 According to Alberdi, the goals that should guide the political organization of a possible South American Republic must be responsive to the latter’s history and state of civilization (i.e., level of material and political progress), which establish the limits of political possibility. On his view, the most important goal of a possible republic is to educate the population for representative democracy. By “education” he meant the improvement of the local population’s level of civilization up to the level required for a true republic. He advocated two main means of civilization: the promotion of commerce and industry, on the one hand, and massive European immigration, on the other. Alberdi opposed the idea that the population could be made fit for democracy through formal schooling, as many other liberals indeed maintained. Domingo Sarmiento, the other dominant intellectual and political figure in Argentina at the time, favored formal schooling as the main means of civilization (Sarmiento 1849; Botana 1997). By contrast with Sarmiento, however, Alberdi held that the best means of moralization were industrious work and the constant interaction with people who already had the habits of order, discipline, and industry. In passages that evince the influence of Adam Smith, he maintained that social prosperity was not the work of governments, but a spontaneous result. He was completely skeptical about the possibility of civilizing the local population without the interaction with people who were already civilized. He summarily remarked that “whatever is not European in America is barbaric.”