We are in the midst of a systemic crisis, and the question “Socialism or Barbarism” is back on the table. What can we learn from the movements of the 1970s and from the critics of Soviet bureaucracy? What do workers have to say who are currently fighting back on vegetable fields, at substations, in hospitals, or in subway tunnels? In the film, we use all these voices to develop a concrete picture of the transition to a post-capitalist society and the basic features of a planned economy from below. For the documentary “Every Field, Every Factory,” we interviewed 50 workers, eyewitnesses, and theorists on the question of the revolutionary transition. We wanted to know how they envision the basic features of a new mode of social production.

In the first part, we examine the strengths and weaknesses of the last major class movements that “overwhelmed capitalism” in the 1970s (Sergio Bologna). Comrades from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and England talk about their experiences—from factory occupations and collective price reductions to their participation in the Carnation Revolution in Portugal—and how the state confronted the movement through repression and co-optation.

Even in the 1970s, the legacy and the actual existence of the Soviet Union limited the movement’s horizons. In the film, we ask comrades how one might imagine raising local self-organization in workplaces and neighborhoods to a societal level without becoming dependent on a planning bureaucracy or market structures for coordination. We discuss the idea of working-time accounting, developed by council communists, and the basic features of a free, conscious, and collective mode of production. The focus is on interviews with workers from key sectors, sharing their experiences from large factories, agriculture, energy supply, or the healthcare sector.

How would a mode of work and production need to change so that all producers not only have the formal right to participate in decisions but also possess the necessary knowledge to do so?

If we assume that capitalism cannot be overcome gradually or through a growing alternative economy, the question of a revolutionary transition arises. What role does the military play, and what role do organized structures within class movements play? What can we do today to both make the “revolution among colleagues seem possible”—as a London Underground driver describes his commitment in the film—and to develop self-organization in workplaces and network these organized nuclei?

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