Peter Ranis makes significant contributions to the study of working-class behavior and the particulars of Peronist labor politics in this interview-based exercise in political sociology. One of the better writers in English on Peronism, Ranis adds to his credentials by offering one of the best examinations in any language of modern urban working-class perspectives in contemporary Argentina. His emphasis is on the social relations of production and their attendant consequences for the formation and reproduction of class consciousness in the Buenos Aires proletariat and lower bourgeoisie, the traditional base (or better yet, columna vertebral) of the Peronist movement.
Admitting some methodological impurities for those interested in rigorous survey research, and reflecting a neo-Gramscian viewpoint. Ranis juxtaposes his interview and anecdotal data with a good reading of modern Argentine union history, expertly grounded in the literature on contemporary labor relations and regime type in the twentieth-century Argentine republic.
Ranis demonstrates that it is as much the realization of interests outside the sphere of production as the protection of interests within it that motivates contemporary Porteño workers. He adds to our understanding of the subtler colorations at play in the formation of working-class consciousness in this instance. Citizen identities may be socially driven, but as Ranis demonstrates, they pass through a broad tissue of objective and subjective conditioners outside of work, Argentine workers accept the capitalist status quo as a given, but recognize a discernible class interest—though not an identity—within it. The atomizing effects of authoritarian repression and the increased diversification of the division of labor resulting from various neoliberal, monetarist, and “heterodox” economic policies have blurred class identities while narrowing their perceived common interests. The result is a more immediately materialist and less ideologically cohesive and militant work force, one that has been sobered by the political and economic uncertainties of the last three decades. This is why Argentine workers support moderate (read: pragmatic) approaches to realizing their heterogeneous interests within the current neoliberal parameters.
In his discussion of how the interviews were constructed and in his review of the Marxist literature on working-class consciousness. Ranis brings fresh insight into the epistemological and methodological issues confronting those who study working-class culture. Here he has provided a valuable service. The book is an enjoyable read for several reasons: it brings us up to date on the Argentine urban classes, it adds to our understanding of how working-class consciousness is formed, and it broadens the debate in labor studies on the processes by which organized workers assess their positions in the political-economic continuum. Its only drawback is its relatively small contribution to our understanding of contemporary Peronism, beyond the shifting perspectives of those who are ostensibly its columna vertebral. Only picky readers will take issue with that.
