Popular Capitalism and Huachipato’s Workers. Between the ideological and the pragmatic convergence

Abstract

The article elaborates an analytical frame to explain the high adherence reached by popular capitalism in Huachipato’s Steel Industry, during the privatization of Compañía de Aceros del Pacífico (CAP), in the decade of 1980, to which Huachipato belonged to. It is argued that in the privatization cycle converged both the deterioration of real wages and an explosive increment of shares’ value in the stock market, what could have represented a conjunctural stimulus to the workers participation in popular capitalism. It is proposed that this conjunctural factor converged with a preexistent worker’s culture, characterized by both high consumption and income expectations, which favored their participation in the modality of popular capitalism practiced in the company.