Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 13:29:20 +0500
From: Andy Daitsman <adaitsma-AT-mail.cc.trincoll.edu>
Subject: Re: Peronism


Yesterday, I wrote:

>Once in power, Peron moved vigorously to implement his redistributive 
>program, and for the first five years or so of his rule workers did 
>tremendously well off state handouts.  But Peron clearly did not have 
>socialism on his mind.  A representative quote from 1944 directed to the 
>Buenos Aires Chamber of Commerce:
>
>"It has been said, gentlemen, that I am an enemy of capital, but if you look 
>into what I have just said you will find no defender, we could say, more 
>committed [to capital] than I."

But I left open exactly what the nature of that commitment was.  In this 
post, I'll try to provide what I think was the Peronist economic project, 
why I think it failed, and what that has to do with enduring strength of 
Peronism.  In 250 words or less...

Others have written that Peron's project involved supporting one fraction of 
the Argentine ruling class against another.  I would revise that slightly: 
the Perons (Juan and Eva) supported a different *model* of economic 
development, Import-Substituting Industrialization (ISI), in opposition to 
the reigning model of export-led growth.  In this, they simply followed the 
new economic orthodoxy gaining ground throughout Latin America.  It's hard 
to argue, I think, that they supported an existing class fraction, because 
Argentina in 1943 had one of the most open economies in the world.  Exports 
of beef and wheat paid for imports of almost everything; by the time of the 
1943 reformist coup, that almost everything included not only almost all of 
the manufactured goods consumed in the country, but had also begun to 
involve food.  Argentina's balance of trade was negative, and only promised 
to get worse.

Because of the extreme openness of the economy, there was almost no domestic 
industry to speak of.  Rather than supporting the economic project of an 
existing industrial bourgeoisie, ISI in Argentina involved *creating* such a 
class fraction.  The Perons were not at all unique in having such an idea.  
In fact, the overwhelming national consensus in 1943, after 13 years of 
direct rule by the exporting oligarchy, was that such a project was in the 
national interest.  The Peronist project, however, directly incorporated the 
working class into the broader ISI project; specifically the Perons sought 
to increase workers' purchasing power in order to broaden the domestic 
market for the new industries they hoped to create.

(How can there be a working class if there is no bourgeoisie?  Well, these 
are the lacunae that open up when you shorten complex historical processes 
into email length analyses.  Trust me, there was.)

This explains the redistributive project implemented by the Perons from 1943 
to about 1950.  A significant portion of the national income did in fact 
make it into workers' pockets during this period.  Another portion went into 
subsidizing the new import-substituting industries.  Where did this money 
come from?  A series of economic measures that in effect taxed the export 
industry.  These measures included some direct taxation, but more important 
were exchange rate policies and the state monopoly on particular kinds of 
export goods.  For example, the Peronist state established an agency that 
would purchase all the wheat directed to the export market.  That agency had 
the power to set the price paid to producers for their wheat, and its prices 
were consistently much lower than the world market price.  In other words, 
the state realized super-profits on its sale of wheat abroad, and producers 
lost potential profits.

The result of Peronist taxation of exports was severe capital flight.  
Rather than investing in new domestic industries, though, Argentine export 
capitalists simply took their money out of the country, searching for more 
profitable investments abroad.  In the meantime, the country's engine of 
growth slipped into low gear.  This process, inherent in the development 
project being pursued, set off the inflationary spiral in the early 1950s, 
and ultimately forced Peron (Eva died in 1952) to abandon the redistributive 
aspect of his development strategy.  He would shortly shift to a much more 
regressive stance vis-a-vis workers.

By the time he was overthrown by the military in 1955, Peron's state was 
much more likely to repress workers' strikes than to support them.  The 
pro-worker rhetoric of the state had become a hollow shell -- and not just 
because Evita was no longer around to articulate it.  Workers' incomes 
meanwhile were falling far behind inflation, and folks were actually worse 
off economically than they had been twelve years earlier.  Why then did 
workers continue to fervently support Peron for years afterward?  (Peronist 
parties won every election they were allowed to participate in between 1958 
and 1972, and Peronist votes were the swing votes that decided all elections 
from which they were banned.)  Let me just suggest a few reasons.

First, I think you have to go back to October 17.  The Peronist state, 
although by no stretch of the imagination a workers' state, was brought into 
existence through the spontaneous action of the working class *acting as a 
self-conscious class*.  That this class lacked a revolutionary project of 
its own, it seems to me, owed as much to subjective factors -- the left's 
inability to articulate such a project, and their defeat in the working 
class by the Peronists in 1943 and 1944 -- as it did to objective ones -- 
the particular stage of Argentine economic development.  So, once the 
workers created the Peronist state, their lack of autonomous political 
organizations and of a political project left them with no other option but 
to abdicate control over that state to their charismatic leaders.

Second, I think you have to look at the real benefits workers realized under 
the first years of Peronism.  Some of these benefits can be measured in 
economic terms -- greater purchasing power, social security, health care, 
subsidized vacation resorts, etc.  Others, however, are less material.  I 
would argue that by recognizing unions, by giving workers direct 
representation in the state, even by providing material benefits, Peronism 
gave workers dignity, a feeling of inclusion in the nation, a sense of 
participation in a broader social project.  Evita's appeals to the 
"descamisados," I think, should be viewed from this perspective.

Third, I think the role of Eva Duarte was essential.  Playing off 
traditional images of femininity, but profoundly revising and subverting 
those images to attune them to the new industrial age, Evita represented 
mother, sister, lover *and* politician.  Her tragic death at the height of 
her power (it was practically broadcast live on national radio), cemented 
her image as the light and salvation of the new Argentina.  Once Juan was 
removed from the picture, by military coup and exile in 1955, it was easy to 
transfer to Evita's partner the adulation the masses felt towards the 
founding mother of the nation.  Juan's absence made it easy to forget the 
negativity of the last years of his regime, and made it easy to remember the 
heady early days when workers enjoyed power and prestige.

More materially, we also shouldn't forget that Peronists remained in 
administrative control of the labor movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

In any event, I accept the Jon's charge that I overspecify Peronism.  It 
*is* a unique expression of populism, and its historical longevity is 
directly tied to the circumstances of its birth.  This, by the way, accords 
with my reading of the Laclau piece Jon cites (in _Politics and Ideology in 
Marxist Theory_).  I read Laclau to say that there are no general populist 
principles, but that the ideology of each particular populist movement will 
respond to the precise configuration of the particular class alliance that 
called it into being.  I don't know how Laclau would respond to my 
discussion of Evita, and unfortunately my copy of his text doesn't even 
include her in the index (curiously, Peron's second wife Isabel, practically 
insignificant in the development of the ideology, does appear), but I think 
she belongs in any historical analysis even minimally informed by feminism.

Instead of rambling on, I'll leave it here.

Andy

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