The State and the National Bourgeoisie in Postrevolutionary Mexico: 1920-1940

Abstract

Studies of the private sector of contemporary Mexico generally go back no further than the 1940s when the promotion of industrialization began to take precedence in the policy of the Mexican government. Presumably because the national bourgeoisie-economically weak and politically on the defensive-had only a marginal role in the historic struggles of the immediate postrevolutionary period, there have been very few systematic studies of the Mexican bourgeoisie during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite this neglect, an understanding of the development of the national bourgeoisie and the role of the state in its formation in the two decades following the revolution is of critical importance. It was during this period that many of the major institutions of contemporary Mexican capitalism-banks and industrial firms, chambers of commerce and industry as well as other business institutions-were established, and important patterns of collaboration were developed between private capitalists and between them and the state (or certain factions within the state). Thus an examination of the process of capital accumulation in this early postrevolutionary period helps to explain the model of development which has emerged in Mexico today. Among the components of this model are a prominent role for the state in what is essentially a capitalist economy; a strong injection of foreign capital and technology, primarily in the form of multinational corporate investments but also through loans, machinery imports, and other technology transfers; and a tendency toward concentration of control in all sectors of the economy (and toward monopolization in some sectors) by the state, foreign capital, and dominant groups among the national private sector. In Mexico, as in other third world countries, the state1 has had a