Argentina - March 5, 2024

The Milei government, the IMF, US ambassador Stanley
and the big capitalists
Are escalating their war against the workers

In these first 3 months of government, with pan-banging in the streets, hard struggles surrounding those laid off with solidarity, wage conflicts by union that led to a partial general strike on January 24…

The working class is not shying away from the fight

Their fighting is for now limited because, in the first place, the leadership of the unions as well as of the piquetero movement refuse to coordinate the demands for jobs and wage rises against the anti worker government of Milei and to set up common organizations of struggle that could unify employed and unemployed workers and all sectors that enter the fight in each city, province and at national level.
This unification is crucial today, when thousands of layoffs are underway, such as in the UOCRA (Construction Workers Union), due to the decree paralyzing all public works; among state workers; and also in hundreds of private factories as a blackmail by the employers keen to increase the exploitation of their workers.

The high fees and fares of the public services and the pervasive conditions of misery are pushing the creation of still molecular struggle organizations of retirees.
The new and brutal increase in these fees and fares that is coming in March and April Is threatening with an intensification of the cacerolazos and the taking to the streets of the ruined middle classes.

However, the union bureaucracy Is preventing any coordination of the different forces in struggle that seek to unify in a generalized claim the demands of all sectors attacked by the government.

Undoubtedly, the fight to set up bodies of self-organization and coordination of the masses that are starting to go out and fight, is a key factor in the pursuit of the development of a counteroffensive against this government of misery, colonization and surrendition.

What is as worrying as all this is that the union bureaucrats insist in leaving the unregistered workers, the falsely considered “self-employed” workers, the outsourced and time-contracted workers, and the unemployed, out of the demands and unions, thought they are currently the absolute majority of the working class and those who suffer the most from the government and the regime’s offensive.
In each collective bargain and in each factory fight, the demands of the most exploited sectors of the labor movement are left aside.
To tell the truth, this is a great conquest for the capitalists, which was guaranteed by the Peronist government of Fernández and before by Macri.

This is what the betrayal of the bureaucracy is all about, because it divides the workers, disorganizing their struggles as it calls for pressure actions, designed to make the bosses sit and negotiate to maintain the bureaucrats’ privileges, and the only thing the working class receives from the government, which is at war against them, is a thousand times greater attack; however this attack goes now against the union bureaucrats themselves, whom the government considers increasingly less necessary to keep the labor movement under control.
The imperialist bourgeois gangs are increasingly enthused and have upped their blows because 60% of the Argentine working class is already under maquila conditions. The bureaucracy is responsible for this situation because all union leaders know where are the workshops, factories, construction sites, distribution centers, etc. where there are unregistered or short-contracted workers, who do not earn more than 200 thousand miserable pesos (u$d200) per month and are left to their fate.
Any decisive struggle of the labor movement, so that it can exert all its vigor, must take this central demand into its hands and unite its ranks with the method of the assembly, to recover the bodies of factory or shop delegates, the workers' self-organization and the coordination of all the sectors that are fighting.

What ended up weakening the unions and union centers to the extreme was the bureaucracy, dividing the struggles and surrendering the majority of the working class as cannon fodder for exploitation.
The leadership of the workers is the limit the working class has to win the battle that it is already waging. The central task to be fulfilled is an advance in imposing organizations capable of waging a struggle at the level of the attack by the government and the capitalists that does not cease, but only deepens. Uniting all the sectors that are fighting and their demands, setting up bodies of coordination and self-organization is the task of the moment to prepare and organize a decisive combat, even superior to that of 2001, to sweep away this anti-worker government and the rotten capitalist regime on which it is based.

Those at the top are fighting for the bounty of the looting at the expense of rising hunger and a chronic misery that is settling in Argentina

In his speech during the opening of the ordinary sessions in Congress, Milei called on the governors to sign the “May Pact” in Córdoba. In this way, Wall Street's BlackRock, Ambassador Stanley, the IMF and the big capitalists listed on the New York Stock Exchange, have called on the different bourgeois factions, whether those in the import-sustitutive industries that work for the home-market, the regional bourgeoisies and their  big works contractors and even the monopolies installed in Argentina that produce for the domestic market, to associate in their businesses or be left out of this plan.

In its offensive in Latin America and in Argentina in particular, imperialism has already defined which provinces it plans to respect and even award super-benefits. USA is even molding a new nation, colonial Argentina. In it there will only exist the provinces of Vaca Muerta in Patagonia, one in the northwest made from those provinces where the lithium is, the Cuyo provinces with their minerals and the Pampa Húmeda of the cereals. All of this so that the gringos can take their loot abroad… Let the rest die.
We are not facing one more belt-tightening, but rather the imperative need of imperialism to inflict a defeat on the working class, the only “truly national” class, to definitively fully colonizing Argentina, as it has already been doing with its agents, whether “democratic” or “coup plotters”, throughout Latin America.

