understand the appeal of smooth-talking hustlers like Menem and the process by which the agents of corporate globalization, like the IMF and the World Bank, are able to find local collaborators. But we also see that the rest of the workers oppose Menem. Most of them support Nestor Kirchener, who voices a pro-labor ideology, even if he is vague about what he will do about the debt and Argentina's long-term relationship with the IMF.

Some of the workers question the entire arena of electoral politics, and The Take gives viewers an opportunity to understand their position. We meet Mattie, a young woman who has come out of the unemployed movement to work in Forja San Martin (which has an overwhelmingly male workforce). She is an adamant advocate of abstentionism. "Our dreams don't fit on your ballots," she and her comrades argue. "No political boss, king, or savior." They express their impatience with "the culture of the old politics," in which cash hand-outs bought political allegiances as workers gave their power away.

The Take does not draw conclusions for its viewers on these political issues, but it shows how the workers' struggle to feed their families has led them to occupy and produce, and how this has led them into the realm of politics. We also learn that, even though the struggle to produce demands considerable attention to the day-to-day life of the factory, this movement is also strongly grounded in community activism and support.

The film also takes us away from the Forja San Martin workers to learn a bit more about the two best-known examples of worker takeovers, Zanon Ceramics and the Brukman Suit Factory. At Zanon, we discover that one of Argentina's most popular rock bands has lent its support, holding huge concerts under the banner "Zanon Belongs to the People, Support the Workers." At Brukman, workers (almost entirely women) have voted to continue to pay a salary to a former worker who is struggling with cancer. The company had already laid her off before the shutdown, but the organized workforce has decided to treat her, still, as one of them.

The filmmakers interview various bystanders and community members about both factories, which elicits statements of strong identification with their projects. In the case of Brukman, an attempt to evict the occupying workers led to a massive protest in which community members encircled the plant and dissuaded the police. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who wield considerable moral authority in Buenos Aires, also came forward to "adopt" the Brukman workers. The soundtrack turns to popular singer, Mercedes Sosa, who sings: "Who says that all is lost?" Indeed. When one woman, interviewed on film, says "Maybe we can run the country this way," she seems to be speaking for many women and men.

Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein deserve considerable credit that they do not choose to end The Take on this upbeat note. Sosa's song continues: "It's like tearing open one's chest and tearing out one's soul." This is a difficult, complex struggle. Menem drops out of the election but, six months later, Kirchener signs a new deal with the IMF. But we can see the hope on the faces of the workers as they run their factories. There is "not a happy ending," the narrators tell us. "It is like The Matrix? to be continued."

Peter Rachleff is professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Documentary 'The Take' screens in Twin Cities

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Visit the film's website, www.nfb.ca/thetake