Argentina - February 13, 2024
Under US tutelage, those at the top dispute for the spoils of national looting… The “omnibus law” was withdrawn by the government but the brutal economic blow is deepened with more inflation, high rates and layoffs
The war waged on us by Milei, the IMF and all those who starve the people must be confronted with…
Pickets, 48-hour general strike and a fight plan now!
For a Minimum, Living and Mobile Salary of monthly Ar$1,300,000 (u$d 1,100) and decent work for all. No layoffs.
Out with the traitor union bureaucracy! Open the road to worker self-organization!
National Congress of Employed and Unemployed Workers
Out with the IMF and the US ambassador Stanley! Out with all the bosses' politicians!
Far from having been defeated by a simple parliamentary vote, due to the disagreements of the bourgeois gangs around the “omnibus law”, the government led by the large transnationals, the IMF and US imperialism, has redoubled the war against the masses.
Now the Wage Council of the Milei government will meet with the union bureaucracy, to determine the minimum wage on which millions of exploited people who are already condemned to hunger have to live. This Peronist bureaucracy that has just surrendered the wages of unionized workers in the miserable collective bargains of the previous Peronist government, and guaranteed the bosses to have millions of precarious and unemployed workers (almost 70% of the entire working class), continues today to tear apart the workers' ranks.
At a time when the teachers’ National collective bargain should have begun, the government refuses to call it and has cut educational funds, in an Argentina where the vast majority of workers do not have rights and live on salaries of 190 thousand pesos/month (u$d 165) when the INDEC (officual stats) has just published that it takes $600 thousand pesos to not be poor! This is the great betrayal of the CGT and CTA bureaucracies, which for 5 years did not call for a single strike under the anti-worker PJ government, scabbing and isolating each struggle. And today they continue to tie the hands of the working class in the face of the government's brutal offensive.
Milei's strength is directly proportional to the level of betrayal to the working class, of the Peronist union bureaucracy.
Milei's strength to attack the masses comes from the detour of the Latin American revolutionary processes that were removed from the scene by the union bureaucracies and Stalinism, and by the surrendition of Cuba to capitalist restoration by the Communist Party.
Imperialism has said, now is the time! and it comes for everything. Wall Street, the IMF and the imperialist monopolies have concentrated their forces to grab the lithium, Vaca Muerta shale gas et al, and make Argentina a colony with enslaved workers as a step to generalize it to the entire Americas. This is the US imperialist plan to keep the sources of raw materials from the planet, something that can only be carried out through wars, massacres and coups d'état, such as in Ukraine, Gaza, Peru, to give just a few examples.
Milei's strength is based on the largest parasites on the planet such as Citigroup, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, whose representatives are startung to arrive in the country to personally monitor Milei's plan of looting and super-exploitation of workers, which is supported by the AEA (Argentine Business Association) and AmCham (Chamber of US monopolies in the country).
We are not facing a “weak government” as Myriam Bregman and the PTS claim. It is a direct government of Wall Street that with its CEOS and its Law firms have drafted the DNU and the “omnibus law”, as well as each economic punch announced by Finance Minister Caputo, and it is supported in the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994 that invests Milei with the powers of a “king”, supported in a police regime imposed with the repressive protocol drafted by Home Security Minister Bullrich, which does not allow anyone who goes out to fight, to step on the pavement.
What we saw in the Congressional sessions in recent weeks was a dispute between representatives of different capitalist sectors who did not agree on who would provide the dollars for repaying the debt to the IMF. The government did not accept further cuts to its law legalizing the ongoing plan of looting and worker slavery, and so they withdrew it. This does not mean they would stop their attack on the masses; on the contrary they redoubled it by cutting provincial funds that lead to more layoffs, higher fees for the public services and proceeded with a frontal attack on the salaries of teachers and state employees, which all governors will apply. It is clear that the dispute among those at the top does not break their central agreement: to attack the working class and its conquests to extract a greater mass of surplus value, by means of repression, forged charges, prison and bullets for those who dare to fight.
Milei together with Macrism from the nation and the provincial governors of the PRO, the UCR and Peronism are a unified bloc against the workers. , For the parliamentary left, instead, the Milei “weak government” suffered a defeat. They want to make the workers believe that thanks to a parliamentary front with Kirchnerism and the “popular mobilization” of a few thousand, maverik Peronist Pichetto and the governors of the PRO and the UCR, were “pressured” and gave in to rejecting this or that point of the same law, everyone of them had already approved in general! A vile deception. If this were the case, why didn't the DNU and the higher fees of the public services stop there? Stop lying, nothing comes out of the Congress, this Wall Street notary office, in favor of the working class.
