Excerpt from "Peronism and Revolution" by John William Cooke (1971)
p. 63-80
My deeply neurotic brain has always militated against publishing texts not my own on this blog — in comparison to the tortured process of actual writing, it feels lazy somehow? The fact that I can’t decide on a satisfactory way to describe the feeling is no doubt an illustration of how agonizing it is to put words on paper. But you don’t come here to read about me.
John William Cooke was a trusted lieutenant selected by Perón to be his representative on-the-ground in Argentina following the 1955 military coup and Perón’s own consequent extended exile to Spain. Cooke was not, however, a simple proxy but rather a highly sophisticated (more so than Perón himself!) thinker who was arguably the father of what today we know as left-wing Peronism. Having visited Cuba and corresponded extensively with Fidel and Che, Cooke understood the world through an explicitly Marxist conceptual frame and advocated that the Peronist movement should abandon its ideological ambivalence in favor of revolutionary anti-imperialism. His position generated a clash with Perón himself, who particularly objected to any effort to include Peronism within the broader family of Third World movements brought into existence at Bandung (for a more in-depth account see James, 1988).
I chose to translate this specific excerpt for the following reasons
Cooke here provides not only a revolutionary anti-imperialist articulation of Peronism but also explains in detail his reasons for pursuing such a politics from within Peronism rather than as a challenge to it. This is a perspective that I think is sorely lacking for Anglophone left-wing readers who express general bafflement at Peronism when not comparing it explicitly to European fascisms.
Cooke provides a prescient critique of “developmentalism,” which I think is interesting in its own right as well as showing how seemingly conservative, class collaborationist nationalisms in the Global South have historically been best transcended from within themselves rather than through wholesale adoption of an imported template for ideological purity such as Marxism-Leninism.
To my knowledge, this quite possibly the first-ever critical use of the term “neoliberalism” in any language, which did not become widespread until following the Chilean military coup of 1973 — that is, two years after “Peronism and Revolution” was first published, not to mention five years after the death of its author. Cooke should get his due for that.
A brief note on historical context: Cooke composed this text during and in response to the 1966-1970 military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía, who deviated from earlier anti-Peronist rulers in trying to co-opt a degree of left-wing nationalism in regards to domestic politics (while still pursuing slavish alignment with the United States externally). Onganía overthrew* the brief “democratic” government of Arturo Illia, which featured semi-free elections in which Peronists were largely prevented from participating. There are many, many more names of specific Argentine political figures of the late 1960s-early 1970s which appear in this text, but I think it will actually be more readable if I do not insert explanations of every single one.
I do not have any qualifications as a translator beyond being a native speaker of both relevant languages in this case. If the text is in any way garbled or hard-to-read, the fault is solely my own.
*This military coup is the “Revolución Argentina” to which Cooke refers.
References:
Cooke, John William. Peronismo y revolución: el peronismo y el golpe de estado; informe a las bases. [1. ed. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Papiro, 1971.
James, Daniel. Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976. 1st pbk. ed. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Onganía and Perón: Two Hearts that Beat as One?
The magic words of our new “progressive” bourgeoisie are, as is well-known “structural change.” They evoke the image of profound changes, of radical and heroic remedies. All the economists, politicians and bureaucrats use them. When that proclamation is accompanied by the clarion calls and the beating drums of a government with absolute power, many have a right to think that at last that panacea will become a reality that will put us on the path to total solutions.
Unfortunately, this expression is as banal as the people who abuse it, because “structures” do not exist in the abstract but rather that term designates a determinate conjunction of functionally related elements; the “change of structures” is rhetorical dust that implies everything and defines nothing, meanwhile it is never concretely explained what structures are being referred to and what change consists of. Holders of the most repugnant privileges also desire to change some structures that impede them from increasing exploitation (the trade-unions, for example); and the “progressives” could be referring to — if they have a concrete vision — structures that are not the principle causes of our misfortunes or to changes that will not satisfy the needs of the disadvantaged classes.
