U4. Korzeniewicz, The Labour Movement and The State

Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
The Labour Movement and the State in Argentina, 1887-1907

Author(s): Roberto P. Korzeniewicz
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1989), pp. 25-45
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
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Bull.Latin.Am.Res.,Vol.8, No.1,pp.25-45,1989. 0261-3050/89$3.00+ .00
Printedin GreatBritain. SocietyforLatinAmerican
Studies
PergamonPressplc
The Labour Movement and the State in
Argentina, 1887-1907
ROBERTO P. KORZENIEWICZ
Department of Caribbean and Latin American Studies, State University of
New York atAlbany
Through the late nineteenth century, capitalist entrepreneurs in Argentina

introduced major innovations in the organisation of the workplace and the
labour market. As I have indicated in another article, these innovations
were largely designed to undermine craft controls over access to skills,
thereby allowing employers to bypass the informal craft organisations that
had previously regulated labour supplies and the labour process (Korzenie-
wicz, forthcoming). Skilled and unskilled workers, with varying degrees of
success, responded to these innovations by creating formal labour organisa?
tions and enhancing their own bargaining power through strikes and other
forms of labour unrest. This article focuses on the impact of this transition
upon the development of new institutional arrangements among labour and
the state at the turn of the century.
Most historical studies of labour in Argentina have maintained that
workers at the turn of the century faced a highly repressive state, and found
little opportunity to effectively pursue economic or social improvements
through political reforms. According to this interpretation, the potential
electoral strength of workers in Argentina was further undermined by the
high proportion of recent immigrants with no political rights. These charac?
teristics, combined with the radical orientation of most Spanish and Italian
immigrants, are held to have provided a strong anarchist orientation to the
ideology and practices of a highly radicalised labour movement.
This article shows that anarchism was not as prevalent within the labour
movement in Argentina around the turn of the century as studies of the
period have generally maintained. Instead, different political tendencies
competed during this period to gain labour support, adopting pragmatic
forms of action and organisation that shared little with their original
ideologies. In the process, all political tendencies sought state mediation of
capital-labour conflicts, as well as regulation of both the labour market and
the workplace through political legislation. From this perspective, labour
unrest shaped the discourse and practice of different political tendencies
within the labour movement, and pushed the state authorities to develop new
institutional mechanisms of labour control.
SOCIALISTS, ANARCHISTS AND LABOUR UNREST

Labour studies have frequently claimed that the labour movement during the
1880s and 1890s was shaped primarily by the efforts of socialist and
26 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
anarchist militants. Thus, labour historians have argued that organisational

skills were brought to Argentina by European socialists and/or anarchists,
and many have attributed peaks or troughs of strike activity to the pre-
dominance of different ideological factions within these political tendencies.
In part, socialist and anarchist labour historians in Argentina have con?
tributed to such a perspective by claiming that their respective ideologies and
the interests of the working class have shared a single, common past (Abad
de Santillan, 1930; Marotta, 1975; Oddone, 1975). Furthermore, capitalist
entrepreneurs and state authorities at the turn of the century often insisted
that strikes and other forms of labour unrest were artificially produced by
foreign agitators. This argument was repeatedly made in the late 1880s, and
again around the turn of the century: in 1904, a delegation of the Union
Industrial Argentina visited the Interior Ministry to argue that labour
conflicts were the product of
professional agitators that since of late abound in the Republic, and

whose influence is decisive due to the freedom of action they enjoy.
These professional agitators, who are mainly foreigners, operate
through the so-called labour organisations of resistance, organisations
that lack personeria juridica and responsibility.1
But the key processes shaping the dynamics of strike activity are to be
found in changes affecting the organisation of skills and authority within the
workplace and in the labour market. After the 1880s, the combined pressure
of greater competition in the labour market and changes in the labour
process?two processes that were linked with one another?led workers to
adopt more permanent and formalised organisational structures (Korzenie-
wicz, forthcoming).2 In part, these structures were designed to ensure
solidarity among non-craft workers during strikes and/or when demands
were being pressed upon employers. At the same time, bargaining between
capital and labour began to revolve around written agreements, and workers
found it necessary to monitor and enforce these contracts through formal
organisations. Together, all these new bargaining arrangements, organisa?
tions and forms of conflict, gave shape to a new, formalised set of relations
between labour, capital, and the state. From this perspective, as indicated by
Weaver,
it is a serious mistake to dismiss working-class unrest as merely the

product of outside agitators and ideas, as is common practice; the fact
remains that the new perceptions and militancy were the product of the
workers' actual position in the process of production. ... The labour
unrest in the early decades of the twentieth century was a product of the
wage labour system, whether in Colombian river transport and United
Fruit plantations or Chilean nitrate and coal pits. Outside agitators
harnessed and articulated the discontent but did not create it (Weaver,
1980, p. 109).3
In other words, to clarify the historical relationship between political

organisations and the labour movement, it is necessary to approach this
LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE STATE 27
interaction as an issue for study, and not to presuppose that their develop?
ment involved a single, common identity.4
The organisation of workers at the turn of the century adopted two basic
forms. Among some sectors of the labour force, the incipient organisation of
workers appeared as informal and tentative. In these cases, which tended to
be characteristic of unskilled and semi-skilled workers in manufacturing
enterprises and services, labour organisations were created to press very
specific grievances upon employers, and tended to become diluted among
workers after negotiations had ended.5 The sporadic nature of these
organisations made it difficult for the political allegiances of workers to be
more than momentary and/or circumstantial. The influence of socialists and
anarchists was greater in a second type of organisation: namely, those that
had adopted the formal representation of workers on a more permanent
basis. These organisations were more predominant among skilled workers in
manufacturing, the port and transportation.
Which of the two political tendencies was stronger among these earlier
labour organisations? Most labour studies have asserted that it was the
anarchists, arguing that their practices and ideology were the most fitting for
a politically exclusionary regime, a transition from artisanal to factory
production, the cultural values of Italian and Spanish immigrants, and/or the
miserable conditions that these immigrants found in Argentina (see Alexan?
der, 1965;Baily, 1967;Bilsky, 1985;Cornblit, 1980; Del Campo, 1983; and
Matsushita, 1983). Thus, Alexander notes that
(a)narchosyndicalism was a particularly appropriate philosophy for

