ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors trace the evolution of the various forms of working class economic and political organization from the period of the first Belaunde government through the military governments of Generals Velasco and Morales Bermodez to the present. They include both urban and rural wage earners, small peasant and marginal urban proprietors, and the salaried middle class. The authors provides the distinction between employers and large property owners and wage earners, small property holders, and the self-employed. They consider the evolution in the labor union movement followed by a similar study of the cooperative movement. The authors describe the labor communities and the social property enterprises. In the early 1970s under the Velasco government the labor community was seen as a potential means of worker mobilization and organization at the margin of the union movement, which was already controlled by the political parties.