When considering the program of the government, it is not necessary to equate it to goals that are shared among all parties, analysts and economists — to curb inflation, to stabilize the currency, to eliminate the deficit of the railway and state enterprises, to promote basic industries and infrastructure works, to improve the balance of payments, to balance the budget, to stimulate agriculture and industry, to improve real wages, to bring social order, to increase jobs, to elevate productivity, etc. — objectives that everyone promotes, though without indicating how they will be reached nor how it is possible to simultaneously pursue those which contradict each other.
The “Act of Revolution” makes two references to the consequences of the economic management of the deposed government: it created a situation within which “economic health cannot be achieved as a rational process, and public services, converted to serve electoral objectives, weighed down the country with unsustainable costs;” “the inflation which the nation sustained was aggravated by an insatiable statism…” That the charges may be accurate notwithstanding, the diagnosis centered around “insatiable statism” is clearly inscribed within neoliberal thought, from Frondizi to Cueto Rua, Aciel, the Unión Industrial and the commercial press.
That coincidence is not partial, we do not find the program to be any different from developmentalisms nor that it is distinct from the orientation that has been continuous since 1955, with differences of technique and application. And that philosophy corresponds to locating it within the most categorically liberal position.
A look at the “Policies of the National Government” (7/13), reveals that the government describes its purpose as to “implant an economic system in which there is no room for totalitarianisms which suffocate initiative, energy and individual liberties, nor for deformations of free enterprise.” One could not possibly ask for a more orthodox profession of liberal faith. Though in practice certain aspects will have to be attenuated, no doubt is left over how it is proposed to achieve national salvation. This articulation is reiterated in the other objectives of said document. It immediately reaffirms: “The new system is based on freedom of decision on the part of consumers and producers…” Later, “the state will draw-up a suitable framework so that economic activity can evolve freely”. It continues: “Private property will be considered as a basic factor for the preservation of individual liberties and a natural and legitimate incentive for human labor.” On the following line: “All which can be done well by individuals and by private enterprise should remain their responsibility. To the state it falls to act in supplement…” Further on: “The fundamental guide to economic activity and individual efforts should the be functioning of a system of free enterprise which orients itself towards achieving the common good via a competitive mechanism.”
In what way does this program diverge from the principles of an ultra-liberal economy? It is a secret of our leaders: surely it is written in code and the initiated know that everything is the opposite of how it is read by “outsiders.” For we suppose that they do not think that this free-enterprise far west would be attenuated in some way just by virtue of being accompanied by phrases about the “common good,” “justice,” etc.; First, because the concessions, to the extent they exist, do nothing more than recognize something which is incorporated into the legislation of all capitalist nations: they are not a negation of capitalism but rather its modern form, its adaption to society. It is no neocapitalism but rather the old capitalism in its historical evolution, with its monopolistic forms, the growth of organized labor, automation, etc. This is to say that it responds to a necessity of the system and forms part of its intrinsic dynamic. Second, since for the liberal mentions of the “common good,” etc., are identified with a “healthy,” “rational” (a term used in the Act itself), “natural,” which is to say “free.” Third, because “justice” would stay in the Platonic realm of well-intentioned affirmations, while the vultures of free-enterprise take charge, in practice, of devouring wealth in a “healthy” and “rational” manner.
The same sentiment is manifest in the clause which affirms: “In contrast to those who advocate certain absolutely liberal formulas, the state should not adopt before economic problems a passive attitude or that of a mere spectator. The functions which have been referred to previously…” These “functions all tend to facilitate the system of free competition and free private enterprise, so that this forms part of the lyrical verses which accompany, without altering in any way, the implantation of a system which facilitates still more exploitation. Apart from being meaningless, it is imprecise: “absolutely liberal formulas” are today neither defended nor applied in any part of the world; among the most liberal of those who apply neocapitalist “liberal formulas” are found in this very “Revolución Argentina.” Even La Nación, an organ of expression for the most retrograde sentiments among the oligarchy and a defender of the most unbridled nineteenth-century debauchery, fervently praises “the new economic orientation,” the “moderation” of which is piously reiterated: “There is no reason to alter the famous ‘live-and-let-live’ formula of the Manchester School.” The view of La Nación is that the state should defend private property and, because of their unfamiliarity with the forms of labor struggle, they desire that the police be alert and vigilant. But a certain degree of national planning, indicative rather than compulsory, regulation by means of the interest rate, taxes, customs duties, etc., apart from not being novel, today are essential for the economy dominated by monopolies, since they need to have data for “economic calculations,” for long-term plans for the production of goods, the repositioning and extension of fixed capital, etc. The anarchy of markets is a stage which ended long ago, and which today takes on new characteristics, specific to capital in its actual process of transformation.