(handicraft workers or artisans) for (they) tended to be ... individual-
ist(s), and the extreme individualism of the Anarchists was therefore
attractive to them (1962, p. 15).
Solomonoff (1971) has emphasised the role played by the exclusionary

political system. Finally, Gariazzo (1981) has argued that anarchist ideology
spread rapidly due to the historical role played by violence in the formation
of Argentine culture.
However, recent research suggests that anarchism was not as strong as
labour studies in Argentina have generally maintained it was. To begin with,
there are no substantive indications that anarchism had anything more than a
negligible influence within labour organisations and labour unrest during the
1880s and 1890s. Furthermore, although anarchism achieved greater labour
support during the early 1900s, most of these gains were to be soon lost
during the 1910s. Finally, even among the labour organisations that did claim
allegiance to anarchist ideals during the early 1900s, there was a great gap
between their ideological discourse and actual day-to-day practices. Each of
these points will now be examined in greater detail.
First of all, indications are that anarchists were already weak among labour
organisations in the 1880s, and became weaker after the departure of a few
key active labour militants in the late 1880s (Oved, 1978, p. 41). Most ofthe
anarchists who remained in Argentina during the 1890s were opposed to
labour organisations and even strikes. In the early 1890s, for example, the
anarchist newspaper El Perseguido argued that trade unions' conflicts were

useless, for
advantages achieved in working conditions and salaries (are) of no

importance because the patrones cancel out any achievement by raising
prices_The working class can only benefit by overthrowing the wage
system, that is to say by carrying out the social revolution (Oved, 1978,
p. 50).
It was only after the early 1890s that anarchists began adopting a more
conciliatory attitude towards labour organisations. However, Oved indicates
that the presence of anarchists was not very remarkable during the strike
waves of the mid-1890s, and that as late as 1899 the anarchists were only
strong in the Sindicato de Obreros Panaderos (Oved, 1978, p. 107). This
lack of anarchist influence prior to the early 1900s appears to have been
characteristic of other cities in Argentina besides Buenos Aires, such as
Cordoba (Iparraguirre and Pianetto, 1967, p. 526).
Militants favourable to organisation increased their influence within the
anarchist movement only after the turn of the century. Thus, according to
Oved, it was only after 1902 that
all the Anarchist circles (except for the individualist anarchists) became
dedicated with insistence to activities in the trade unions. Differences in
terms of organisation, initiative, spontaneity, violence, etc. did not
disappear, but were no longer the source of considerable internal
contradictions as in the past (Oved, 1978, p. 228).
But the new influence of anarchists within the labour movement after the turn
of the century did not result solely from an internal shift in the ideological
orientation of different internal factions: the influence of anarchists within
labour organisations only increased as socialist militants appeared to
abandon this terrain of struggle in favour of electoral politics.
Socialists had been initially successful in generating support within the
labour movement: their political discourse was able to synthesise not only the
key processes affecting wage workers, but also the pressures faced during the
late nineteenth century by independent craft producers and small capitalist
entrepreneurs. Thus, the Federacion Obrera in the late 1880s and early
1890s claimed that many of its members were small manufacturers. La
Prensa, for example, noted
As opposed to what many believe, the Federacion Obrera is formed by
many small industrialists?mainly German and Italian?who without
abandoning ... democratic ideals have been able to accumulate a small
capital that today is being lost, in spite of their constant work.6
The socialists continuously appealed for the support of small entrepreneurs

by warning them that capitalist accumulation and competition would ulti?
mately bring them into the ranks of the proletariat.
The predominance of the socialists among labour organisations was most
pronounced during the waves of strikes of 1895-1896 (see Fig. 1). There is
some evidence that not all trade unions were receptive to the socialists; but in
1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924

Source:Korzeniewicz,1988,20.
FIG 1 Strikes, 1887-1924 (trend removed)
overall terms the socialists had the strongest presence in the labour conflicts
at the time.7 However, their position was soon undermined by the ambivalent
strategy that socialists adopted towards strike activity. Originally, the wave of
strikes in August-September 1896 was greeted with great enthusiasm by La
Vanguardia, the official socialist publication:
The triumph of this giant strike could anticipate a new era for us, the
workers in Argentina, and its defeat would represent disappointment
for many and arrogance for the capitalist class_It's necessary that we
donate part of our salaries in favor of those who are struggling.
This will not be a sacrifice, but a great reward; that is, the triumph of
this strike ... will be the first victory of the Argentine proletariat.8
But while the socialists viewed the strike wave as evidence of workers' 'spirit
of protest against the bourgeois class', they also thought strikes to be
temporary instruments for the achievement of more stable forms of organ?
isation.9
... It is precisely because strikes are the first echoes, loud protests
against the bourgeoisie, that we, the Socialists, support them, because
besides serving as protest, the workers meet and in their meetings they
can be made to understand the causes of exploitation and their misery as
well as the means of emancipation.10
In other words, according to the socialists, strike actions provided an

opportunity to begin shifting labour militancy to the political terrain, par?
ticularly in so far as these same strikes would unmask the class content of
existing state policies.
If the working class knew, with the consistency and energy that any great
enterprise requires, how to totally or partially appropriate the political
power that today it leaves in the hands of the rich class, wouldn't its
situation be different, wouldn't all the current strikes have a better
chance of success? Ah! There wouldn't even be a need for (strikes),
because they would be favourably replaced by political and economic
measures and reforms, and these would be more permanent and of a
more general reach than the improvements that can be reached today
with the strike.11
As workers began to lose strikes in September 1896, the tone of socialists

