hydrarchist writes:

This long essay is in three parts. The analysis comes from Aufheben magazine, whose other works can be found here.To print this article, click at the following links for the essay in printer-friendly format:

Part 1 --
Part 2 --
Part 3.

"Picket and Pot-Banger Together:

Class Re-Composition in Argentina?"

A Nation Implodes?

Following years of 'neo-liberal' restructuring in Argentina, and with thousands of private and state workers not having been paid in the last half of 2001, by the end of that year the social situation was deteriorating fast. The collapse of a heavily indebted economy threatened ever wider social sectors with the loss of their livelihoods. This situation was not going uncontested, however. There were twelve general strikes in 2001 alone. On just one day in August of that year, a huge piquetero action involved over 100,000 people and blocked 300 roads. On the 17th of December the government of De La Rúa announced further cuts. The state budget was to take a further 20% reduction. This meant more cuts in services, wages and pensions. Unemployment already stood at 20% and the corralito (banking restrictions) had been put in place on December 3rd to prevent people withdrawing their savings. A generalized insurrection gripped the country. And on the 19th, huge sections of Argentinian society mobilised not only against De La Rúa but against the whole Argentinian political class. On the 15th, organised lootings spread through Argentina’s provincial cities; on the 16th and 17th they hit Buenos Aires, where thousands attacked supermarkets, warehouses and shops, as well as official buildings. In Quilmes, in greater Buenos Aires, 2000 people besieged a supermarket and refused to leave until they were given 3000 twenty-kilo bags of food. The movement spread spontaneously. Many banks in the heart of Buenos Aires were burned on the 19th.

De La Rúa denounced this ‘anarchy’ and instituted a state of emergency. This threat of state repression, a very tangible threat to Argentinians with their memories of the terror of the dictatorship, instead of demobilising people became the spark for an even wider mobilisation. More than a million people filled the centre of Buenos Aires and headed for the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace in the Plaza de Mayo. There were also hundreds of thousands on the streets of most of the other cities: Córdoba, La Plata, Rosario. The impoverished middle classes came out into the streets, in a mass cacerolazo, a symbolic protest involving the beating of pots and pans. At exactly the moment when the state attempted to intimidate and create division, with a call to order against the looters, people filled the streets chanting ‘the state of emergency – they can stick it up their arse’. This crucial moment became effectively an endorsement of the insurgency of the previous days. More than 30 people died on the 18th and 19th, shot by shopkeepers and cops at lootings around the country, and in the streets around the Plaza De Mayo in Buenos Aires during riots; but the ‘party of order’ was decisively pushed back. The massive defiance of the state of emergency appeared to lay to rest the ghost of fear and intimidation from the years of the dictatorship; the phrase ‘No te metes’ (‘Don’t get involved’) was no longer heard.
All the main protagonists of this story were involved on the 19th. There were the unemployed, who participated in both the piquetes and the lootings all over the country. The ‘middle classes’ were also there; in the following few days, they would set up popular assemblies in their neighbourhoods. Prefiguring this, people met and discussed on street corners, where many stayed until late into the night, lighting fires in the middle of the roads at the intersections of wide avenues - reminiscent of piquetero tactics of the last few years. The workers from the Brukman factory, occupied on the 18th, were there too.

As the 19th turned into the 20th, the cacerolazo protest escalated into open confrontation with the state and there was massive street-fighting in the centre of Buenos Aires. At the Obelisk, in the centre of Buenos Aires, hundreds engaged in running street-battles with police – including the motoqueros, the motorbike couriers, who gave aid to the fighters from the back of their bikes, charging the police, rescuing those overcome by tear-gas and bringing loads of stones for others fighting. People celebrated, as De la Rúa fled the Casa Rosada by helicopter, with music, champagne and bonbons looted from nearby shops. The banks burned in the centre of Buenos Aires on the 19th and 20th, an expression of anger at the corralito; the bank freezes affected not only the middle classes but also many workers with small savings and those who depended on cash by working in the black economy. The demos, riots and lootings took place throughout Buenos Aires province and in more than 12 cities around the country. Barricades were erected in some areas of the capital and massive riots ensued. Many joined the weekly vigil of the mothers of the disappeared in the Plaza de Mayo; some tried to storm the Casa Rosada; the Ministry of the Economy was set alight; and people besieged the home of the hated minister of finance, Cavallo. In Cordoba, the second city, site of Argentina’s declining car industry, the breakdown of negotiations over the payment of wages between municipal workers and the council led to an occupation of the council offices, where a popular assembly was held. Thrown out by the police, they tried to burn the building down and build barricades in the street, helped by workers from various factories that had just gone on strike. As in Buenos Aires, lootings occured involving different sectors of workers and the unemployed. A new slogan against the political class resounded in the streets all over the country, one taken up and much-debated ever since: ‘Que se vayan todos’ (Out with them all).