The most total attempt to recreate the pre-Peronist situation was the Aramburu regime, which tried to return to a liberalism that was utopian in light of changes in our economy. But we wish to make a note of that moment of a crude and confessed goal of laissez-faire. The minister of Labor and [Social] Security, Migone, a hyena who took glee in persecuting unions and in forcing workers to go hungry, demonstrated that the government proposed to “restore the old form of liberal state, with state intervention in currency, in credit and in other means of finance, in the way which had been established last century.” As can be seen, the responsibilities which the regime reserves for itself in no way represent a moderation of liberalism but rather liberalism as exists in its most orthodox models.
Though we are not yet in the age in which each and every cipayo was a spirit working for treacherous revanche, the neoliberalism of today also looks to eliminate the corruption inhibiting “normal” economic function and, as far as possible, to maintain social peace through paternalist appeals to the working classes. In spite of the peculiarities which distinguish one period from another, the constancies that we have noted in the general politics of the Argentine state since 1955 can be observed perfectly in the realm of political economy.
The Prebisch Plan, with the corrections to it that reality imposed, was applied from Leonardi up until the present day. Its principle points were “Strong incentives to agricultural production and the appreciable elevation of prices by moving exchange rates” (meaning devaluation), “Re-establishment of the free market for [currency] exchanges,” “Progressive disarticulation of the interventionist apparatus,” “Liquidation of commercial and industrial state enterprises,” “Progressive elimination of price controls on basic necessities,” “Progressive elimination of subsidies” and “of exchange controls,” “arranging foreign loans,” “De-nationalization of bank deposits,” “Transformation of the Banco Industrial into an autonomous development band.” General Leonardi, (on 10/26/1955) declared that “The government believes the contribution of public and private overseas capital and foreign technology necessary to promote vigorous development. We believe in the system of free enterprise, which has contributed so much to the progress of Western Civilization, because it is not incompatible with a healthy state economic policy.”
Here, in its broad outlines, is the politics of the regime from Leonardi to Onganía. The approval through decree of the Prebisch Plan and the adoption of its principle measures, the Club of Paris, the roots of the petropolitics of concessions, the adherence to the International Monetary Fund and to the World Bank under Aramburu; the oil agreements, the plan of the IMF and the compromises agreed to in relation to our economic policy, the guarantees to foreign investors, “stabilization,” etc. under Frondizi; the “blitzkrieg” of Pinedo and measures of Alsogaray under Guido, the negotiations with former petroleum contractors, the acceptance of the principles of the IMF, the plans to attract investors, under the deposed Radical government, are some of the relevant acts which concretized the “structural change” after the fall of Perón.
The consequences are visible and can be detailed by any worker or his wife. Wages, which reached 56.9% of GDP under Peronism, fell rapidly and reached 45.9% in 1960, signifying that the income of workers diminished to increase that of employers (within the class sector of whom this especially favored landowners). The Stabilization and Development Plan of Frondizi was based, like all such, on producing a marked alteration of the composition of incomes, so that the employers would increase their profit, and invest in new means of production. That is the principle of all development projects up to the present day.
What the government actually proposes, within that conception, is to eliminate the deviations in free enterprise produced by practical reality; to free prices; to discontinue pricing policy ([price] increases for public services, energy, electricity, fuel, transport) and to create a climate where local and overseas investors will have their profits assured. This is in any statement by Aciel, the Unión Industrial or similar entities that denounce “collectivism,” “statism,” etc. The declarations of Alsogaray, which caused such a stir in the highest union circles, are no more than the expression of pure and simple reality. Labor leaders have no reason to become indignant; if it has not occurred to them that this is a revolution and that the objectives of the government are to institute the most absolute economic liberalism, that will not change the nature of the official plan nor of the goals it sets.