No one has been defeated yet. The attack gives no respite! The transport ticket increased by 300%, gasoline and food prices have risen again, you can no longer eat meat or bread in the country of cows and wheat. The unemployed do not have even a bowl of noodles in the soup kitchens because the government stopped sending funds, and the retirees are dying of hunger or lack of medicine. In Mosconi, Salta, the town has not even had tap water for weeks. Layoffs do not stop, as in state workers, metallurgical companies in Córdoba and Tierra del Fuego and in the tire factories. And General Motors (Santa Fe) has suspended production until March, reducing wages.
The working class is the only one that, with its methods of struggle, can break the offensive of the Milei government, the IMF and the capitalists. The fight is class against class!
With the spontaneous eruption of the cacerolazos and the massive mobilizations of December 20 and the national strike of January 24, the working class showed willingness and strength to confront the capitalists. But the union bureaucrats left everything in the hands of the Peronist deputies and went again into hiding. After dissipating the forces deployed by the workers, the CGT spokesperson and Gerardo Martínez (UOCRA/Construction workers union), seeking to negotiate their role in the regime, met with Nichols, from the US State Department for the region, sent by Biden.
Enough of traitorous bureaucrats! To defeat the attack by the Milei government and the US, we must defeat the union bureaucracy that surrends our salary and conquests, and for this we must proceed with assemblies, pickets, self-organization and direct democracy to open the way for the general strike.
The war of the capitalists commanded by US imperialism can only be countered by returning to the path of 2001, with pickets, strikes and imposing the general strike. The path is the revolutionary struggle.
It is time for the working class to bring order to the chaos and madness generated by the capitalist bandits and their gangs, and prevent the colonization and auction of the Nation. Workers and poor people must take the resolution of the crisis into their own hands.
We must immediately impose a 48-hour general strike and a plan of struggle, unifying the ranks of the working class. We must unify the employed and unemployed workers, either unionized, sub-contracted or unregistered, to impose together a single national collective bargain of the entire labor movement for:
$1,300,000 minimum, living and mobile monthly salary for everyone. No layoffs. Distribution of work hours so that everyone goes to work. Everybody in permanent staff!
Enough of precariousness and attacks on workers! Down with the DNU!
Freedom to all comrades imprisoned for fighting! Down with forged charges and for the acquittal of all accused workers and fighters!
Unitary self-defense committees of the working class! We must crush the repressive protocol of Bullrich who is under the orders of the US Southern Command!
Dissolution of the repressive forces and the Videlista judges!
Out with the IMF and Ambassador Stanley, Milei’s real bosses!
In order to obtain wages, work and housing, we must attack the profits of the big capitalists. We must expropriate the oligarchy, the bankers and the parasites transnational corporations that plunder the nation and enslave the working class, without compensation. To stop layoffs, any factory that closes, furloughs or lays off must be expropriated without compensation and put into production under workers' control.
There is no time to lose! It is time to set up a National Congress of Employed and Unemployed Workers with mandated delegates. Open the road to worker self-organization, assemblies, bodies of delegates and committees of the unemployed!
The SUTNA (tire union) whose workers are being brutally attacked with layoffs, is going out to fight with strikes at Bridgestone and Pirelli and the combative unemployed movement, which is being condemned to hunger, must lead this call together with the Haedo UF (railroad workers union) Local, the teachers, the state workers and other sectors of combative unionism.
Milei and his bosses can only be defeated by returning to the Argentinazo path... Everyone of them must go away, not even one of them should remain!
The path is that of Chile's fights against Piñera and the Pinochetista regime, which Boric and the CP are currently administering. The path is that of the Colombia of the General Strike, of insurgent Peru against the coup d'état of Boluarte and the US.
Standing alongside the Palestinian resistance that faces genocidal Zionism and its war of extermination against the martyred Palestinian people!
The time has come to untie the hands of the working class to lead the exploited masses of the nation in the fight against imperialism and its lackeys, to expropriate the land of the parasite oligarchy and break the yoke of Wall Street and US imperialism with the method of the workers and popular revolution. There is no other way.
Open the road to the Argentinazo!
Argentina will be socialist or a colony of Wall Street
Clara Varga and Nicolás Cramer for the Editorial Committee of Democracia Obrera |
