Typographical Workers and their Mutualist Experience: The Case of the Sociedad Tipográfica Bonaerense, 1857–80

Abstract

Mutualist societies have traditionally been treated as ‘antecedents,’ or components of a ‘prehistory’ of later working-class organisations. Accordingly, this view gives mutualism a short lifespan, lasting at most into the 1890s, only to be eclipsed by resistance societies.’ This essay, on the contrary, tries to broaden the view of mutual aid of tradesmen and to rescue the experience from the marginal role to which it has been relegated in Argentine working-class history. The Sociedad Tipogrâfica Bonaerense, one of the first organisations created by the workers of Buenos Aires, exemplified a long mutualist tradition.