became pessimistic, and their discourse emphasised more than ever the need
for labour to shift its actions to the political terrain. Thus, a member of the
executive committee and future leader of the Socialist Party, Dr Juan B.
Justo, advised workers in September 1896
why the results are so limited, and obtained only at the cost of so many
sacrifices. Only in the active effort, only in the political struggle and the
cooperative association, can the working class acquire the knowledge
and the discipline that it needs in order to reach its own emancipation.
Because not everything consists in understanding that there is exploita?
tion, we must also be able to free ourselves from it; to learn how to
organise the work without need of patrones. This labour union for
political struggle and cooperative action, this union to do, is much more
perfect, much harder, and at the same time more effective, than the
passive action of strikes.12
A few weeks later, the tone of Socialists had turned sombre, and La
Vanguardia carried Justo's argument further by beginning to attribute the
very defeat of the strikes to the political indifference of workers:
... if we the workers, being as we are the immense majority, had not been
so indifferent, and had already struggled in the political terrain, the
results of our work would be very different, and so would be our current
situation.
But experience will serve from this, and this strike will serve to
convince the companeros that this system of struggle is too costly; that
we the workers find ourselves in conditions that are too unfavourable to
beat the capitalists in the economic terrain; and that, instead, in the
political struggle no sacrifice is needed to vote: all that is lost is a couple
of hours to deposit the ballot in a box?and the benefits will be
incalculable.13
Finally, only a few months later the socialist leader Patroni would himself
remark
... what has been unfortunate is the erroneous belief that many have,
that to struggle against the patronato and to defeat it, it is enough to issue
a proclamation, hold a well-attended meeting, pronounce some effective
phrases, give a few cheers for the strike_Nobody can be blamed for
the defeat of many of the strikes, but the workers themselves.14
Of course, much of this criticism was aimed at rallying political support for
the socialists. During the strikes, Patroni himself had worked incessantly with
the strikers, attending rallies, giving speeches, bargaining with employers,
writing for La Vanguardia, and so forth. Thus, in a sense, the frequent calls
for greater organisation became an euphemism for promoting support
among workers for the socialists.
But as workers failed to rally to the political arena in response to the defeat
of strikes, the socialists began to publicly denounce strikes as the very anti-
thesis of?rather than a prelude to?mature working class struggles. Thus, by
the early 1900s, when the socialists turned to the electoral arena, strikes were
openly attacked as a sign ofthe political immaturity ofthe working class. This
was the case, for example, of the comments made by E. Dickman after a
successful strike at the port of Buenos Aires:
With the strike having concluded we can once again affirm that
painful, but very real, truth: that the working class of this country is very
far yet from having the capacity and the sufficient preparation to struggle
with advantage against the capitalist class, either on the economic
terrain, or even less on the political terrain. Strikes are the eternal
repetition of that embarrassing phenomenon: they emerge without pre?
paration, instigated by some individuals, the immense majority does not
know what it wants, there is no discussion nor reasoning, violent
speeches are made in abundance, at the beginning there is much enthu-
siasm but then comes disillusion and the general decline; and if the strike
ever wins it is only because of unforeseen circumstances that in a well-
organised strike would be accessory and not decisive.
And what is sadder is that these cruel lessons do not serve as a school
for the working class.
After each strike the spirit of inertia is even greater than ever before;
and the workers continue to be disorganised and disunited, dragging
their miserable life between the mire and the mud of the tavern and the
bar, increasing the general decline of a pueblo that will die.
And there are pretensions of making a social revolution with this
pueblo?
Oh, what naivete!
Conscious workers should take note although they are few, and they
should abandon forever their usual indifference, and they should
organise seriously struggling for the attainment of gradual and con?
tinuous improvements.15
The socialist discourse now portrayed strikes as individualistic confronta-

tions between employers and employed that could have no lasting impact
upon the real interests of the working class. Political reforms rather than
strikes were the only avenue through which the working class could achieve
long-lasting improvements in its condition: thus, the socialists argued that the
efforts of workers should be geared towards attaining political representa?
tion at the level ofthe state. For this purpose, the Socialist Party concentrated
its own efforts towards naturalising immigrant workers so that they could
vote, preparing platforms and slates of candidates for the national elections,
and so forth.
As the socialists turned away from actively supporting strikes, the
anarchists began to improve their position in a number of labour organisa?
tions. As in the case ofthe socialists, the anarchist discourse was designed to
appeal to craft workers who opposed their subordination to wage labour.16
However, their new influence within the labour movement after the turn of
the century signalled the adoption of a more pragmatic attitude towards
labour organisations and labour-capital relations. Thus, in the early 1900s
anarchists began to accept arbitration as an acceptable mechanism for
resolving labour conflicts, and actively involved themselves in mediating
labour conflicts thereafter, a strategy they had considered to be repulsive
only a few years earlier. Hence, in the words of Thompson,
the terms in which they defined their position remained anarchist, but
their activities in practice embraced a much wider variety of modes of
action (Thompson, 1984, p. 91).
LABOUR AND THE STATE

In changing their respective strategies towards labour organisations, social?
ists and anarchists were both responding in part to the new role played by the
state policies in capital-labour relations. Basically, state policies at the turn of
the century defined more clearly which labour activities would be repressed.
This is not to say that the state failed to intervene in labour conflicts prior to
the early 1900s. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, when faced with the
threat of a strike, employers frequently requested the presence of police
forces to 'preserve order and guarantee individual freedoms'. Arrests, beat-
ings and other forms of repression of strikes and labour organisations are
well documented in the press throughout this period. But before 1900, the
demarcation between illegal and legal actions on the part of strikers and
labour militants appeared to be arbitrary, police repression was generally
contingent upon the personal attitude of particular police chiefs, and explicit
restrictions upon the activities of socialists and anarchists were rare.17 After
the turn of the century, on the other hand, state policies clearly demarcated a
range of labour actions that would not be tolerated: specific laws were passed
to expel labour militants from the country, the police were provided with
special powers to use in repressing labour organisations and political groups
of the left, the government increasingly made use of the state of siege to stop
strike activity, and the overall level of repression of urban labour unrest rose
to unprecedented levels. In 1906, for example, the Chief of Police of the
Province of Buenos Aires counselled his subordinates to provide good treat?
ment to peaceful immigrants, but
... to be inexorable with the turbulent and perturbed spirit of those who
using false concepts of liberalism, predicate social dissolution and seek
to establish it through disorder_The right to strike, recognised by the
fundamental law of the Nation and the Province, becomes a true crime
when its purposes are exaggerated by an effort to constrain the free
exercise of the right of others. That element with no roots in our country,
floating around due to a lack of propitious terrain and environment,

which has come to us as the detritus to the coast, deserves the most
severe vigilance and the weight of fully justified repressions (sic) if it
pretends to implant in our land (virgin of great oppressions and
abundant in all sorts of benefits), subversive procedures that, whereas
they may be explainable elsewhere, among us they are an evident folly.18
Many of these new state policies were formulated in explicit acknowledge-

