1. IntroductionFew countries and case studies have attracted as much attention to the study of neoliberalism and its application as Argentina. It is due to the particular specificity of that case that I chose to analyze it in the following essay. First, an assessment of the emergence and consolidation of the neoliberal project in Argentina under military junta and democratic governments until the end of the 20th century will be presented, followed by an analysis of the social movement of recovered businesses as a possible neoliberal response to the failure of neoliberal logic. Using a Gramscian approach and, in more detail, Robert Cox's elaborations on this field, I intend to show the power of underlying ideas and thoughts with respect to the change of historical materialist structures in the introduction of neoliberalism by military dictatorship as an instrument of war of movement. Secondly, the consolidation of this paradigm will be assessed and in particular the role of international actors, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the G-7 nexus, and of national actors with different access to power such as the elite Argentine financial and agricultural sector. . Finally, the Gramscian approach will be used to show the tendency for the emergence of a post-neoliberal alternative, its limits and the reasons for the limited impact on transformation.2. The Rise of Neoliberalism in Argentina2.1 Peronsim and Isabel Perón: The Argentine nation-state was consolidated by President Juan Domingo Perón1 in the 1940s under his first presidency. During that era, the concept of import substitution industrialization (ISI) was heavily promoted. To protect the nascent manufacturing industry, high tariffs and additional regulations on trade and investment, encouraged by the Argentine financial elite, the so-called “financier homeland6”, and the IMF. The consequence was a shift from the already weakened industrial economy to a finance-based economy, defined by speculation and generally lax financial regulations that encouraged economic destabilization, high levels of inflation, and capital flight that reached $28 billion during the seven years of dictatorship ( Smith, 1989). Speculators, for example, converted US dollars into pesos while this currency was weak, lent this money for a short period of time and at high interest rates in Argentina, and exchanged the returns into US dollars once the peso was strong. Up to 50% of the returns to investors were likely due to this speculation scheme, which usually ended with the withdrawal of used capital from the Argentine market (Cooney, 2007; Jilberto, 2003).