Revista Internacional de Educación y Análisis Social Crítico Mañé, Ferrer & Swartz.

ISSN: 2990-0476

Vol. 4 Núm. 1 (2026)

Social transformations and the offensive of the neo-fascist right in Argentina: A political-pedagogical analysis of the State, labor, and education

Transformaciones sociales y ofensiva de las derechas neofascistas en Argentina: Un análisis político-pedagógico sobre el Estado, el trabajo y la educación

Transformações sociais e a ofensiva da direita neofascista na Argentina: uma análise político-pedagógica do Estado, do trabalho e da educação.

Marisa Bolaña

Internacional Antifascista de la Educación

Profesora Regular, Escuela de Humanidades, UNSAM, Argentina

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1259-1851

marisab@unsam.edu.ar

María Esther Basualdo

Internacional Antifascista de la Educación

Educadora - Docente Jubilada

https://orcid.org/0000‑0001‑5153‑7420

basualdomarie@gmail.com

Abstract

This article examines the current phase of neoliberalism in Argentina within the broader context of the global advance of authoritarian political projects. It argues that, beyond its economic dimensions, this process entails a comprehensive reorganization of the social order in which the production of subjectivity acquires a strategic character. The transformation of the material conditions of life -the precarity of labor, the feminization of poverty, and the reconfiguration of the State- is articulated with a struggle for meaning that tends to naturalize inequality, individualize responsibility, and delegitimize forms of collective organization. Drawing on an approach that integrates the perspectives of internationalism, feminism, and popular education, the article offers a reading that brings together the material and symbolic dimensions of the process underway. Within this framework, the notion of the violating state is introduced to account for contemporary forms of vulnerability production and social suffering, as well as the role of denialism in the erosion of democratic consensuses built around Memory, Truth, and Justice.

The article further argues that education constitutes a strategic field in the struggle over subjectivity, insofar as it operates as a privileged site for the production of meaning and the formation of collective subjects. As a conceptual contribution, it proposes the figure of a dialectical triangle articulating material conditions of existence, the production of subjectivity, and forms of collective organization, as both an analytical tool and an instrument of praxis.

Keywords: Education, Antifascism, Poverty, Latin American Feminism, Subjectivities, Internationalism, State.

Resumen

El presente artículo analiza la actual fase del neoliberalismo en la Argentina en un contexto de avance de proyectos políticos de carácter autoritario a escala global. Se sostiene que, más allá de sus dimensiones económicas, este proceso implica una reorganización integral del orden social en la que la producción de subjetividad adquiere un carácter estratégico. La transformación de las condiciones materiales de vida -expresada en la precarización del trabajo, la feminización de la pobreza, y la reconfiguración del Estado- se articula con una disputa por los sentidos que tiende a naturalizar la desigualdad, individualizar las responsabilidades y deslegitimar las formas de organización colectiva.

Desde un enfoque que integra las perspectivas del internacionalismo, el feminismo y la educación popular, el trabajo propone una lectura que articula las dimensiones materiales y simbólicas del proceso en curso. En este marco, se introduce la noción de Estado violentador para dar cuenta de las formas contemporáneas de producción de vulnerabilidad y sufrimiento social, así como el papel del negacionismo en la erosión de consensos democráticos construidos en torno a la Memoria, la Verdad y la Justicia. Asimismo, se plantea que la educación constituye un territorio estratégico en la disputa por la subjetividad, en tanto espacio privilegiado de producción de sentidos y de formación de sujetos colectivos. A modo de aporte conceptual, se propone la figura de un triángulo dialéctico que articula las condiciones materiales de existencia, la producción de subjetividad, y las formas de organización colectiva, como herramienta analítica y de praxis.

Palabras clave: Educación, Antifascismo, Pobreza, Feminismo latinoamericano, Subjetividades, Internacionalismo, Estado.

Resumo

Este artigo analisa a fase atual do neoliberalismo na Argentina num contexto de avanço de projetos políticos autoritários à escala global. Defende-se que, para além das suas dimensões económicas, este processo implica uma reorganização abrangente da ordem social, em que a produção da subjetividade adquire um carácter estratégico. A transformação das condições materiais de vida -expressa na precarização do trabalho, na feminização da pobreza e na reconfiguração do Estado- articula-se com uma luta pelo sentido que tende a naturalizar a desigualdade, a individualizar as responsabilidades e a deslegitimar as formas de organização colectiva. Partindo de uma abordagem que integra as perspetivas do internacionalismo, do feminismo e da educação popular, este trabalho propõe uma interpretação que articula as dimensões material e simbólica do processo em curso. Neste contexto, introduz-se a noção de Estado violento para dar conta das formas contemporâneas de produção de vulnerabilidade e sofrimento social, bem como do papel do negacionismo na erosão dos consensos democráticos construídos em torno da Memória, da Verdade e da Justiça. Além disso, defende-se que a educação constitui um território estratégico na luta pela subjetividade, enquanto espaço privilegiado para a produção de sentido e a formação de sujeitos coletivos. Como contributo conceptual, propõe-se a figura de um triângulo dialético, que articula as condições materiais de existência, a produção da subjetividade e as formas de organização coletiva, enquanto ferramenta analítica e prática.

