Abstract
The global capitalist crisis has had a huge impact in the so-called neo-developmentalist processes of capitalist development in South America. In particular, in Argentina the combination of local barriers and limits (originated in the particular form of dependent development) with regional an global events, have put into question the continuity of this particular way of capitalist strategy for development. We propose to analyze this process and its current transitional crisis in the light of class conflict and the particular form of dependent capitalism in Argentina. We will stress the way in which the articulation of (a) class relationships and struggles with (b) patriarchal rule (and struggles against it) and (c) super-exploitation of nature (and clashes to stop it), amount to a particular form for working class strategies for radical social change. We will analyze the particular form of these struggles and the way in which they constitute and -at the same time- put into question, the production and reproduction of capitalist value in Argentina’s dependent setting.
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Notes
- 1.
Neo-developmentalism is a form and strategy of capitalist development that puts the State as the force channeling political contradictions. As a form of the State, it promotes the articulation of social demands from below and from above in a way that helps sustained capital accumulation with some redistribution of income. As a development strategy it attempts at keeping social conflicts within the limits of capitalist social structure so as to avoid or ‘suspend’ crisis tendencies. See more in Féliz (2012, 2015, 2016).
- 2.
Peronism is a political movement born in the 1940s with the irruption of working people as a mass political actor. In general terms, it has been a populist type of political movement, always calling on ‘the people’ but in heteronomous fashion, limiting and attempting to control the autonomous political participation of the masses. Peronism has always sustained multi-class political coalitions to promote forms of capitalist development.
- 3.
Even after years of neoliberal deregulation, Argentina’s unions remained fairly strong with about 1/3 of all salaried workers unionized. Besides, labor legislation protected union representatives in the factories against dismissal.
- 4.
The profit rate on circulating capital for big corporations jumped from 5.9% in 2001 to 14% in 2002, averaging 14.4% between 2003 and 2010, in the first decade of the neo-developmentalist era (Féliz 2015). Ground-rent related to production of commodities for exports also had a significant increase: According to Arceo and Rodriguez (2006), the volume of agrarian rent jumped 700%, from 1288 million constant pesos to 9022 million between the 1991–2001 period and the 2002–2004 period.
- 5.
The prices of privatized public utilities (mainly, gas, mass transport and electricity) remained heavily subsidized since 2002. This helped keep at bay, for some time, demands for higher wages.
- 6.
In fact, even as profits increased, the rate of investment of big corporations fell during neo-developmentalism (Manzanelli 2011).
- 7.
The World Bank promoted a new generation of social policies that expressed a form of basic universalism. This meant that social policies would be wide in the scope of beneficiaries but basic in the amount of transfers. Cash-transfers should provide just enough to avoid hunger but give incentives to participate in the precarious labor-market.
- 8.
At the same time, the result of the 2015 election meant that there was no actual radical popular political alternatives to overcome the pendulum between a form of reformism (kirchnerist way through neo-developmentalism) and conservative neo-developmentalism.
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Féliz, M. (2020). Beyond the “Pink Tide”: Dependent Capitalism in Crisis in Argentina and Lessons to Be Learned for Radical Social Change. In: Silver, M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13639-0_11
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