Notion of State and community in peronist political thought forty years after the arrival of democracy

Abstract

The Peronist political project was not only a concrete historical experience in Argentina, but also gave rise to numerous conceptual developments, especially in political theory. Through a hermeneutic perspective, this article addresses the theoretical constructions of Peronist political thought that refer fundamentally to its notions of State, community and individual, with the purpose of knowing if it is possible to find in this political expression elements of a theory of the State, if it is possible to speak of a Peronist State and how it differs from other state forms, such as the liberal or the Marxist. To this end, we analyze the works written by Juan Domingo Perón as one of its greatest exponents, taking into account the national and international historical circumstances of war and post-war. We consider that Perón's conceptual elaborations not only make up a political theoretical body, but also
correspond to state, semi-state institutional forms, which express the efforts to translate into reality that political project. Moreover, these conceptual elaborations offer a key distinctive note that invites us to think of a social democracy different from the liberal paradigm: the notion of Organized Community. This work may be of contemporary interest and importance since it refers to the permanent tension between the individual and the community. In this sense, it intends to contribute to the updating of contemporary theoretical-political debates, which acquire validity in the face of the current return of individualistic and radicalized neoliberal theses in our country, which stress the forms of community life proposed by Peronism.