Argentina - February 19, 2024

Polemic

In the Congress of the oligarchy, the big bosses and imperialism, the Omnibus Law was withdrawn while a brutal economic war against the masses deepens...

In the document presented by Lizarrague  "Milei's first defeat and the new coming from below” and which was voted on, amended and corrected by the national leadership of the PTS on February 8 of this year, they affirm that Milei's government is a "weak Bonapartism" for suffering a defeat in Congress for withdrawing the Omnibus Law. Castillo, deputy of the PTS, also insists on this statement.

Thrilled, the MPs of PTS celebrated the fall of the law by giving each other flowers. What do the PTS deputies celebrate? Firstly, we Marxists identify the bourgeois Parliament in a semi-colony in the imperialist era as one more of the mechanisms of deception of the regime of domination. This institution is a notary office of the US embassy where what imperialism decides is approved. Parliament, as an institution of democracy for the rich, exists to deceive the masses and has fulfilled the role that Wall Street expected. While the Omnibus Law was being discussed, the “weak and defeated” government carried out the plan that the imperialist companies, the banks and Biden’s government dictated.

It is necessary to clear the enormous cloud of dust thrown into the eyes of the working class of Argentina and the world, regrettably promoted by the leadership of the PTS and the FIT-U

We affirm that what the working class and the group of exploited people in Argentina are experiencing today is not the “defeat” of the Omnibus Law, but rather they are bearing on their shoulders a brutal economic blow carried out by the government in only two months of mandate: high rates, rampant inflation, misery wages, labor slavery with 70% of workers without an agreement, outsourced, contracted or unregistered and millions of unemployed people plunged into famine, feeding their children in neighborhood soup kitchens.

The government, protected by the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853-94, uses the monarchy powers granted to the president to govern by decree.

Given this, the union bureaucracy, which has just been pushed to a 12-hour general strike on January 24, continues at the feet of the Peronist bourgeoisie and the bosses' justice, openly obeying Stanley’s commands, the US ambassador in Argentina.

The leadership of the PTS says that we are facing “an attempt of a 'weak' Bonapartism (...) A government that, despite the support of the big bourgeoisie, could go into an overall crisis if there is a drastic fall in the social base that is still preserves (…) This weakness was revealed with the defeat of the Omnibus Law” (Christian Castillo, “What the defeat of the Omnibus Law left and what is coming”, LID, February 13, 2024).

But, each of the blows delivered by this government that the PTS sees as “weak” has not been approved or discussed in Congress. If for the leadership of the PTS and the FIT-U the law of this Bonapartist government was defeated, why doesn't Congress stop the economic attack against the working class and the exploited? Because at this point ALL the bosses' politicians agree that it must be the masses who pay for the current crisis and bankruptcy of the nation.

In Parliament the discussion revolved around the delegation of powers to Milei, privatizations such as that of YPF that leave juicy royalties to the provinces and about the taxes that the government wanted to impose on different fractions of the bourgeoisie such as the agrarian oligarchy that is against paying any type of withholding tax on grain exports.

The thing is that, to pay the IMF, the government also wanted different bourgeois gangs to chip in, reducing federal co-participation, harming the regional bourgeoisies and the agrarian upper bourgeoisie. This was what they disagree on during the "debates" of Parliament and left open a negotiation of how the profits of each of them will be in this offensive plan of imperialism to colonize the nation.

The PTS silences the imperialist offensive to impose Argentina as a colony and makes Milei's Bonapartist government appear “weak” when what we witnessed for days in Parliament were nothing more than bourgeois disputes about which gang should pay.

The offensive of the Milei government, supported by the AEA (Argentine Business Association) and the AmCham (Chamber of US monopolies in the country), the UIA, etc., is directly commanded by the great financial capital of Wall Street, such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, etc., who are the heads of the government and are traveling to Argentina to clarify the plan of looting, colonization and super-exploitation of the working class.

Does the PTS think that the K and Peronism “are silent” and doing “nothing”? They are the guarantors, along with all the Peronist leaders of the unions and the picketer bureaucracy, of giving the government time to move forward in this attack. That is, the PTS believes that Peronism is doing nothing as it is actually doing everything.

We remind the PTS leadership that “Colonial and semi-colonial countries are under the sway not of native capitalism but of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken but on the contrary, strengthens the need of direct, daily, practical ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments which are in essence subject to them – the governments of colonial or semi-colonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates both in colonies and semi-colonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and semicolonial governments, as protectors, patrons and, sometimes, as arbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the Bonapartist and semi-Bonapartist character of governments in the colonies and in backward countries generally. This likewise constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unions upon the state.”. (León Trotsky, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay)

Milei’s government: A “weak Bonapartism”?

Although the PTS wants to make the working class believe that in Argentina there is a bourgeois-democratic parliamentary regime, Caputo's measures were not voted on in Congress because precisely the Constitution of '53 gives Bonapartist powers to the government. Everything Milei does, imposing recurring devaluations, salary liquidation, removal of subsidies, high rates, etc., has open constitutional protection to do it so as president.