The new mood appeared to be summed up in a statement by one of the piqueteros involved in the MTD Solano (Movement of Unemployed Workers: ’We heard rumours of deaths [from repression] but we knew we were participating in something historical and you could feel the solidarity there. We weren’t piqueteros or middle class; we all felt the sensation of being “one”’. But this provokes the question: What was the nature of this feeling of ‘being one?’ A problematic cross-class solidarity in which the proletariat were in danger of losing sight of their class needs by joining with other classes affected by the Argentinian crisis? The present article seeks to answer this fundamental question of the composition – or re-composition – of the movements which have been threatening the social order in Argentina over the last 12 months.

In order to gain an understanding of the nature of the current struggles, we need first to place them in their historical context, beginning with Argentina’s ‘golden era’, when the economy revolved around the agro-export business. The rise of Peronism heralded a new ‘settlement’ with the working class which helps explain some of the peculiarities of the present-day struggles. In this context, we trace the origins and outline the trajectories of the different sections making up today’s movement: the unemployed and piqueteros, the situation in the factories, and the impoverished middle classes and the neighbourhood assemblies. While there appears to be a generalized ‘rejection of politics’, there remains the question of how all these aspects fit together – do the various struggles in Argentina constitute a proletarian attack against capital? Is the ‘rejection of politics’ a radical advance for the movement, or an expression of sectional fragmentation? We suggest that the ‘neo-liberal’ attack has resulted in a massification of the class in which the middle classes are being absorbed into the proletariat. This is happening in specific conditions of a country on the periphery of capital, where an immediately social mobilization around the neighbourhood is possible.

1. The contradictions of the 'golden era' of the agro-export business

As thousands of Argentinians loot stores for food and goods while grain and meat is shipped away to the western markets, the ‘iron’ laws of economy are exposed as reified expressions of the class war. Indeed, the whole history of modern Argentina, of its changes in economic strategies and its various crises, is the history of the Argentinian bourgeoisie’s battle to reimpose, again and again, capital's control on a fierce, riotous proletariat.

In 1914, Argentina's economy was based on agricultural exports, mainly of grain and beef. The Argentinian bourgeoisie was composed of landowners, who had control of large latifundias, and export businessmen, and confronted a huge number of discontented agricultural workers whose pay and conditions were appalling but whose dispersion in a large backward countryside was a great obstacle in their attempts to organize. In the rural region of Patagonia the meat-processing, service and transport workers of the small towns of Rio Gallegos and Puerto Deseado were already developing organizations based on small federations. Patagonia's largest union organization, the Sociedad Obrera de Rio Gallegos, was centred in the small capital Rio Gallegos and had been active since 1911.

While Argentina's rural hinterland was left underdeveloped, the agro-business trade had necessitated the development of some subsidiary industries and services, such as meat-processing plants, cargo transport, railways, docks, triggering the expansion of a few coastal cities and a growing urban proletariat. The urban workers could organize more easily and by 1914 they were already a combative force and a challenge to the status quo.

The urbanization of the coast, functional to the export-oriented economy, involved the growth of an urban middle class and petit bourgeoisie composed of shop-keepers, petty businessmen, professionals, and civil servants. The development of the urban middle classes and the threat of the proletariat gradually started undermining the power of the agrarian oligarchy. By 1911, the conservative government had to concede to the struggles of the middle classes and the petit bourgeoisie and extended the electoral franchize to include middle classes and to the bulk of the working class with the law Sáenz Peña (1912). In 1916, Hipólito Yrigoyen, candidate for the Radical Party, which represented the middle classes, was elected President of Argentina. Yrigoyen's populist government would combine repression with attempts to recuperate urban and rural working class struggles.

The dominant agrarian and mercantile bourgeoisie had little interest in promoting industrial production or the development of the countryside. However, the viability of Argentina's agrarian export economy depended on the ability of the Argentinian exporters to realize profits by selling on the world market. The vulnerability of this economy, and of the class settlement which it expressed, was exposed by the First World War. Causing disruption to international trade, the war stirred up in Argentina a wave of strikes and insurrections which seriously threatened the bourgeois order. This was the beginning of the end of the era of an economy which was golden only to the extent of the Argentinian agrarian oligarchy's pockets. As we will see later, the world crisis of 1929 was to give it the final blow.

Already before the First World War, Argentina's extensive but backward agriculture had begun to reach the limits of cultivable lands, and a change in economic strategy would sooner or later appear necessary to the bourgeoisie. However, with the First World War, the demand for agricultural export goods from the belligerent countries temporarily increased, pushing prices up and rewarding the agro-businessmen with huge profits. But, at the same time, the war caused a shortage in the import of raw material and capital goods, and led to a crisis in many industrial sectors. As unemployment rose and pay and working conditions worsened, waves of strikes affected transport and urban service sectors, as well as the mostly British or foreign, meat-processing plants, in the towns along the coast.