ment of the political pressures of industrialists, and in a context of rising
conflicts between capital and labour. As early as the late 1880s, several
entrepreneurs had attributed strike activity to the subversive actions of
foreign agitators, and sought to curb labour militancy by developing a black-
list of agitators.19 At this early point in time, however, employers acted
against labour militancy by relying primarily upon informal corporate links
among employers and the occasional use of police repression. The strike
wave of 1896 led to crucial changes in this respect. The public declarations of
employers were no longer limited to announcing that all agitators would be
dismissed and placed in a blacklist, but now included
(r)equesting from the public authorities of the nation the sanction of

laws conducive to impeding the implantation in this country of exotic
associations and the diffusion of anarchical doctrines, all of which are
incomprehensible in a country that is rich, big, and lacking in hands and
capital.20
In the short term, state policies responded to these pressures by moving
more strongly towards forbidding entry into the country to well-known
militants.21 But by 1902, these demands led to the adoption of a range of
repressive laws and the first enforcement of a state of siege in response to a
wave of strikes.22 The new law allowed the government to deport labour
organisers, and provided legal grounds for press censorship, special arrest
powers, police repression of strikes and labour organisations, and so forth.
Another repressive law (the Ley de Defensa Social) was approved in 1910 to
further facilitate the repression of the anarchists.23 Altogether, the adoption
of these measures clearly defined a repressive posture of the state towards
strikes, and the anarchist discourse made frequent references to this fact.24
But the labour movement also confronted a second, complementary
posture on the part of the state, involving public mediation of labour-capital
conflicts and the creation of a limited space for promoting legal reforms
through electoral institutions.25 Newspapers such as La Prensa condemned
the use of repression against labour, arguing that it was a mistake for public
authorities to view strikes as the result of professional agitation, and called
for Congress and the Executive to legislate on labour reform, create arbitra-
tion courts, and improve the living conditions of the working class.26 These
demands were stronger during periods of heightened labour conflict that
made public authorities more willing to consider labour reforms: in 1903, for
example, the press announced that
(t)he Minister of the Interior, in view of the frequent strikes that occur in
(Buenos Aires), has the purpose of creating arbitration courts com-
posed of employers and workers, which will be in charge of resolving the

matters that arise between capital and labour in the future.27
Already in the 1890s, there were sporadic press reports of groups of

workers asking police chiefs and judges to mediate in labour conflicts and/or
enforce written agreements violated by employers, as well as socialist and/or
anarchist organisers mediating in conflicts between capital and labour.28 In
fact, the Congress of the Federacion Obrera Argentina (FOA) in 1902
debated whether mediation should be accepted at all. Although there was
opposition from some anarchist organisers, a small majority within the FOA
finally approved that labour organisations should accept mediation by
responsible individuals willing to respect the interests of the working class
(seeMarotta, 1975, pp. 130-131; Oddone, 1975, p. 139).
State mediation of capital-labour conflicts increased rapidly after the turn
of the century. The instances of strike mediation reported in La Prensa, for
example, rose suddenly in 1901. At first, most instances of strike mediation
involved a combination of socialist leaders, municipal authorities and the
local police. After 1902, on the other hand, mediation was reported to
involve higher levels of authority. In particular, after 1902 there were
frequent press reports of mediation efforts by Dr Beazley, an active police
chief whose mediation efforts appeared to be accepted by many labour
organisations and were frequently praised in the mainstream press.29 As an
indication of Dr Beazley's success, one week after his retirement in October
1904, and with the editorial support of the mainstream media, public
authorities decreed that police chiefs should exercise mediation of capital-
labour conflicts in the future.30 The next police chief, however, was not as
successful as his predecessor: one month after approval of the decree, La
Prensa was forced to recognise that mediation would be more effective if it
was shifted away from police chiefs, towards 'specialised, truly impartial
bodies'.31 Thereafter, the number of labour conflicts mediated by police
chiefs in Buenos Aires dropped sharply and by 1908, the Departamento
Nacional del Trabajo reported that
The (decree) has turned out to be inefficient, and has an inconvenience

which other countries have avoided: confusing in a single arm both
repressive and conciliatory functions. Above all, police functionaries
have to persecute delinquents and keep public order by force; while the
mediator or arbitrator is, by the nature of his mission, a peaceful and
friendly interventor who is in good relations with both sides and is
sought for by all.32
Despite its failure, similar bills and decrees, such as the new proposals being
put forth by the Department of Labour, or the introduction of a bill in
Congress in 1910 to establish arbitration courts to mediate industrial
conflicts (Isuani, 1985, p. 73), constituted merely early efforts towards the
creation of new channels of bargaining and mediation. In the process,
bureaucratic procedures towards conflicts between labour and capital were
becoming more defined and specialised.
In terms of executive and congressional reforms, the most important
initiative was a bill proposed in 1904 for the enactment of a Ley Nacional del
Trabajo. Already in the 1890s there had been calls for labour legislation in
this area. In the midst of the crisis of the early 1890s, for example, the press
had called for a new law to force employers to pay outstanding wages even in
the case of bankruptcy.33 But the 1904 bill was the first effort to develop a
complete and thorough labour code. The bill was opposed by both the
anarchist and socialist labour federations (the FOA and the Union General
del Trabajo), on the grounds that several of its clauses were designed to
restrict the right to strike and to control the activities of labour organisations.
Some sectors ofthe Socialist Party wanted to accept the beneficial aspects of
the law (8 hour day, employer's responsibility for work-related accidents,
greater hygiene within the workplace, municipal inspections) while rejecting
others. These factions of the Socialist Party also believed that passage of the
law would finally motivate workers to orient their actions towards the
political terrain (Marotta, 1975, p. 226). On the whole, however, socialist
labour organisers opposed the law. The law was also opposed by conserva?
tive members of Congress and by the Union Industrial Argentina (Bilsky,
1985, p. 123). After limited debate, the bill was tabled and not considered
again.34
But not all legislative reform ended in inactivity. An active area of reform
was in regard to state enforcement of rest on Sundays. There were some
early efforts in the early 1880s by municipal authorities in Buenos Aires to
restrict work on Sundays and holidays, but the opposition of local manu-
facturers was successful in turning back this legislation (Qineo, 1967, p. 55).
After repeated labour demands for a shorter working week, a new project for
rest on Sundays was presented to the national congress in 1904, and
commercial employees lobbied particularly hard for the bill to be
approved.35 The restriction of work on Sundays also had the support of the
Catholic Church and its Circulos Obreros Catolicos (Falcon, 1986, p. 20).
Some members of Congress argued that employers should be left free to
choose which particular day to observe as a holiday, and not be all
constrained to give Sunday as the day off.36 In response, other congressmen
argued that a common day of rest, homogeneous throughout the country, was
essential to promote
... closer family relations and ties, so that men can have a day of relaxa-
tion to meet with their wives, with their children, and carry out the family
life that work tends to prevent (speech by Congressman Oliver, quoted
inPanettieri, 1984, p. 29).
According to this argument, unless all workers shared a common day of rest,
the family
.. .won't be able to meet, because the husband will have Monday as his
day off, for example, when the wife will be working in the shop, and the
same will happen with the children; and if the day of rest for the wife is on
Tuesday, the husband and children will be off on another day; in this
case, when will they meet to strengthen family ties? (in Panettieri, 1984,
p. 30).
Such an argument proved to be persuasive, and the bill was approved in

