Argentina - October, 27 2023

The electoral trap has been consummated

 

The bourgeoisie, in the run-off, will define with
which government is going to administer its
business and command a superior attack
against workers and the poor people

 

Massa, the candidate of the anti-worker government, lackey of the US and the IMF, of the Fernandez, that has been applying in the last years the worst attack on the masses and the rigorous payment of the fraudulent foreign debt left by Macri and company, has won.

The working class was taken out of the scene by the traitors of the bureaucracies off the workers' unions and the picketeer movement (unemployed associations)
The reformist left refused to unify the vanguard and coordinate the struggles with the Jujuy uprising to prepare the exploited for decisive battles in the face of a ferocious war launched by the capitalists against them. They had done the same during many years with waves of struggle that gave rise to embryonic movements of self-organized workers which were breaking with the Peronist government and confronting the trade union bureaucracy.

The FIT not only divided the ranks of the workers, but also divided the workers of the same FIT as its parties fought tooth and nail for the electoral seats, after having voted for 24 out of 26 bills to the government that only gave small handouts to the workers in order to take everything from them, as it really happened. As the election campaign aired, the FIT MPs had a parliamentary pact with Massa to vote for his so-called "progressive" laws and criticize the negative ones, so, why would millions of desperately hungry workers that lose their wages to the high inflation in the first ten days of the month because of an unbearable high cost of living and who hate the government and the bosses' parties, vote for the FIT? Precisely because of this, Milei, pretending to "confront the caste" (as he names the political establishment), got 30% of the votes, turning the situation terribly to the right, and supported by desperate masses left to their fate by the traitorous leaderships.
The parliamentary cretinism of reformism and the open betrayal of the trade union bureaucracy left the ranks of the working class paralyzed.

 

The bourgeoisie, in the run-off, defines with which government it is going to administer its business and command a superior attack against the workers and the poor people
Massa and Milei, the candidates of the IMF and the US Embassy

Massa with anesthesia and Milei directly with the scalpel, seek to command the attack on the working class and finish handing over the nation to imperialism, after channeling, behind their respective arch-reactionary forces, all the exploited layers of society. A huge superstructural triumph of the regime and the ruling classes, which will now seek to impose it on the streets. That is where Argentina's future will be actually defined.
Milei, channeling desperate sectors of the ruined middle classes and the hungry lower strata of the proletariat, explores the conditions for setting up a proto-fascist movement; while Massa guarantees a government of national unity and parliamentary pacts, preserving the forms of the regime and its most Bonapartist character of recent years.
One puts the chainsaw as a symbol of what is to come and the other regroups the statified trade union bureaucracy, with millions of dollars from social security and their thugs, as a guarantee for sectors of the national upper bourgeoisie that all the workers' conquests will be handed over in this way.

 

The political and anti-democratic scam of the infamous regime of the 1853 Constitution
The cynicism of the bourgeois politicians in this democracy for the rich.

Nothing is solved in this den of bandits of the bourgeois parliament. Everything is solved by extra-parliamentary pacts organized in the US embassy and in the meetings of the elites of Idea (a group of diverse CEOs-), the Stock Exchange, the Argentine Rural Society. There they discuss and prepare the two ends of the same rope with which they seek to strangle the proletariat and steal the wealth of the nation.

After the election, the presidential candidate of Macri and the PRO, Patricia Bullrich, called on people to vote for her "arch enemy" who was even further to the right than her, namely Milei. The fact is that behind both you can find the representatives of the big transnationals, the agrarian oligarchy and the big state contractors, from whom the Kirchners took away business for their own benefit in the last 16 years. Now, they are desperately coming back for them. And they want to do it by shielding the regime.
The Argentine bourgeoisie learned from 2001, that after the defeat of their parties and the police, the military party was not there to be used again. This bourgeois gang openly proclaims that the military must return as such and integrate itself into the regime.
The Peronists, however, also think the military should return to the stage, but in specific operations and "creating an FBI". But to put it bluntly, no serious bourgeois sector is of the opinion that this is a solid guarantee for the businesses of imperialism. Ambassador Stanley and his "boss" Richardson, commander of the US 4th Fleet, have already decided how to solve this. As in Chile and Peru, what will be installed in Argentina is the US military bases to directly take care of their businesses of Vaca Muerta, lithium, agri-food, etc.