Meanwhile, there was also a change in the representation of the working class. By 1914 the largest union federation in Argentina was the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), which in its fifth congress in 1905 had adopted an anarcho-communist position. In September 1914 the syndicalist Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina (CORA) dissolved themselves to join FORA. The syndicalists opposed FORA's anarcho-communist position and their entry to the federation was conditioned by a promise from the anarchist unions to discuss the problem of common objectives and principles in the forthcoming ninth congress of FORA. During this congress, in 1915, FORA's revolutionary positions were discarded in favour of a position of neutrality towards different political currents within the labour movement - this included the Socialist Party and other parliamentary and moderate currents, but, as we will see, it also gave freedom to the union leaders of FORA to accept any compromise with whoever was in power. Also the revolutionary positions which had up until then characterized the syndicalists were toned down. In fact, while up until then revolutionary syndicalism had encouraged the use of the general strike as a tool to overthrow capitalism, the general strike was now accepted 'only when it is exercized with intelligence and energy to repulse the aggression of capitalism and the State'. While moderation took root in the mainstream FORA, the now minority unions who were still faithful to revolutionary principles left FORA to create the 'FORA of the fifth congress' (FORA V). The syndicalist FORA was then known as the ‘FORA of the ninth congress’ (FORA IX).

With his election in 1916, the Radical President Yrigoyen sought a conciliatory approach with the working class and started a ‘special relationship’ with the unions of FORA IX. The Radical government took steps towards introducing labour reforms and intervened in industrial disputes through a representative of the President (the governor), sometimes on the side of the workers. On the other hand, Yrigoyen's government severely repressed strikes when no political gain or conciliatory agreements could be obtained or when important interests of capital were at stake.

FORA IX found it difficult to bridle the proletariat into submission and compromise. After 1918 news of the Russian Revolution added to the material conditions of crisis by encouraging the Argentinian proletariat towards a uncompromising confrontation with the system. It was the revolutionary FORA V which took the lead of the new offensive. In January 1919 a major insurrection, which would be known as the Tragic Week, exploded in Buenos Aires, provoked by the death of workers during armed confrontations between the police and strikers in the occupied metallurgical plant Pedro Vasena & Hijos. FORA V called for a general strike and the on the 9th of January a march of 200,000 people led by about a hundred armed workers turned to a victorious battle with the police, while looters raided the city. FORA IX was obliged to join FORA V in calling a general strike for the 10th, whilst at the same time opening negotiations with the government. The struggle continued for the next four days and strikes paralysed the city, while FORA IX, who were able to negotiate and obtain petty concessions limited to the dispute within Vasena, tried to discourage the workers from carrying on and appealed for a return to work - but in vain. The insurrection was not really about one isolated dispute in an isolated factory, but about the general discontent shared by everyone, and the workers felt strong enough to prosecute the strikes while FORA V was pushing for the extension of the strikes to the revolution. Only the intervention of the army was able to reimpose social peace.

After the end of the First World War, a fall of international wool and meat prices affected the rural region of Patagonia. Unemployment and the general worsening of the conditions of rural workers caused by the crisis encouraged the Sociedad Obrera de Rio Gallegos, affiliated to FORA IX, to call for a regional strike of ports and hotels in July 1920. The repressive response of the State triggered an escalation of the struggle, which extended among the rural workers in the hinterland. Armed nuclei composed of rural workers raided the countryside, spreading terror among the landowners and the bosses, recruiting, and propagating the struggle from hacienda to hacienda. Presidential appeals for reconciliation to the 'genuine-and-peaceful' workers were answered with armed defiance both in the coastal towns and in the countryside, and scabs sent from Buenos Aires were shot at by the workers of Rio Gallegos. Patagonia did not want a compromise, they wanted to go further: 'This is not a working-class movement' said the governor Correo Falcon 'but something much worse'. The strike ceased first in the capital Rio Gallegos and later in the countryside in front of a total lack of support from the central FORA IX and of the promises of generous concessions by the new governor, Varela, who presented himself as a defender of workers' rights and was able to obtain an agreement with the rural workers. The promises were not met; but another attempt to organize strikes and armed struggles in 1921 was murderously repressed by the governor Varela. The upsurge was over, to the relief not only of the Argentinian bourgeoisie but also of the English and the German bourgeoisies, who had appealed to the Argentinian chancery to protect their property in Patagonia.
Between 1919 and 1929 Argentina's economy recovered, real wages rose, unemployment decreased. This gave the government the economic basis for a renewed compromise with the working class. New laws to regulate the labour market were introduced (e.g. a legislation which made payment in cash obligatory came in 1925, the restriction of the working day to 8 hours, except for rural and domestic workers, came in 1929). The working class were demobilized and most of the unions merged to form the reformist confederation Central General de Trabajadores (CGT, 1930). Only FORA V and a few communist unions stayed out.

