Swimming Against the (Developmentalist) Mainstream: The First Generation of Neoliberal Economists in Argentina, 1955-1976

Abstract

We the study the main representatives of traditional liberalism in Argentina between 1955 and 1975. In those years a local reformulation of liberal ideas attempted to both rescue the 19th century liberal tradition and to incorporate some of the neoliberal ideas that had begun to gather strength at the international level. These ideas paved the way for the construction of new consensuses within liberal ranks. The most visible exponents of such thinking in this period were Federico Pinedo, Álvaro Alsogaray, Alberto Benegas Lynch, and José Martínez de Hoz. In this article we are interested in the action and rhetoric of these exponents of Postwar liberalism in Argentina, and we specifically assess the criticisms they deployed against the state-led industrialization model.