When the secretary-general of the CGT, Francisco Prado, declares (7/28), that “Alsogaray doesn’t understand, in the judgement of the CGT, the thought of the nation and, thus that of the Revolución Argentina,” he expresses the thought of the group which heads the most pro-government tendency represented in the union (just as Alonso fulfills the same duty in the dissident group). Identifying the military regime with national opinion is normal for those leaders who, since Luz y Fuerza [light and electricity sectoral union] have fought for “pure” industrial unionism, tightly connected with American imperialism which is attempting to replicate in Argentina the AFL-CIO of the United States, which is allied to Yankee capitalism and which defends its imperialist policies. Such yellowness is absurd in a country whose working class is not a co-participant in colonial dispossession but rather a victim of it. But Luz y Fuerza, which does not suffer the impacts of crisis in the same way as the bulk of the working-class, forms part of a labor aristocracy whose leaders have delivered themselves to creeping tradeunionismo. It was another of their representatives, Angeleri, who while serving on the previous board of directors of the CGT who maneuvered to limit the scope of the Struggle Plan and ultimately to marginalize the union, at the instigation of the Yankee embassy, within the mobilizations to support the Dominican people.
Within this mentality and manner of understanding the problems of the working-class, it makes perfect sense not to have anything but enthusiasm for the military regime, the organizers of which with [the aforementioned labor leaders] have been on the best of terms for some time. What contains no common sense is the affirmation with respect to Alsogaray, which is made by the communique of Luz y Fuerza: “The presentation of Alsogaray as defender of free enterprise does not match up with the official document with respect to the future economic policy. In any case, least of all in this sense does there yet exist any explanation…”
The articulations of Alsogaray coincide with the official document, as the quotes we have noted show beyond the shadow of a doubt, and as later was ratified by Onganía. Alsogaray said other things that the government may not have wanted expressed so crudely (such as his attacks on Peronism), but as related to free-enterprise, the hunt for foreign capital by offering it conditions of social stability, compliance with the stabilization plans and free competition, not a single world that Alsogaray has said was not already explicitly, expressly, categorically clear from the known objectives of the government and in everything that has been forever enunciated in the thought of the military leadership.
The officially stated goal of “structural change” functions in perfect agreement with capitalism and the ideology of the bourgeoisie. With it they expect to suppress the chronic crisis, while they unload on the popular classes, in a still more despicable manner, the costs of a “healing” which will not be produced, and the greater enrichment of consortia, which is the permanent state of affairs.
Structural reality produces this state of permanent crisis, while a cycle whose costs fall on the workers and on the poorer sections of the middle class goes on repeating itself. The mechanism by which this occurs, in sum, is the following: the need to export makes it obligatory to stimulate agrarian producers, and in some cases, to put them in a position to sell at prices which will be competitive on the world market; so the peso is devalued (meaning, the exporters receive a greater quantity of national currency for each dollar they obtain via selling internationally). That modifies the internal price structure, thus the export sector (in the first place consisting of large landlords and the major intermediaries) receive that greater quantity of money and can purchase more things than before; at the same time, as the majority of agricultural production is consumed internally, prices for food, basic necessities, etc., rise, i.e. everything which the urban population acquires from the countryside (which is sold at the new prices in devalued pesos). The benefits of this transfer of buying power to the countryside are concentrated principally among the propertied classes because agricultural production requires less labor than industry, and further, because wages are lower, there are no social services nor severance compensations, etcetera.