2. Import-substitution production
and Peronism

The fall of world trade that followed the end of the First World War prompted some within the Argentinian bourgeoisie to disengage with the world markets and look towards industrialization based on import substitution. However, a concerted attempt at national industrialization required a break with the established class settlement. The emerging industrial bourgeoisie, in whose interests it was to was to really push for this new economic policy, was in fact weak and squeezed between the agro-trade oligarchy on the one hand, entrenched in their conservative free-trade oriented interests, and a militant and restless working class on the other. It was only with the economic crisis that followed Wall Street crash in 1929, which saw a collapse in world trade, that became possible to break the existing class settlement and pursue a policy of import subtitution led industrialization . Even then the Argentinian industrial bourgeoisie was too weak and the army had to step in.

The army overthrew the Radical government in 1930, installing a military presidency. In order to regulate overproduction caused by the international crisis, the military government placed agricultural trade under State control, against the entrenched interests of the agrarian and mercantile bourgeoisie. The monopoly of the agro-trade profits allowed the State to channel capitals into the development of a modern army, and a State apparatus which favoured industrial development; and (above all later with Perón) to channel profits into productive and industrial development.

At the same time the military government acted against the working class so as to increase the profitability of industrial capital. As soon as it took power, the new governments started repressions of both militant and conciliatory unions. Despite the fact that the moderate CGT did not even condemn the military coup, declaring themselves 'politically neutral', the new government took repressive steps against the unions. The industrial bourgeoisie regained the ground previously lost to the working class. The labour laws conceded after the insurrection of 1919 were repealed; regulations were neglected by the bosses with the approval of state authorities and during the next ten years the average wage decreased. In the same period industrial production expanded and overtook agricultural production. This was accompanied by a recomposition of the Argentinian working class: made redundant by the economic restructuring, masses of rural workers moved to the urban areas and provided the labour force for the new industries.

However, unable to find a stable form to mediate class conflict and to integrate the working class with some form of corporative compromise, the military government found itself caught between the interests of the old ruling oligarchy and rising popular discontent, and they were obliged to progressively concede power to bourgeois politicians.
In June 1943, during the Second World War, in the face of a bourgeoisie split by conflicting interests, the army, led by Generals Rawson and Ramírez, took power a second time in order to ensure Argentina maintained a neutral position in the Second World War. There was an ideological motive in the coup, since the right-wing army was inclined to maintain a friendly relationship with the fascist side and many among them, Perón included, openly expressed their admiration of Mussolini. In fact the military was looking at fascism and corporatism as an answer to growing working class militancy. In 1942 the number of working days lost to strikes in Argentina was three times higher than in the past two years.

Indeed, in 1943, the new Labour and Social Security Secretary, Juan Domingo Perón, started a coherent economic and political policy based on the introduction of protective tariffs to support national accumulation and industrial development and on a corporatist compromise with the industrial working class. By 1944 he had become Vice President of Argentina. His popularity with the working class became so high that when the army tried to remove him from his post and send him into internal exile in 1945, a wave of grass-root struggles spread through the country obtained his return. In 1946, he was elected President with the support of the urban working class. In 1946 Perón initiated an industrialization plan, based on the income from the State monopoly of the agro-export, which would be reinvested in new industries through State-owned banks.

The introduction of protectionism and the State control of industrial development provided the material means to integrate the working class through economic concessions. And at the same time the real improvement in working class conditions, particularly higher wages, was functional to the expansion of Argentina's internal market, and to the development of the import substitution economy. Indeed, the ideology of Peronism, based on the idea of a State 'above all particular class interests', was an ideology that the Radical government of Yrigoyen (and General Uriburu, with his corporatist commitment) had tried to propose in vain because it was challenged both by the old oligarchy and the working class, and as a result was contradicted by its actual economic policies. Only with the Peronist compromise this nationalistic 'third way' was grounded in the actual role taken by the State in the control of the economy. And by allowing for a real change in the conditions of the working class it was able to secure the material basis for its credibility.

The gains of the working class were to some extent comparable to those of workers in European social-democratic countries. A bureaucratic union apparatus would represent the workers and guarantee their 'interests' within a system of collective bargaining with the state as interlocutor (the unions received the status of persona juridica in 1945).The centralization of wage negotiations became a feature of most trades (already in 1945 there were 142 collective bargains signed at the National Department of Labour for Buenos Aires and 279 for the rest of the country). Legislation which benefited the workers was passed, including a steady rise of wages, the introduction of an extra month bonus at Christmas (the Aguinaldo, suspended only in August 2001), the implementation of health and safety regulations, free health care and new guarantees for rural workers.

These 'generous' concessions were offered in exchange for the workers' submission to the State and the social order. For Perón the good worker had to go 'de casa al trabajo y del trabajo a la casa': from home to work and from work to home - and give up class struggle. Perón's nationalistic ideology condemned communism and capitalism as 'foreign' and spurious ideologies, in the name of the 'third way' of justice and welfare provided by the Argentinian State. The Peronist party was called 'Justicialist'. The other side of this 'third way' was of course military repression, which was turned against those unions and militants who opposed the regime (the socialist splinter of the unions' federation CGT was suspended).

