Development and labour resistance: a class composition perspective on import-substitution industrialisation in Chile and Argentina

Abstract

Research on labour and development has demonstrated the significance, both analytically and politically, of labour for understanding the political economy of development. Analyses of labour regimes highlight the central role of reorganised workplaces and changing labour processes in value chains across the global economy. Research in global labour studies illustrates the ways in which concepts and theorisations of labour struggles emanating from the Global North struggle to capture the dynamics of labour conflict in the Global South and their wider impacts. This article argues that the revival of autonomist ‘class composition’ approaches can advance a labour perspective on development by shedding light on the importance of labour’s defeats when mapping the contours of the political economy of development. This approach reveals how what E.P. Thompson called the ‘dead ends’ of labour history are essential to understanding the grounds upon which state and capital reorganise to contain workers’ demands and struggles, thereby setting new conditions for these struggles to re-emerge. Drawing on insights from the early work of Antonio Negri, the article will examine how processes of working-class composition and decomposition occurred within the trajectory of import-substitution industrialisation in Chile and Argentina, establishing new labour regimes in its early crises. The article demonstrates this through original archival research using industry journals and publications from the textile industry in Chile and metalworking industry in Argentina.