Can the PTS leadership tell us what economic strike against the working class was stopped and defeated in Congress? No attack has been stopped, nor will it be stopped in that den of bandits.

Precisely the circus in Parliament and its operation did not stop the attack and the war against the masses, but during those days and afterwards it only deepened.

Defining Milei's government as a “weak Bonapartism” means sugarcoating a reality that only comes out of the conjurers' galley of the PTS leadership, who do their analysis from the comfortable armchairs of the Chamber of Deputies, alluding that Milei is “weak” because it does not have a parliamentary majority, or because it does not have any provincial government… a vision copied from Kirchnerist journalists and absolutely far from Marxism.

Can a “weak” Bonapartism impose an anti-picketing protocol and a police regime? Milei and Bullrich, under US command, have brought out the Police, the Prefecture and the Gendarmerie who will have free rein to crack down anyone who wants to step on the asphalt. An example of this occurred when the Congress sessions were taking place, where the police fiercely repressed, with dozens of prisoners not only in Buenos Aires, but also in Rosario, Mendoza, Jujuy, etc. Even the piquetero movement has not returned to the streets fighting for genuine work.

The PTS hides that Milei's strength to unleash such a Bonapartist attack on all the exploited comes from the diversion and strangulation of the Latin American revolution by the mostly Stalinist union bureaucracies, from the fact that Cuba was sold out to the capitalist restoration from by the new bourgeoisie of the CP, and that is why they deepen the counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism worldwide.

This is why Milei heads the Executive Branch today. And for this reason, settled in these conditions and in the brutal tearing apart of the workers' ranks, the US imperialism comes for everything... and there is no Parliament to stop them.

Milei's Bonapartist government has not settled yet, but it seeks to do so by defeating and removing the working class out of the picture. The last word has not been said yet. In short, the strength of this government is directly proportional to the betrayal of the union and piquetero (unemployed) bureaucracy, to its submission to the Peronist bourgeoisie and to the bosses' justice and to the deep division that was imposed within workers' ranks. They are the ones who support this government!

Falsifying the lessons of the Argentine revolution of 2001, the PTS in the Congress and in the streets organizes a “democratic front” with Kirchnerism…

For the PTS, Peronism "will continue as long as it can playing its double game, of parliamentary opposition and street demobilization, with its main references such as Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or Sergio Massa without saying a word but implying that the streets must not be taken" (“What the defeat of the Omnibus Law left and what is coming”, February 13, 2024).

The leadership of the PTS and the entire FIT-U ask the Peronist bourgeoisie to change its class nature and to put its forces into mobilizing against the Milei government... Who are they trying to fool? A few days ago, Cristina Kirchner wrote a letter from her luxury chalet a few meters from the National Congress. Of course, she made a class statement, defending the interests of the bourgeois faction that she represents, a cowardly bourgeoisie and as much a servant of imperialism as Milei.

Kirchnerism governed the previous four years, they have pulverized salaries, imposed brutal worker slavery, and they handed Milei a labor movement dismembered, divided, and plunged into unprecedented hardships. And now they rant against the Peronist bourgeoisie for “demobilizing”?

Do they expect this division above the bosses' politicians and their front with the Kichnerists that we saw in Congress to be expressed in mobilizations in the streets to defeat Milei? A fraud.

They want to pass off the Peronist politicians as “democratic” to whom they demand to mobilize against “the right” of Milei and Macri… but both come out of the same sewer of this rotten capitalist system.

No one has been defeated yet. We insist, this is so, because a brutal betrayal of the Peronist union bureaucracy led by the PJ and monitored by Stanley, the head of ALL EMPLOYER POLITICIANS IN ARGENTINA, has been imposed.

The PTS and the FIT-U want to make us see the film backwards. The revolutionary exploits of 2001 recognized their enemy, the slogan of “Everyone of them must go away, not even one of them should remain!” confronted all the employers' politicians and also the union bureaucracy, which was forced to call 8 general strikes against De la Rúa.

Truth must be told. The Popular Assemblies of 2001-2002 organized the middle classes bankrupted by the imperialist bankers. The revolutionary piquetero movement, vanguard of the entire working class, unified the ranks of the exploited under the slogan of “pickets, pots and pans, the fight is one.”

While the piquetero movement blocked the circulation of goods on the route, the employed workers imposed political strikes that directly confronted the anti-worker government of the Alliance, while the bankrupted middle classes attacked the banks that had expropriated their savings.

What do these enormous feats have to do with the “neighborhood assemblies” that the PTS promotes in CABA and Greater Buenos Aires where the FIT-U and Kirchnerism militants go to carry out cultural events? Absolutely nothing. Precisely, the FIT-U is anxiously waiting for Kirchnerism to unite "breaking with its demobilization policy" and that, as Castillo says, the "CGT militants" break the "inertia" and call for assemblies in the factories... They falsify and take the tactics of Leon Trotsky's Action Committee in France in the '30s out of context to cover up their democratic front in the neighborhood assemblies of the FIT-U with the K, a true front of class collaboration.