Instead, the more moderate unions were encouraged and integrated into the State structure. The union's complicity with the corporatist state and their moderation was guaranteed in concrete by a redefinition of their role within the system of wealth distribution. The unions were in fact put in charge of benefit provision and they would run the health service and even holiday resorts for the workers. This control on resources was an element of real power and control on the individual workers based on relations of patronage.

However, the union representation found itself in a contradiction. In order to maintain their privileges which were the token for their submission to the State apparatus, the unions had to strive not to lose their control of the workers' movement; but on the other hand they had also to strive to maintain their legitimacy in face of the workers, whose militancy was growing. Indeed, contradictorily, in their efforts at recuperating the proletariat through representation, Peronism encouraged the workers to meet and participate in union activities, and to organize. Unionization was made obligatory for the state sector, and new unions promoted. The same fact that unionization was encouraged meant that while between 1940 and 1944 there were 332 strikes with a loss of one million working days, between 1945 and 1949 392 strikes soared to a record of nine million working days. In fact, while the main union federation CGT had become a bureaucratized mechanism at the service of the government, struggles proliferated around the shop stewards and the official representatives in the factories (comisiones internas), escaping the control of the leaders.
With its nationalistic and militaristic ideology, and with its attempt to surpress class conflict through a state-imposed corporatism, Peronism appears strikingly similar to European fascism. However, although Perón openly sought to emulate Mussolini, and although many commentators have seen Peronism as merely a form of fascism, there were vital differences. First, Peronism did not arise out of a mass movement rooted in the despair following a decisive working class defeat. Second, in his efforts to modernize Argentina through a policy of rapid industrialization, Perón was unable to rely on the backing of a relatively strong industrial bourgeoisie in order to overcome entrenched conservative agrarian interests. Instead, as we have seen, Perón came to power with the support of the working class. Far from smashing already demoralized working class organizations, Perón was obliged to establish a modus vivendi with such organizations.
The fact that Perón was obliged to establish an alliance with the working class has led some commentators to suggest that Peronism was essentially a form of social democracy, or at least a cross between social democracy and fascism. However, to the extent that social democracy becomes the representation of the working class within the state and capital, it represents the working class as individual commodity-owner/citizens. As such, social democracy tends to lead to the demobilization of the working class and the atrophy of its self-organization.

In contrast, although Perón could maintain an iron grip at the national level, at the grass-roots level both formal and informal working class organizations and networks were not only preserved but left with a large degree of autonomy. At a national level, Perón tied the working class as a whole to Perónism through substantial material concessions, while at a local level the various local grass-roots organizations were tied to the state through a system of patronage.
This co-option and preservation of the pre-existing forms of working class self-organization was further consolidated with Perón’s move towards democratization. In doing so, Perón established a system of clientelist relationships which guaranteed political and financial autonomy to the electoral base. Peronist local organizations were left totally or almost totally free from any political control on their activities. They would support their politicians at electoral times, receiving in exchange financial help and jobs. This encouraged identification with, and support for, Peronism, since such support actually meant welfare, state-guaranteed rights against the employers, and also space for militant actions and self-organization.

It is worth noticing that the Peronist structure of power, by giving a limited autonomy to its electoral base, encouraged and reproduced a traditional practice of self-help and solidarity at neighbourhood level. This tradition was rooted in the life of the pre-1920s conventillos, large buildings where working class families used to, and indeed some still do live (they have the structure of convents, with shared kitchens, and central patios). Workers' cultural associations, popular libraries and anarchist schools proliferated around the conventillos' patios, as well as instances of organized neighbourhood-based struggles. When, by the end of the 1920s, the workers were rehoused in individual houses in the suburbs of the cities, they tried to overcome their isolation by organizing themselves in the neighbourhood (barrio) through social and sport clubs and cultural associations - however, as Ronaldo Munck stresses, the new social heterogeneity in the suburbs would 'tend to dilute the harsh proletarian experience of the pre-1930 period. This base activity was encouraged by Peronism, when welfare was provided by the union structures through a network of associations (such as recreational groups, co-ops, etc.); this situation probably reflected the weakness of a bourgeoisie which could not afford to provide the working class with a modern welfare system. The ‘mafia’-like structure of Argentinian power was one side of the coin of this weakness; the failure of the Peronist ‘welfare system’ to fragment and individualize the working class (as was achieved instead by the western welfare state) was the other side of this same coin.

This had allowed the Argentinian working class to experience communal self-organization as a central part of its reproduction and survival, balancing the obvious pressure of capitalism towards bourgeois individualism. This tradition of solidarity in the neighbourhood and at street level, which Argentinian capitalism could not affort to dismantle, was an important element in Argentina's historical insurrections. One tradition which has reoccured from pre-Peronist times up until today today is the organization of ollas populares, community kitchens during episodes of strikes. But above all this experience is important for its revolutionary potential – the fact that struggles which start from certain categories of workers can actually involve other proletarians and expand to whole towns.

