Page 21 - Social Science.docx

Future of Argentina
unionization of previously unorganized workers in Argentina. He used various means to ensure that this large group of potential voters and political actors would give him their individual political backing. The workers did, indeed, form the core of supporters who elected Peron in 1946.3 By tapping into the political potential of the working classes, the importance of the changes Peron introduced are demonstrated by the continuity of the Peronist Party dominating Argentina for all but six of the past 30 years. Juan Peron changed the politics of Argentina with his implementation of a new political ideology called Justicionalism, also known as The Third Way; his administration charted a bold new economic path for the country, preaching industrialization and government intervention to control the progress of the nation. In this new found position of power, the vowed object of Peronist ideology was to find a third position- the Third Way or Justicialism - between capitalism and socialism, both of which he thought proposed inadequate social solutions for nations in general and particularly inadequate ones for the nation states of the Third World.
Justicialismo was similar to Italian fascism in the dual sense that it put an emphasis on totalitarianism and the creation of a mythical charismatic leader. But Argentine fascism, unlike that of Mussolini, was proposed in Christian terms.4 Having grown up being a part of the lower class, Peron was able to understand what motivated the workers and the underprivileged in creating policies which resulted in massive support from the working class. It is my contention that his Third Way was actually a modern form of populism which may be defined as an ideology which strives to appeal to “regular” people and their feeling that they are being manipulated by a small
3 John T.Deiner, “The ILO and Peron's Argentina,” Social Science, vol. 48, no. 4, 1973, pp. 222–231. 4 Finchelstein, "The Peronist," p. 620.
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