Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)

Introduction

The dominant theme in Argentine history: the uneasy but ever

present dialogue between generals and union bosses.

Objective: to trace the development of Peronism within the
unions in the 1955-73 period. What was the relationship
between union leaders and members? How valid is the popular
conception of union power which emphasizes corruption,
violence and power politicking? (1). It also addresses the wider
issue of the relationship between Peronism and the Argentine
working class and the meaning of that relationship for workers
in general and the trade unions in particular. This is an issue
that has been approached from the perspective of more general
notions of concerning populism. The political participation of the
working-class (under AND BEYOND Peronism) has been treated
as something of an historical conundrum requiring explanation,
most usually in terms of notions such as manipulation, passivity,
cooptation, and not uncommonly, irrationality. This work does
not offer an all-embracing theory of populism. Indeed, from the
historians point of view I would suggest that part of the
problem with many existing analyses has been the level of
abstraction at which they have operated. Macro-explanatory
frameworks have not been able to cope with the concrete
questions and exceptions they themselves have often suggested.
The specificity of concrete social movements and historical
experience have escaped through the broad mesh of such

frameworks (2).
Objects: the Peronist union hierarchy and its relationship with
its rank and file, and the issue of Peronist ideology and its

impact on the working class.

The working class treated by scholars as an ideal construct at
the

service

of

different

ideological

paradigms.

(Gino

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
Germani/modernization

theory/passive,

manipulated

urban

masses/result from an incomplete modernization process);

(Marxism/inexperienced proletarians incapable of realizing their
true class interests/dominated by bourgeois ideology and
controlled and manipulated by demagogic politicians and a
ruthless union bureaucracy); (Peronist left and radical youth
sectors

of

the

late

1960s

and

early

1970s/exemplary

proletarians forging a peculiarly Argentine movement towards

socialism and national liberation). All those schemes lack any
sense of the concrete historical experience of working people
and

their

complex,

ambiguous,

frequently

contradictory

responses.
For James, this lack results both from academic theory failure
and the importance that past historical models have in
Argentina contemporary politics.

Chapter 1 Peronism and the working class, 1943-55

By the mid 1940s Argentina was an increasingly industrialized

economy; while the traditional rural sector remained the major
source of foreign exchange earnings, the dynamic center of
capital accumulation now lay in industry and manufacture (8).
Industrial economy expanded fast, but the working class did not
benefit

from

this

expansion.

While

there

were

specific

improvements in work conditions and social legislation in the

1943-46

(military

coup)

period,

the

decade

of

Peronist

government from 1946 to 1955 was to have the most profound

effect on the working classs position in Argentina.

1946 legacy: massive extension of unionization with the
development of a global system of collective bargaining; state
legal recognition (in a monopoly sense) of unions over each
economic activity; Confederacion General de Trabajo (CGT)

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
centralizing all the unions over the local branches and the
national federations; it also made the state the ultimate
guarantor and overseer of this process and the benefits

deriving from it (10).

1946-1951: the gradual subordination of the union movement to
the state and the elimination of the old-guard leaders who had
been instrumental in mobilizing the support of organized labor
for Pern in 1945. 1952-1955: the emergence of the outline of
the justicialist state, with corporatist pretensions of organizing
and directing large spheres of social, political and economic
life, in a attempt of setting a clear role to the union movement

in incorporating the working class into this state.

a crucial legacy of the Pern era for labour was the integration
of the working class into a national political community and a
corresponding recognition of its civic and political status within

that community (12).

For James a relative racial and ethnic homogeneity of the
Argentine working class and the concentration of them within a
few urban center gave the Argentine working class and its
labor movement a weight within the wider national community
which was unparalleled in Latin America (INTERESTING

POINT).
What explains the political appeal of Peronism? In the past, the
explanations

gravitated

around

traditional

narratives

and

truisms on Latin American populisms; more recent works

favored instrumentalist approaches of Peronism as an inevitable
manifestation of social and economic dissatisfaction. For James,
rather, in order to understand Peronism distinctiveness, we
need to answer why its political appeal was more credible for
workers, which areas it touched that others did not. In this
sense, he argues that Peronisms fundamental political appeal

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
lay in its ability to redefine the notion of citizenship within a
broader, ultimately social, context. The issue of citizenship,
per se, and the question of access to full political rights, was a
potent part of Peronist discourse, forming part of a language of
protest at political exclusion that had great popular resonance
(14). Tradition => Hiplito Yrigoyen and the Radical Party prior
to 1930 (discourse against oligarchy and traditional claims on
citizenship,

political

articulation

of

rights

democratic

and

obligations).

demands

was

Peronistas

claim

for

reestablishment of previously recognized rights and claims.