3. The end of the
import-substitution economy

By the end of the 1940s, import substitution-led industrialization was reaching its limits. Concessions for the working class and the its institutionalized strength restricted the rate of exploitation and hinder profits. The State apparatus necessary to Peronist patronage, with its army of white collar workers employed in the unions, hospitals, schools, etc, was a growing burden on the realization of surplus value at national level. Argentina's archaic agricultural trade, whose profits still constituted the main source of finance for the State, and which were challenged by competition from more advanced western countries, began to impose increasingly pressing limits on the Peronist system. As a consequence, inflation began to rise and real wages declined. A mounting petty bourgeois, middle-class and bourgeois opposition to Peronism emerged, politically articulated by the Catholic Church and by increasingly nervous associations of industry bosses.

It was increasingly apparent that Peronist power could survive only by changing the terms of its 'compromise': In order to deal with the increasing State deficit, Perón had to seek foreign investments, and in order to contain inflation had to discipline the working class. Already by 1948, the government responded to strikes with repression more frequently than by making concessions. In 1953 Perón had to abandon his commitment to his flagship policy of protectionism: causing outrage in public opinion, he allowed the USA to invest in a new a steel plant, and started negotiations with the California-based Standard Oil Company for the exploitation of oil sources in Patagonia. All this weakened both the ideological and the material basis of the Peronist class compromise.

In fact a change at international level in the post-war settlement presented Argentina with the opportunity to shift towards export-led industrialization. The Bretton Woods agreement, together with multilateral agreements promoting free trade, established the dollar as world currency and stimulated a sustained recovery in world trade. Argentina's bourgeoisie could now in principle take advantage of an opening up of foreign markets, particularly in the USA and in Europe, to sell the products it could now manufacture. The governments which succeeded Perón's would make increasing efforts towards liberalization. But there was a fundamental problem confronting the attempts to pursue export-led growth. The industry developed under the Peronist compromise was backward and inefficient by world standards. Argentinian industry needed massive investment to be able to compete on the world market, and this could only come from abroad. But Western Banks were not prepared to make large the large scale and long term investments in Argentina necessary to modernize its plant and machinery while the post-war boom was generating high profits in the Western countries.

However, the need to attract foreign investment and to discipline the working class into better standards of efficiency, faster work pace, higher intensity of work, meant that the bourgeoisie had to get rid of Perón and attack the privileges of a 'spoiled' working class. In September 1955 a military coup replaced Perón, populistically playing also on the disappointment of the public opinion about the deals with Standard Oil. The aim of the new military government was first of all to redefine the balance of power between employers and workers, since, according to the employers' federation of the metallurgical industry, workplaces were 'like an army in which the troops give the orders and not the generals' . In the years following the coup, anti-labour laws were passed; the base structure of the Peronist union, the comisiones internas, were subjected to State intervention or forced into clandestinity. In 1958 the Radical government led by Frondizi implemented a series of privatizations and rationalizations, to patch up the State finances and encourage foreign investment. After 1958 production was restructured sometimes with the introduction of new technology; but often the effort of increasing productivity just meant imposing a faster work pace and discipline on the workers.

There was a strong grass-root workers' response to the new economic measures. Between 1955 and 1959 about four million working days were lost every year to strikes. In 1959 the days lost to strikes soared to ten million. The workers did not hesitate to consider occupations, sabotages and the use of explosives. Despite this resistance, the bourgeoisie recovered ground. Wage concessions were related to productivity; piece-work was introduced; speed-ups were imposed. It was a period of defeat for the class, paradoxically amidst a level of struggles which we may only envy today in the UK.

At the end of the 50s, however, a peak in militant factory occupations and strikes encouraged the CGT to get involved, both to control this militancy and to use it for achieving more political and negotiation power. With Augusto Vandor as leader, the CGT made every effort to minimize grass-root influenece on the assemblies with the use of intimidation by stewards and impose a total control of the struggles from the top. The workers' energies were channelled into 'controlled struggles', controlled in every detail by the union leaders, which were aimed to gain concessions for the union's power and for the workers, but also to weaken the Radical government and pave the way for a return of Perón. In particular, in 1964 a 'controlled' series of factory occupations involved eleven thousand factories and four million workers.

