ABSTRACT
Like other states that have implemented neoliberal policies, during the 1990s, Argentina privatized its state-owned companies, reduced public sector employment, liberalized foreign trade, intensified foreign investments in the country, increased the export-led dimension of the economy, established a macroeconomic framework favourable to finance capital and forced labour to adapt to capitalist demands. Further, as in other cases of radical neoliberal economic reform, Argentine policy-makers claimed that the new economic regime would be highly efficient because it was anchored in a self-regulating monetary system. The government of CarlosMenem (1989-1999) institutionalized its neoliberal policies by establishing a newmonetary system enforced by legislation (Convertibility Law 1991).1 This system, the so-called convertibility regime, was aimed at renewing monetary stability after almost two decades of capitalist stagnation and recurrent
fiscal, financial and hyperinflationary collapses (1975, 1982, 1989). The system consisted of pegging the national currency (peso) with the dollar at a fixed exchange rate and at a parity exchange level, requiring the Central Bank to back all pesos in circulation with its reserves in dollars. This legislation was the fundamental pillar of Menem’s government, which claimed that the so-called one-peso/one-dollar regimewould ensure the perpetual development of capitalist forces. In his administration’s view, once citizens could trust the new currency, foreign investors would invest, which would in turn foster labour productivity, capital accumulation and guarantee an effective relationship of Argentina to Northern capitalism (Cavallo 1993, 1996b). In examining this project of neoliberal economic reform, I explore the following questions: what were the regulations of the neoliberal regime ofmonetary exchange in cultural, political and economic terms? More specifically, what kind of cultural-political conditions did this regime require for it to succeed? And what are the ideological functions of money and monetary law in contemporary capitalism?