Those appeals for democracy and denounces of political
exclusions were not a monopoly of Pern; his success, for
James, is better explained in his capacity to recast the whole
issue of citizenship within a new social context, and his
constant emphasis on the social dimension of citizenship (16).
He denied the liberal separation of the state and politics from

civil society. Implied social change.

Pern didnt have the discourse of a traditional caudillo or
political

boss:

He

didnt

address

workers

as

atomized

individuals whose only hope of achieving social coherence and

political meaning for their lives lay in establishing ties with a
leader who could intercede for them with an all-powerful state.
Instead, he addressed them as a social force whose own
organization and strength were vital if he were to be successful
at the level of the state in asserting their rights (18). Even
considering

the

personalism,

almost

mystical

caudillismo

attached to Pern and Evita Pern, and the fact that the state
and Pern can be considered as the ultimate arbiter of this
process, the workers, as a class, had a certain independent, and
irreducible, social, and hence political, presence.

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)

The real issue at stake in the 1940s: the different potential

meanings of industrialism. The superior role of the working
class

within

the

whole:

the

people

were

frequently

transformed into the working people the people, the nation

and the workers became interchangeable social justice and
national

sovereignty

became

interrelated

themes,

giving

credibility slogans that were purely abstract before. Workingclass nationalism was addressed primarily in terms of concrete
economic

issues.

Credibility:

Pern

cumple!

the

practicability of the hope he offered was affirmed on a daily

basis by its action from the state. The solution he offered didnt
depend on future/remote concatenations but were rather
directly verifiable in terms of everyday political activity and
experience. And remember, this is about working class
politics,

that

is,

doing

politics

in

worldly/practical/constant/normal activities. In this sense,

there is a normalization of politics that has to influence

in empowering the peronista discourse.

Less tangible factors in assessing Peronisms social meaning for
the working class: pride, self-respect, dignity the heretical
social impact of Peronism. Dcada infame and the tango lyrics
that lack in social engagement and optimism found in some of
the tangos of an earlier era. The heretical social power
Peronism expressed as reflected in its use of language: what
was silenced or ridiculed in those tangos came became central
social justice, fairness, decency. The ressignification of the
word descamisado; Peronism took the term and inverted its
symbolic significance, turning it into an affirmation of workingclass value. Also La negrada de Pern, las cabecitas negras
(31). The demonstration of October 17 and the description of
the masses as murga, a word only used in the context of

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
carnival/street festivals While such behavior was acceptable
within the strict limits of carnival, and restricted to workingclass

barrios,

its

breaking

out

of

these

confines

in

demonstration with a clear political content represented a

symbolic subversion of
deference

for

the

accepted codes

working

class

of behavior and

(32).

Subversion

of

language. Other aspect: the demonstration culminated in the

Plaza de Mayo, a territory of the gente decente the spatial
aspect. A reappropriation of public space and a performance
that constituted a form of counter-theatre (E. Thompson) of
ridicule

and

abuse

against

the

symbolic

authority

and

pretensions of the Argentine elite.

The limits heresy and the ambivalence of Peronisms social
legacy. 1946-1955: constant efforts to institutionalize and
control the heretical challenge it had unleashed in an earlier
period and to absorb this challenge within a new statesponsored orthodoxy. Pern reference to the dangers of
unorganized masses; From home to work, and from work to

home.
[Summary of the chapter]. Peronism marked a critical
conjuncture in the emergence and formation of the modern
Argentine working class. Its existence and sense of identity as a
coherent national force, both socially and politically, can be
traced to the Pern era (37). Its legacy is complex and
ambiguous. Its appeal for workers cannot be reduced simply to
a basic class instrumentalism. a) Perns support was not solely
a result of their class experience within the factories; it was
also a political alliance generated by a particular form of
political mobilization and discourse (reference to Sigal and
Torre the public plaza rather than the factory as the main
point of constitution of the working class as a political force

