75 years after the first Peron
On 17 October 75 years ago, led by Evita Duarte and the populist vanguard of the socialist revolutionary and to a lesser extent anarchist trade unions, over 200,000 workers took to the streets and obtained the release of Juan Domingo Peron. The in-depth study by Livio Zanotti, author of "ildiavolononmuoremai.it"
In the overheated Argentine conjuncture, between the persistence of Covid and the expected worsening of the financial crisis, however under control, one of the most symbolic anniversaries of the past now falls to take stock of the real and turbulent present of the neoliberalism-Peronism conflict. The comparison between the two models has reached bright red, without actually presenting completely new aspects. Except the rise of fundamentalist tendencies, as everywhere. Not without reason is the Rio de la Plata perceived as the most virulent of the last decade. Someone even attributes to him destitute intentions. As if a piece of country had forgotten that the Peronist government was elected flawlessly and with a large majority less than a year ago.
Flanked by most of the followers (not all, there are explicit and relevant distinctions), the former president Mauricio Macri, who in the four years of his mandate expired last December tripled unemployment and public debt, accuses the government of Alberto Fernandez of attacking to individual freedoms (reiterating anti-pandemic quarantines in some provinces) and to corporate freedoms (accentuating the size and progressiveness of the tax levy and attempting to nationalize some bankrupt companies). Launched in a Parliament forced by Covid to digital debates, the macristi offensive passes through the Supreme Court (which in part influences) and flows into the streets (without a mask).
The government counterparts with the accusation of having crumbled the economy, destroyed small and medium-sized businesses and an attack on public health for ideological prejudice and personal interests. Accusations that, like those of corruption tout court, are as repeated as they are reciprocal (and sometimes credible). Delegitimization is, moreover, an unsheathed weapon that sparkles naked and sharp far beyond the borders of the Pampas and Latin America, to the point of characterizing the political struggle throughout the West (Italy is no exception). For some time it has been the subject of innumerable political essays and studies in the juridical-social faculties of universities no less than in party schools. An undeniable common denominator all negative.
On 17 October 75 years ago, led by Evita Duarte and the populist vanguard of the socialist revolutionary and to a lesser extent anarchist trade unions, over 200 thousand workers took to the streets and obtained the release of Juan Domingo Peron , to whom a previous military coup had entrusted the Vice-Presidency of the Republic, the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Labor. But yet another conspiracy in the armed forces, connected in the circumstance to the major traditional parties (including the communist one, pushed by the US-USSR anti-fascist alliance in the world war) and openly supervised by the United States ambassador in Buenos Aires, the republican Spruille Braden , had dismissed and imprisoned the General, disliked by the traditional oligarchy, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the great Anglo-American oligopolies.
Even today, the United States casts its shadow on the Argentine crisis with the anticipation of the presidential elections on 3 November. It is not as heavy as it was then, but it certainly affects the behavior of the Casa Rosada as well as those of the opposition. The polls that present the Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump hurry the latter, fearful of losing the favor of Washington enjoyed so far thanks to the ideological affinity with Trump; without relieving the former from the concern of not offering the warlike tenant of the White House pretexts that could induce him to hinder the ongoing negotiation on the debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Macri denies the admissions made immediately after the electoral defeat ("I told my parents that if they closed our credit we would end up in a dead end …"). Now he declares that (“like Deng Xiao Ping in China…”), his government would have favored the concentration of wealth to do business and thus create jobs (etc. etc.). Thus intending to recall the iconographic image of the neoliberal theory according to which if you continue to fill the cup of well-being, the well-being that overflows would benefit everyone, thirsty and hungry. On a global level, the net, albeit limited, reduction in extreme poverty would seem to confirm it. The equally global crisis of the middle classes contradicts it. The theory, as you know, remains controversial to say the least.
In reality, Argentina appears to be unsustainable. In 2015, Macri received a country burdened by a partially subsidized economy; with a substantial but manageable public debt. Confident in the invisible hand of the market, he cut subsidies and taxes in the presumption of attracting in this way domestic and foreign capital that would finance the modernization of the production system (infrastructure and services). For different but far from unpredictable reasons, neither one nor the other has arrived. (Similar assumptions had supported the even more adventurous and opaque liberalist project of the Peronist Carlos Menem, dramatically shipwrecked in the late 1980s.)