Massa lies. He poses as a good-natured friend of the people. He is cynical! This man comes from the intimate Menemist kidney, like the Fernandezes, Cavallo and Melconian.

This man brazenly announces "fighting against the right", when he is the greatest friend of the IMF that has been repaying every penny of the foreign debt contracted by Macri, supported by the traitors of the trade union bureaucracy, who handed the working class over tied hand and foot to the most ferocious exploitation of the capitalists, to the slavery of unregistered and flexibilized labor of broad layers of the working class.
At the last minute on Sunday Massa finished counting the votes and the following Monday he himself was repaying 2.6 billion dollars to the IMF.
Massa claims to "defend democracy" against Milei's "right wing". But Massa acts as president, decides as president, resolves as president... he governs the country. While Fernández (the oficial president) has gone on holiday to Puerto Madero. Who had voted Massa president? This is what the scams of this rotten democracy for the rich are all about, where the monopolies seek to have the most authoritarian and undemocratic government to plunder the nation.
Massa announces he is "fighting against the right" and calls for a government of national unity... with Bullrich and Milei... with Macri and the anti-worker champions of the UCR. A vile deception.

As we revolutionary Marxists affirm, the chainsaw and the cudgel with which Milei threatens the workers and the people does not work without the electoral demagogy and the sweet phrases with which Massa seeks to regain the political support of broad sectors of the working class.
They are different, but they do not function without each other. They are different dogs, but guardians of the same business. They are different, but they smell the same: they come out of the same sewer of the rotten capitalist system and the establishment and the ruling elites that manage and supervise them.

The establishment, the transnationals, the oligarchy, the bankers and imperialism are watching the working class with their hands tied by their leaderships. They test and select their general staff that will command the attack, having achieved a huge victory with the electoral trap and disorganizing the workers' ranks.
The situation of the working class is a fragile one, because, as if it were not enough, as we have already said, the adaptation of the FIT and its parties to the regime is already scandalous. They promised that the capitalist catastrophe of the nation can be overcome by putting many left MPs in parliament and fighting in it. As if it would be possible to win and achieve minimally serious demands that the masses need without defeating capitalism, and that is done with the victory of the socialist revolution. Revolution that they have very well swept under the carpet.
That is why we Marxists affirm that above all the partial demands of our class is the question of power. The FIT, in its election campaign, claims that without seizing it, the working class can improve its standard of living and existence. It's a lie. A fallacy. It is a Reformism without reforms, which only votes for laws that give alms, designed by a government that is an agent of the IMF, which put a couple of coins in one pocket of the exploited and took out, by means of the hyperinflation the whole wallet in the other, as Massa did the last few weeks.
How to achieve the reduction of the working day, expropriate the land from the oligarchy (a question they keep quiet about), nationalize foreign trade, that is, attack the property of the capitalists, without taking power? These people... Who are they kidding to? Marxism? What do they want to invent? Everything has already been written about reformism without reform.

Argentina is at a real crossroads. As we have said, the bourgeoisie selects its institutions to go on the attack. It has its hands free to do so. It explores the conditions with all its agents to regulate its attack. The ruling classes are aware that without a new mass of surplus value extracted from the working class, the IMF will not be able to collect its usurious debt nor will capital reconstitute its rate of profit.

With the trap of the elections an attempt was made to falsely reconcile class antagonisms and stop the revolutionary struggle of the masses. For now, the bourgeoisie has succeeded. But it is cautious. It is exploring the opportunity for the chainsaw, but at the same time it is preparing to make the attack with anesthesia, with deception and a government of national unity of the bourgeois forces.

The working class has not yet surrendered. It distrusts the regime and its parties. But it does not find a way and an organization for the struggle. It is waiting for an initiative from its organizations, and this did not come. Therefore, a dangerous process is opening up that can lead to transform its anger and hatred into isolated explosions of despair when the attacks of the capitalists began.
The only instrument the leaderships of the working class have used allí these years for the preparation of this ongoing struggle was the fire hose. And now they blame the masses for having doused the gunpowder. They are traitors!

The proto-fascist tendencies, which the bourgeoisie will try ever more boldly if the proletariat does not put up a fight, represent the organic product of capitalist decadence, of the same system from which Massa comes, as well as that anti-worker and pro-imperialist party which is Peronism, which here and there produces a metamorphosis always in the service of the big capitalists and imperialism.