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
why no the streets). b) the working class was not fully formed
and simply adopted Peronism; in an important sense it was
constituted by Pern, in a complex process of reconstituting
workers sense of identity and political loyalty as they
abandoned

established allegiances and identities; it doesnt

imply the manipulation and passivity of Germanis powerful

image of masas disponibles; rather a two-way process of
interaction. Bargain. c) Peronism aspired to be a viable
hegemonic alternative for Argentine capitalism (this explains
the comparisons with the New Deal and welfare capitalism).
However, Peronism in an important sense defined itself, and
was defined by its working-class constituency, as a movement of
political and social opposition, as a denial of the dominant
elites power, symbols and values. It remained, in a fundamental
way, a potentially heretical voice, giving expression to the
hopes of the oppressed both within the factory and beyond, as a
claim for social dignity and equality (39). d) those who
controlled the political and social apparatus of Peronism had to
deal with its inherent oppositional culture as a burden, since
it meant that Peronism was unable to establish itself as a viable
hegemonic option for Argentine capitalism; it was akin to
riding the tiger, but it was also an enormous advantage, since
it gave to Peronism a dynamic substratum that would survive
long after peculiarly favorable economic and social conditions
had faded (40).
Chapter 2 The survival of Peronism: resistance in the factories

Aramburus government main concern was an in increase in the

productivity (anchored in the idea that new machinery wouldnt
be enough for that; they envisioned an increasing output per

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
worker, and the reestablishment of a healthy discipline among
workers). However, Peronism previous years meant a shift of
power within the workplace from management to labor (56).
This generated a generalized resistance to the notion of
incentive schemes and rationalization plans. Justicia social: the
ability to earn a good wage without being subjected to inhuman
pressures within the production process. for wokers the work
practices and provisions enshrined in them provided a vital
safeguard in terms of the quality of life in the factories [] They
expressed, in a very concrete way, the change in the sociopolitical position of workers in the broader society as this
transformation was experienced at a most basic level of class
relationship the relationship between employer and worker
within the workplace. This didnt imply a critique of the criteria
underlying capitalist production relations. But this was not
ascribed to a manipulation pattern either; there was even signs
of a genuine internalization by workers of pride in Argentine
industrial performance which symbolized the regaining of

national self-esteem under Pern (59).

Socialists, and communists in a lesser extent, maintained an
attitude of moral superiority towards the working class. The

socialists initially supported the Revolucin Libertadora.

The decline in living standards was rather the result of a
political defeat, the overthrow of Pern, not an economic one. It
was the direct result of government attack on the unions and a
government-backed

wage

freeze.

The

government

and

employers imposed by legal means and the power of state what

they could not impose through the discipline of the labor
market (69). Workers had sufferd inflation under Pern and
hard times but they had rarely hunted down and treated like
thieves (71).

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
Chapter 3 Commandos and unions: the emergence of the new
Peronist union leadership

Former leaders and the Peronist rank and file; There was a
friction between these groups and the newly emerging leaders
[] The new leaderships who had largely arisen from a
spontaneous and de facto democratic struggle on the shop floor
tended to carry over the practices derived from this experience
in the newly normalized unions (73). Faced with a hostile state
and with much of basic trade union activity condemned to semilegality, with very little formalized bureaucratic structure to
utilize, there was an inevitable increase in rank-and-file

involvement (75).
The emergence of the 62 Organizations was an important
development since it not only confirmed the dominant position
of the Peronists in the unions but also provided them with a
completely Peronist legal organization with which to operate
and pressure the government in the wider union and political

field (76).
Spontaneous terrorism against the provisory government: sense
of desperation + key values of Peronism (self-sacrifice; non-

professionalism; ordinary people vs. bureaucratic elite).

Difficulties to convince the rank and file to vote for Frondizi,
including an express order from Pern to the union leaders to
convince them (800,000 abstained or voted blank).

Chapter 4 Ideology and consciousness in the Peronist Resistance

Strikes of 1956 and 1957: biggest up to that point in Argentine

history.
This chapter tries to characterize the ideology which emerged
from this general context among rank-and-file Peronist
workers.

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)

(counter-culture)

The

strange

mix

of

anarcho-syndicalism,

Marxist economics and personal devotion to Pern; for James, it

is a summation and condensation of the experience of a
significant sector of the working class prior to 1955, an
affirmation of that experience for the post-1955 situation.
Potentially, too, this was done in a way which challenged
implicitly many of the assumptions of formal Peronist ideology.
Even official Peronist discourse had ifself adopted a more

radical posture after its removal from power.