Wages are only a small proportion of the costs of rural production such that its benefits are not distributed evenly but rather enrich the landlords. At the same time, in the city prices rise, but employers are not disadvantaged to the same extent as the workers, because for them the cost primarily comes in the form of higher prices for raw materials and the various other results of devaluation. Inflation in the price of industrial goods is produced, and since the standard of living declines there are fewer buyers for products and thus factories cut production; but because they need to cover the same costs as before, enterprises need to profit more from a smaller quantity of goods [sold] by increasing prices in unison: there is a rise in prices, inflation while people have no money with which to buy. This process continues, as meanwhile the paralization or decrease of production in one sector, reducing the buying power of its workers, creates the necessity to reduce production in other sectors in congruence with a lower level of demand, and so forth and so on. This never reaches the extremes it did in early capitalism, or in the periods after the great crisis of the ‘30s. Urban workers fight to recoup their buying power, businesspeople fight for credit in order to reactivate [production] and thus equilibrium is reestablished. Industrial salaries and prices stabilize to compensate for the modification thus produced, but yet again and because of this, international prices have once again become misaligned in relation to internal ones, with [monetary] parity in relation to foreign currencies the same quantity of goods as before are not bought, and thus the exporters plead for another devaluation in order to find an outlet for their products, and so the process starts all over again… At the beginning and end of these cycles is devaluation. Generally, in the middle [of these cycles] appears Alsogaray as economic bastonero [stand as in furniture, can’t think of the equivalent English expression atm] promising frigid winters which never end and florid springs which never arrive. In sum, fluctuations have benefitted the capitalists and harmed the workers, as much because of the maladjustments that fail to be resolved as because of the permanent fall of wage levels in relation to the cost of living. Against this, the remedies which are proposed to us by all “developmentalists” all have the same foundation: incentives for enrichment, secured by regulations enshrining free competition, will cause businesspeople to expand production and accumulate in order to reinvest; since capitalization [of the economy] is insufficient, foreign capital is attracted with social calm, a stable currency which allows it to make profits that do not decrease in value, facilities to remit its profits and amortizations, incentives for investment in relevant sectors, guarantees from the state for capital that enters [Argentina], etc. In this manner, so they say, the economy is reactivated and it acquires a self-sustained rhythm of growth which ends the stagnation of GDP, frees items from trade imbalance because of import substitution, and with greater wealth and productivity all benefit, because wages increase and there are plenty of jobs.
It has already been seen what results from the regime and its policies, which started from that same assumption supported by the armed forces in the proposals they periodically made to Frondizi. In their reasons for overthrowing him in 1962 there are no objections to his economic policy, nor is it or was it in in question in any of the intra-military conflicts.
Foreign capital has come, producing an income transfer from labor to business which, according to the estimations of bourgeois economists, represented by 1963 around $2.5 billion (400 billion pesos at the 1963 value, according to the CGT); and external debt reached up to $4 billion. In spite of $2.5 billion extracted from workers and $4 billion which is also paid by the nation, the economy remained in crisis. The foreign consortia and their partners made huge profits, local businesspeople sent their capital abroad while at home increasing prices. Now they tell us that these sacrifices were in vain — something which we always knew — but it is announced that in order to save ourselves the same policy must be intensified. Well, the problem is not simply better application, or readjustments to this policy. Other structures must be changed. Not the system of structures, but rather the structures of the system.
That the organs of the proletariat confuse this most bourgeois politics with revolution would be unbelievable — even if in place of this liberal program with a paternalist sheen we had a more dirigiste policy — if we did not already know the level of consciousness of their bureaucracies. In an article written by José Alonso (De Pie, 7/19) it is said about the official plan, if with reservations, that “we want it to be put in motion with haste in order to break out of the inertia in which we find ourselves;” and after some banal pieces of advice, it is affirmed “We have a certain authority on which to make this statement. It has been two years since we talked about structural change and offered to do our part, but were not understood and from both the left and the right we were called names. The passage of time has shown that our vanguard effort did not take into account only criticism from mediocrity.”
Alonso refers to a monstrosity, of which 80,000 copies were distributed (Towards Structural Change) published when he was Secretary General of the CGT, which contained that same thesis of “progressive developmentalism” and presupposed a common politics between the bourgeoise and the working-class; happily, on being examined in the “52” block the good judgement of leaders with a better sense of the interests of their class prevailed and it was shelved. It was in the same spirit as the declaration about “agrarian reform” that a congress convoked by that same CGT leadership voted for, and which is a paean to private property with two or three banal caveats inserted. Such statements agree with the CGT “training” courses, run by reactionaries with a “progressive” varnish with approval from and scholarships provided by the U.S. embassy, which for some time has been a major influence on that proletarian organization [the CGT] which in the days of Perón held that “cursed is he who aligns with the representatives of imperialism” (referring to Serafino Romualdi, who attempted what today has been accomplished without resistance) while Evita committed blasphemy against the idols to whom the working-class is now to be sacrificed.