Palavras-chave: Educação, Antifascismo, Pobreza, Feminismo Latino-Americano, Subjetividades, Internacionalismo, Estado.

Introduction. Political-Conceptual Framework.

The current Argentine conjuncture is shaped by a process of profound transformation that extends beyond the strictly economic sphere, within a context marked by the global advance of authoritarian political projects that strain and erode the so-called “historically constructed democratic consensuses” established within capitalism as a means of maintaining hegemonic power.

In this sense, we argue that the analysis of these transformations requires incorporating not only their material dimensions, but also the disputes surrounding the production of subjectivity, which for us constitutes a distinctive feature of the present historical moment.

Although the deterioration of living conditions represents a central dimension of the current scenario, its understanding remains insufficient if one does not simultaneously consider the construction of meanings that organize social experience and that make it possible either to legitimize or to contest such processes. Within this framework, the present work seeks to analyze the current phase of neoliberalism in Argentina as a stage in which the production of subjectivity acquires a strategic character, insofar as it constitutes a privileged terrain for the consolidation -and also for the contestation- of the prevailing social order.

We draw upon a set of analytical categories that allow for an integral approach to the ongoing process. First, we recover an internationalist perspective that not only situates the analyzed transformations within the framework of a global reconfiguration of capitalism -thereby avoiding exclusively national readings- but also proposes itself as a political horizon. Faced with the deepening individualism characteristic of contemporary neoliberalism, internationalism, from our perspective, constitutes a form of rebuilding class solidarity on a global scale, presenting itself as a collective response to the dynamics of social fragmentation.

Internationalism is not merely a historical slogan or an abstract moral principle, but rather a category capable of guiding the interpretation of global capitalist accumulation and its effects on education; it implies considering three key dimensions:

1. Epistemological: it defines the structural scale from which to interpret contemporary capitalist accumulation and its transnational effects on territories, states, and institutions.

2. Political: it guides strategic articulation in the face of a globally organized power structure, fostering shared diagnoses, the circulation of experiences of struggle, and coordination against common processes of adjustment and disciplining.

3. Subjective: it intervenes in the production of the common, transforming fragmented individual experiences into a shared horizon of struggle, where differences are recognized without being dissolved and strengthen collective action against the individualization and self-exploitation promoted by neoliberalism.

This articulation avoids two frequent reductionisms: conceiving internationalism as merely a doctrinal inheritance, or limiting it to an identity-based slogan devoid of analytical depth. From our perspective, it is instead understood as a material condition of possibility for reorganizing collective action against contemporary capital, and it constitutes the foundation for analyzing the remaining axes of this article.

Secondly, contributions from feminism are incorporated, making it possible to render visible the centrality of social reproduction, the feminization of precarity, and the intertwining of capitalism and patriarchy in the production of inequalities. Finally, Latin American traditions of popular education are revisited as a perspective that conceives education as a political process of constructing collective subjects and contesting meaning, granting education a central role in the configuration of critical subjectivities.

Far from being limited to the implementation of adjustment policies, the contemporary neoliberal project operates upon the ways reality is perceived, interpreted, and inhabited, intervening in the construction of meanings that tend to naturalize precarity, individualize responsibility, and dismantle forms of collective organization. In this sense, the regressive restructuring of the labor market, the feminization of poverty, the reconfiguration of the “Neoliberal State,” transformations within the educational system, and the expansion of digital governance mechanisms do not constitute isolated processes, but rather interrelated dimensions of a single dynamic aimed at reorganizing both the material conditions of existence and the forms of social subjectivation.

The struggle over subjectivity in Argentina in 2026 does not occur within a historical or geographical vacuum. It is inscribed within a fifty-year trajectory linking the installation of the neoliberal model through state terrorism in 1976 with the current offensive of authoritarian right-wing movements. Situating this analysis requires recognizing that the social disciplining now expressed in an abyssal gap -where the Basic Household Basket (ARS 1,397,671) is four times higher than the minimum wage- has its roots in that apparatus of systematic violence designed to dismantle popular organization.

In this sense, the advance of denialist discourses promoted by sectors of power is not merely a debate about the past. It is a deliberate political intervention into the frameworks legitimizing state violence in the present. By attempting to fracture the popular consensus around Memory, Truth, and Justice, power operates as a mechanism of “de-subjectivation” seeking to normalize institutional abuse and the repression of protest as legitimate forms of managing adjustment policies.

