in the 1920s, a trend that would become more pronounced in later years. This description of the tax system in Argentina also shows the difficulties inherent in the federal regime where tax collection was concerned, and the need, acknowledged in Article 4 of the bill, to compensate provinces levying internal taxes on general consumer goods in Argentina with proportional cuts in the relevant customs duty.
During the 1930s, liberal ideas were overshadowed by opposite schools of thought. This was the case with the totalitarian ideas that emerged in the Hispanic world (Spain and Portugal) and later, more forcefully and aggressively, in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. Likewise, the Russian Revolution spawned a clearly more antiliberal left than the one that found expression in the social democratic parties of the Second International. In the democratic world, the economic crisis of 1929 contributed to the emergence of solutions that, like the New Deal, relied to a great extent on state intervention. Argentina’s experience in those years was similar, and the liberal response to all these challenges was weak. One exception was Emilio Coni, a prestigious and influential economic historian and professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires, who published a letter explaining to the “Martians” what was happening on our planet. In this early contribution from
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1933, Coni warned of the uncontrollable advance of interventionist ideas in the field of economics.
Possibly the most original contribution, however, is José Nicolás Matienzo’s lecture titled “La civilización es obra del pueblo y no de los gobernantes” (Civilization is the work of the people, not of the rulers). In this work Matienzo adhered explicitly to the evolutionary ideas of Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer (First Principles, 1862, and The Factors of Organic Evolution, 1887), and made public his debt to the ideas of Alberdi. Matienzo’s thesis was suggested to him “by unfair criticisms that, during the dictatorship that has just elapsed, have frequently been made regarding the ability of the people to manage their own life.” Alluding to the de facto government of General Uriburu (1930–1932), Matienzo warned of the rise of right-wing totalitarian ideas at that time associated with the regimes of Primo de Rivera and Benito Mussolini. Matienzo rounded off his analysis in classic liberal style by asserting that “civilization is the work of private initiative among the members of the people, not of the official action of government agents.”
The 1930s were thus not as generous in the production of liberal ideas as previous decades had been, with one notable exception at the end of the period. In July 1940, Marcelo T. de Alvear, a former president of the Republic and head of the main opposition party, the Unión Cívica Radical, delivered a lecture at the British Chamber of Commerce. German troops were at the time winning victory after victory in Europe, and the USA was still neutral. Under such difficult circumstances, Alvear expressed his explicit support for the countries threatened by the Nazi offensive. His speech drew on the example of Great Britain, which he held up as a model of political civilization based on democratic and liberal principles, a tradition the Argentine Republic ought to join.
CONCLUSIONS
This introduction has examined the extended period when liberal ideas had a significant bearing on Argentine political and social thinking. From the moment Hipólito Vieytes alluded to the “sublime Adam Smith” in Letter Twelve of his Semanario de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio, a weekly periodical, this trend garnered influences from the different schools that characterized the liberal tradition in the world.
In Argentina, liberalist ideas were embedded in a milieu marked by
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the changing fortunes of the new nation’s institutional development. It is important to review some of these specific features. First, the vast majority of those who expressed this kind of thinking were politicians rather than academics, and this sometimes affected the quality and consistency of their arguments. Second, the exposition of liberal ideas took place during the debates involved in building the key institutions of the Argentine nation. As we saw in connection with James Madison, this entailed one of the peculiar difficulties of liberal thought, namely, how to seek limits to power while at the same time generating and organizing it. This difficulty surfaced especially over the creation of a strong central power, which sometimes bore only a passing resemblance to the teachings of liberal thought. And last, these principles were imported from various European and U.S. schools and therefore had to be adapted to the realities and exigencies of the local environment.
For all these restrictions, liberal ideas made headway in Argentina, and—especially from the mid-nineteenth century onward—they played a vital role in the new country’s growth and consolidation. This contribution was expressed in the different fields of national endeavor, producing works and contributions of unquestionable analytical value.
As in many other parts of the world, the influence of liberal ideas began to wane in the 1930s. This decline is apparent in the decreasing quantity and originality of the contributions from the dwindling group of institutional players who still subscribed to this school of thought.
Argentine liberalism, however, has been left with a rich heritage of principles that also became a reality at the social and institutional levels. Aside from the intellectual works collected in this volume, perhaps the most permanent contribution of this body of ideas has been the promotion of an open and plural society with high social mobility.
NOTE TO THE READER
Original footnotes in this edition are identified with “[A.N.]”; those of the current editors are identified with “[E.N.].”
Natalio R. Botana and Ezequiel Gallo are both Emeritus Professors at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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| 1 | Liberalism during the Dictatorship of Rosas (1837–1850) |
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| 1 | JUAN BAUTISTA ALBERDI The Argentine Republic, Thirty-seven Years after the May Revolution (1847) * |
Toutes les aristocraties, anglaise, russe, allemande, n’ont besoin que de montrer une chose en témoignage contre la France:—Les tableaux qu’elle fait d’elle-même par la main de ses grands écrivains, amis la plupart du peuple et partisans du progrès. …
Nul peuple ne résisterait à une telle épreuve. Cette manie singulière de se dénigrer soi-même, d’étaler ses plaies, et comme d’aller chercher la honte, serait mortelle à la longue.
—J. Michelet1
Today more than ever, anyone who was born in the beautiful country between the Andes mountain range and the River Plate has the right to cry out with pride, “I am an Argentine.”
On the foreign soil on which I reside, not as a political exile, having left my home country legally, of my own free choice, just as an Englishman or a Frenchman can reside outside his country as it suits him; in the lovely country that receives me as a guest and provides so many pleasures to foreigners,
