The political expression of the Argentine working class has been a subject of concern to social scientists and other interested observers for some time. The country was one of the first in Latin America to have autonomous trade unions and political parties or ideological groups dedicated to the defense of labor interests. During the 1940s a major reorientation took place associated with the advent of Peronism. How did this change come about? Was it a totally new departure, or was it rather an adjustment of tactics on the part of the existing structures? How different is the Argentine labor movement—both in its trade unions and its political expressions—from others in comparable countries? This article seeks to explore this problem, based on a theoretical reassessment of the issues involved in working-class organizations as they emerged in the Argentine historical experience.

One of the most pervasive phenomena in the modern political world is authoritarianism—regimes characterized by “limited pluralism,” identifiably and analytically distinct from democratic or totalitarian types of rule. Well over a third of the contemporary nation-states, mostly in the developing regions, fall into the authoritarian category—and this fact alone would seem to call for intensive research. Nevertheless, despite the obvious importance of the problem, we know relatively little about the origins, dynamics, and stability (or instability) of such regimes. There is a particularly urgent need for empirical research to test, refine, and amplify hypotheses that now exist.

Past studies of urban ethnic residential patterns have focused mainly on European immigrant populations of our large, old, northern industrial centers. These studies have shown in general that (1) residential dissimilarity is a pervasive feature of ethnic settlement; (2) residential dissimilarity among ethnic groups, according to various indicators, denotes the social distance among groups; (3) social status differences only partly explain residential differences among ethnic groups; (4) ethnic groups most centralized in urban residential space are most recent in their immigration; and (5) with the exception of the black population, residential segregation and centralization decline with the length of time of the ethnic group's residence in the society.

Some historians and political scientists have probably passed each other on their way to incorporate the paraphernalia of their respective disciplines. The historians are showing greater interest in theoretical questions and a growing methodological sophistication. The political scientists have begun to test their models against well-known events which have been previously researched by the historians. Obviously, this trend is no harbinger of disciplinary convergence although it underlines the similarity of interests between quantitatively oriented historians and developmentally oriented political scientists.

In March 1973, for the first time since the military coup of 1966, a presidential election was held in Argentina. It also was the first time since 1955 that Peronist parties were allowed to present candidates in every province. The present note originated in an initiative by Darío Canton to collect occupational and electoral data from polling places in several Argentine cities. He had the cooperation of Beba Balvé and Lucía Osvaldo of the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires. The three were responsible for gathering data in Buenos Aires (Canton), Rosario (Balvé), and La Matanza (Osvaldo). Subsequently, collaboration with researchers Jorge R. Jorrat and Héctor Caldelari from interior provinces made it possible to include comparisons with data from Córdoba and Tucumán. The analysis of the data and, ultimately, this note are the sole responsibility of the two authors whose names appear above.

Capitalism is profoundly conditioned by the types of landed property and agrarian classes it confronts in its development, thereby determining fundamental features of the historically specific “social formation” that emerges in a given capitalist country. Such a social formation is not merely split into the constituent classes unique to the capitalist mode of production, but also incorporates, as Marx wrote of Western European capitalism, “strata of society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of production, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay” (1967, vol. 1, p. 765). Or, as Joseph Schumpeter—certainly no Marxist—put it: “Any theory of class structure, in dealing with a given historical period, must include prior class structures among its data; … any theory of classes and class formation must explain the fact that classes coexisting at any given time bear the marks of different centuries on their brow” (1955, p. 111). Every concrete social class, therefore, is also an historical class, not a mere social category or analytic abstraction, and its existence depends on the particular history of the society of which it is a decisive constituent; and in that history, the protracted presence of agrarian elements has often been critical.