This work presents itself as a situated political essay, understanding historical memory not as an object of study, but as an ongoing political practice. Popular education and the recovery of our history of workers’ struggles emerge today as strategic trenches. There can be no resistance to the material dispossession imposed by Law 27.802 on labor modernization without first contesting the common senses that seek to impose obedience and silence in the face of capital’s advance.

Political Conjuncture and the Reconfiguration of the Meaning of the State in Argentina.

The present work is produced within a political context marked by the reconfiguration of the Argentine state, labor relations, and the material living conditions of the popular majorities. The national legislative elections of October 2025 consolidated a scenario characterized by the parliamentary strengthening of the ruling “libertarian capitalist” coalition and its allies, enabling a new cycle of legislative initiatives aimed at structural reforms of the state. This institutional reordering unfolds within a context of persistent economic adjustment, the reconfiguration of the world of work, and growing social conflict, where employment -even formal employment- has ceased to guarantee access to dignified living conditions.

We are witnessing a process of ontological emptying of the state, in which the notion of “the common” is displaced by a technical rationality that systematically dissolves the social bond. This process transforms the state into what Agamben (2008) calls a “governmental machine” whose center is empty: a device in which glorious power becomes indistinguishable from economic management, thereby emptying itself of substantive political content. Contemporary power, fundamentally concentrated within the political right, is not oriented toward the construction of a collective project, but rather toward technical management and the control of bodies through mechanisms of de-subjectivation. As the narrative of the “common good” collapses, the state renounces its mediating function and is reduced to an administrative structure that renders relations of domination invisible while operating upon isolated individuals connected only through norms and the market (Lewkowicz, 2006). In this way, it loses its symbolic and political power as a generator of collective identities. Social relations are no longer established among citizens who share a common history, but among consumers engaged in the exchange of commodities.

The poor are foreigners in this world of cosmopolitans. To be foreign to the world is to fall outside humanity. Non-consumers lose their human condition (…) The decline of nation-states and the abstract universalization of markets induce a retreat of social identities into ghettos defined by a single trait: a logic of war between ghettos. (Lewkowicz, 2006, p. 35).

The bureaucratic structures of the state and the various levels of government have undergone a process of political patrimonialization, becoming showcases for self-promotion and niches for the accumulation of power. As a consequence, the state ceases to function as a mediator of collective demands; the instrumentalization of public administration distorts its specificity as guarantor of the public sphere, transforming it into a device of political visibility in which personal exposure prevails over social transformation. Within the logic described by Byung-Chul Han (2013, 2015), “everything is measured according to its exhibition value” and “the capitalist economy subjects everything to the coercion of exposure” (p. 29), such that public action becomes trapped in the construction of spectacle, replacing substantive political content. The result is the emergence of accumulations of egos incapable of common political action, incapable of constructing a collective “we” (Han, 2013), where personal branding displaces collective deliberation, thereby deepening the gap between institutions and the social fabric.

The reconfiguration of the state also impacts processes of subjectivation. The fragmentation of labor and the erosion of social bonds promote a vision of society as merely a sum of individuals. The current crisis cannot be understood solely as a macroeconomic phenomenon, but rather as a “crisis of the sustainability of life” (Kessler, 2024). Adjustment policies shift social needs into the domestic and community spheres, intensifying unpaid care work within popular territories and deepening historically rooted gender inequalities (Cavallero & Gago, 2022; Gago, 2022; Gago & Cavallero, 2019; Pérez, 2021).

In the current conjuncture, the intensification of adjustment measures and labor precarity deepen this dynamic of overload. A triple working day thus emerges, combining paid employment, domestic labor, and community participation. This accumulation generates physical and emotional overexertion, limits political participation under conditions of equality, and reproduces structural asymmetries within collective organization. These asymmetries are not isolated cultural phenomena, but structural components of the contemporary regime of accumulation.

Nor does the emptying of the state imply a simple territorial withdrawal. Wherever public capacity weakens, ambivalent forms of social regulation emerge. As analyzed by Javier Auyero (2014; Lang & Auyero, 2025), within the so-called “gray zone,” state practices, illicit economies, and informal mediations intertwine to reconfigure the exercise of power. Simultaneously, new authorities emerge that manage everyday life in the absence of solid institutional tools.

The state does not disappear, but rather transforms itself, altering its modalities of intervention and weakening its “protective function.” Within this scenario, community organization is reshaped by what Garriga Zucal et al. (2016) identify as social regulation mediated by violence and pragmatism. While churches provide frameworks of subjective containment converging with the neoliberal logic of individual effort, drug trafficking -protected by police permeability- installs an economy of obedience. This dynamic seals the transition from a conception of citizenship toward one centered on consumers or indebted subjects; collective political identity is displaced by a fragmented subjectivity seeking immediate responses to urgency, thereby consolidating the dismantling of social bonds in favor of a precarious management of survival.

