Hmmm.
Yea, there is a lot of superficial truth in this account, at least as
relative to Canada. But there is also a lot of overgeneralization
and obfuscation in this account also. Since I have already
published several hundreds of pages and articles on this subject, I
am not about to begin a detailed rebuttle here, suffice it to say that
Louis is perhaps right in general direction, though widely
misinformed in detail, at least as far as Canada is concerned in the
1860-1920 period.
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: m <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, psn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
pen-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, a-list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
wsn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Date sent: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 19:51:50 -0400
Subject: [PEN-L:24837] Argentina, Australia and Canada
Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Warwick Armstrong, "The Social Origins of Industrial Growth: Canada,
> Argentina and Australia, 1870-1930", in "Argentina, Australia and
> Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, 1870-1965", edited by D.
> Platt & Guido di Tella:
>
> Yet, within the general pattern of similarity which gave them their
> distinctiveness, there were also important differences. The key to
> such differences can, again, be identified in the nature of the
> social structures and relationships within the three. This, in turn,
> affected the way in which the economy of each interacted with others
> in the international system of trade and investment. The most obvious
> variation is to be found between Argentina on the one hand, and
> Canada and Australia on the other. In the latter two, the urban
> elements in the ruling coalition were stronger, and earlier assumed a
> dominance over the staples producers. By the 1880s and 1890s, the
> Australian squatters had become, in many cases, subaltern members of
> the coalition, indebted to, and dependent upon, the banking sector
> for their continued viability. The power of Canadian capital, too,
> was concentrated in the financial institutions and commercial
> enterprises of Montreal and Toronto, which exercised a clear economic
> hegemony over the staples producers, and especially over the grain
> farmers of Ontario and the Prairies. This economic weight was
> reflected also in political influence at federal level. In Argentina,
> the dominance of the urban groups was less evident. The landed
> oligarchy continued to wield much greater economic and political
> influence, even after the Radical Party's triumph in 1916, and acted
> as the principal arbiter of social, economic, and political change in
> a way that its Australian equivalent had ceased to do after the late
> nineteenth century. And in any serious confrontations, they could
> call upon the ultimate weapon, the armed forces, which had retained a
> special position in the administrative order ever since the
> nineteenth century.
>
> One indicator of the relative capacities of the three ruling groups
> may be seen in RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. The railway networks, central to
> the opening up of the staples-producing prairies of Canada, the
> pampas of Argentina, and the outback of Australia, could be
> considered economic elements of national importance to each country.
> In Canada, the major part of the construction was carried out first
> by private capital, heavily promoted and subsidised by the state.
> Australia's federal government constructed its own system in the
> separate colonies, and later, federal capital remained responsible
> for construction and operation, although, as in Canada, it drew
> heavily upon foreign loans and expertise. Argentina, however, the
> principal lines (and most profitable) were built and run by European
> companies, while the state was left with the task of undertaking the
> peripheral and less profitable sections.
>
> The manufacturing sectors of the three societies reflected also the
> distinct capacity of the ruling coalition to branch out into new and
> innovative activity. In the 1850s Canada was already establishing a
> range of small-scale, manufacturing activities associated with
> agricultural production; these competed successfully with the later
> influx of US branch plants. Similarly, the steel industry of Southern
> Ontario remained essentially a Canadian national enterprise. By the
> First World War, these groups had formed a modern corporate elite,
> part of a powerful managerial structure.
>
> Australia diversified and industrialized later, and possibly more
> slowly, but its manufacturing sector was, if anything, more firmly
> based upon indigenous capital and entrepreneurship. The processing
> industries and small-scale urban manufacturers were joined, after the
> turn of the century, by large-scale corporate enterprises, especially
> in the mining metals sector. As in Canada, enterprises such as BHP
> and Collins House were no longer family-controlled; they were modern,
> twentieth-century industrial conglomerates with vertical control from
> mining to blast furnaces to wire-rope factories to shipping lines -
> and with links to foreign capital through joint ventures. The
> Australian state, like its Canadian counterpart, was concerned
> directly with this phase of large-scale, corporate manufacturing
> expansion. And, in both societies, the work force assumed the
> character of a modern industrial proletariat by contrast with the
> craft workers of the small-scale, urban factories of the past.
>
> It is rather more difficult to find an equivalent evolution taking
> place in Argentina during this period. The possibilities for backward
> linkages into agricultural machinery manufacture did not arise, and
> Australia, in fact, became one of the country's suppliers of such
> products. Staples processing was initiated by Argentine
> entrepreneurs, but fell rapidly into the hands of foreign firms.
> Consumer industries in the big cities were numerous, but the mainly
> immigrant factory owners remained socially, economically, and
> politically marginal within Argentine society. The small,
> labour-intensive, factory sector continued to expand right into the
> 1920s, and provided more employment than the foreign-owned and
> larger-scale modern plants. But corporate groupings of larger
> national industries similar to those of Canada and Australia failed
> to emerge. It may be significant that whereas the Australian ruling
> groups, in conjunction with the state, used the years of the First
> World War to restructure and create a new corporate industrialism,
> the Argentine manufacturing community, if anything, suffered from the
> shortages caused by war, as well as from the state's and its own
> inability to adapt and respond to the wartime challenges and
> opportunities.
>
> --
> Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 04/11/2002
>
> Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
