Abstract

FITZSIMONS, Alejandro Luis. Labor process and internationalization of capital: global determinants of technological "backwardness" in the Argentine automotive industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Trab. soc. [online]. 2016, n.26, pp.225-240. ISSN 1514-6871.

This article explores the hypothesis that the low technological level of the Argentine automotive industry (and other South American cases) emerged from the global dynamics of capital accumulation, challenging the institutional approach that favors 'internal' factors. Following a particular reading of the Marxian critique of political economy, it is argued that the 'automation' of the labor process initiated at the global level in the late 1940s had two different implications for the 'internationalization' of capital in the industry. On the one hand, it stimulated technical progress in East Asian countries due to the characteristics and costs of local labor force. On the other hand, it created the necessity, particularly to US individual capitals, to relocate increasingly obsolete machinery to countries -like Argentina- where the appropriation of a portion of the abundant agrarian rent by industrial capital allowed to offset the technological backwardness. The article concludes by suggesting that further investigation grounded on this approach should integrate political and institutional factors as mediations or forms of realization-but not as independent causes-of the differentiation between countries arising from the process of global technological development.

Keywords : Late industrialization; Economic development; Automation.

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