In this way, the contemporary crisis articulates the ontological emptying of the state, labor fragmentation, neoliberal subjectivation, and the privatization of social reproduction. It is not merely an economic restructuring, but an integral transformation of the conditions for collective organization. This dimension acquires particular relevance within highly feminized sectors, where the naturalization of care and vocation has historically operated as a mechanism of both material and symbolic devaluation (Basualdo, 2023; Basualdo et al., 2020). The impact of Law 27.802 and the creation of the Labor Assistance Fund make evident this displacement of the costs of social security toward households (Gender Perspective Area of the Institute for Studies and Training, 2026), configuring a privileged space from which to observe contemporary tensions surrounding the historical feminization of care and the precarity of domestic and community labor (ELA, 2026).

Work, Wages, and Poverty: The Anatomy of the Crisis.

In the current conjuncture, the ideological dispute is grounded in a concrete material basis of sustained deterioration in living conditions. The defining feature of the crisis is no longer limited to the problem of unemployment -which, by the fourth quarter of 2025, stood at 7.5%- but has shifted toward the structural expansion of the category of the working poor. According to analyses by Luis Campos from the Institute for Studies and Training (IEF) of the CTA Autónoma (2026), the phenomenon has become institutionalized: 21.6% of the employed labor force currently lives in households whose incomes are insufficient to cover the Total Basic Basket (CBT). This precariousness is especially acute within the informal sector, where poverty affects 37.5% of wage earners and 40.5% of unregistered self-employed workers.

Reports from the IEF-CTA-A published in March 2026 warn that workers expelled from the formal sector are reintegrated into the labor market under conditions of high vulnerability and with substantially lower incomes. While the majority of employed individuals receive wages that fail to keep pace with inflation, the cost of living has surpassed new thresholds: in February 2026, a standard family required ARS 1,397,672 to avoid falling below the poverty line in Greater Buenos Aires (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Critical Indicators of the Material Crisis (First Quarter of 2026).
Indicator	Valor (Pesos / %)	Fuente / Referencia
Total Basic Basket (Greater Buenos Aires)	$ 1.397.672	INDEC (Feb. 2026)[1].
Minimum Living and Mobile Wage	$ 352.400	IEF-CTA-A (Marzo 2026).
Minimum Pension (Without Bonuses)	$ 359.254	IEF-CTA-A (Feb. 2026).
Poverty Among Employed Workers	21,60%	Luis Campos (IEF-CTA, 2026).
Poverty Among Unregistered Self-Employed Workers	40,50%	IEF-CTA-A (Marzo 2026).
Real Decline in National Public Sector Wages	30,00%	IARAF / Luis Campos (2024-2026)[2]

Prepared by the authors based on the cited reports.

Along the same lines, the report Regressive Labor Recomposition (Chávez et al., 2025) warns that workers expelled from the formal sector are reintegrated into the labor market with incomes 50% lower than before. Likewise, while in 2025 approximately 72% of employed workers earned incomes equal to or below one million pesos, this threshold has already become obsolete: today, “one million pesos” places any standard family directly below the poverty line.

At the same time, the public sector has undergone a dramatic deterioration, with an accumulated wage loss exceeding 30% in real terms. Within this universe, university workers have experienced one of the largest historical declines; by February 2026, the salary corresponding to the benchmark teaching-research position in national universities had fallen below the poverty line, covering only 0.99 basic baskets.

Within this scenario, the old slogan of “8x3” -the historical triad of the labor movement demanding 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours for recreation or education- has given way to a norm of permanent overemployment. Workdays of 10 or 12 hours, the reduction of rest days, and forced multiple jobholding have become survival strategies in the face of the loss of nearly 300,000 formal jobs. This intensification of labor is now further facilitated by the fragmentation of vacations and leave authorized under Law 27.802.

Feminization of Labor and the Crisis of Social Reproduction.

This regressive restructuring of the labor market impacts social groups unevenly, deepening the historical inequalities affecting women and gender-diverse populations. The feminization of labor in 2026 is not merely a quantitative phenomenon, but also a qualitative one.

In Argentina, the feminization of poverty is the result of structural inequalities related to class, gender, age, and ethnicity, intensified since the implementation of neoliberal economic programs during the 1990s. These policies deepened labor precarity and the exclusion of broad sectors of the population, disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people. Poverty among women has not only increased at a faster rate than among men, but has also become internally segmented within the female population itself, generating a widening gap between those from more vulnerable sectors and those with greater access to labor rights and social protection.