Christian Castillo tells us “Our members support and promote the neighborhood Assemblies that have begun to be established in CABA, greater Buenos Aires and other sectors of the country, an instance of self-organization that we call on to strengthen, especially those who have been voting for us. And to come together with the working class, its struggles and its organizations…”

Who are they trying to fool? The working class will stand up with self-organization, breaking with the bourgeoisie, overcoming the slab of the pro-US imperialist Peronist union bureaucracy, uniting the employed and unemployed and setting up its own organizations of political struggle, with direct democracy...

For the PTS and the FIT-U the fight is not class against class, but rather calling on the “democratic and progressive” bourgeoisie to mobilize to confront the “right-wing forces”… this is the classic Stalinist policy of class collaboration, which ties the hands of the working class. They even go so far as to call their voters to join this fight to strengthen their “neighborhood assemblies.” How are votes for FIT-U organized? The working class organizes itself in unions, in factory committees, the revolutionaries organize themselves in cells... an invention that is not new. For the PTS, as it was in the MAS of the '90s, the “neighborhood assemblies” and the “action committees” are made up of its militants and their voters. Do they mean to tell us then that the Soviets will take place within the FIT-U? From ridicule there is no turning back.

This parliamentary left is the enemy of calling for a general strike to decisively confront the US imperialism colonization plan, of organizing a Congress of Employed and Unemployed to unite the ranks of workers... none of that.

We insist, the FIT-U and the PTS, speaking from the upper layers of the labor aristocracy, “forget” that 70% of the working class is outside the unions and are already slave labor. The flexible worker does not earn more than 190 thousand pesos... how can he face the government and the war they have declared on us? The great tragedy that the working class is experiencing today is that the bureaucracy, while negotiating not to lose the billions of dollars of social works, is hiding under the bed. A call for a general strike, where transport is stopped and routes are cut, would unite the entire employed, hired and unemployed working class in a single struggle.

But this is not happening. The Peronist bureaucracy buys the government time and supports it, preventing the ranks of the working class from uniting for a vital and mobile minimum wage of $1,300,000 for the entire labor movement, the reduction of the working day so that all available hands enter to work under an agreement would immediately put an end to the war that those at the top have declared on us. This is the true betrayal that has been imposed on us and the FIT-U maintains a thunderous silence.

The working class, brought to a front of class collaboration, will only lower its demands, including the fight for a salary at the level of the family basket, because both Milei, the K and all the bosses' politicians who pose as "opponents" and even the provincial governors tell the working class that “there is no money.” Lie! There is plenty of money, but the IMF, the transnationals and Wall Street are taking it.

But the PTS insists: first we must form a parliamentary front and unitary “neighborhood assemblies” with the Kirchnerist bourgeoisie, which they pompously call “action committees” to defeat the already “weakened” Bonapartist government of Milei.

Stanley, the US embassy and the financial capital of Wall Street are the true rulers here! That's the truth. The situation is already unbearable for the masses. All commodities have New York prices and the worker salary is like that of Haiti. Milei did not do this through Parliament, but rather imposed it by decree.

The one that is really weak is the working class because it cannot conquer the organizations of mass political struggle to resume the revolutionary path of 2001.

Someone has to refresh the minds of the PTS and FIT-U leadership. In 2021, in the Chubutazo, the Megamining law was defeated, surrounding and leaving all the institutions of power of the exploiters in ashes. In the Jujeñazo of 2023, the roadblocks and general assemblies of all the workers and poor peasants made shake all the bosses' parties. The Peronist union bureaucracy said “never again” and isolated these heroic fights.

Taking back to the path of the Chubutazo and the Jujeñazo, that of the self-convened people who began to organize themselves outside the bureaucracy in different parts of the country? Deepen the strike on January 24 to open the way to the general strike? No. The union bureaucracy left the working class in the dark in the face of the capitalists' war. For the PTS and the FIT-U, the way out to confront the government is in unity with the Peronist bourgeoisie that goes from Pichetto to Bregman in congress and from Cámpora to the FIT-U in the streets.

The PTS and the FIT-U are rare “socialists”; they have been seeing Milei saying that “we must end with the socialists” as he did in the meeting with Trump in the United States and they have erased the fight for the socialist revolution from their program even from the electoral campaign.

We need to organize factory committees now, assemblies in all establishments, voting delegates to unite the ranks and all the demands of the entire working class to open the way to the general strike.

Only the working class, leading the exploited as a whole, can defeat the colonizing offensive of imperialism by attacking capitalists’ property, expropriating the expropriators and leaving no stone unturned in bourgeois power, expelling imperialism and setting up a revolutionary worker and popular government.

We must return to the path of 2001. Open the road to the Argentinazo! Open the road to the revolution!

Milenka López and Alejandro Villarruel

Ford the Editorial Board of the paper “The International Workers Organizer”