The most politically sensitive question in studies of economic growth is: What is the optimal relationship for the distribution of income and wealth to economic growth? The rich often diversify their assets, and thus it is not easy to know the total wealth of an individual, or the distribution of wealth for a nation. For this reason, the analysis presented here for Argentina from 1914 to 1969 makes only brief reference to the influence of the distribution of wealth and focuses instead on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. Income distribution in other nations also is discussed in order to evaluate the possibility of utilizing their experience to judge the Argentine case. The relationship between increases in workers' and entrepreneurs' income and those in investment is also examined, for an economy will grow only if investment takes place. Moreover, because funds spent on private consumption cannot be invested and much past economic analysis has studied the relationship between changes in income and in consumption, this relationship must be considered in the Argentine case. We will look at several categories of income, taking into account the effects of inflation and of ownership of selected categories of wealth.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto's now-classic analysis of Latin American dependent development is perhaps the most important synthesis of the shifting alliances between classes and interest groups that have been cause and consequence of nation-building, state formation, and capital accumulation in Latin America. The book is admirable in many ways, but especially in the scale of its focus across time and space. Rather than telling us every detail of a particular country or period it uses an analytical perspective based on class analysis to compare “situations of dependency” across Latin America from the period of decolonization in the early nineteenth century to the 1970s. I am not a Latin Americanist and so I cannot evaluate the many interpretations of political events in the book. Rather my comments will focus on its theoretical implications, its special strengths, and its possible limitations from the point of view of the capitalist world system as a whole.

The history group of CIESU was formed by Juan Rial Roade, Angel M. Cocchi, and Jaime Klaczko, graduates of the History Section of the Instituto José Artigas, the only institution at the university level devoted to teacher training in Uruguay. They are doing research in urban and demographic history, an area of Uruguayan historiography that has not been much studied by social scientists.

The recent burgeoning of interest in agrarian reform throughout Latin American countries (Schaedel, 1965; Smith, 1965) has been accompanied by unprecedented attention on the part of social scientists in Latin America and elsewhere in what is called colonization. This is largely because what often is designated as official colonization (or projects to establish on the land groups of families headed by the operators of small or medium-sized farms) is one of the major measures used in attempts to achieve agrarian reform, and also because what frequently is referred to as spontaneous colonization (or the process by which settlers established new farmsteads for themselves on portions of the public domain) is another. In this article attention is concentrated upon the books, monographs, and articles dealing with colonization and settlement, and particularly those that have been put into circulation during the last decade.