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The Ideology of Peronism: The Third Way and the Law of the Excluded Middle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

F. J. McLynn
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Extract

THE RECENT VICTORY OF RAUL ALFONSÍN AND THE RADICAL Party in Argentina marks the end of forty years during which the Peronists were, overtly or covertly, the major factor in Argentine politics. It also sounds the death-knell of attempts to find a trans-class solution to the problem of political legitimacy in Argentina. It may not be inappropriate, then, to look back on the most sustained attempt to establish this legitimacy via an ideology of class collaboration: the ideology of Peronism.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1984 , pp. 193 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 The literature on Perón and Peronism is vast. The most useful general works for a study of Peronist ideology are: Lux‐Wurm, P., Le Peronisme, Paris, 1965 Google Scholar; Blanksten, G. I., Perón’s Argentina, Chicago, 1974 Google Scholar; Pérez, Carlos and Cárdenas, Gonzalo (eds), EI Peronismo, Buenos Aires, 1969 Google Scholar. Falcoff, Mark, ‘What was Peronismo 1946‐55’ in Cunniff, Roger (ed.) Latin America. Power and Poverty, San Diego, 1975 Google Scholar, is illuminating. Romero, José‐Luis, A History of Argentine Political Thought, Stanford, 1963, pp. 247–54Google Scholar is good for orientation as is Merchensky, Marcos, Las corrientes ideológicas en la história Argentina, BA, 1961 Google Scholar. Abel de Río, El Pensamiento Político de Perón, BA, 1972, is a general survey. In this study exhaustive use has been made of the volume of collected writings and speeches published as Perón expone su doctrina, BA, 1947. A translation of this work into English appeared in 1973 but qua translation leaves a lot to be desired. I have used both volumes, the 1973 version when Perón’s meaning is absolutely clear, and the original (1947) when the translation seems to have missed some of the nuances of the Spanish. In the text references to these volumes are indicated by the abbreviated form PESD, followed by the date of the version used.

2 See Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology, p. 190.

3 ‘We are perfectly aware of the fact that the detractors of such institutions can only produce two alternatives, both of extremist tendencies (sc. Fascism and communism). They are ideologies based on materialistic principles which are supposed to correct the defects of the liberal system but which in practice, are even more pernicious in their effects than the evil wrought by the system they are supposed to rectify. Thus they degenerate into extremely despotic regimes which constitute a denial of the essential attributes of the human personality’, Peronist Doctrine, p. 167.

4 But he adds ominously, with the rider so often used by apologists of the oneparty state, that it is no less certain that the opposition has responsibilities, and unless it acts responsibly there can be no democracy (PESD, 1947, p. 291).

5 Peró, J. D., Conducción política, (BA, 1971) p. 57 Google Scholar.

6 Peronist Doctrine, p. 72.

7 Perón’s lecture to the First National Congress of Philosophy (Mendoza 1949), pp. 31, 38, 42, 55, 57.

8 Ibid., p. 55.

9 Conducción Política, p. 298.

10 Ibid., pp. 43–5.

11 For a general survey see Juan Hernando Arreguí, Peronisma y socialismo, BA, 1972.

12 Pérez, Carlos and Cáirdenas, Gonzalo (eds), El Peronismo, BA, 1969, p. 259 Google Scholar.

13 La Razón, 5 September 1950.

14 Conducción Política, pp. 71–72.

15 Conducción Política, pp. 73–74.

16 Pérez and Cárdenas, El Peronismo, pp. 259–60.

17 Conducción Política, p. 267.

18 Conducción Política, p. 76.

19 Perón, J. D., The Voice of perón, BA, 1950, p. 27 Google Scholar.

20 One of Perón’s apologists, Faleroni, Alberto Daniel, in Estado y sindicalismo, BA, 1948 Google Scholar, portrays Perón as the true inheritor of the mantle of socialism, allegedly betrayed by the heirs of Marx.

21 Voice of Perón, p. 154.

22 Voice of Perón, p. 103.

23 Peró, J. D., La tercera posició, BA, 1973, p. 61 Google Scholar; cf. also Pérez and Cárdenas, El Peronismo, p. 257.

24 Peronist Doctrine, p. 331.

25 At this point Perón parts company decisively from a thinker like Sorel, whose sentiments he otherwise often seems to echo.

26 Peronist Doctrine, pp. 87–8.

27 Conducción Política, p. 266.

28 Conducción Política, p. 299.

29 Peronist Doctrine, p. 111.

30 At times Perón let the mask slip and admitted as much: ‘Our third position is not a centrist position. It is an ideological position that is on the centre, on the right or on the left according to particular circumstances’, La Razón, 5 September 1950.

31 Laclau, Politics and Ideology, p. 198.

32 See Mosse, G. L., Germans and Jews. The Right, The Left and the Search for a Third Force in Pre‐Nazi Germany, New York, 1970 Google Scholar.

33 Goldwert, Martin, Democracy, Militarism and Nationalism in Argentina, Austin, 1972, p. 193 Google Scholar.

34 Hence the irony of Perón’s own strictures on Lenin’s attitude to salaries: ‘The confusion of concepts has reached such a point that doctrines are no longer defined by facts or ideas, but by the persons or groups that adopt them’, The Voice of Perón, p. 29.

35 Lenin, V. I., Complete Works, 55 vols, London 1960–70Google Scholar: English translation, v. p. 384.

36 Marcuse, H., One‐Dimensional Man, London, Sphere, 1968, p. 50 Google Scholar.

37 Pike, F. B. and Stritch, T. (eds), The New Corporatism, Notre Dame, 1974, p. 208 Google Scholar.

38 Peronist Doctrine, p. 84.

39 I will allow myself just one example of dramatic irony: ‘My soul is filled with emotion when I think that the day cannot be far off when all of humanity, seeking some star in the night, will fix its eyes on the flag of the Argentines’, Blanksten, Perón’s Argentina, p. 293.