Argentine unionism has been, since the 1940s, one of the best organized and politically influential labor movements in Latin America. Most of the scholarship on Argentine unionism, however, has been descriptive in nature. In this context, Peter Ranis' book makes a pathbreaking contribution: it provides a thorough study based on in-depth, open-ended, survey analysis.
Ranis’ concern is to discover the true nature of the class consciousness of Argentine workers. Quite sensibly, he argues that to achieve this goal, one needs to look at workers not just in terms of social class but also as citizens who have the same basic needs and aspirations as other people.
In this revised version of his original work, Argentine Workers: Peronism and Contemporary class Consciousness, published in 1992 by the University of Pitts-burgh Press, Ranis adds a new chapter describing the changes affecting Argentine labor under the sweeping market-reform agenda of President Carlos Menem (1989-present). The rest of the book and its findings, however, remain consistent with the previous edition. In the first part, Ranis describes the historical link between organized labor and Peronism and the traditional interpretations of such a bond. In the second part, the author analyzes the labor movement and its behavior under the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-89), who tried, but failed, to emasculate labor’s bargaining power. Ranis’ data collection was carried out during the Alfonsín presidency; more precisely, in 1985 and 1986.
The third and fourth parts of the book constitute the core of the study. Ranis’ surveys show that Argentine workers do have a class consciousness, but one that is rooted in ideas like social justice and freedom rather than the ideological tenets of Marxism-Leninism. The workers come across as being principally concerned with bread-and-butter issues like their families’ standard of living, their own upward mobility in the workplace, and their political freedom. Accordingly, workers believe that the best means to accomplish such goals are the democratic process and a capitalist society. Conversely, they reject the alternatives proposed by communism and right-wing authoritarianism. These results thus contrast with the common wisdom that used to portray the Argentine working class as helplessly anchored to the authoritarian-brand populism of the Perón years.
In sum, this book makes an invaluable, major contribution to the study of Argentine labor. Its weakness rests on the small sample size (only 110 interviews), which would lead many methodologists to question the level of confidence that one may have in such results. Indeed, Ranis downplays the consequences of sampling error for his study in an unconvincing fashion. Nevertheless, his work is an important point of departure for more systematic, methodologically and theoretically grounded research on workers’ attitudes and behavior, not only in Argentina but also in the rest of Latin America.
