Catholicism and Peronism, 1945–1954

Abstract

Aware that communism depended on a concept of class struggle which was coherent as long as capital resisted justice and the state defended capital, Peron placed the newly-autonomous state at the service of unions seeking improvements in the conditions of labour, while excluding communists. This strategy was not Peron ’ s alone; he was assisted by Jose Figuerola in the National Labour Department, whose initial attempts under Ortiz had not been forgotten by unions. But by revoking the repressive union law, by supervising labour contracts, and by forcing employers to meet the demands of social legislation, Peron had the means and the will to demonstrate to labour that not only was the state independent of the major economic interests, but that it also recognised the need for coherent social reform through a transformation of the political economy. The social laws which began to stream from government departments in 1944–1945 — the Peon Statute, the maternity protection law, the creation of a cheap housing commission, the regulation of child labour — were often taken directly from union blueprints, and rapidly acquired the force of law, in stark contrast to the legislative ossification of the previous years.1