Ernesto Laclau popular democratic elements within an
ideological discourse and which refer to a level of social and
political antagonism which does not coincide with economic
class conflict but refers to what he calls the people/power bloc
antagonism; for James, assumptions and principles drawn from
the experience of class conflict were less easily expressed (as
the conflicts emerging in the labor process were). Yet the
presence of these latent, half-submerged class elements should
not beignored [] They would represent a persistent stumbling
block that would confront both employers and the state in

Argentina in the course of the next decade (96).

Nostalgia and obrerismo: an affirmation of class feeling
almost in terms of sentimental folklore which celebrated the
harshness and grief of working-class life, together with the
affective values associated with home and family, barrio and
workmates (97). Another element of the distinctive structure
of feeling of this era: nostalgia for Peronist era. The good old
days of a golden era: Elements of this recently passed
utopia were appropriated selectively from the past to meet
present needs and to point the way for future hopes [] Its not
that the workers were unaware of the partisan class nature of
the existing state: Rather, it represented a statement of what

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
ought to be in the future based on a selective interpretation of
what had been in the past. Pern: conscious myth making; the
return of Pern symbol and synthesis of a range of aspirations
which workers held concerning dignity, social justice and the
end to bitterness (99).
Chapter 5 Resistance and defeat: the impact of leaders, activists and
rank and file

Frondizi and desarrollismo (developmentalism): Peronism had

similitudes with desarrollistas ideas both economically and
socially. Their rupture centered on the economic stabilization
plan of 1958. Betrayal (hostility framed in the language of
economic

nationalism,

denouncing

concessions

to

foreign

capital even if Pern himself did his own concessions,

especially in the context of oil industry, during his term).

growing fatalism among the rank and file of the unions (123);
growing resignation , passivity the rank and file pushing for a
growing isolation of the activists. This context formed the
backdrop

to

process

of

bureaucratization

which

was

manifested in a changing relationship between leader and rank

and file and a changing attitude of union leaders and an

increase in personal corruption (126).

In the enforced absence of a bureaucratic structure available to
be used, Peronist trade union practice had become more
democratic. The end result of this democraticallybased
struggle had been defined as the recuperation of the unions for
Peronism through free elections. Little was said of how these
unions were to be run after the Peronists had regained them and
the opportunities for manipulation of a bureaucratic apparatus
had reappeared (128).

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)

The instransigent lnea dura emerges precisely from this

context;

their

diagnostic

about

Frondizi

government

was

centered in the idea of betrayal and moral failures (vacillation,

cowardice and dishonesty) (133).

For James this seem to have generated a political context in
which the impression for the majority was the necessity to
choose between compromising with the union hierarchy and the
guerrilla struggle.

Chapter 7 The burocracia syndical: power and politics in Peronist

unions

Augusto Vandor (the leader of the metal workers): personified

the transformation of the movement and its unions from a
position of outright antagonism to the post-1955 status quo to
one of acceptance of the need to compromise with it and find a
space within its boundaries. Vandorismo as a synonym with
negotiation, pragmatism, and the acceptance of the realities of
realpolitik which governed Argentina after 1955. He took the
hegemony from the lnea dura leaders in the 62 Organizations
from March 1962 elections on. Ruthless control of any internal
dissent. The Plan de Lucha 2nd stage in 1964 (based on factory
occupations) as an example of how integration was not a rule,

not even under Vandor era (167).

The exceptional power of state vis--vis the union in Argentina:
the labor law, particularly law 14,455 and the instrument of
personera (the legal recognition for the unions ability to

bargain collectively was granted by the state).

[KEY point in the chapter] In the situation of general political
proscription of Peronism after 1955, and the parallel recreation
of a strong union movement, the political identity of the Peronist
working class increasingly became incarnated in its trade

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
unions

(183).

Vicious

circle:

when

the

union

leaders

independence became too great and they started using power in

a way Pern disapproved of, he could remind them of the
relative nature of their power (185). The organizational chaos
and eclecticism of Peronism: It was to remain, particularly after
Vandors

failure

to

give

it

some

coherent,

union-based

institutionalized form, essentially a loosed federation of different

groups loyal to Pern (185).
Chapter 8 Ideology and politics in Peronist unions: different currents
within the movement

the common platform (188)

what distinguishes the Peronist case was the insistence with
which the political role of unions was emphasized; the conscious
denial of the validity of a purely business unionism conception
[] The rock on which Peronist/non-Peronist union unity always
foundered in these years was precisely the Independents
rejection of the Peronists grander political and social claims.
The example of the Plan de Lucha after Illia attended the initial

economic demands of the CGT (193).

