Neodevelopmentalism and Dependency in Twenty-first-Century Argentina: Insights from the Work of Ruy Mauro Marini

• Author: Mariano Féliz
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18806588
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 224, Vol. 46 No. 1, January 2019, 105–121

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18806588

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

105

Neodevelopmentalism and Dependency

in Twenty-first-Century Argentina

Insights from the Work of Ruy Mauro Marini

by

Mariano Féliz

Translated by

Richard Stoller

For Ruy Mauro Marini, writing in the mid-1990s, neodevelopmentalism in Latin

America ended with the moratoria on debt repayment in Mexico and Brazil in the early

1980s, which ushered in an era of International Monetary Fund control. For him this

demonstrated the inability of the Latin American bourgeoisie to achieve autonomy at the

international level. Neodevelopmentalism returned in early-twenty-first-century

Argentina in the local context of a new class politics and a wider context marked by the

emergence of China in the world economy and the influence of Chavismo. It consisted of an

economic policy that consolidated the new hegemonic groups led by transnational capital

through the superexploitation of labor and nature and the revival of the myth of develop-

ment expressed by the notion of “growth with social inclusion.” For a time the project was

characterized by high rates of profit and high levels of (albeit precarious) employment, but,

as the global crisis of 2008 revealed its limitations and the “fine-tuning” of economic policy

produced a decline of real incomes and consumption, it led to fragmentation of the political

spectrum and a realignment of its principal actors. Mauricio Macri’s election to the presi-

dency in 2015 represented a counterrevolution that, as Marini predicted decades ago,

would involve more violent superexploitation and stronger imperialist influence.

Para Ruy Mauro Marini, escribiendo a mediados de la década de 1990, el neodesarrollismo

en América Latina terminó con la moratoria sobre el pago de la deuda en México y Brasil a

principios de la década de 1980, lo que marcó el comienzo de una era de control del Fondo

Monetario Internacional. Para él, esto demostró la incapacidad de la burguesía latinoameri-

cana para lograr la autonomía a nivel internacional. El neodesarrollismo regresó en la

Argentina de principios del siglo XXI en el contexto local de una nueva política de clase y un

contexto más amplio marcado por el surgimiento de China en la economía mundial y la influ-

encia del chavismo. Consistió en una política económica que consolidó los nuevos grupos

hegemónicos liderados por el capital transnacional a través de la superexplotación del trabajo

y la naturaleza y el renacimiento del mito del desarrollo expresado por la noción de “creci-

miento con inclusión social.” Durante un tiempo el proyecto fue caracterizado por altas tasas

de ganancia y altos niveles de empleo (aunque precario), pero, como la crisis global de 2008

reveló sus limitaciones y el “ajuste” de la política económica produjo una disminución de los

ingresos reales y el consumo, condujo a la fragmentación del espectro político y una realine-

ación de sus principales actores. La elección de Mauricio Macri a la presidencia en 2015

Mariano Féliz is a professor of economics at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata and a researcher

at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Richard Stoller is coordinator

of selection and international programs for Schreyer Honors College, Pennsylvania State

University.

806588LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18806588Latin American PerspectivesFéliz / Neodevelopmentalism And Dependency In Argentina

research-article2018

106 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

representó una contrarrevolución que, como predijo Marini décadas atrás, implicaría una

superexplotación más violenta y una influencia imperialista más fuerte.

Keywords: Neodevelopmentalism, Neoliberalism, State, Argentina, Marini

The ideas of Ruy Mauro Marini provide insights for an understanding of the

limitations of neodevelopmentalism resulting from the articulation between

the transformations of global capitalism and the nature of its reproduction in

Argentina. Marini’s work is one of the high points in Latin American critical

thought, and his studies of capitalism, dependency, and revolution have

inspired a generation of critical intellectuals. His “Dialectic of Dependency”

(1973a) marked a turning point in interpretations of peripheral capitalism and

the transnationalization of capital facilitated by neoliberalism. His integrated

understanding of dependent capitalism is the starting point for my analysis.

Marini’s contributions were part of a theoretical and political debate with

those who saw the possibility of autonomous capitalist development in the

periphery, in particular the so-called Latin American structuralism of the

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) as repre-

sented by Raúl Prebisch, Celso Furtado, and Aníbal Pinto. Their claim, chal-

lenged by Marini (1994), was that the industrial bourgeoisie in association with

the state could become a modernizing force that would promote development on

a par with that of the core countries. Marini (2008 [1978]) criticized neodevelop-

mentalists and dependency theorists such as José Serra and Fernando Henrique

Cardoso for their failure to take imperialism into account, their reformism, and

their “sociological” focus. He had a more fruitful exchange with other currents

of dependency theory, including that associated with André Gunder Frank, with

whom he shared (Marini, 2008 [1966]) a critical view of the developmentalist

theses of structural dualism that to this day make a fundamental distinction

between the development of the primary sector and that of industrial capitalism.

Instead of structural dualism Marini (1966: 85) and Frank proposed an organic

complementarity between export agriculture and industrial development.

Marini (1973a: 111) also agreed with Frank on the development of underdevelop-

ment—the idea that underdevelopment is a specific form of capitalist develop-

ment in the periphery—and its antireformist political consequences.

Marini’s positions in various debates contribute to an understanding of the

transformation of capitalism in Argentina as a result of neoliberal policies and

the neodevelopmentalist project associated with Néstor Kirchner and Cristina

Fernández de Kirchner. This project is both a historical stage and a societal

project of the dominant classes. Emerging from the crisis of neoliberalism from

1998 to 2001 (Féliz, 2011a; 2014b), it displaced neoliberalism but displayed

structural continuities with it—maintaining its contradictions but processing

them in different forms. The dominant classes sought to make productive use

of the social, political, and economic assets derived from the neoliberal era with

a strategy of social reproduction in an age of transnationalized capitalism

involving a new political structure and a new kind of state. Neodevelopmentalism

is the social and political articulation of the demands of different social sectors

within the framework of the interests of large-scale transnational capital.