Hi again, Nestor,
>This is EXACTLY what Peronism attempted to do here, and failed.
>
>Funny to see again how different are things in an imperialist country
>and in a colony. In more senses than one, Peronism, which is widely
>known outside Argentina (and particularly in the United States) as a
>Fascist South American overgrowth that remained alive for a decade
>after Nazism was swept away from Europe was in fact a domestic
>version of a Labour government in Australia. In fact, one of the
>parties on which Perón built his initial electoral victory in 1946
>was the Argentinian Labour party, a party based on the workers of the
>La Plata city foreign owned meat packing and slaughterhouse
>industries.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you say, comrade, but am left wondering if
a significant difference between Australia and Argentina might not be
precisely that we did follow our masters to war.
It certainly occasioned a massive and belated shift from the almost entirely
agricultural economy we'd been. This at once reduced an aspect of
dependence, diversified our stock market, and made us less reliant on a
low-value staple (we were more the price taker than the price maker in our
agricultural exports). The Pacific War (beginning with the pathetic
Singapore disaster in '42) significantly contributed to a resentful
suspicion of the UK (already in place, given the equally pathetic Gallipolli
disaster and the continued and expensive mediocrity of British general staff
on the Western Front), itself occasioning a popular desire for less
dependence on 'em - indeed a distance from them (funnily enough, many on the
left were persuading everybody we should make for Unca Sam's open arms with
expedition).
And it made Australia's Labor Party, and a large slab of the public, look
away from the old Commonwealth in its strategic (we immediately signed some
treaties with NZ) and trade policies (even Asia copped some overtures, but
that stopped when the Tories got in). So both the sectoral structure
(higher value production and the creation of a new and integrated national
bourgeoisie) and the political culture (self-reliance and nation-building)
of the country were very much positively affected in the context of the
times. Not lastingly and not completely, but perhaps decisively at and for
the time.
Perhaps the ALP did not face the problems Peron faced because of the war,
then?
What say you?
Cheers,
Rob.