More on the duros language and their lack of a defined and
distinctive ideology and politics, which left them unarmed
against

the

overwhelming

practical

logic

of

mainstream

unionism and Perns tactical whims. However, Peronism was

also about something else, and the left within Peronist unionism
came to represent the conscience of the movement, insisting in
defining itself in terms of the values and experience deriving

from class struggle, suffering and solidarity.

[KEY point in the chapter] The appeal of guerrilla strategy to
Argentine militants resulted from the process of demobilization
of the mass movement in the early 1960s, the consequent

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
domination of an accommodationist union bureaucracy and the
marginalizing of the most militant activists and leader which
this process entailed (210). Focismo: the emphasis placed in
guerrilla theory on the victory of subjective will over the
objective conditions. For James, focismo (and leaders like
Cooke) were a result of an isolated militant cut off from the
mainstream of the workers movement and its daily struggles.
The diagnostic for the radical left within Peronism was that the
movement was dominated by a union bureaucracy which had
profoundly submerged and stifled these longings.
About the anxiety caused by the entrance of new actors in Argentina
politics and public space: p. 33 a terra incognita through which we
had never wandered; Everything up till then was coherent and
logical. Felix Luna
Because of the nature of the political discourse and relationships over
which Peronism was built, the negotiations (bargain) was a necessity.
(p.39)
Basically, James argues in chapter 2 that political power of Peronism,
in an ultimate level, was guaranteed from within the plants and the
rank-and-file floors.
Frondizi y desarrollismo, ideological sympathy (Frondizi enforced the
importance of a strong national oil industry, YPF monopoly); long
Argentine tradition, roots in the 1930s; crisis in their relationship
impact of the economic stabilization plan on employment and wages,
and the concessions to foreign capital considered a betrayal by the
peronists; the other opposition, based on the counter-discourse

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
analyzed in the previous chapter, that ignored the rationale or formal
ideological tenets, relying instead on notions of social justice, equity,
class solidarity and a literal economic nationalism drawn from their
experience of the Peronist era and the post-1955 resistance (112).
Resistance and defeat period (1956-1959); vandorist electoral failure
This failure and its following resignation and passivity formed
backdrop to a process of bureaucratization which was manifested in a
changing relationship between leader and rank and file and a
changing attitude of union leader and an increase in personal
corruption (126).
There were tangible changes in the relationship between the unions
and the Frondizi government, compared to Aramburus rule. The
example of CGT as an illustration of the peronist resignation to
moderation: A regained CGT would be an obvious step forward in
terms of organization and working-class unity, even if it were also a
step toward integrating Peronist unions in a status quo which
excluded the direct return of Pern or Peronism to power [] The
institutional interests of union leaders would prevail over the more
general political interests of the Peronist movement (132). The most
militant sector of the Peronist union movement reacted attacking
personal moral qualities of the leaders, instead of looking back to the
1959 defeats; this was how the lnea dura emerged, proposing
intransigence, hardness and loyalty; formally a majority within the 62
Organizations

thorighout

Frondizi

government.

For

James,

the

morality discourse was important in a certain extent to provide a

meaningful basis for individual actions of militants and workers, but it
was not enough for a union strategy; the potential for the
development of a radical ideology seemed to exist in that period, as an
outcome of the counter-discourse which emerged from the 1955-1958
period (133). The lnea dura became a state of mind, an attitude, a

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
structure of feeling rather than an articulated, political, ideological
position (134). What happens next is shaped by the different
possibilities

of

interpreting

and

acting

under

those

different

possibilities and discourses of Peronism.

Chapter 9 The Peronist union leaders under siege: new actors and
new challenges

antipathy toward Illia government and the support for the June

1966 coup that led to the military coup and to Onganas rule.
One of the centrals premise of Vandors strategy whad been
the effectiveness of applying Peronist union pressure within a
political system characterized by weak governments and divided
political adversaries [] By eliminating the ability of social
groups to bargain politically Ongana laid the basis for the
emergence of a state controlled by military and economic elites

which was not beholden to other interest groups (217).

