Between the Strike and the Ballot Box: The Early Years of the Argentine Socialist Party, 1890–1910

The Socialist Party is one of Argentina's oldest political formations and played a key role in the national political scene since its foundation in the late nineteenth century. Under the leadership of the physician Juan Bautista Justo, it developed a political stance that called the workers to organize themselves in an independent organization along clear class lines. At the same time, the activity of the party was definitely reformist and strongly oriented toward the “political struggle”—that is, the participation in elections in order to get parliamentary representation. Due to the fraudulent political regime of the time, the Socialist Party faced serious difficulties to develop this strategy. Not surprisingly, strong anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist currents developed inside the labor movement, and posed a serious challenge to the socialists' influence among the working class. This article assesses both the organizational and political characteristics of the Argentine Socialist Party in the period before the First World War. The goal is to contribute to our knowledge of one of the first socialist political organizations established in Latin America, its political stances and its relationship with the local labor movement.