 

The tasks of the moment

The conditions of the battlefield and the policies of the bourgeoisie and imperialism must be patiently explained to the working class. There is no time to lose. The run-off must be faced with a program and tasks that prepare the working class for a decisive class war.
Reformists complain about the "passivity" of the working class. This is an infamy. The responsibility for the present passivity is placed on the shoulders of the working masses. As if the parties and trade unions are on the fringes of the proletariat and are not its organs of struggle.
For decades, the working class set up political and trade union organizations for the struggle. At the decisive moments, like now, when capitalist Argentina is falling on the shoulders of the exploited, these organizations have become a dead weight collapsing on their heads. This has been imposed by the trade union bureaucracy, the picketeer bureaucracy and the parliamentary cretinism of the FIT.

The working class knows that what lies ahead is a decisive struggle to get out of the present prostration. And it does not find any bold leadership that had pushed for a revolutionary campaign throughout the country, even using the election campaign. The class was left isolated in scattered fights and partial demands, which were won one by one by the bourgeoisie.
It is a question of life and death. The attack of the capitalists is already here and will only deepen. Imperialism, worldwide, and the bankrupt US imperialism in particular, is deepening the attack on the masses in order to get out of its own crisis. The massacre in Gaza is a new chastisement that it has prepared for the masses in the Maghreb and the Middle East, and internationally.
Under the orders of the 4th Fleet of the US, the Lima Group of 11 armies of 11 Latin American states emerged under its orders, from the military bases installed in Honduras, Colombia, Chile and Peru.
Imperialism is coming for everything. The masses of Latin America and the US put up a fight and are waging a hard battle. Despite having suffered defeats, such as the counterrevolutionary coup in Peru or the diversion of their struggles by the traitors of Stalinism and trade union bureaucracies, towards pseudo-parliamentary breakthroughs which, once they have disorganized the masses, move forward so that the bourgeoisie and imperialism can deepen the plunder of our countries.
But the working class on the Americas has not given up. In the US the auto workers are leading the way, as the masses of Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia were yesterday.
In Argentina, a decisive battle of the Latin American working class is being fought and will be fought in the immediate period.
Imperialism and the bourgeoisies have the role of the traitorous leaderships in their favor. Even the former Trotskyists, currently renegades, who called to vote and support, and even to enter the governments of class collaboration as in Brazil, as the Boric government that administers the business of the Pinochetista regime, or yesterday  Castillo, or Petro and his reconciliation plan of "peace of the cemeteries" in Colombia. And what is worse, they are hiding and cleansing from the left the biggest betrayal of the Americas, which is the surrender of workers' and peasants' Cuba to imperialism. They are responsible for the "backwardness in the consciousness of the masses". They are traitors! They have put the motto "Socialism is no more" and beat the workers who revolt against the new capitalist Cuba and protect the "gusanos" of Havana, who meet with the "gusanos" of Miami to do business.
These are the conditions of the battlefield internationally and in Argentina, which the conscious and discerning workers must understand in order to orient themselves with a class and revolutionary policy.

Let's start at the beginning... Blank vote? Null vote? Abstention? Out with the runoff of imperialism and the parties of the US embassy! Let them all go away, let not a single one remain!

Enough of electoral trickery and deceit!
Make way to the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the exploited!

Those at the top are coming for everything, let's prepare a decisive struggle to go after them all!

We are on time. Let's set up a national committee of militant workers' organizations and the picketers' movement, to prepare and organize the struggle against the traitors of the trade union bureaucracy, to confront the capitalists and to win the general strike!
The condition for this is to break with the bourgeoisie and all its institutions of domination. A new pole of class independence must be set up, so that the working class can have its say in national political life, before it is too late! No more parliamentary pacts with the bourgeoisie! No more subjugating the trade unions to the bosses! No more begging for handouts for the unemployed movement!
For a workers' and revolutionary solution to the crisis!
For the unity of the working class of Latin America! For a continental struggle against imperialism! Stand up with the trade unions and the revolutionary masses of Gaza!
Out with the bourgeois Stalinist scum from Havana!
Let's bring back the workers' and peasants' revolution in Cuba and the entire Latin America!

Argentina will be socialist or a colony of Wall Street!

Carlos Munzer