Failure of the Plan of Struggle of 1967; initial emergence of
participationists; seek precedents in Peronist ideology and
history; neo-corporatism embraced by some sectors of Peronism
within the CGT; Ongana attempted to control and suppress
large areas of social and political life; dissatisfaction of some
economic groups and a more generalized civil opposition by
1969. Cordobazo in May 1969; the issue was initially the cost of
meals at the university; strong opposition in other universities;
both (?) CGTs declared strikes the first sign of national
organized labor mobilization in more than 2 years. Union
hierarchy tried to take advantage of the protests to put
themselves at the head of the mobilization and thus restablish
their credibility and bargaining power with the authorities at a
national level.

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)

[KEY point] Yet, the years following it saw an intensification of

the crisis of the Peronist union leadership as their position was
challenged by the emergence of new actors and currents. The
wave of working-class protest beginning in 1969 was related to
longer-term structural factor which had been undermining the
union hierarchys power and facilitating the emergence of new
opposition forces within the labor movement (223). In 19691973 the movements were emerging in new industrial sectors
(Crdoba and the Paran industrial belt), which was a surprise

to both government and union leaders.

Decentralized collective bargaining weakened the power of
union leadership and it also undeniably weakened the union
apparatus to mobilize and to pressure the government. This was
intended by Illia to respond Perns hostilities, pushing the
union leaders towards a crisis that would be worsened during
Onganas rule. However, the other effect of those policies
was the revival of local sections and unions in the
industries affected. This changed labor opposition to be
stronger out of Buenos Aires after 1969; In the urban
sectors of the interior where the new industries were installed,
the social conflict generated by factory life was prolonged
outside the factory and reinforced by forms of social and spatial
segreagation [] A close physical proximity between place of
work and place of abode particularly in many of the singleindustry towns of the interior also helped reinforce the

internal solidarity of working-class communities (227).

Direct action; the leaderships which came to the fore in the
modern sector in the 1969-73 period also sought to frame their
labor protest in terms of wider, ideological concerns. Clasismo,
sindicalismo de liberacin [] implied, at the level of leadership
ideology, an identification of the working-class movement with

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
the suppression of capitalism and the creation of a socialist

society (231).
[KEY point of the chapter] The context of Cordobazo, the
military regime crisis and the union leadership following the
social unrest, together with the radicalization of the rank and
file particularly in the interior, opened a space for radical
politics within the working class. Many of the leaderships
believed that was the ideal context for the action of a
proletarian vanguard capable of a economic and political blow
against capitalism. For the youth and guerrilla group (like the
Montoneros), the union bureaucracy was a corrupt caste whose
function was to repress and manipulate the Peronist masses. For
them, Peronism should be a national liberation movement, with
the final goal of establishing a national form of socialism (241).
They represented above all a challenge to the entire trajectory
of the union movement within Peronism and, indeed, the identity
they held of Peronism as a movement. The reormist nationalism
they had identified with Peronism, and the pragmatism and
compromise that had come to imply after 1955, were now
assailed in terms of a moral crusade launched by newcomers

with no traditional standing within the movement (241).

For James, both the Peronist and non-Peronist left found
themselves politically isolated within the working class (246).
The bloody battle for survival deeply affected the rank and file,
who didnt have the benefit of a clandestine infrastructure and
thus became preferred targets for right-wing death squads.
Under Perns government, and specially after his death, it was
problematic to expect that peronistas would defend radical
leaderships under attack from a Peronist state for which the
working class had fought since 1955. During Isabels last 18
months in power, the union bureaucracy emerged as the

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
dominant force, but James argues that was a pyrrhic one, since
the were able to marginalize the competitors within the working
class and within Peronism radical left, but they were unable to
reestablish their hegemony over the rank and file , or
reestablish their credibility as a dominant force in Argentine
society. This was the scenario preceding the next military coup.
Chapter 10 Conclusion

2 fundamental poles Argentine politics seemed to revolve:

unions and the military.