With those antecedents marking the approach of the labor leadership towards national problems, it is not very surprising that they habitually invoke the name of the revolution in vain, confusing it with the “Revolución Argentina.” These leaders, and the tools whom they have brought in as advisors, trainers, etc., filled with optimism Thomas Mann, ex-undersecretary of the U.S. State Department for Latin America and a champion of hardline imperialism, who demonstrated his agreement with the views found in many military circles, and added: “the number of responsible labor leaders in Latin America is increasing” (U.S. News and World Report, 7/13/64).
The only thing which worries us is that a comrade could become confused and think that Peronism has anything to do with the ideals of the military.
Movement bureaucrats are always on the hunt for whatever phrase or declaration of Perón’s can be utilized to cover their defenses [of the status quo] in [ideological] orthodoxy, while ignoring the core of his thought, maintained throughout his years as director of the Movement, unchanging and coherent, which goes beyond mere tactical considerations. Here it is opportune to reference some recent quotes [of Perón’s] which summarize that thought.
1) “Those who think that the Argentine social crisis can be solved with a progressive increase in incomes over the course of ten years, are mistaken.” 2) “Since social injustice has been dominant, we have been hearing from the mouths of those who benefit from it that social justice can only be achieved if the nation becomes wealthy and powerful. If egoism did not predominate in society this sentiment might be valid, but under the actual present capitalist system of exploitation it is observed that, excepting in the Justicialist [Peronist] period, periods of prosperity have not been such for the workers but rather only for the bosses and for the parasites. When the economy has been stronger, exploitation has only been greater.”
3) “Once the bourgeois government demonstrates its failure evidenced by its incapacity to govern and by its indignity and lack of moral values.”
4) “When they speak to us of a ‘free economy,’ of ‘free enterprise,’ of ‘freedom to do business,’ these are nothing but insidious constructs to hide what they really defend, which is exploitation.”
5) “Now capitalists want to convince the people that property must be defended, without realizing that the people do not have access to such and thus can have no interest in defending it. By contrast, common property is a solution making it so that no one can or could have nothing.”
6) “The economy is not, nor has it ever been, free: either it is directed and controlled by the state for the benefit of the people, or it is run by the great monopolies against the interests of the nation.”
7) “Apparent aid through loans and contributions of capital are nothing but yet another form of [imperialist] penetration which furthers plunder and decapitalization. Foreign banks and monopolies complete their domination, imposing their economic, political, and social exigencies, whether it be directly or through the intermediary of the IMF with which countries subordinated to it become colonies.” As you can see “Onganía and Perón, two hearts that beat as one.” In the minds of the bureaucrats any conciliation is possible. At night they dream of happy endings. The misadventures of developmentalist utopia.
The debate over whether Argentina is or is not an “underdeveloped” country, corresponding to a search for another designation that takes into account Argentina’s peculiar situation, with a variety of characteristics of an advanced economy (a high percentage of urbanization, high-quality consumer habits, a large industrial working class, strong industry, etc.) is pointless. It serves for distinguished economists who come to explain how good capitalism is, can flatter their audiences and make them see that we are not considered on the same level as the backwards countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Differences exist, but they do not signify that we can see ourselves as lacking connection to the fortunes of other countries of Latin America or of the other backwards continents; that Afghanistan is much more underdeveloped than Argentina is not an argument for us to consider ourselves a part of the exclusive club of “Western Civilization.” To pose the question on the basis of technical comparisons only means isolating us, making us lose the perspective of a common [Latin] American community and obscuring that dependency is the determinative factor in any categorization and not the specifics which differentiate us from the [other] nations which occupy an inferior position in global [capitalist] evolution.
All the bourgeois developmentalist programs partake in the same presupposition: that the underdeveloped countries (or the incompletely developed ones or whatever they want to call Argentina) repeat the evolutionary processes that were already completed by advanced capitalisms. Underdevelopment is a childhood or adolescence from which from which one passes to maturity, foreign capital, investment in some key sectors, etc., initiate economic growth, in order to enter into a qualitatively different stage or to accelerate an inadequate pace. That presupposition is false.