The bourgeois gangs hidden behind the governors and the “conciliatory opposition” or under the wing of the Kirchnerites, or the European transnationals that enter into open competition with the US for the Latin American subcontinent, all have a great point in common with the Wall Street gang, Citibank, BlackRock and the IMF that today controls the government: all of them are fans of imposing labor flexibility and total slavery of the workers and strengthening the nation's submission to the IMF.
What's more, both the "opposition" bandits and the parasites who are in the government today, had in the Peronist government of the Fernandezes and Massa a phenomenal "squeezed lemon" that allowed them to organize the greatest attacks on the working class of the last years. As we will not tire of insisting, between Macri and the Fernandezes they put the majority of the workers under unregistered works “without rights”…

These “opposition” bourgeois sectors only want an equitable distribution of business or even a minority part of it, but they will never be willing for the labor movement to break out independently. The thing is that in this struggle, the demands of the working class would attack all bourgeois factions and gangs equally, as all bosses all declared enemies of the interests of the workers.
Hence, any policy of placing the working class at the feet of any of the bourgeois fractions to carry out “intelligent negotiations” or a “patriotic resistance” is suicidal for the exploited. It is already clear that the greatest limit that the working class has to fight is the union bureaucracy, as it is always tied to this or that bourgeois sector.

In this inter-bourgeois dispute the workers have nothing to gain.
This war is class against class.

The working class neither has to be in Córdoba in May, nor today with that den of bandits of the bourgeois Congress, where the Kirchnerites together with the parliamentary left have announced that there was a “victory” because the “Omnibus Law” had been defeated, when this was instead imposed with a thousand times more virulence with the government's Decree of Necessity and Urgency. And in case this DNU is “defeated” in the Senate, the government will take out 100 more DNUs because the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 allows it, which gives the president the powers of a monarch and the powers of supervisor of the businesses of imperialism to the Supreme Court of Justice.

Milei has risen above even the Parliament and declared himself “emperor.” He is going for everything. The US imperialism wants gas, lithium, minerals and agribusiness and is willing to get them at any cost, as it has already demonstrated in Peru with a wild coup and before in Bolivia with Áñez.
What Milei is looking for today is a pact with sectors of the big bourgeoisie and its politicians, especially the governors, to achieve “legality” and parliamentary “legitimacy” for the looting that he is already promoting. And if not, he will move forward without them. Wall Street knows very well the kind of cowards and miserable partners with whom it is acting in its plan to colonize Argentina.

Faced with unprecedented suffering, despite the union bureaucracy, the working class is fighting.
Although reformism wants to avoid it, the only way is the Argentinazo and the revolution

There is no time to lose. The working class wants to fight. But to do this it is essential to unify their ranks, transform each assembly in each factory and in each establishment into a bastion of the fight for the transfer of all unregistered and contract workers to the permanente payroll, and get decent work for all, reducing working hours without wages reduction, because it is time for the capitalists to pay for this crisis.

The working class needs a pact with a revolutionary program to unite its ranks.
To achieve this, we must set up coordinating bodies to unify all the claims and struggles, first of all those who have no voice: millions of piece-work, unregistered and contracted workers, who have been expelled from the political and economic life of the country… and of the unions.
There is an urgent need for a National Congress of employed and unemployed workers, which we can achieve by surrounding each fight against layoffs with solidarity, uniting them with the fight of the unemployed for decent work and all their demands and with the conflicts over collective agreements, so that they contemplate the transfer to a permanent payrolls of all workers…

A National Congress of employed and unemployed workers that call for contracted and unregistered workers to vote for delegates in assemblies or underground by factory to recover the internal commissions and bodies of delegates.

The time has come to set up a new labor movement from the bases that would rebuild its unity and declare war on its executioners, with the methods of class struggle and proletarian revolution.

Against Milei's government and the police regime, repression and decrees
Let’s impose strikes, pickets, self-defense committees and the General Strike

Not just any strike is needed, but THE strike that shows who really rules in Argentina: the working class or a handful of millionaires who have become rich with the sweat of the people and the looting of the nation.

The Milei government still keeps a large part of its social base because it demonstrates what it says not only in words, but in actions. The thing is that in the midst of the catastrophe of the capitalist system, beyond the fantasies of Milei's charlatanism, he is leading an inveterate fight to win.

Due to the crisis of its leadership, the working class is still not up to that battle. The workers need to win a bold and decisive struggle to defeat the government and all the bourgeois and “opposition” gangs that support the attack on the exploited on behalf of imperialism.
The old owners of Argentina and their society are bankrupt. They survive by colonizing the nation and multiplying their plunder by a thousand. We need a new Argentina, revolutionary and socialist. If the revolutionary proletariat does not take power, Milei will advance to consolidate his “emperor” regime and fascism will come.
The masses need a leadership and organizations that show them that with their struggle they can win. That is what the task of revolutionaries is about.

The working class wants to enter the fight. Its leaders, who subject it to pacts with the enemy and the pacifism of bourgeois parliamentarism, only manage to hinder this struggle that is and will be life and death for the workers and future generations of the exploited.

The time has come to begin to set up the self-organization coordinators of the workers, with direct democracy, with the method of assemblies, to break the containment dams of the traitors of the union bureaucracy and unify the struggles despite and in against them, as we did in 2001, in the Cordobazo and in the Coordinadoras of the '70s. It's high time.

This can't be taken anymore!
Those at the top come for everything.
We have to go for what is ours. We have to go for all of them.

Editorial Committee of the newspaper “Democracia Obrera”