Amidst growing social tension, a students' struggle swept the country in 1966. A new military regime took power the same year and smashed the movement, but it could not stop the process of policitization in universities which had started with it. The student's radicalization and their involvement with the workers' struggles would in fact be an important element in the later insurrectional events of 1969.
The new military government, led by General Onganía, initially presented itself as ideologically corporatist and its coup was welcomed by most of the unions. But in 1967 the government's economic policies shifted towards liberalization and rationalization , adopting anti-inflationary policies which led to the collapse of uncompetitive businesses, reducing barriers for the entry of foreign capitals, and cutting the powers and the resources of the CGT. However, a general strike called by the CGT for March 1967 met a cold response from many unions. In 1968 the CGT regrouped in a moderate CGT Azopardo and a more militant, and only initially large, CGTA ('of the Argentinians'), created by base militants, and involving stalinists, left-wing Peronists, left-wing Catholics, and groups of the far left.
From 1968 however the workers rose up again in a crescendo of strikes which culminated with major insurrectional events in 1969, the Cordobazo. Tension in the industrial town of Cordoba built up mainly around the issues of the abolition of the five-day working week and the establishment of quitas zonales, regions where the bosses were allowed pay less than the wage nationally agreed, which included the region of Cordoba. The metal mechanical workers, the bus drivers and the car mechanics, and their respective unions UOM, UTA and SMATA were mainly at the centre of these struggles. The immediate trigger for the insurrection was a series of protests after murderous police repression of student struggles. The 29th May in Córdoba a march organized by SMATA, Luz y Fuerza (the local power workers union), UOM and UTA, joined by white collar workers and by students, soon transformed itself into a battle on the barricades. The whole town was on the streets and the centre was seized for many hours. But the day after the army counterattacked, numerous arrests were made, and militants were killed. In September a new insurrection exploded in the town of Rosario, in the Córdoba region; the town was seized and defended on the barricades against the police. Police headquarters, banks, shops and hotels of the city centre were raided.

The insurrections were heavily repressed, but the State had to restore collective bargaining with the unions and moderate their new economic policies. The participation of white-collar workers in the Cordobazo was the first major instance of participation of this sectors on the barricades. With the cuts on the state services, the participation of dissatisfied white-collar workers in the proletariat struggle was to become increasingly frequent: the piquetero movement of 1995 emerged precisely from a combative struggle of teachers. The Cordobazo is also another example, rooted in the Argentinian tradition, of a struggle which does not stop at the factory gate but spreads throughout the town - a tradition which has become very important in today's movement.

During the Peronist period, the unions' 'corruption' had been for the workers a comfortable means of obtaining benefits within a clientelist relation while as a by-product part of the State finances were redirected to the pockets of union bureaucrats. But with the political and economic reorientation of the ruling class, the bureaucratic union 'corruption' and their collaboration with a system, which was no longer generous, became a reason for resentment on the part of the working class. That the union was part of the bourgeois system was indeed apparent in the fact that the union bureaucrats were even owners of industries and businesses. The movement of clasismo which started in 1970 with the rank-and-file struggles in the Fiat factory in Cordoba expressed this resentment. The unions of SITRAC and SIMAC were seized by the workers, who imposed rank-and-file leaders (mainly Maoist or independent Peronists), against the resistance of the union bureaucrats and of the State. A new insurrection in Cordoba, called the Viborazo, exploded in 1971 precisely around the new rank-and-file movements and in particular around a struggle in the FIAT car factory.
This hot climate, which also included raids by Peronist and Trotskyist terrorist groups ('guerrillas'), could not be defeated with the army or with the help of right-wing paramilitary groups. The return of Perón, who could still be seen by many as 'above the parties', was then accepted by the bourgeoisie: the Peronist Cámpora was elected in March 1973, and Perón was president later the same year. During this period strikes broke out everywhere in the country, with occupations, clashes with the police, raids on bosses' homes. 'Guerrilla' actions also multiplied.

While allowing a rise of wages, and making an attempt to control import prices, Perón carried on a policy in the three years of his power which was systematically and mercilessly repressive; he criticized Cámpora for his 'excessive concessions' to the workers. A redundancy law allowed the State to get rid of militant employees and a new 'Law of Professional Associations' allowed the trade union leaders to overthrow decisions made by the committees and increased the bureaucrat's control over the shop floor. Isabelita Perón came to power after her husband's death, and prosecuted his repressive policy. The repression had the consequence of isolating and radicalizing small vanguard groups - armed 'guerrilla' groups, in particular the Montoneros, got stronger and their kidnappings and murders of trade union bureaucrats and other members of the bourgeoisie earned general public support and sympathy.

4. Petrodollars and the
restructuring of the working class.

The quadrupling of the price of oil in 1973 precipitated a severe financial crisis in Argentina. The sharp rise in the price of oil triggered an inflationary spiral that soon led to hyper-inflation. At the same time the Central Bank sank deeper into the red. Yet this oil crisis not only brought the dangers of debt and hyper-inflation, it also offered the Argentinian bourgeoisie new opportunities. The oil price rise of 1973 led to a huge increase in the revenues of the oil producing States. Unable to spend or invest more than a small fraction of these revenues at home, the oil producing States deposited their 'petro-dollars' in Western banks. As a result Western bankers found themselves awash with money-capital to invest. Faced with rising working class militancy and declining profits in Western Europe and the USA in the 1970s, the Western banks were prepared to channel a large part of their petro-dollar funds into the more developed parts of the periphery of the world economy, such as Latin America. As a consequence, the oil crisis gave Argentina's economy the opportunity to present itself as a profitable place for the Western banks to invest their petrodollars. Foreign investments could then ideally be used to modernize Argentina's industry and economic infrastructure so that it could compete in the world market. But such a strategy required a further concerted attack on the working class to guarantee the potential profitability of investments in Argentina.

