He studied in the Faculty of Exact Sciences and became a land surveyor; then he moved to Buenos Aires and got involved in the literary conflicts of the Boedo and Florida groups.

In his youth, Scalabrini Ortiz participated in a Marxist group called Insurrexit; he also travelled to several provinces for work reasons, and at 26 he visited Paris, France, from where he returned disappointed by the xenophobic attitude of its citizens.

Like everyone in Argentina, he felt the effects of the Great Depression, and then saw the coup d'état against president Hipólito Yrigoyen that began the Década Infame, marked by conservative rule perpetuated by electoral fraud.

Together with Arturo Jauretche, Scalabrini Ortiz is considered a pioneer of historical revisionism in Argentina, a fervently nationalistic and anti-liberal current of historiography that became especially influential in the 1960s.

He had to resort to a newspaper classified ad to earn a living, noting that he possessed an ample general culture, experience and knowledge in many fields.