August 1905 although industrialists and conservative congressmen success?
fully pushed for several modifications ofthe original bill: its enforcement was
confined to the city of Buenos Aires, and the day was not to be considered a
paid holiday.37
The concern with consolidating the family as a social institution was also
evident in a second major area of legislation: the work of women and
children. Almost every single congress of trade unions held between the early
1890s and the mid-1900s issued a call for the restriction of employment of
women and children.38 Labour organisations viewed the employment of
women and children as intensifying competitive pressures for male, adult
workers. Therefore, labour organisations called for legislation restricting the
employment of women and children, and frequently demanded that em?
ployers agree to exclude women and children from the paid labour force. A
Congress representative noted in 1907, for example, that
... apprentices (have been persecuted) by adults in all the Federations
and resistance societies (in Panettieri, 1984, p. 50).
Less frequently, labour organisations sought to organise women and children
and to increase their wages.39 In the words of a labour organiser at the first
congress of the FOA,
(g)iven that women are competing with men, what we should do is
organise them (Marotta, 1975, p. 133).
Of course, many of these labour organisations assumed that if all workers
were to be paid the same wages regardless of age and/or gender, employers
would have no reason to hire women and children.
Some socialist organisers pushed hard for legislative reforms regarding
the employment of women. Writing in La Prensa, for example, Gabriela L.
de Coni called for the creation of nurseries in all factories employing a sig?
nificant number of women, and the replacement of all male foremen and
supervisors by women, so as to reduce the instances of sexual abuse in
factories.40 But the most important bill regarding the employment of women
and children was introduced in Congress by a Socialist congressman in 1906.
In its initial formulation, the bill forbade manufacturing employment of
children under 14 years old, limited the work of teenage women and men to
8 hours a day, and restricted women's work to 8 hours a day. The bill also
called for women to be given a paid leave of absence 20 days prior to birth
and 40 days after birth. Introducing the bill, Congressman Palacios attri-
buted the growth of female employment to mechanisation, which in his view
had reduced the need for muscular effort, and opened to women and
children the jobs that had previously been the exclusive domain of men. The
employment of women and children, according to Palacios,
... brings as a natural consequence disorder at home and a weakening of
family ties, without producing any advantages, for wages decline due to
the resulting competition, while (the costs of daily reproduction)
increase as capital confiscates mothers and wives (from) domestic work
(in Panettieri, 1984, p. 42).
Industrial entrepreneurs, particularly in textiles, where women constituted

a large proportion of the labour force, opposed the bill, claiming that the
legislation would increase overall wages and undermine their ability to
compete with foreign products, and that men should not be employed in
tasks requiring no intelligence or skills (Panettieri, 1984, p. 44). However, by
emphasising its importance for strengthening the family unit, the socialist
legislators and labour leaders were able to gain support for the bill among
more conservative politicians. Approval of the bill was delayed until mid-
1907, when it was passed with some reforms.41
The bill had an immediate impact on the employment of children and
women, particularly in the city of Buenos Aires. The work of children and
teenagers under 18 had already been restricted in many occupations: in the
early 1910s, a Congressman argued that protective legislation had led many
employers to dismiss children from the workshops, only to employ them
instead to work in the streets (such as in deliveries, commerce and so forth)
(Panettieri, 1984, p. 62). A similar shift was observed regarding the employ?
ment of women, in so far as textile production began to shift away from the
shops covered by protective legislation, to rely upon unrestricted outwork
and sweatshop production (Panettieri, 1984, p. 42). These initial measures
anticipated the more extensive set of protective legislation that was intro?
duced in the mid-1920s (Korzeniewicz, 1988).
Another major change towards greater regulation of the labour market
and the workplace involved the formation ofthe Departamento Nacional del
Trabajo (DNT) in March 1907, with the explicit purposes of studying
capital-labour relations, advising the executive and legislative branches on
labour matters, suggesting forms of negotiation, proposing different types of
legislation, compiling statistics and publishing materials pertaining to
labour.42 The relationship between the creation of the DNT and the rise in
labour conflict was clear, as stated by the President of Argentina in a speech
before Congress in 1907:
The DNT has been commissioned to gather, coordinate and publish