As Rita Segato (2016) explains, gender inequality constitutes a form of structural violence inscribed within the very design of the economic and political system, reproducing the subordination of women not only through concrete oppressive acts, but also through the differential administration of rights. This regressive reinforcement of the labor market thus produces uneven effects. According to data from the EPH-INDEC processed by the Igualar Report of the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity (2023), women represent approximately 64% of the country’s lowest income decile, configuring what the report itself defines as the “feminization of poverty.” This percentage has increased in comparison with previous periods, when the figure stood at 61.4% (INDEC-EPH, third quarter of 2025), confirming that the expansion of unstable forms of employment increases the concentration of feminized bodies within survival-oriented labor.[3]

Incorporating a gender perspective makes it possible to understand that these disparities constitute a foundational pillar of systems of domination. Data from April 2026 reveal an average wage gap of 27.7%, rising to 40% within informal employment. In this sector, Law 27.802 on Labor Modernization -previously mentioned- has facilitated precarity through figures such as the “independent worker with collaborators.” This mechanism renders invisible the indispensable tasks required to sustain life, relying upon what has been termed the “motherhood penalty”: women devote, on average, three more hours per day than men to unpaid domestic labor (6 hours and 31 minutes compared to 3 hours and 40 minutes), thereby limiting their labor trajectories and pushing them toward precarious employment.

Within the current conjuncture, the decline in real wages compels a reorganization of everyday life that falls upon a triple burden: paid employment, domestic labor, and community or union participation necessary to sustain assistance networks amid the hollowing out of the state. This accumulation generates a condition of physical and emotional overexertion functioning as a mechanism for fragmenting collective organization.

Meanwhile, the Social Debt Observatory of Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA, 2026) warns that chronic poverty is becoming consolidated in households with children headed by women. At the same time, the underfunding of the pension system caused by the diversion of contributions toward the Labor Assistance Fund (FAL) -a mechanism introduced by the aforementioned Law No. 27.802, which redirects between 1% and 2.5% of employer contributions from SIPA- further deepens structural vulnerability[4] (the Argentine Integrated Pension System, SIPA) toward individual company accounts intended to finance severance payments (IEF-CTA-A, 2026)… disproportionately affects women workers. This is because women constitute 58% of beneficiaries within the pension system receiving the lowest benefits, 70% of recipients of the Universal Child Allowance (AUH), and the principal users of pension moratoria programs (IEF-CTA-A, 2026; Center for Argentine Political Economy, 2026), which makes the underfunding of SIPA a further deepening of the feminization of poverty in old age. Approximately 65.2% of women accessed retirement benefits through moratoria mechanisms that are now under threat, placing them in a condition of technical indigence.[5]

Finally, economic precariousness becomes articulated with the most extreme forms of gender-based violence. The report by MuMaLá (Women of the Latin American Matria)[6] in the first quarter of 2026 records 73 femicides (one every 29 hours), linking this vulnerability to the dismantling of public gender policies and to the economic dependence produced by adjustment measures.

Within this context, the “violent state”[7] no longer merely renounces its “protective function,” but actively administers dispossession and institutional abuse, leaving women in contexts of poverty without the means to escape cycles of violence. Understanding the crisis therefore requires simultaneously analyzing the production of wealth and the sustainability of life, precisely where the system shifts its costs onto households and communities.

Dispute over Subjectivities, Common Sense, and the Legitimation of Adjustment Policies.

The material crisis described above does not operate solely on the economic plane. Regressive labor recomposition and wage impoverishment are articulated with an intense cultural and ideological struggle aimed at producing legitimacy for adjustment policies. The neoliberal project currently underway is not limited to modifying fiscal or labor regulations: it deploys a systematic intervention upon subjectivities, seeking to redefine the way society interprets work, the state, and collective rights. “The general mutation -social and subjective- could not fail to provoke a major disturbance in the configuration of the discursive map of the situation. The much-mentioned adjustment is not only economic, but also discursive” (Lewkowicz, 2006, p. 34).

One of the central axes of this strategy is the construction of a common sense that naturalizes present suffering in the name of a promise of future prosperity. Sacrifice is opposed to rights, individual merit to public policy, and aspirational consumption to social justice. Collective demands are portrayed as privileges, while adjustment appears as a necessary condition for modernization. This narrative shifts the debate away from structural decisions toward individual behavior, holding subjects responsible for their own precariousness.

Within this framework, social conflict is delegitimized and collective organization is associated with corporate interests or irrational resistance to change. The stigmatization of public employment, trade unionism, and universal rights systems fulfills a specific political function: eroding the legitimacy of the historical mediations that structured social citizenship in contemporary Argentina. When the poor worker is interpellated as an “entrepreneur” rather than as a subject of rights, fragmentation replaces collective identity.

Contemporary neoliberalism operates not only through coercion, but also through a form of “psychopolitics” that exploits the individual’s apparent freedom in order to secure voluntary self-exploitation Byung-Chul Han (2014). The achievement-oriented subject perceives themself as autonomous while internalizing the logic of permanent competition. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this process intensified through the expansion of the digitalization of everyday life, amplifying forms of control and behavioral modulation through technological devices and virtual environments… “The achievement-subject, who believes itself to be free, is in reality a slave. It is an absolute slave, insofar as it voluntarily exploits itself without any master. There is no master standing before it forcing it to work” (Han, 2014, p. 12).

