El gasto social como contención de la población obrera sobrante durante el kirchnerismo y el chavismo (2003-2010)

Abstract

The last decade is marked by a strong rise in social spending in Latin America. This is particularly observed in Argentina and Venezuela, where this phenomenon was explained by the presence of so-called national and popular or socialist governments. Many authors maintain that we are facing a qualitative change from the neoliberal politics of the 90s. In this paper, we propose to discuss this consensus by showing that the strong rise of social spending does not express a qualitative change propelled by a turn to the left but rather to a quantitative expansion, following a prior trend of the States role in order to control the rising unemployed, or surplus, working class population for the capital that is being consolidated in both countries.