Argentina - November 16th, 2021

The electoral farce of those at the top was imposed and while the FIT-U celebrates having added thousands of votes, seats in the National Congress and provincial Legislatures, and councilors in the municipalities, life for the working class continues to be unbearable...

WE MUST UNITE THE FORCES OF THE WORKERS TO FACE THE ATTACK OF THE CAPITALISTS THAT IS ALREADY HERE AND IS ONLY GOING DEEPER

With the legislative elections on last Sunday 14, a real electoral trap was imposed, which is celebrated by all the bosses' parties that come out strengthened to deepen the attack against the working class on behalf and under the orders of imperialism. Whether they succeed in imposing this plan to deepen the transformation of Argentina into a large "maquila", the looting and triple-chain subjugation to imperialism, still remains to be seen, but for the moment the regime has been strengthened and is breathingrelieved.

The FIT-U that managed to add several thousand votes, exceeding a total of 1,400,000, is celebrating to be now the "third national force", hovering around 6%. Myriam Bregman, Nicolás del Caño, Romina del Plá and Alejandro Vilca managed to enter the National Congress; furthermore they have gained seats in the Legislatures of Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires provinceand councilors in different municipalities of the extense suburban belt around the City of Buenos Aires.
Facing these results, you have to say that a sector of the working class voted for the FITU, evidently sympathizing with the ideas expressed during the campaign, but the truth be told: in the midst of the misery and hunger of the masses, when imperialism comes for everything throughout the continent, the bourgeois regime as a whole has come out strengthened to implement the IMF plans because the electoral trap was imposed and the workers, voted mainly for their executioners from the PRO (former president Macri's party, NT), the Frente de Todos and Milei.

The parties that make up the FIT-U, insist in their balances of the elections on affirming that their seats are an expression of the struggle and that from there, and by pressuring the puppet parliament of bandits that make people starve, the attack of imperialism will be stopped, the demands of the working class will be conquered by means of a “new Green Wave”(referring to the mobilizations for the abortion law, NT). They are telling us that the sharing of working hours among all free hands and the reduction of the working day without a reduction in pay can be obtained simply with a pressure struggle. Thus the PTS in its article "The electoral campaign of the FITU, the program and the strategy" (10/17/21) states: "For this reason, the possibility or impossibility of imposing the 6-hour day depends on the wiliness to fight and the organization of the exploited and oppressed. A national law could be imposed with the struggle, beginning with its application under workers control in large companies, to see the application not only in large companies but also in small and medium-sized companies and in areas of the State or in the creation of new sources of employment (construction of houses, schools and hospitals). The resources should come from what the big businessmen and landowners have accumulated at the expense of the labor of others, as we have already stated”.

To affirm that the bourgeois Parliament, which is just a notary's office to rubber-stamp what has been already decided by Wall Street beforehead, can happily vote to hand over its profits and those of its multinationals in favor of the workers, producers of wealth, is not only an absurdity, it amounts to proposing that the bourgeois Parliament can change its class content, and so, step by step, we will conquer socialism. This is what they make explicit by brandishing the program of Stalinism, breaking with the revolutionary apothegm. They also say in the aforementioned article: “In other words, as we fight, day by day, to conquer each of our rights, we know that we can only fully build a life free of discrimination, violence, misery and exploitation if we manage to take from the capitalists not only economic power but also their political domination, conquering a workers' and poor people's government, based on assemblies of workers, as part of an international struggle that begins the construction of a society without exploitation or oppression."

This only confirms the consolidation of the FIT-U as a social democratic party. That is why they celebrate the "strong seats" that "will fight in the Parliament." Thus they sow illusions in this rotten system that can no longer give the slaves even a piece of bread, when not only it cannotgrant reforms but the bourgeoisie is going on the offensive to snatch our conquests from us, as they are already imposing with the labor reform in the facts, as we could see it in the Toyota plants with the establishment of Saturday as a common working day (no longer being counted as overtime). This social democratic reasoning could be exposed as Trotsky did, when defining Stalinist politics in France in the 1930s with these words: “In five years, in ten years, in twenty years, we will have more votes and more elective positions; then we have to wait and we will take power” (LT, Once Again, Wither France?). But we revolutionaries know that the capitalists cannot give something to the workers, except when they are threatened by the danger of losing everything.

