>From "The Argentine Crisis"
by Joseph Halevi
(http://www.monthlyreview.org/0402halevi.htm, please
sub if you can afford)
"In Argentina, the military dictatorship of 1976-1983 was the avant garde of neoliberalism. It introduced a new foreign investment law facilitating acquisitions and financial investment while freeing the exchange rate from government controls. Forshadowing what would come two decades later, these measures attracted capital from abroad while international financial companies and banks, awash with money from oil price increases, were aggressively pushing loans onto third world countries. Though not a traditional third world country, Argentina was no exception. It must be stressed, however, that the neoliberal orientation of the military would not have been possible without the physical extermination of the activists of the popular forces. The military dictatorship led to a tight alliance between multinationals, financial capital, and local business elites, an alliance which became dominant througout the 1980s. This bloc reversed the import substitution strategy that characterized Argentina’s substantial industrial growth in the 1960s. It was under this alliance that the external debt explosion occurred, while the productive system started to suffer from chronic deindustrialization". 1 {Fernando Hugo Azcurra, La “Nueva” Alianza Burguesa en Argentina ( Buenos Aires: Dialectica, 1988); Eduardo M. Basualdo, Deuda Externa y Poder Economico en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nueva America, 1987).}
For liberals, though, a small price to pay for the wonderful economic result we see today.
-Brad Mayer
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