Counterhegemonic Strategies in Neoliberal Argentina

Abstract

This article outlines a strategy of action for subordinate groups confronted by the neoliberal pluralist projects currently in vogue in Argentina and elsewhere. To do so, it applies Gramsci's often underappreciated (and somewhat scattered) thoughts on counterhegemonic movements to the realities of the present conjuncture. It is therefore less a finished empirical analysis than a preliminary rumination on the theoretical and practical problems surrounding subordinate-group collective action under conditions of atomizing pluralism and survivalist alienation. Not by chance, these pathologies are reinforced and promoted by market-driven logics imposed by national elites, which gives them a structural base that presents formidable obstacles to effective subordinate-group collective action. Nor are these obstacles shortlived or tied to the dynamics of regime transition. By 1994, the postauthoritarian conjuncture was well into its consolidation phase: over ten years of elected rule, a successful rotation of office between the two major political parties, the subordination of the military hierarchy to civilian government authority, and the expansion of popular participation in the political life of the nation. But beneath the surface lay profoundly negative undercurrents that worked against the consolidation of democracy in its substantive sense. Economic policymaking by executive decree, the disarticulation or neutering of traditional subordinate-group collective agents such as the Confederacion General de Trabajo (General Labor Confederation-CGT), and the dismantling of the public-goods infrastructure all signaled that democracy in Argentina was hollow at its core.