Argentina - February 15, 2025

The huge mobilization of 1F against the government
put the general strike on the agenda

Down with Milei, the big business government and the US imperialists’ embassy!

We must break with the PJ and defeat the sellout bureaucracy that supports the government to reopen the path to the GENERAL STRIKE

DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM! DOWN WITH THE IMF!

Milei, a partner of Zionism and the US imperialists has deepened the war against the exploited to imposing the plan of colonialism and worker slavery of imperialism and the big bosses of AEA all the way.
In its offensive, it launched bybdecree pon 25 Jan a virulent attack against the legal concept of femicide, the education about sex in the schools, the trans and disabled job quotas, etc., and other democratic rights that are conquests of the working class and the masses, as part of the brutal plan to reduce state spending to repay the IMF. This has been imposed through tens of thousands of layoffs, the emptying of the health services, the defunding of education and the liquidation of public works, which the union bureaucracy of ATE-CTERA (CTA) as well as that of UPCN and UOCRA (CGT) let run.
Against the government's attack on 25 Jan, a self-convened popular Assembly was set up, driven by the LGTBIQ+ collective, which, in a self-organized manner and outside of the union bureaucracy, imposed a massive mobilization in Buenos Aires and throughout the country this Feb 1. It was a rally that escaped the control of the bourgeoisie.
Thousands of workers, students, teachers, retirees and sectors of the ruined middle classes took to the streets in defense of their rights and demands, seeking a way to confront Milei's attack. It was a mass action against Milei and his government that put the conquest of a general strike on the agenda.
This February 1st, the CGT and CTA “rebels”, under the orders of Cristina Kirchner (now president of the PJ), prevented the most important battalions of the industrial proletariat from being present to raise their demands and defend the rights under attack. Throughout 2024, the union bureaucracy was in charge of dividing and handing over every struggle of the working class, which again and again fought back every Milei’ attack, leading it to harsh defeats.
Without the industrial proletariat and its organizations on the scene, the Kirchnertes relied on the meetings of the LGTBIQ+ collective after Jan 25 and, disciplining the FIT-U and the entire reformist left, imposed a new mobilization for March 8 and another for March 24, thus giving the government time to continue unleashing its full attack.

Kirchnerists took over and controlled this movement, preventing the enormous mobilization of Feb 1 from taking a leap forward in the conquest of the general strike against the government. A great opportunity was lost. Meanwhile, Kirchnerist union bureaucrats such as Furlán of the UOM (metalworkers), Pignanelli of SMATA (automotive workers) and Aguiar of ATE (publc servants and State services workers in the CTA), together with the bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA, let all the attacks of the bosses and the government run free. In this way, they guaranteed that the enormous energies of the masses that demonstrated their willingness to fight would be dissolved.

Peronism, as well as the PRO, UCR and all the employers' parties, supports Milei and as representatives of different bourgeois gangs they have one point of agreement: to enslave the working class and impose the 12-hour work day by law.
The PJ has been guaranteeing governability in the face of Milei's war, the big bosses and the US imperialists. Factory closures, layoffs and suspensions are multiplying, the price hikes and the high cost of living are unbearable and the brutal precariousness of life for millions has become a tragedy under a repressive and police regime.

We must break with the PJ and defeat the union bureaucracy…

The Kirchnerites pose as “friends of the people” when ITBIS them who, under the Fernández-Massa government, together with ministers without portfolio from the union bureaucracy, sank all wages with inflation and made 60% of the working class more precarious. It is them who months ago, together with all the employer politicians, allowed a parliamentary minority government to pass all its anti-worker laws and surrender to imperialism. It is them who, in the provinces where they govern, with Kicillof at the head, are applying the same plan as Milei.
Cristina Kirchner wants to pose as a defender of democratic rights when, together with Grabois, they are friends of the Catholic Church, which blessed the genocidal military in the 1970s, and of Pope Francis and Opus Dei that are the main enemies of legal abortion and the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community.
Both Milei and Cristina Kirchner answer to the same master: the US imperialist embassy. We must break with Peronism and other employers' parties that support the government!

The union bureaucrats divide us and sell us out, they separate the demands of the LGTBIQ+ community from the demands of the workers as a whole... as if eliminating the trans and disabled’s quota were not an attack on workers and their jobs!
These scoundrels, who never incorporated the demands of the unemployed and the unregistered workers, of the youth and working women and of the immigrants into the unions' programs, are today giving in all our achievements. They are the ones who prevented any mass response against Milei and who now, like good Mileístas, are handing over their salaries and agreements, factory by factory, in exchange for the millions of dollars in social security funds.
Enough! We must unify our demands under a single program! We must unite the ranks of the working class and the exploited to oust the traitorous bureaucrats!

 The working class must stand up!…
Milei must be defeated with a revolutionary general strike

After the Feb 1, the FIT-U currents argued that with new “mass mobilizations” the government’s “austerity plan” could be defeated, without breaking with the PJ and without defeating the union bureaucracy. Now, faced with the political crisis opened by Milei’s “crypto-scam”, they propose to “throw him out” by the hand of the Parliament of Wall Street or the employers’ justice that persecutes those who fight. Lamentable! At the feet of the “democracy” for the rich, the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994!

The working class must be put on its feet to fight against the war of Milei and his bosses from the big AEA employers' association like Eurnekian, Rocca, Madanes and the US imperialists.
For a new regrouping of the working class. We must unite the workers' ranks and coordinate the struggles, uniting all the demands to defeat the traitors of the union bureaucracy. As with the student struggle and the massive mobilization of Feb 1, we must take to the streets again, but settling accounts with the traitors.

The fight is against layoffs and suspensions, for a minimum living wage of AR$1,800,000 monthly (around usd 1,500) for everyone to be permanently employed and under contract and under collective bargaining, for tripling the quota of trans and disabled workers, the fight is for quality education, health and housing for the working class and the poor people... This fight is inseparable from the fight to defeat the government and expel the IMF and imperialism, to overthrow this infamous police regime of Milei and the US imperialists.
The banks and transnationals that plunder lithium, gas, oil, etc., the parasites of AEA and the lands of the oligarchy must be expropriated without compensation and under workers' control.
There is more than enough money and wealth to end with hunger and the enormous suffering of the exploited, as well as to provide cheap loans to the ruined middle classes in the city and the countryside.

The working class must emerge with its methods of struggle, breaking with Peronism and defeating the union bureaucracy! The government must be fought with a revolutionary general strike!

Down with Milei, the government of the big capitalists and the US embassy! Down with the IMF!

The government must be thrown out by returning to the revolutionary path of 2001, shouting “All of them must go, let not a single one remain.”

Editorial Board of Democracia Obrera (Workers' Democracy)