Underdevelopment is not a phenomenon particular to each individual country but rather part of the global expansion of capitalism. Development is a stage reached by some European powers, by the United States, by Japan, which was not accomplished within the closed circuit of their own economies but rather by reaching the point where the productive apparatus surpassed the absorptive capacities of the internal market, and so a search began for markets beyond the frontiers; in the backward countries cheap raw materials were obtained, manufactured goods were sold and excess capital relocated that was not profitable when a saturated market depressed the interest rate. In a word, the development of England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, the United States, was realized as a function of the underdevelopment of the semicolonial and colonial world, whose wealth was taken through direct colonization or through the suction of relations between unequal economies. We have already mentioned the relationship of England to Argentina, and the effects of dependency on new forms of development. Furthermore, what initially propelled capitalism in its places of origin was, in great measure, the wealth that was extracted from other continents through conquest, which provided a large part of the economic basis for subsequent transformations (what is called “primitive accumulation”).
Thus, just as our weakness and deformation was the result of that our incorporation into capitalism began late and under the aegis of dependency and of the British metropole, today imperialism is also at the heart of our crisis. Through unfavorable terms of trade, the remittance of monopoly profits, etc., we decapitalized ourselves to the benefit of imperialism. Here is the great omission which we encounter in all “developmentalisms:” they ignore the problem of imperialism. Or, when they mention it, as frigerismo does, they conceive of it solely in the old forms of the agro-importer relationship with Great Britain and not in its actual form of American penetration, which does not limit its dispossession of us to intermediation but rather participates in the process of production and conditions our entire economy.
Imperialist profit is realized by setting up affiliates of consortia in Argentina and obtaining concessions or facilities to invest in sectors with a high rate of profit (oil, petrochemicals, steel) already associated with domestic capitals. As American imperialism is integral (political, strategic, economic) we see it in all aspects of national life, not only as cultural influence but also as a direct presence. A “healthy” economy where the norms of free competition play out without restriction (an aspiration which overlooks the monopolistic forms of modern capitalism) the enterprises that survive will be the most efficient ones, those which produce at the lowest cost, because they are foreign or are associated with foreign capital and displace those enterprises which lack such advanced technical installations. They are those which now extract superprofits of “combined development,” meaning, by coexisting with enterprises of much inferior technical capacity with prices based on production costs much higher than those of the great consortia. This enterprise can also provide a more comfortable situation for its workers, in a way which exacerbates the differences within the working class.
Disappearance of the backwards enterprises tends to end industrial “Malthusianism” in the advanced capitalist countries, which allows to live as a remora the businessman sheltered within high defensive walls but who is behind in modern technological advancements, as was characteristic of the classical French economy. This proposition, which forms part of the policy of the new Argentine regime, mechanically projects the problems of “Malthusianism” onto our economy dispensing with our dependent situation and with the forms of backwardness. A liquidation without replacement, like that which was produced by foreign imports in the middle of the nineteenth century, which liquidated artisan production in the Argentine interior, will exacerbate our internal inequalities and complete our subjection to imperialism. When the advanced countries liquidated feudal and artisan forms, they were replaced by capitalist forms of production; in Argentina there was no work for the dispossessed of the interior because there was no industry to absorb them: “our” industries were in England. Now, in the final instance something similar is thought; production will be made healthier, but not through an even development, but rather through eliminating, without replacement, the inferior productive units. A politics of healing can be conceived of only under a conception diametrically opposed [to it], not under free enterprise and the law of the jungle, but rather through a planification where the state directs the process of modernization in the general interest. Which is to say, that the state should commence becoming something else, no longer in the hands of the bourgeoise.
Before, imperialist exploitation was found in the commercial balance (terms of trade) but principally in the balance of payments as the exit of dividends, amortizations, freight and security payments, etc. The commercial balance provided surplus but the balance of payments was in deficit. Today, an important proportion [of imperialist exploitation] is realized through other mediums: payments on patents, technical assistance, price differentials obtained in the sale of machines, raw materials and other elements that must be bought in the metropoles to supply industry in Argentina, in conditions which permit openly setting prices, reinvesting profits to multiply the suction or transferring profits or losses, according to necessity, within the complete circuit of all stages of production. It is unnecessary that an industry be exclusively American: it is enough that it depends on purchases in the United States of machines, raw materials, and patents. Which is to say that this cancer is now inside of the structures of Argentine capitalism, and it is those structures which must change. But on the contrary, sacrifices in favor of big business and landlords increase — which are not clearly separate sectors — and those to imperialism as well.