Similar calculations were made in neighbouring Chile, when in 1973 a military coup d'état opened their doors to the 'monetarism' of the new bourgeois economists, educated in the 'Chicago school' of Milton Friedman. The prescription of the American 'monetarist' economists was to fight inflation by cutting state spending and privatize state enterprises; and abolish protectionist policies and subsidies for state industries, forcing the 'inefficient' industries to close down in the face of international competition. In 1974 the average Chilean wage fell by one half and unemployment exploded, while the welfare system, which was based on the profits of the national industries, collapsed. At the same time massive military repression hit Chilean workers and their organization s. In a word, the restructuring devised by the Chicago School was a class counterattack, whose rationale was founded in the imposition of the 'hard laws' of international competition.

In 1976, using the justification of the need to fight the 'guerrillas', the army took power in Argentina in a coup. The concept of 'guerrilla' was extended to that of 'industrial guerrilla' to launch a massive attack against workers’ organization s. Indeed it was clear to the military that the main obstacle to restructuring was the proletariat. A wave of arrests and murders of militant workers and union leaders was carried out with the collaboration of paramilitary groups. A period of terror started. Militant workers would be sacked or resign for fear of arrest, torture and death, with a total of 30,000 dead or 'disappeared'. Laws were passed to attack the militancy of the rank-and-file (reduction of the number of shop stewards to half; limitations to the access to the role of shop steward in the unions, the obligation of a pre-approved agenda at union meetings).

The CGT was dissolved by the military regime, and legislation was passed to 'democratize' the unions. The right of collective bargaining was restricted to weaken the power and legitimacy of the unions. Their control on welfare and resources was withdrawn. The interest of the military to 'democratize' the unions was one with the attempt to break down their power based on patronage, and in the same time to make the workers look at the State as individuals for their benefits rather than seeking to belong to a group. But this attack on the unions had contradictory consequences. First, by losing the concrete basis for their power over people, the unions would cease to be an efficient form of social control of the proletariat. And, second, losing their privileges, which were the reason of their complicity with the government, many union leaders did not have any choice but to be drawn into the struggle and radicalized their position in an attempt at maintaining control of the situation.

However, this restructuring and liberalization of the economy had to be gradual, because of the backwardness of Argentina's industries in terms of technology and organization of work, which was the other side of the coin of the strength of a working class which had not allowed capitalism completely to follow its laws of free competition. Indeed when the State spoke about efficiency, it was the strength of the working class that was under discussion. The industries doomed by the neoliberal policies would be precisely those where the workers were stronger and had been able to gain and maintain high wages and comfortable working conditions. The restructuring meant dismantling those industrial sectors which, not uncoincidentally, were the strongholds of workers' militancy. The industries which would survive had to be competitive to face foreign competition, and the workers had to be efficient to face the pressure of a rising unemployment - this meant imposing labour discipline and speed ups on the workers, the reimposition of capital's control on labour. The introduction of wage differentials was a way of encouraging efficiency and competitiveness in the workers, and at the same time a way of trying to break class solidarity in the workplace.

As in Chile, while productivity increased, wages were halved in the first year of the coup. Unemployment rose and the gap between rich and poor increased. In the years following the coup a third of Argentina’s industrial capacity was closed down in the face of foreign competition. A large part of the redundant workforce was absorbed by self-employment in the tertiary sector, but in 1981 the government was obliged to admit that forty per cent of the working population was under-employed, and in 1982 they had to introduce unemployment benefit. With the restriction of the state sector, between 1976 and 1980 half a million white collar workers employed in the state sector were also made redundant, contributing to a split in the middle class support for the state.

But Argentinians were not willing to accept their fate of starvation and submission. Even in a situation of repression which obliged the leaders not to come out openly, even if repression and economic blackmail would tend to fragment them, Argentinians continued their struggles. From 1976 there were hundreds of thousand of workers on strike every year and a general strike in 1979. After 1979 struggles intensified while the unions were unable to contain the grass-root activity. In 1980 the government and bosses of Argentina faced street protests and a solid general strike in Buenos Aires.

The middle class support for the military regime was severely undermined by the beginning of the 80s, with a new economic crisis provoked by the second oil prices surge in 1979 and the subsequent recession in the developed economies, which caused a widespread debt crisis (Mexico defaulted in 1982). Facing workers' resistance to their best efforts towards 'efficiency', and facing falling demand for its exports in the West, Argentina's economy confronted a growing balance of trade deficit and a mounting foreign debt to finance it. Foreign debt rocketed from about $8bn in the mid-seventies to $45bn in the mid-eighties. Unrest spread, as far as the army and even in the police, which came out on strike for wages in 1982. The government, seeking a desperate way to regain their support, invaded the British colony of the Falklands/Malvinas to inflame Argentinian nationalistic hearts and obtain the support of left-wing workers' organization s (which they obtained, in the name of the leftist ideology of 'anti-imperialism'!). Unfortunately for them, they lost the war.

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