THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA,

Transcription

1 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA,

2 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA Edited by Guido di Tella and D. C. M. Platt Palgrave Macmillan

3 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / St Antony's College, Oxford, 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Printed in Hong Kong Published in the United Kingdom by The Macmillan Press Ltd. First published in the United States of America in 1986 ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Political economy of Argentina, Includes index. I. Argentina-Economic policy. I. Tella, Guido, Platt, D. C.M. (Desmond Christopher StMartin), 1934 HC175.P ISBN

4 To Raul Prebisch Elder Statesman of the Emerging Nations

5 Contents List of Tables Editors' Note and Publishers' Note Preface Notes on the Contributors Domestic Finance in the Growth of Buenos Aires, D. C. M. Platt ix X XI Xlll 1 2 The Relationship between Labour and Capital in Rural Argentina, JosephS. Tulchin 3 The Argentine Export Economy: Intimations of Mortality, Tulia Halperin 4 The Argentine Economy, : Some Salient Features 60 David Rock 5 Free Trade in One (Primary Producing) Country: the Case of Argentina in the 1920s 74 A. O'Connell 6 The Economic Formulae of the 1930s: a Reassessment 95 Peter Alhadeff 7 Economic Controversies in Argentina from the 1920s to the 1940s 120 Guido di Tel/a Vll

6 Vlll Contents 8 Argentine Economic Policies since the 1930s: Recollections 133 Raul Prebisch 9 The Origin of Argentina's Sterling Balances, Jorge Fodor 10 The United States, Britain and Argentina in the Years immediately after the Second World War 183 C. A. M acdona/d Postscript and Conclusions 201 Guido di Tel/a and D. C. M. Piau Index 213

7 List of Tables 2.1 Capital invested in agriculture (by Pampean region), Real expenditure, Public expenditure and budgetary results as a proportion of total production, Annual debt service as a proportion of export value, public expenditure and revenue, Domestic and foreign composition of the annual service of the public debt, Money in circulation and means of payment, Variations in means of payments, IX

8 Editors' Note This book is the second in the St Antony's/Macmillan series to be devoted to the economic and social history of modern Argentina. The first volume- Platt and di Tella (eds and contrs), Argentina, Australia and Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, was published in The editors hope that subsequent volumes will include a follow-up on the political economy of Argentina since 1946, a further comparative work on social experiments in regions of recent European settlement (Argentina, Australia and Canada, ), and an analysis of the relative position of Britain and the United States in Argentina during and after the Second World War. Other volumes, prepared and edited by Argentine scholars, are planned in the Republic for themes such as communications, finance and banking, industrialisation, and the development of the pastoral and agricultural sectors. Publishers' Note The volume is published with the aid of a grant from the Latin American Publications Fund. X

9 Preface In substance, this book is the outcome of a conference held at St Antony's College, Oxford, in July The conference discussed the political economy of Argentina for the first half of the twentieth century, a period of critical importance to the Republic during which Argentina moved from an optimism induced by great expansion to the doubts and vacillations which have since preoccupied us all. The papers and subsequent discussion brought together both academics who had worked on developments in Argentina over the period and a group of distinguished public servants who had played a leading role during the later decades. The interaction was interesting, more particularly in the shape of the reactions of public servants to the inferences and conclusions of academics on their behaviour and motivation at the time. As Prebisch pointed out, scholars are better informed today about some aspects of the past even than the leading actors of the time. While contemporaries had to guess the intentions of others, we know today, from local and foreign sources, rather more about what these intentions might actually have been. In the first part of the book we publish four papers for the years before the First World War. They consider the role of domestic and foreign finance in the expansion of Buenos Aires, the differences in labour and capital usage between the various kinds of agricultural frontier, the emergence of doubt as to the possibility of continuing the geographical expansion of the frontier, and the position arrived at by the Argentine economy just before the First World War. The papers were contributed by D. C. M. Platt, JosephS. Tulchin, Tulio Halperin and David Rock respectively. The conference then turned its attention to the inter-war years, to the policies of the 1920s and 1930s, and to the analysis of the economic controversies which surrounded both the transitory nature of agricultural expansion and the need for alternative paths of development for the national economy. The academic argument was presented by Arturo O'Connell, Peter Alhadeff and Guido di Tella, and it contrasts with what Raul Prebisch, a leading policy-maker at the time, was able to xi

10 Xll Preface tell us about what he and his group wanted to do, and actually did. The flavour to be derived from the recollections of perceptive contemporaries, public figures of the day, was of exceptional interest to the conference participants, as, we hope and expect, it will be also to the readers of this volume. The last section of the book discusses the problems of Argentina during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. It focuses on the financial problems which emerged between Argentina and Britain during the War (Jorge Fodor), and on the changing, triangular relationship between the United States, Britain and Argentina induced and promoted both by Britain's economic decline and by the appearance, in the Southern Cone, of a totally novel degree of North American interest and concern (C. A. MacDonald). The volume ends with a postscript in which the editors bring together some of the main strands and isolate both the significant areas of agreement and some of the points which remain in dispute. The editors are glad to take this opportunity to thank St Antony's College (and its Latin American Centre) for having sponsored the conference. They are grateful to the Nuffield Foundation, to the Latin American Publications Fund, and to the Committee of the Argentine Friends of Oxford (Buenos Aires) for their generous support. They thank the contributors and participants for their time and expertise, Adolfo Gurrieri for editing Chapter 8, and Celia Szusterman for her share in the preparation, sub-editing and publication of this volume. They are grateful, in particular, to Raul Prebisch, elder statesman of the emerging nations, to whom this book is dedicated. St Antony's College Oxford Guido di Tella D. C. M. Platt

11 Notes on the Contributors Peter Alhadefl' is a researcher at the Torcuato di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires. Jorge Fodor is Professor of Modern History at the University of Modena. Tullo Halperin is Professor of Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley. C. A. MacDonald is Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Warwick. A. O'Connell is a senior researcher at the Torcuato di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires. D. C. M. Platt is Professor of the History of Latin America at the University of Oxford and Senior Tutor and Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. Raul Prebisch was until recently Secretary-General of the Economic Commission for Latin America. David Rock is Professor of Latin American History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Guido di Tella is Professor of Economics at the Catholic University and the University of Buenos Aires, and Associate Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford. Joseph S. Tulchin is Professor of Latin American History at the University of North Carolina. Xlll