Social, administrative, and educational interactions are progressively displaced toward digital platforms, which function not merely as tools, but as genuine environments of socialization. In Argentina, state procedures, healthcare management, and educational processes are increasingly mediated by automated systems, applications, and private platforms. This phenomenon is inscribed within what Éric Sadin calls the “digital administration of the world”: a growing delegation of public decisions to technical protocols designed by transnational technology corporations (2017, 2020). Technical efficiency becomes imposed as an unquestionable criterion, displacing democratic debate over the public sphere and consolidating forms of governmentality that shape subjectivities adapted to market logic. This mechanism operates not as a coercive force, but under the form of a “soft administration,” painless and almost imperceptible, which, by guiding the course of everyday life, gradually “limits the exercise of our faculty of judgment in the here and now” (Sadin, 2017).

Nevertheless, this symbolic construction is not imposed without tensions. The materiality of the crisis (insufficient wages, deterioration of public services, work overload, and growing precarity) erodes the effectiveness of the meritocratic narrative. When work no longer guarantees minimum conditions for the reproduction of life, consensus becomes fragile and conflict reemerges as a constitutive dimension of the social.

The contemporary struggle over common sense does not unfold on neutral terrain. The last civic-military dictatorship not only implemented a program of economic restructuring that inaugurated the neoliberal phase in Argentina, but also deployed a systematic dispositive of disciplining aimed at dismantling workers’, student, and territorial organization. State terrorism pursued the strategic objective of destroying collective capacities for resistance and reconfiguring the subjective conditions necessary for the consolidation of a new regime of accumulation.

This disciplining produced effects that extended beyond the dictatorship itself. Fear, fragmentation, and the rupture of militant networks left profound marks upon social experience and upon the intergenerational transmission of political organization. From a Marxist perspective, this process cannot be understood merely as political repression: it constituted a historical condition for the subordination of labor to capital in its neoliberal phase.

The patriarchal dimension of this order was not secondary. Economic reorganization relied upon the intensification of unpaid labor, the feminization of precariousness, and the re-naturalization of care roles. Disciplining also operated upon bodies and identities, reinforcing gender hierarchies that ensure the daily reproduction of labor power under conditions of growing inequality.

Within this context, the struggle for Memory, Truth, and Justice does not constitute merely a human rights policy, but rather an active process of reconstructing collective subjectivities. By sustaining the memory of workers’ and popular struggles and by prosecuting those responsible for state terrorism, the human rights movement reinstates the legitimacy of social conflict and dismantles attempts to naturalize the existing order. Memory does not refer solely to the past: it operates as a present-day practice that contests depoliticization and reaffirms the centrality of collective rights.

At the same time, neoliberalism profoundly reconfigures the notion of citizenship. The experience of citizenship ceases to be organized around social rights and political participation, and is instead redefined under the figure of the consumer, interpellated through logics of individual merit and personal responsibility regarding material conditions. The progressive commodification of the state and social life, together with the digitalization of services and the expansion of advertising, promotes forms of subjectivity centered on competition and individual access to goods rather than on the collective construction of rights and democratic intervention.

This displacement constitutes a functional condition for the reproduction of the capitalist order in its neoliberal phase. The depoliticization of citizenship and social fragmentation weaken the organizational capacities of the working class and naturalize inequality as the result of individual trajectories. Within this process, patriarchy continues to operate as a structural support for accumulation, guaranteeing social reproduction under conditions of generalized precarity.

Education and the Construction of Meaning.

The educational field today constitutes one of the central terrains in which the economic, social, cultural, and subjective disputes of the current conjuncture are expressed and condensed. Reflecting upon the educational reforms currently underway requires articulating them with a feminist and class-based reading capable of understanding not only what is being reformed, but also in service of which social project.

From a Latin American feminist perspective, education seems to be permeated by historically invisible dimensions: the feminization of teaching, the overload of care tasks that condition labor and educational trajectories, the precarity of time and wages, and the growing demand for emotional and affective availability without material recognition. Educational adjustment policies do not operate in the abstract: they impact women and gender-diverse populations disproportionately, deepening structural inequalities that sustain social reproduction.

Within this context, we argue that a logic has been established that articulates labor disciplining, the commodification of knowledge, and the production of subjectivities adapted to market demands. In this way, the transformations underway are not merely administrative, but rather configure a genuine arena of disputes over the political meaning of education.

At the same time, education constitutes a privileged space for the production of subjectivities. In this sense, reforms promoted through a neoliberal logic tend to reconfigure education as a space for training individuals to adapt to the market, displacing its historical function as a social right, a tool of emancipation, and a space for the collective construction of critical knowledge, a feature deeply rooted in the Argentine educational tradition (Bolaña, 2024, 2025). Within this framework, this dispute is inscribed within a broader process of reconfiguration of the educational field, in which antagonistic projects contend over the place of education within society and over the forms of production and distribution of knowledge.