[KEY point about how all the analysis about Argentina have
been focusing almos exclusively on the idea of integracionismo]
James doesnt deny the existence of corruption and control
within the Peronist union leadership; however, he argues that
such factor cannot be taken in isolation; they must be seen as
elements of a wider social and historical process if they are to
have analytical usefulness (251). This pessimistic approach
resounds also within academia: works influenced by Robert
Michels and Max Weber are particularly inclined to repeat the
idea that there is an inevitable tendency of bureaucratization
and the consolidation of oligarchies in labor organizations.
Academics repeat, in a certain extent, the idea that was very
strong, for example, among duros and the guerrilla, that is, the
integracionismo

paradigm

and

the

moral

implications

historically related to it. For James, most of what is talked of as

integration in the Argentine context was in fact no more than a
normal result of the intrinsically interrelated relationship
between unions and capitalism; a development all the more to
be expected in a society with as high a level of industrialization
and unionization as Argentina (253). When he analyzes
Vandorism, for instance, he prefers rather than emphasize the

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
extent of incorporation.to point out and insist on its the limits.
Wright Mills: The managers of discontent had also to be, the

organizers of discontent.
Union-state relations: comparison with Britain In no sense,
even at its apogee, could one really talk of Vandorism as part of
the establishment []; the Peronist unions influence on the
nations councils was grudgingly recognized and strictly limited
by the restricted tolerance for all things Peronist and working

class (255).
For James the elements of leadership power MUST be placed
within a wider social context if they are to have genuine
analytical usefulness, and that context MUST be the general
history of the Argentine working class, and in particular
the union rank and file, in the post-1955 era. In this
context bureaucracy and rank and file are not necessarily
diametrically

opposed

poles,

but

are

rather

intricately

interrealated, the one with the other (256).

Early and mid 1960s increasing privatization of attitude, a
turning inward away from public engagement. Demobilization;
reconstruction in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The problem
with the creation of two metaphysical abstractions: a
working class that always struggles and aspires to independent
collective action regardless of context and experience and a
bureaucracy

which

always

betrays

and

represses

those

struggles and aspirations (259). The romantic image of the

revolutionary potential of the masses within populism and its
movements just because they involve the working class as the

mirror image of the pessimistic approach.

[KEY BROADER ARGUMENT OF THE BOOK] The implications
of such an understanding are evident in relation to the dyad
resistance/integration whose apparently radically opposed

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
terms have dominated much analysis of the Argentine working
classs history in the post-1955 era. This work has documented
the remarkable capacity of Argentine working class to act for
itself, to create rank-and-file organization, to organize resistance
against social and political repression; indeed we have argued
that development of the working-class movement and of
Peronism in the post-1955 era is incomprehensible without
understanding this rank-and-file experience. Nevertheless, it is
also clear from our study that such vitality and resistance did
not preclude demobilization, passivity and the acceptance of the
need, albeit temporarily, to achieve an integration within the

status quo as circumstances and experience dictated (260).

James also argued in the book that although usually considered
as a reformist/non-class potential, those notions coexisted and
were interrelated with elements which made the consolidation
of capitalist ideological hegemony extremely problematic in
Argentina. At times these elements explicitly denied capitalist
values and needs, posing an alternative reading of reality as
part

of

an

emerging

counter-discourse

(261).

Raymond

Williams structure of feeling.

Pueblo => pueblo trabajador; the complexity of Peronism

ideology nationalism.
How to explain the persistence of Peronisms domination of the
working class as a political and social actor? Social pathology,
irrationalism, emotionalism and false consciousness as typical
explanations. James argues that the Pern era saw the
formation of a dominant working-class tradition and a profound
recasting of the historical memory of Argentine workers. Their
experience of the post-1955 era was to be framed within
the parameters established by this memory and tradition
[] Peronism did not only represent higher wages, its historical

Daniel James Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine

Working Class, 1946-1976 (1988; 1993)
meaning for workers was embodied also in a politcal vision
which entailed an expanded notion of the meaning of
citizenship and the workers relations with the state, and a
heretical social component which spoke to working-class
claims to greater social status, dignity within the workplace
and beyond, and a denial of the elites social and cultural
pretensions (263). For James, finally, it was meaningless to
expect workers to simply abandon a tradition and experience
which, for better or worse, they felt was their experience and
tradition, not that of a particular party (264).
*Additional notes

plan de lucha Vandor against Ilia, leading the occupation of

10000 plants read more on it

there are structural conditions

that led

to the

political

radicalization, but the actions of political subjects like Vandor,

Pern, etc were also important to generate that new reality.

E.P. Thompson Eighteenth Century English Society (Social

History, May 1978)

Part five overlaps with Carassai!!!