To conquer what the FITU raises it takes much more than a new green wave. It is necessary to touch the property of the capitalists, to impose the expropriation of the 1% that appropriates the profits produced by man on the ruination of the 99% of society. And this will not be achieved peacefully but through a revolutionary struggle that leaves no standing stone of the bourgeois state and imposes over its destruction, the power of those below. It is that “the most immediate of all demands must be to demand the expropriation of the capitalists and the nationalization (socialization) of the means of production. Is this demand unfeasible under the domination of the bourgeoisie? Evidently. That is why it is necessary to conquer power” (Ibid).

To respond to the fierce re-colonizing attack of imperialism, resuming the path of 2001, howeverthis time successful, it is necessary to organize promptly -because the attack is not "yet to come", but it is here and now- the decisive combat of the working class so that it retakes weight in the national political scene and advances in the revolutionary path. Trotsky opposed to the program of Stalinism that the FIT-U has revived, the revolutionary program stating: “Explaining every day to the masses that the rotting bourgeois capitalism leaves no room, not only for the improvement of their situation, but even for the maintenance of the level of habitual misery; openly posing before the masses the task of the socialist revolution as the immediate task of our day; mobilizing the workers for the seizure of power; defending the workers' organizations through the militias; the communists (or socialists) do not lose, at the same time, not a single opportunity to snatch from the enemy, along the way, this or that partial concession or, at least, prevent it from further lowering the standard of living of the workers ”.

And the conditions to do so are more than mature. In Jujuy Alejandro Vilca obtained 25% of the total votes, that is to say that he is a majority force in the Jujuy labor movement. There we can set up a revolutionary bastion of the working class, which, sweeping away the rotten bureaucracy of the social pact imposed by the capitalist attack, regroups the forces of the working class. From there, together with the most exploited sectors of the Argentine proletariat such as the workers of the sugar mills, calling the self-convened port and health workers, concentrating the forces and the call from the SUTNA Black ticket, from the combative Sutebas of Buenos Aires and ATEN of Neuquén, from railway workers led by Pollo Sobrero, they must prepare and organize the fight against the IMF government right away. The FIT-U must break its submission to the regime and turn its forces to this decisive and unpostponable fight! Because the Argentine working class depends on it.

On the contrary, the balance sheets presented by the FIT-U parties, about a regime that has emerged weakened after the elections, we affirm that the results of the electoral contest, added to a harsh repression and persecution of those who fight, and the actions of the treacherousbureaucracy of the Social Pact,leave the exploiters better able to attack the masses, which find their ranks divided and disorganized.
A proto-fascist movement of the great bosses is trying to raise its head. Even under the shelter of the large employers, it has carried out its first armed demonstrations, as in its act in Luna Park, while the worker fighters are persecuted, convicted and imprisoned for defending themselves against the repression of the employers' prey dogs. In this situation, the sugary poison of false hopes spread by reformists is extremely dangerous for workers. In France in the 1930s, Trotsky affirmed "Nothing increases the insolence of the fascists so much as the bland 'pacifism' of the workers' organizations. Nothing destroys so much the confidence of the middle classes in the proletariat, as the expectant passivity, as the absence of will to fight".

The bourgeoisie is readying its forces among the gunmen of the bureaucracy, the repressive forces and the proto-fascist movements in order to impose its plans of hunger and looting until the end, as we have already seen in Latin America, with counterrevolutionary actions, fierce repression and deaths, under the spell of the "siren songs" of pacifism and electoral traps.
They, imperialism, the bourgeoisie and their dogs, speak the language of class struggle.

It is time for the Argentine working class to weigh again in national politics by speaking the language of the revolution, with strikes, pickets, defeating the treacherous union bureaucracy, attacking the property of the capitalists and conquering armed self-defense committees against the fascist gangs, to prepare their chastisement before it's too late. It is false to affirm that proposing “extreme measures” would alienate a sector of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. "On the contrary: the lower layer of the petty bourgeoisie, its great masses do not see in the workers' parties more than parliamentary machines, they do not believe in their strength, they do not believe them capable of fighting, they do not believe that this time they are willing to lead the struggles all the way (...) In order to attract the petty bourgeoisie to its side, the proletariat must win their confidence. And, for this, it must begin by having confidence in its own strength. It needs to have a clear program of action and be willing to fight for power by all possible means" (LT, Wither France?). The path is none other than the determined struggle for the socialist revolution, the only way out to end hunger and widespread misery, repression and the fierce dictatorship of capital that makes the lives of the exploited even more unbearable every day.