Argentina - March 1, 2024
There is no more time: hunger, unemployment, layoffs, the looting of the nation...
They make life unbearable for workers and poor people
Enough of Milei, imperialist looting and superprofits of the big capitalist gangs!
Enough of the truce from the union bureaucracy! Enough of fighting divided against unemployment, layoffs and apallingly miserable collective bargains!
48-hour General Strike and Fight Plan now!
We must unite the ranks of the workers!
From the bases we must impose a
National Congress of Employed and Unemployed Workers
Open the road to the Argentinazo!
So that the workers and the poor people eat and live with dignity,
this rotten capitalist system deserves to perish
The self-proclaimed “emperor” Milei, a lackey and puppet of the pirate funds of Wall Street, after his trip to his homeland of choice, the United States, has returned recharged to deepen his attack on the people.
To get the dollars to repay the IMF, he has stolen the wages of retirees and state workers and has pacted collective bargains well below inflation with his Labor Secretary and the complicity of the union bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, the majority of the working class Is working under precarious conditions with monthly wages of 190 thousand pesos (less than u$d 173 per month, 6/7d, often more than 9/24h), as flexible and unregistered staff, and due to the fares increase in urban transport they can no longer even go to be exploited as slaves at their jobs.
The war wages on us by those above is total and gives no truce. The new fees for electricity, gas, etc., are the missiles fired against the masses by this gang of capitalist criminals led by the pirate Wall Street investment fund BlackRock, Eurnekin and other partners within the AEA (Argentine Business Association). .
We are facing a gang of big Wall Street capitalists who are coming to definitively colonize the nation and even redraw the internal borders of the old semi-colonial Argentina among the “lithium provinces” in the north, the “provinces of the Cordillera and its minerals” westwards, the “province of Vaca Muerta” with its gas in Patagonia and the soy-wheat-corn-sunflower “provinces of the Pampa Húmeda”. And the rest, the vast majority of workers, sunk in hunger and the most dreadful misery in an Argentina maquila.
The bourgeois fractions are disputing with those who currently own power around how their societies and businesses will be and who will also pay for this crisis... As we saw with the "Omnibus Law", in the crisis of the provinces, etc., we are facing a ruling classes haggling over who loses and who wins in the new colony Argentina.
But this is a dispute among bosses over their business; not the workers’ business. What's more, all of them: the challenging governor "Nachito" of Chubut, all the other governors, the peronists, those who call themselves "soft or hard opposition", etc., not only apply in their provinces a belt-tightening and attack on the workers the same or worse than Milei; they are more afraid of a revolutionary irruption of the masses that they are seeking to contain together with their allies of the union bureaucracy, than of the colonizing attack that is underway.
That is what the hypocrisy of the “opposition” to the government of the boss politicians and the union bureaucracy is all about. They know that a new 2001 or a Cordobazo would attack the businesses of them all: the bourgeois fractions, the IMF and the looters of the nation.
Yesterday, February 29, dozens of fighting teachers, judicial workers, etc., who fought in Chubut for 3 years to be paid their wages on arrears and against the mining companies that came for water and the destruction of the province's habitat, were brought to trial.
It is the workers who are going to testify in court and at risk of going to prison, and not that bully governor that does not go beyond an ineffectual warning and is actually no more than a “freethinking” partner of Milei and Macri.
Day by day Milei deepens an open and ruthless war against the working class
The parliamentary left wants to make the workers believe that this attack can be stopped from the Congress, and that the “Omnibus Law” was stopped there on a front with the bosses' politicians... A fallacy.
With a shower of decrees, the government has been applying the same offensive written in the "Omnibus Law" multiplied by a thousand without the blessing of the Parliament, using the power given by the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 to the president.
The left is looking for “democratic” allies to confront the “dictator” Milei, which constitutes a true political scam because in that alliance with “opposition” deputies, the working class cannot even stop the offensive of the government and its bosses, much less get out of their unprecedented sufferings.
The truth is that the plan to repress the masses, establishing a police regime, and ferociously attacking the people: everything is being resolved outside the Congress.
The real thing is that Milei has dressed as an “emperor” and the powers to do so were given to him in the US embassy, where the entire political life of the country is developing. Political leaders (whether or not they voted for the “Omnibus Law”), judges and even union bureaucrats go there to ask for instructions…
This is colonial Argentina. Yes, even Cameron himself, the U.K. Foreign Secretary, has come to visit his Argentine colony in the Malvinas. Not to mention Blinken, US State Secretary, who came to personally supervise the progress of the colonization of the nation, embraced by Milei and the lackey Minister of Foreign Affairs Mondino. They want to turn Argentina into another “star” on the US flag.
To the war that the capitalists and their government have declared on us, we must oppose the class war of the workers and the poor people.
The war is class against class...
In the hands of the union bureaucracy and the “opposition” politicians, Milei only buys time to finish his work of colonizing the nation and defeating the working class.
Daer, the top bureaucrat of the CGT, has declared that this is a “chess game” that they have with the government… How cynical. The bureaucracy has barely moved a pawn.
Millions of workers are outside the unions and do not even enjoy the “benefits” of the apallingly miserable collective bargains signed by the bureaucracy.
Any serious struggle to confront the attack of the capitalists must start from uniting the ranks of the workers.
Indeed, if the workers want to do so, they will have to “change horses in the middle of the river” and get rid, from the bases up, of all the leaders who block the way for this unity.