The reforms promoted by the government of Javier Milei advance precisely upon this core. This redefinition impacts not only teachers’ labor conditions, but also the democratic constitution of student subjectivities, insofar as it seeks to delegitimize conflict as a constitutive dimension of democratic life.

This process is not an exclusively local phenomenon, but is instead inscribed within the global dynamic of “accumulation by dispossession” theorized by David Harvey (2004, 2007), through which capital seeks new frontiers of valorization via the privatization of the public sphere. This transnational logic seeks to reconvert educational systems into service markets administered through corporate protocols.

This offensive is articulated with a broader dynamic of social disciplining experienced directly by the working class: through institutional mistreatment, the repression of mobilizations, arbitrary detentions, police harassment in working-class neighborhoods, and the stigmatization of young people based on their surname or appearance. These dynamics are not external to the educational field. On the contrary, they configure the very framework within which schools are inscribed as part of the struggle over the production of obedient or critical subjectivities.

We recognize that schools, in both their genesis and structure, often function as dispositifs of state control oriented toward disciplining and the formation of subjects functional to the logic of performance and competition. However, as education workers, we reject any fatalistic or deterministic reading that reduces our labor to the mere reproduction of dominant ideology.

As Latin American educators, we draw upon the contributions of Paulo Freire and share his conviction that human beings are conditioned subjects, but not determined ones. “I like being a person because, unfinished, I know that I am a conditioned being, but conscious of my unfinishedness, I know that I can overcome it. This is the profound difference between a conditioned being and a determined being” (Freire, 1997, p. 52).

Within this framework, public and free education -a tradition deeply rooted in Argentine society- as well as compulsory secondary education (Law 26.206/06), cannot be understood as concessions granted by benevolent governments, but rather as the result of collective struggles that inscribed the right to education within the structure of the state.

The struggle over education is thus configured as a struggle over the production of subjectivity. It is a matter of determining whether schools form subjects adapted to the logic of performance, competition, and individual responsibility, or whether, on the contrary, they contribute to the construction of collective subjects capable of recognizing the structural determinations shaping their living conditions.

In this sense, the material conditions under which teaching labor is carried out do not constitute a secondary element. Labor precarity, work overload, and the loss of purchasing power not only affect the lives of education workers, but also directly impact pedagogical processes. The degradation of teaching conditions thus translates into a limitation on the possibilities for constructing critical and emancipatory educational practices.

A Turning Point: Antagonisms in Dispute.

Within this framework, the transformations analyzed in the educational field cannot be understood in isolation. On the contrary, they are inscribed within a broader scenario that clearly expresses a structural antagonism. On one side stands a neoliberal project that presents itself as the only possible horizon, naturalizing inequality, commodifying rights, and foreclosing alternative political imagination. On the other stands a critical tradition that recognizes in Marxism -in dialogue with feminisms, Latin American popular education, and the historical experiences of working-class organization- a still-valid tool for understanding and transforming reality, not as dogma but as praxis.

This antagonism is also materialized in the way technologies are incorporated into the educational system. The advance of digital platforms and algorithmic control, under the discourse of innovation and technological inevitability, may lead to a progressive “pedagogical blackout”: a loss of centrality of the educational relationship, critical thinking, and teaching labor as cultural production (Bolaña & Verdún, 2025; Bonilla-Molina, 2018).

The massive digitalization of administrative processes, data mining, and the expansion of so-called “hybrid” models are not neutral processes; they reconfigure the meaning of teaching and the identity of education workers. The expansion of EdTech corporations imposes a technocratic logic that reduces education to a technical problem of implementation, displacing the political dimension of the educational act.

Faced with this corporate advance, reclaiming teacher education through the framework of popular education does not constitute a rhetorical gesture, but rather a strategic decision. Popular education emerges as a political strategy that articulates knowledge production, collective organization, and social transformation (Basualdo et al., 2020).

We are confronting a turning point. The current neoliberal offensive seeks to redefine the very meaning of the state and education. In response, the educational field, trade unionism, and social movements face the challenge of reconstructing comprehensive diagnoses and collective strategies capable of contesting not only concrete reforms, but also the authoritarian project that promotes them.

As a closing reflection and horizon of praxis, this work forms part of a collective process of political-pedagogical production that neither begins nor ends with this article. It draws upon debates, research, and systematizations of organizational and educational experiences promoted within the framework of the International Antifascist Education Movement (Díez-Gutiérrez et al., 2025). By proposing a critical synthesis, our aim is not merely to conclude an analysis, but to make explicit a praxis understood as a dialectical unity between theory and practice: a situated reflection upon the material and symbolic conditions of the present that simultaneously guides transformative action. Within a scenario marked by a neoliberal offensive displaying authoritarian and fascistic tendencies, thinking about education, the state, and popular organization implies recognizing that every theoretical elaboration also constitutes a political position and a strategic commitment.