The difference between developed and underdeveloped countries, rather than narrowing as held by bourgeois economists, has been increasing. The rich are ever richer, not only absolutely but also in relation to the poor. Exchange relations continue to be unfavorable for underdeveloped exporters of raw materials, and for every dollar which capitalism invests, it gains three. It is easy to demonstrate that the growth necessary for the Third World to reach, over many years, minimally decent standards of living, without there being 1.5 billion people who go hungry as is the case in reality, requires investments completely outside the realm of possibility. In order to maintain the present levels [of growth], meaning in order to compensate for demographic growth, sums are needed which there also appears not the slightest chance of achieving, on the contrary, the amounts of “assistance” and investments by the developed countries in the backward regions tend to decrease. Not one of the predictions of the developmentalist theorists has come true. Rostow, who not long ago wrote a book which all bourgeois economists repeated was much more important than Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, proposed scientifically stages of economic evolution, analyzing the conditions for developmental “takeoff.” One of the charges leveled at the student movement — well remembered today as justification for the [military] intervention [of universities, particularly in the Province of Córdoba] — is that they produced a scandal and impeded [Rostow] from giving a conference when he was in our country; they did good, because Mr. Rostow is one of the collaborators in the imperialist policy of Johnson, and so he was treated as the enemy of the nation that in Latin America he is. But what no one remembered to mention is that not a single country in the world has “taken off” nor is on the way to doing so.
Here, in sum, is the model which the frigeristas always mentioned to demonstrate their thesis that it was India which didn’t develop and lost ground.
Not that they have now revised their positions, just forgotten to mention India.
The Argentine case presents us with the characteristics which we have mentioned for the Third World in toto, and so that is how it should be evaluated starting from our particular situation. Eleven years of developmentalisms has not served to develop us, nor will it now. We continue to be far from a desperate case, but also without reaching those levels of economic progress which they announce to us. And it is unquestioned that we apply the approach of the regime businessmen, governing officials, and economists, they speak to us of faith in the country, self-confidence and other such generalities. We have already clarified that we believe in the country, believe in the people; it is them who we do not believe to be a progressive factor but rather the exact opposite. Apart from the criticism which each specific policy deserves, we negate developmentalism in all of its variants.
Developmentalism is supported by a series of fallacies: that all investment equals development; that all industry is a factor of self-propelled growth; that the profits of businesspeople transform into investments; that foreign capital accomplishes the function of “primitive accumulation” on which rose the advanced powers.
The “national bourgeoise” is not in conflict with imperialism (some sectors are, certainly, but we have already said that they lack the weight and the voice to impose a national politics). They try to achieve an increase in profits or to save themselves by associating with imperialism. Meanwhile, they need the protection of coercive powers for fear of subversive insurgencies. They are part of “Christian Westernism” politically and strategically and as such take part of the domination of imperialist monopoly capital.
The problem continues to be unresolvable for the bourgeois economy of our country. It must find an support, an economic foundation [on which to stand], since that which it has currently, agrarian production, is insufficient, and capitalization of the national economy through industrial profits is also impossible. Furthermore, there is nothing more absurd than seeing our Latin American bourgeois patriots trying to claim better prices for our export products. First, because they deny the existence of imperialism and they adore the masquerade of free competition, they do not have any reason to expect to be paid more than what the market determines. Further, because the more “Western and Christian” they are, the more closely they feel tied to and protected by the United States, the more outlays does that great gendarme of counterrevolution have to maintain its military and intelligence apparatus everywhere in the world, to finance its wars against the peoples who want to liberate themselves like those of Vietnam or Venezuela, Guatemala, etc.: as the United States has a serious balance-of-payments problem from all of its external spending, which is only partly compensated for by its favorable trade balance, the more unified the “free world,” the more need its leader has to maintain the lowest possible prices for the products it acquires in our countries.
The “Revolución Argentina” is, consequently, an impossibility of bourgeois politics, because it eliminates from the agenda the key question of imperialism and because its steps to harmoniously develop the economy in a self-propelling manner are unsuited for the task. And this allows us to better comprehend what the “new regime” consists of and what relation it has to the Peronist Movement.