statistics and information that pertain to the working conditions in the
country, and possible means of promoting the material, social, intellec?
tual and moral prosperity of workers. The need to legislate in these
matters is notorious. Repeatedly, there are grave bouts within factories,
workshops and trade establishments, that paralyse production or com?
merce, make life difficult, sow malaise and even affect the public order.
... It is convenient for us not to ignore this matter that affects so deeply
the permanent interests of the nation, and for us to proceed as in the
countries that have preceded us on this road, studying the events,
searching in reality the true conditions and motives of social problems
and dictating, immediately, prudent and provident laws that respect all
rights and assure the general well-being (cited in Isuani, 1985, p. 67).
In time, the DNT also came to enforce regulations on working hours, wages
and so forth (Panettieri, 1984, p. 159). A commission was created by the
executive in 1913 to coordinate a study of home-work and sweatshops with
the Department of Labour, and some regulation was introduced into this
type of work in 1918, including shop floor hygiene and the creation of mixed
commissions to set wage rates.
The possibility of instituting these types of reforms shaped the avenue of
action chosen by the socialists, and from the modest positions gained in
Congress they pushed for basic regulations of the workplace, intervened on
behalf of workers facing arrests and diverse forms of police repression, and
so forth. Within this terrain, the socialists met a considerable degree of
success, and their electoral weight, at least in the city of Buenos Aires, grew
considerably through the 1910s and 1920s. Anarchists, on the other hand,
continued to emphasise primarily the repressive character of state actions
towards labour, and the violence that was often used by the police and army
against strikers gave a measure of legitimacy to this posture.
The political status of immigrants tended to undermine socialist efforts to
gain a larger electoral constituency, but neither this nor the reluctant attitude
of the socialists towards strikes led to an ideological conversion of workers
towards anarchism. In a sense, what happened was the opposite of this:
anarchist practice itself was changed in order to accommodate it to the forms
of action and organisation prevalent within the labour movement. But even
here, the relative success of anarchists within the labour movement only
stands out when contrasted to the socialist decline. Soon afterwards, the
influence of anarchists within labour organisations also underwent a rapid
decline. According to Munck, the decline responded to the inability of
anarchists to deal with the new co-optive policies of Radical administrations
afterthe mid-1910s (Munck, 1984, p. 262). Del Campo (1984), on the other
hand, attributes the decline of the anarchists to growing stratification within
the labour force, and a change in the perception of work itself: as workers
began to accept their situation as wage workers as permanent, they moved
towards more steady organisations, with greater emphasis on the creation of
permanent channels of bargaining, enforcement of contracts and so forth.
However, the anarchist practice within labour organisations in fact acknowl-
edged and made use of all available channels of mediation and conciliation.
In between a political discourse aimed against repression, and one
organised around reform, there was a large space occupied by the bulk of the
labour organisations. In other words, strikes, periodic confrontations
between labour and capital, and individual trade unions, stood largely on the
margins of these political organisations.43 Thus, for example, Thompson
(1984, p. 83) has noted that during this period there were few strikes carried
out on an ideological basis, and her claim is substantiated by the fact that for
the period as a whole there were very few general strikes: of the 1,559
instances of labour unrest recorded in La Prensa between 1887 and 1907,
only 11 consisted of general strikes (4 in Rosario; 2 in Buenos Aires; 1 each
in Cordoba, Mendoza and Santa Fe; 1 in both Cordoba and Buenos Aires;
and 1 of a national scope). Subsequently,
(b)etween 1907 and 1916 ... there were 1,290 strikes in the city of
Buenos Aires. Of these 5 were general strikes (Gallo, 1986, p. 371).
From this perspective, the growing importance of syndicalist practices

within the labour movement after the mid-1900s was highly indicative ofthe
trends discussed in this article. Syndicalism originated within the Socialist