The current expansion of the neoliberal project exceeds the boundaries of classical authoritarianism, assuming forms that combine economic deregulation, concentration of capital, social disciplining, and the systematic production of individualized subjectivities. In its most extreme drift, this process adopts fascistic traits: the construction of internal enemies, the delegitimization of collective organization, contempt for social rights, attacks upon democratic institutions, and the naturalization of violence as a form of government. These are not superficial analogies, but rather dynamics that erode democratic life and reconfigure common sense through meritocratic, punitive, and anti-egalitarian logics.

Within this framework, contemporary neoliberalism instrumentalizes and manipulates data in order to convert them into a “common sense” legitimizing exclusion. From our perspective, data generated through studies and research constitute raw material that acquires meaning only through situated interpretation. Our strategic commitment as education workers lies in recomposing the dialectical triangle linking material conditions of existence, the struggle over subjectivity, and collective organization. This requires reclaiming the systematization of our pedagogical experiences not as a mere record of information, but as rigorous research capable of producing emancipatory forms of knowledge.

Within this context, the discussion concerning the state cannot be reduced to the dichotomy of “more or less state.” The central issue is the meaning of the state itself: in service of which historical project, which social subjects, and which horizon of society its institutional structure and everyday practice are organized (Tocco & Basualdo, 2025).

The state is neither a neutral entity nor a mere technical arbiter. It is a historical construction traversed by relations of force and, within Latin American societies, it has also persistently functioned as a violent state. This characterization does not seek to foreclose its transformative potential, but rather to understand the depth of the struggle currently underway. To think about the state means asking how its institutions, practices, and meanings can be transformed in favor of life, equality, and social justice, rather than merely regulated or managed.

Within this process, education occupies a strategic position. The neoliberal offensive not only restructures productive systems and legal frameworks; it also redefines the very notion of citizenship, displacing it toward the figure of the individual consumer held responsible for their own destiny. Against this logic, popular education, as a historical Latin American current, constitutes a fundamental theoretical-political key.

From our participation in the International Antifascist Education Movement, we consider it necessary in Argentina to construct a collective space for teachers, educators, and researchers committed to a class, gender, and ethnic perspective capable of promoting emancipatory and antifascist projects. This construction requires a broad convocation free from sectarianism and dogmatism, together with a methodology grounded in a dialectical triangle linking organization, formation, and systematization: organizing in order to sustain collective strength; educating in order to provide critical tools for action; and systematizing in order to transform experience into socially shared knowledge and historical accumulation.

“Thought, praxis, and imagination converge today in the challenge of making life possible again” (Agamben, 2004, 2015) in the face of a state of exception seeking to transform the suspension of rights into the normal paradigm of government.

This strategic commitment cannot be realized in isolation. We consider that the International Antifascist Education Movement represents a deliberate effort to reverse the authoritarian advance leading toward fragmentation and individualism, to which the neoliberal project seeks, in this new phase, to condemn teaching as a continuous present. We assume internationalism as a material condition of possibility for transforming individual experiences into a shared horizon of struggle. Ultimately, it constitutes our commitment to rebuilding class solidarity on a global scale, since it is indispensable to radically oppose fascistic efforts that seek to foreclose the future and present themselves as the only possible world.

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[1] https://www.indec.gob.ar/ftp/cuadros/publicaciones/indecinforma/indec_informa_02_26.pdf

[2] https://www.iaraf.org/index.php/informes-economicos/area-fiscal

[3] Ministerio de las Mujeres, Géneros y Diversidad de la Nación (2023). Informe Igualar. La participación de las mujeres en el trabajo, el ingreso y la producción. Segundo trimestre de 2022. Observatorio de las Violencias y Desigualdades por Razones de Género. Buenos Aires.

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[4] The Integrated Pension System of Argentina is a solidarity-based distribution system created by Law 26.425/2008 and administered by ANSES, which finances retirement benefits, pensions and family allowances for the Argentine population.

[5] Instituto de Estudios y Formación de la CTA-A (IEF-CTA-A). (2026, febrero). El Fondo de Asistencia Laboral y el desfinanciamiento previsional: cuando el ajuste se traslada a los hogares. Buenos Aires: iefctaa.org / ctaa.org.ar

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[6] Organización MuMaLa, Mujeres de la Matria Latinoamericana: https://mumala.online/observatorio

[7] The violent state: we are not referring solely to its extreme expression as a terrorist or genocidal state, but to the structural dimension of violence -both material and symbolic- that permeates its historical constitution in our societies. This violence manifests itself in the reproduction of inequalities, in social disciplining, and in the unequal administration of rights, even under democratic forms.