This paper argues that the Hierarchical Market Economy (HME) category does not provide an adequate starting point for addressing capitalist diversity in Latin America. Building from a critical perspective on the Global Commodity Chain (GCC) and Global Production Network (GPN) approaches it will instead consider the impact of firms transnational relations and the often neglected role of working class struggles. It will argue that capitalist diversity can only be understood at the nexus of these ostensibly global and local phenomena. By specifying the strategic decisions taken by firms in Argentina s automobile industry, it will account for the failure of this sector. I will also examine the role of working class struggles in the industry in Córdoba, Argentina, arguing that these were vital in shaping the specific and unstable form of capitalist diversity in Argentina, as well as potential alternatives to it.

Drawing on historical research into the period of import‐substitution industrialization (ISI) in Chile and Argentina between the 1930s and 1960s, this article claims that developmental state theory (DST) obfuscates a crucial feature of state intervention in Latin America. Specifically, despite a long‐standing interest in state–society relations, DST has been unable to incorporate adequately into its analytical framework labour–state relations and labour control in the workplace. This is because DST, in its various guises, privileges state–society relations mediated by institutions from which labour is implicitly or explicitly excluded. Extending the analytical lens of DST, the article combines critical labour‐relations and labour‐process theories to identify the purposive establishment of ‘regimes of labour control’ via changes in institutional and workplace relations. Using this expanded framework, it shows how the often vacillating strategies pursued by the state under ISI in Chile and Argentina, and the inefficient outcomes of ISI in these countries, can be better understood by considering efforts designed to exert control over labour.

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The 'pink tide' in Latin America, or what remains of it, is drawing increasing criticisms from the political left for its inability to confront existing socio-structural inequalities. This article contributes to these debates in two ways. First, as a means of understanding better the development strategies that have been followed by left-leaning governments, it highlights and critiques what it labels Elite Development Theory (EDT) encompassing Washington Consensus and Statist Political Economy. It shows how despite its self-stated objectives-the amelioration of the conditions of the poor and their uplifting-EDT is grounded in elite assumptions about social change: States and corporations are posited as prime-movers in the development process while collective efforts of labouring classes to pursue their own developmental strategies are ignored and/or de-legitimated. Exploitation, oppression and the ideological delegitimation of labouring class collective actions form the core of EDT. The second contribution of this article is to argue for an alternative form of what it terms labour-centred development (LCD). This argument is supported through an examination of the Chilean cordones industriales and Argentinian empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (ERT) movements. The article concludes that whilst LCD may be a rarity, its existence offers the basis for alternative development theory and strategy.

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