Party, where it emerged as a tendency during the debates over labour legisla?
tion in 1904.44 Syndicalists were willing to accept state mediation of labour
conflicts, but avoided making political objectives central to their organisa?
tions. This pragmatic approach gave syndicalists an edge over anarchist
organisers, allowing them to openly make discretionary use of institutional
political mechanisms when these proved convenient to achieve immediate
objectives (Rock, 1975, p. 83). The predominance of syndicalists within
organised labour was accentuated after 1914 and the rise of the Radical
Party to power in 1916. Pursuing economic demands, and emphasising the
need of maintaining their autonomy from all political parties, syndicalists
found strong support among railroad and port workers who sought to take
advantage of the strategic position they occupied in the export system.
Rather than becoming engaged in general strikes and/or economic demands
that subordinated their interests to those ofthe urban labour force as a whole,
these workers concentrated instead on 'partial strikes and on securing
concessions directly from their employers' (Rock, 1975, p. 87; see also
Matsushita, 1983, pp. 30-34). In the process, railroad and port workers
developed large and centralised labour organisations that in some respects
became a model for the development of industrial unions in manufacturing
and construction during the late 1920s and 1930s.45
CONCLUSION
Over the 1887-1907 period, a new set of institutional arrangements came to
prevail among labour, capital and the state. By the end of this period, as
employers undermined craft controls over employment and the workplace,
workers enhanced their own bargaining power by adopting innovative forms
of action and organisation. Strikes, trade unions and formal contracts
between employers and workers became a regular and constant feature of
capital-labour relations. During this period, and until World War I, workers
derived most of their bargaining power from tight labour market conditions.
In this sense, the innovative forms of action and organisation adopted by
workers were designed to enhance and exploit their marketplace bargaining
power (Korzeniewicz, forthcoming) and political objectives were secondary
to the labour movement.
However, the state played a central role in enforcing the new arrangements
that prevailed among labour and capital, and there were incipient efforts to
introduce state regulation of the labour market and the workplace. In this
sense, the new forms of action and organisation adopted by labour were
shaped by the opportunities and constraints that workers found in the
political arena. Labour organisations pushed for legislative and executive
reforms to regulate the length of the working day, the introduction of legal
holidays and the employment of women and children. State authorities
adopted most of these reforms after the initial waves of strikes in the 1890s
and early 1900s, in an effort to control labour unrest by intervening more
directly in regulating capital-labour relations.
On the other hand, the opportunities for political reform were not open-
ended. Employers joined corporate organisations that offered a common
resistance to labour demands, and pressed the state into adopting a more
active role in repressing labour unrest. Responding in part to these pressures,
new institutional arrangements among labour, capital and the state included
restrictions on trade union activity and labour's electoral participation. More
directly, state authorities often responded to labour unrest through the use of
repressive measures?such as deportations, censorship, arrests and the use
ofviolence.
Reform and repression provided a basis for the development of alterna-
tive, and often conflicting, political discourses within the labour movement.
Hence, the socialist discourse emphasised the need for workers to press,
through their growing electoral strength, for greater state regulation of
capital-labour relations. The anarchist discourse, on the other hand,
emphasised the limits to effective political participation, and challenged the
very foundation of prevailing institutional arrangements. As indicated in this
article, however, there was a considerable gap between the discourse and
actual practices of these different political tendencies, and the gradual
predominance of syndicalism within the labour movement was indicative of
the limited appeal of both socialist and anarchist ideologies.
From this perspective, the decades around the turn of the century were
clearly distinct from the World War I-World War II period, when workers
adopted new forms of action and organisation geared towards enhancing
their political bargaining power?in a process that culminated with the
emergence of Peronism. Around the turn of the century, however, strikes and
other forms of labour unrest became widespread, trade unions were created
in key sectors of the labour force, workers and employers adopted formal
agreements, and there were incipient state efforts to regulate the workplace
and employment. Hence, in many respects, this initial phase involved the
very creation of some of the most salient institutional arrangements that
prevailed among labour, capital and the state for the rest of the twentieth
century.
NOTES
1. La Prensa, 3 December 1904.
2. There were sporadic strikes in the 1870s and early 1880s, but it was only after the wave of
labour unrest of the late 1880s that they became a permanent feature of relations between
labour, capital, and the state. Generally, labour studies have argued that the first strike was
organised in 1878 by typographicalworkers:this argumentfits well into the overall notion
that the vanguardof the labour movement was to be found among workers in close contact
with progressive European ideas (in this case, writtenideas). However, there were strikes in
Buenos Aires as early as 1872, when skilled carpenters pressed masters for higher wages
(see La Prensa, 4 December 1872 and 7 December 1872).
3. La Prensa itself made a similar point in 1901, when it argued that Socialism was the native
outcome of a disequilibriumbetween labour and capital:
.. .Socialism is as natural and logical as trade unions, as the Sociedad Rural, as the
Stock Exchange and other collectives arising out of the interests of their associates.
Socialism, son of the pressure of necessity, keeps watch over the fate of the worker.
(20Augustl901.)
4. Halperin Donghi implicitly raises a similar issue by asking
... were the immigrants predominantly a modernising agent or rather a group
modernised through its experience (in the Rio de la Plata)? (1976, p. 769).
Of course, his point is that cultural and political allegiances were themselves influenced by
the Argentine context of working-class development.
5. In many instances, for example, the authority for presenting workers' grievances to
employers, mediating between workers and supervisors, and so forth, was often delegated
to foremen.
6. La Prensa, 24 January 1891.
7. This was the case, for example, of bakers and some craft workers in construction (La
Pre?sfl,28Junel896).
8. La Vanguardia, 22 August 1896.
9. La Vanguardia, 5 September 1896.
10. La Vanguardia, 22 August 1896.
11. La Vanguardia, 5 September 1896.
12. La Vanguardia, 3 October 1896. The emphasis is in the original.
13. La Vanguardia, 17 October 1896.
14. La Vanguardia, 16 January 1897.
15. La Vanguardia, 27 January 1900.
16. This argument is also put forth by Del Campo (1983, p. 19).
17. At this time, state policies were primarily concerned with defining which types of organisa-
tion?both between workers and between employers?should be regulated by government.
Of course, in most instances these measures were used to attack craft corporations. For
example, La Prensa (8 April 1894) noted that the National Prosecutor was seeking to deny
organising rights to plasterers, for their organisation would restrict the freedom of indi-
viduals by imposing standard working hours and setting minimum wages.
18. La Prensa, 11 September 1906. Solomonoff (1971, p. 219) also indicates that presidential
messages to the legislative assembly began emphasising more frequently the potential threat
that radical immigrants represented for the established political order.
19. La Prensa, 11 November 1888. Labour studies have often argued that this type of discourse
was developed in Argentina in response to the large number of foreigners among workers.
However, the development of the theme of unrest as a threat to both private poverty and the
nation had preceded the arrival of immigrants. In an editorial of the early 1870s, for
example, La Prensa attacked gauchos who had joined Indians in armed conflicts against
authorities, indicating that
... it is necessary... that upon capture they should suffer the punishment they deserve
(as) perturbadores of the public order, enemies of private property, traitors to the
homeland. (20 November 1872.)
20. La Prensa, 22 August 1896. La Prensa itself was opposed to actions of the state against
strikes, claiming that the functions of government in regard to strikes should be limited to
regulating the workplace and mediating conflicts between workers and employers (La
Prensa, 16 October 1896).
21. See, for example, La Prensa, 22 January 1899.
22. Oved (1978, p. 277) provides a good account of the events of 1902. See also Viamonte
(1956).
23. Onthislaw, see Isuani (1985, p. 73).
24. However, employers often complained that state authorities failed to exercise sufficient
repression. During the port strike of 1911, for example, employers argued that they needed
army troops because '(0ne police has been in accord with the strikers since many years ago.'
(Boletin delDNF, 19 (31 December 1911): 883.)
25. This is often overlooked in the relevant literature;Bilsky, for example, argues that
.. .the sole response that was implemented and applied by the state during this period
was that of repression. (1985, p. 86.)
On the other hand, for a good compilation of labour laws during the first half of the
twentieth century, see Unsain (1947).
26. To the extent that La Prensa represented powerful sectors of the bourgeoisie, its editorial
positions suggest that there were some significant disagreements within the dominant class
on how to deal with the urban labour movement. The exact extent of these disagreements,
and the nature of the cleavages they represented, can only be ascertained through further
42 BULLETINOFLATINAMERICANRESEARCH
research. For example, La Prensa was against strikes in the countryside, citing Kautsky on
one occasion to argue that rural strikes were 'unnaturaT(11 December 1904). La Prensa
also used labour conflicts and labour demands as an opportunity to attack taxation and the
fiscal policies of the Roca administration (20 August 1901), and argued that workers
should demand that government change its economic policies (21 December 1903).
27. La Prensa, 31 December 1903. The newspaper opposed efforts by the government to
establish itself as a mediator of conflicts between labour and capital:
A government that has closed its ears to the demands of (public) opinion asking for
economic reform; that has watched with no response a succession of strikes by all
trade unions; that paid no regardto the debates and resolutions of the Congresses held
by labour;that has ignored the insistent and respectable demands made by commerce;
that in order to solve the great disturbances that have taken place between labour and
capital was only able to produce, under a state of siege, a law of force to expel danger-
ous foreigners that damages Argentine families; a government that has behaved in
such a way certainly lacks any claim to public faith; and therefore, cannot be recog-
nised as sole arbitratorof conflicts. (La Prensa, 6 January 1904.)
28. See, for example, La Prensa, 13 November 1894.
29. La Prensa, 6 December 1903.
30. La Prensa, 20 October 1904. The decree was approved on 20 October, and had a great
degree of detail. It called for police chiefs to offer their mediation on any occasion of
disagreements between capital and labour. This mediation involved preparinginformation
over the nature of these conflicts, interviewingeach of the parties involved, and conciliating
existing differences. In the case of continuing disagreements,police chiefs were empowered
to offer their own arbitration, or to assign an arbitration court composed of individuals
agreeable to both parties involved. When exercising arbitration themselves, police chiefs
were given the authority to request legal advise from the Public Attorney of the Federal
Courts (Procurador Fiscal de los Tribunales Federales de la Capital). (La Prensa,
21 October 1904.)
31. La Prensa, 26 November 1904. For some efforts made by Dr Beazley's successor, see La
Prensa, 26 October 1904.
32. Argentine Republic, 1908, p. 4. This problem became particularlyevident after September
1906 under the police leadership of Ramon L. Falcon. Colonel Falcon initially approved a
private secretary to provide counsel on labour matters (La Prensa, 11 September 1906),
but eventually came to adopt a considerably more repressive posture towards labour. He
was eventually killed by an anarchistmilitant.
33. La Prensa, 25 January 1891.
34. Some aspects of the law were approved as independent bills in subsequent years. For
example, a law regardingwork-related accidents was finally approved in 1915, after being
considered in 1902 (see La Prensa, 31 March 1902), 1904, 1906, 1907 and 1912.
Beginning in 1907, the Departamento Nacional del Trabajo began accumulatingstatistics
on work-related accidents, and indications are that after the mid-1900s, employers were
increasinglyjudged to be liable for such accidents. As indicated by Panettieri(1984), such a
shift began to involve a growth of insurance companies and health-care programmes
developed by employers.
35. The Union Dependientes de Comercio printed and distributed20,000 copies of a manifesto
supporting the bill, and personally lobbied individual members of Congress. (La Prensa,
25 September 1904.)
36. One member of Congress also criticised the legislation for
... while it shuts down the shops during holidays, it maintains open the tabernas and
cafes where the worker invests his wages in a carefree manner. (La Prensa,
29 September 1904.)
37. See La Prensa (30 March 1905) for the Union IndustrialArgentina's criticism of the law, in
which industrialistsclaimed that only the opinion of labour was being heard by legislators.
Panettieri (1984) notes that the law improved in particular the condition of commercial
employees, who had faced the longest working hours.
38. Such calls were made at the rally of 1 May 1890; at the 1892 congress of the Federacion de
Trabajadores de la Region Argentina at the 1900 meeting of the Federacion General de