The liquidity on the financial markets is in fact enormous, but it prefers speculative investments; capital golondrina, they call it in the Cono Sur, because like the swallows it arrives with the warmth of the economic spring and immediately emigrates in the first cold. No government prefers it, many end up resigning themselves to it (necessitas virtute). The capital available for medium-long term investments, on the other hand, requires guarantees of legal certainty and political stability that not everyone recognizes in the so-called emerging economies. If the autarchic choice and fiscal competitiveness imposed by Donald Trump on the colossal US market are added to these inborn tendencies, the fate of Argentina (and Latin America) is well understood.
In this context, the next 17 October is no longer simply a party anniversary to be granted greater or lesser significance, it becomes a central reference of the ongoing clash. It flared up then and is still unclear, since its terms remain unresolved (the implications of which in principle go well beyond the national borders and of the South American hemisphere itself); despite the numerous and too often tragic vicissitudes which it has given rise to in over half a century. It is possible to develop a country (meanwhile passed from 17 to 43 million inhabitants) essentially agro-exporter, renouncing to have an industry aimed at the domestic consumer market, exposed to the repercussions of changing international situations, without effective exchange control, nor an adequately progressive tax system (as even the IMF suggests)?
The now recalled crisis of 1929 had posed the same questions (with the obvious differences dictated by the different levels of development it also posed to the central countries, which split in the new-deal vs. fascism opposition until the Second World War). The United States saved its capitalism thanks to public intervention in an expansionist and social sense indicated by JM Keynes to FD Roosevelt. With the coup d'état of General José Uriburu which overthrew the radical president Hipolito Hirigoyen, Argentina made contradictory choices in favor of a conservative modernization, however financed by the state. Aimed more at safeguarding public finances and private interests in agro-food and mining exports than at supporting internal consumption.
Both reformists, the couple Federico Pinedo-Raúl Prébisch (in his industrialist evolution the latter will create the CEPAL, Comisión Económica para America Latina for the United Nations) favored an anti-cyclical policy up to the conspiracy of the barracks of the nationalist officers among whom he made his way Peron, in 1943. State intervention benefited the large landowners above all; but although to an incomparably lesser extent and only in a second period, already in the 1940s, this also served to alleviate the difficulties of the urban middle classes and the reduced workers' wages. The millions of pesos of the public treasury (in a period in which they more or less held parity with the dollar) financed the national economy well before the redistributive policies of Peronism.
As the liberal-socialists and Christian-socialists also recommended with balancing intentions since the early 1930s, an example of which was Alejandro Bunge, engineer and economist, an heir of none other than the Born family in the cereal holding until a few years ago. powerful in South America and still among the first in the world. A personality of particular prestige for his intellectual qualities no less than for his family ties, formed in Germany and England, as well as part of the Rio-Plateau elite, which at the time had its main point of reference in Europe. Juan Domingo Peron's disenchanted nature and authoritarian culture stifled the fragile pluralism that fermented in that Argentina; but inevitably Peronism was not immune from it.
Conditioned by an export economy, Argentine entrepreneurs are demanding today as yesterday and the day before yesterday a devaluation of the national currency that the government denies them in the name of the risk of collapse to which the entire population would expose. The delay of incomes (fixed ones above all) with respect to inflation would not bear a further trauma. President Alberto Fernandez and Economy Minister Martin Guzman intend to conduct financial policy with maximum coordination, to prevent the internal price system from exploding in his hands and with them social peace. They need time to do this. The business world and the Macrist opposition do not seem willing to give it to them, in the belief that it would weaken their negotiating capacity.
It is what Keynesian economists since the middle of the last century have called the curse of dependent development (to be understood in an absolute sense, since in different ways and measures all depend on everyone else). An addiction that at the end of each cycle and in maximally exasperated terms in the prolonged period passages like this one we are experiencing, involves states of stagnation and recession, all the more serious the more the economies are subjected, exacerbates social inequalities and puts systems in tension. institutional. Covid is wind on fire. But Argentina has overcome the most difficult fords.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/65-anni-dopo-il-primo-peron/ on Sat, 17 Oct 2020 05:09:53 +0000.