In the discussion of the minimum wage (which was set by decree at 200 thousand pesos, barely u$d190 while we are having a 240% yearly inflation!), the bureaucracy Is once again surrendering not only our wages, but also the unity of the worker ranks.
Precisely, it was time to fight for a minimum, living and mobile wage of 1,200,000 pesos (u$d 1,150 for now) for everyone: retirees, contracted, flexible workers, those in unions with lower agreements, the unemployed. That would have quickly brought all layers of the working class, which are still dispersed and enduring unprecedented sufferings, to standing on their feet and entering the fray.
What “if Milei has a majority”, what “if he keeps the votes”, or “if he doesn't keep them”… That is what the bourgeoisie is discussing, as for being mindful and prevent a mass irruption or to critically support the government, as it is doing.
What are they talking about? In real life two classes are confronting each other: the capitalists and the workers with their allies, the ruined middle classes, that is, the vast majority of the population that produces the enormous wealth of the nation.
These are the forces that confront each other. The elections were a deception, where the only option the workers had was to vote for which executioner would torment them.
Can't waste any more time
The government's offensive of high rates, high living cost and inflation that terrifies the people and ruins the working class, brings unemployment as consequence. A wave of layoffs Is sweeping through the factories. The capitalists have stopped part of their machines. Consumption Is falling brutally. And so, in a sea of hungry people, of consumers leaving the market, of machines that stop, the government Is seeking “economic stability.”
This constitutes a great scam so that the working class does not go out to fight. This is the war plan of the capitalists.
This war plan can only be opposed by a decisive struggle to fight for the minimum, living and mobile wage of 1,350,000 pesos (u$d1,300 for now), indexed monthly with a trigger clause according to inflation, and a sliding scale of working hours, that is, working hours reduction according to the capable labor availability, without wage reduction, so that all available hands can start producing. This is the only favorable solution for the workers.
The capitalists will say that this cannot be done. The workers will say that what cannot be done is starving the people.
The capitalists say they don't win money, as if the rising prices were phantoms and not the profits of big businessmen.
We must impose the immediate opening of the accounting books of the entire food and goods marketing chain so that the workers can demonstrate with the numbers in their hands how the capitalist parasites plunder the people and make super profits.
Factory that closes, furloughs or fires, must start to operate under the control of the workers. Not a single layoff.
Only with these minimal demands, which are a decisive step to expel the IMF and imperialism in Argentina, will the working class be able to unite its ranks, organizing from the unions and the piquetero movement supply committees, price control committees, of retirees, of unemployed, etc.
The working class must take the resolution of the crisis into its own hands so that the capitalists pay for it.
Those at the top say they want Vaca Muerta gas pits, lithium and the Pampa Húmeda; they are vulgar thieves of the nation's wealth.
We have to go after all of them to recover what they have stolen from the people!
They have come for the entire wealth of the nation. We workers must go for the wealth that was stolen from us.
Nationalizing foreign trade to prevent the flight of foreign currency and nationalizing private banking without compensation and under the control of the workers to guarantee savings to the people, is the task of the moment before Caputo's gang and company expropriate them from the middle classes, who are already being forced to exchange their dollars savings to survive.
We must expropriate the people's expropriators!
Those below, despite their leaders, are looking for a way to fight
When the first government measures were announced, spontaneous “cacerolazos” (pot-banging) went through the most important cities in the country. This was not organized by any fictitious assembly of the party apparatuses. It was a spontaneous action of the enraged people who should have to set up, as happened in 2001, mass base assemblies that coordinate all the sectors that enter the combat.
Different unions are in their collective bargains. The task of the moment is to achieve a single national collective bargain to prevent the isolation trade by trade of the claims that belong to the entire working class.
Branch 21 of the UOM of the steel workers Is threatening with a fight plan for wages and the employers have responded with the threat of closing Acindar.
In SUTNA, the employers have just fired dozens of workers at Bridgestone. Thus it weakens the workers in the fight for wages.
This is the war plan of the capitalists, supported by the Milei-Caputo offensive.
It is a question of life and death to conquer the unity of the working class. In order to do so we must incorporate as a demand the transfer to permanent payroll of all contracted and unregistered workers of all establishments in the country to re-establish internal commissions and bodies of delegates that represent the majority of workers.
The unemployed movement cannot continue as a beggar even one more day. We must unite the unions and the fight against layoffs, to the fight for the reduction of working hours that leads to decent work for all.
For committees of enployed and unemployed workers together with the struggle committees of dismissed workers who resist and defend their jobs!
The slaves are not even allowed to work. The cost of urban transport can no longer be tolerated.
The fight for free worker-student tickets paid for by the capitalists must be the demand of the moment, as part of the collective bargains discussion, the agreements and the student struggle. How to impose it? By jumping the turnstiles like in Chile to conquer Dignity.
For a National Congress of grassroots delegates with a mandate from the entire employed and unemployed labor movement!
Freedom to and dropping of all charges on the persecuted fighters!
Trial and punishment of the murderers of Maldonado and other working-class and popular martyrs!
Dissolution of the repressive forces of the state!
Enough Is enough!
Enough of Milei!
Enough of the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 with its aristocratic Senate and its Parliament where gangs discuss their businesses!
Enough of “justice for the rich”!
Active strike for 48 hours and General Strike until the war launched by the oppressors and imperialism is overcome by the workers!
Everyone of them must go away, not even one should remain!
Open the road to the working class! Open the road to the Argentinazo!
Argentina will be socialist or it will be a colony of Wall Street
Editorial Board of Democracia Obrera |
