Neo Liberalism In Argentina

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1. Introduction Few countries and case studies have drawn that much attention to the study of neo-liberalism and its application as Argentina. It is due to the particular specifics of that case, that I have choosen to analyze it in the following essay. First, an evaluation of the emergence and consolidation of the neo-liberal project in Argentina under the military junta and democratic governments until the end of the 20th century will be presented, followed by an analysis of the social movement of recovered companies as a possible post-neoliberal answer to the failure of neo-liberal logic. By using a Gramscian approach and in more detail, Robert Cox's elaborations on this field, I aim at showing the power of underlying ideas and thoughts in respect to the change of historic materialist structures in the introduction of neo-liberalism by the military dictatorship as a war of movement. Second, the consolidation of this paradigm and especially the role of international actors, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the G-7 nexus, and national actors with changed access to power like the Argentinian financial and agrarian elite, will be assessed. Finally, the Gramscian approach will be used to show the tendency of an emergence of a post-neoliberal alternative, its limitations and reasons for the limited impact on transformation. 2. The rise of neo-liberalism in Argentina 2.1 Peronsim and Isabel Perón: The Argentinian nation-state was consolidated by president Juan Domingo Perón1 in the 1940s under his first presidency. During that era, the concept of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) was strongly promoted. To protect the nascent manufacturing industry, high tariffs and additional trade and investment regulations w... ... middle of paper ... ...y encouraged by Argentina’s financial elite, the so-called 'patria financiera6', and the IMF. The consequence was a shift from the already weakened industrial economy to an economy based on finance, defined by speculation and generally lax financial regulations encouraging economic destabilization, high levels of inflation, and capital flight which reached US$ 28 billion during the seven year dictatorship (Smith, 1989). Speculators would, for example, convert US dollars into pesos while this currency was weak, lend this money for a short period of time and at high interest rates within Argentina and exchange the returns back into US dollars once the peso was strong. Up to 50% of revenues for investors were possibly due to this scheme of speculation, which usually ended with the withdrawal of the used capital from the Argentinean market (Cooney, 2007; Jilberto, 2003).

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