Organizaciones Obrerasde BuenosAires, at a rally against unemployment attended by over
ten thousand workers in mid-1901 (La Prensa, 13 August 1901); at the FOA (after 1904,
FORA) Congresses of 1901, 1902 and 1903; and at the UGT Congresses of 1902, 1903,
1904 and 1906. (See Oddone, 1975, pp. 100-101,119,132,139,188,197,204 and 264-
265; as well as Marotta, 1975, pp. 96,105,107,130,141,150,188 and 197.)
39. Thus, a meeting of stevedores in 1904 resolved that
... minors should not be employed in the workplace, and if they are, they should earn
the same wages as adults. (La Prensa, 13 November 1904.)
40. La Prensa, 27 April 1902 and 30 May 1902.
41. For a review of these bills and an overall background see Boletin delDNT 1 (30 June 1907):
67-81.
42. See Boletin delDNT 1 (30 June 1907): 5-30.
43. Both the socialist and anarchist discourse appear to have been strongest at the level of the
national federations. In effect, city-wide federations were more opened to political activity,
but as I have stated before, they constituted a relatively small proportion of labour militancy
at the time. Some have argued that federations were the key mechanism of bargaining,due to
the weakness of individual trade unions (Rotondaro, 1972) but my data suggests this
hypothesis to be very unlikely.
44. Rock, on the other hand, traces the origins of syndicalism to 1906, arguing that
(Syndicalism) began as a result of a division in the Socialist Party over the old question
of the class struggle versus democratic paternalism and parliamentary gradualism.
The syndicalists supported the more positive use of the strike weapon, and demanded
from the socialists a greater commitment to immediate working class objectives. The
group's doctrines were based on European syndicalism, particularlyof the Italian and
French varieties, whose great exponents were Labriola and Sorel. The syndicalists
were at one with the anarchists in their acceptance of the ineradicable class basis of the
modern state. Their disenchantments with political methods, with parliamentary
democracy, and with the political game in general was one of the prime features of
their position. (1975, p. 84.)
More recent works, on the other hand, have indicated that the doctrinal influence of Sorel
and Labriola were rather limited, for syndicalism in Argentina tended to minimise the
philosophical content of European syndicalism in favour of a more pragmatic approach?
although in this sense it did look to the French CGT as a model of labour organisation (see
Matsushita, 1983, p. 34; and Del Campo, 1984, p 16).
45. These unions do not fit the usual image of the period, of small unions with direct participa-
tion of all affiliates:
Their small dimension facilitated the direct participation of the affiliates in the
internal life of the trade union. The assembly methods of functioning, the almost null
delegation of power, and the constant overseeing of the directive organism, both in the
trade unions and the federations, were all derived from this initial fact. (Bilsky, 1985,
p. 86.)
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U4. Korzeniewicz, The Labour Movement and The State

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Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

The Labour Movement and the State in Argentina, 1887-1907

The Labour Movement and the State in

Through the late nineteenth century, capitalist entrepreneurs in Argentina

SOCIALISTS, ANARCHISTS AND LABOUR UNREST

anarchist militants. Thus, labour historians have argued that organisational

professional agitators that since of late abound in the Republic, and

it is a serious mistake to dismiss working-class unrest as merely the

In other words, to clarify the historical relationship between political

(a)narchosyndicalism was a particularly appropriate philosophy for

Solomonoff (1971) has emphasised the role played by the exclusionary

anarchist newspaper El Perseguido argued that trade unions' conflicts were

advantages achieved in working conditions and salaries (are) of no

The socialists continuously appealed for the support of small entrepreneurs

1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924

FIG 1 Strikes, 1887-1924 (trend removed)

In other words, according to the socialists, strike actions provided an

As workers began to lose strikes in September 1896, the tone of socialists

The socialist discourse now portrayed strikes as individualistic confronta-

LABOUR AND THE STATE

floating around due to a lack of propitious terrain and environment,

Many of these new state policies were formulated in explicit acknowledge-

(r)equesting from the public authorities of the nation the sanction of

posed of employers and workers, which will be in charge of resolving the

Already in the 1890s, there were sporadic press reports of groups of

The (decree) has turned out to be inefficient, and has an inconvenience

Such an argument proved to be persuasive, and the bill was approved in

Industrial entrepreneurs, particularly in textiles, where women constituted

The DNT has been commissioned to gather, coordinate and publish

From this perspective, the growing importance of syndicalist practices

trends discussed in this article. Syndicalism originated within the Socialist

Trabajadores de la Region Argentina at the 1900 meeting of the Federacion General de

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