Argentina - September 19th, 2018

Cost of living, dismissals, tax increases and repression: The government throws the crisis to the workers, and capitalists flee millions of dollars from the nation's wealth
While workers confront Macri’s attack, union bureaucracy gave him truce so that the devaluation prevails and worker's salaries collapse...

Let the strike of 24 and 25 become a new December 18 and 19!

DOWN WITH MACRI!
And the infamous regime of bosses’ politicians and IMF

After the general strike…
Our struggle cannot remain in the hands of the union bureaucracy of the truce, which sold out our salaries, and our jobs

For a workers’ exit to the crisis...

NATIONAL COORDINATING BODY TO UNITE THE STRUGGLES

As in 2001: A National Assembly of Employed and Unemployed Workers must be set up

 

ARGENTINA HAS ENTERED FULLY INTO THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS

Argentina is at the center of the bankruptcy scene of world capitalist economy. Along with Turkey, they are the focus of the crisis that hits mainly Russia, Brazil, South Africa (i.e. BRICS) and even smaller imperialist countries (like Turkey), motorized by the brutal trade war between different imperialist powers, mainly the United States and Germany-France, for the markets and spheres of influence on the planet.
A brutal devaluation, dollars and capital constantly being withdrawn, offensive of IMF and imperialism to keep the wealth and business of the nation;those are the conditions of the global crisis that hit Argentina like a tsunami.

With Trump, the United States has kicked the dashboard of world economy to maintain its supremacy in the market threatened by its imperialist competitors.
On the one hand, it closes its borders and exploits its domestic market again, while trying to impose customs openings around the world in defence of its transnationals and its financial capital. With the rise in the interest rate of the Federal Reserve, the dollar has appreciated. Such measure has caused chain devaluation of all semicolonial world currencies. This allows the US to acquire raw materials and even entire companies in the colonies and semi-colonies at a low price and, at the same time, it favours the exports of their transnational companies located in those countries.

Huge masses of capital are withdrawn from the BRICS and those countries where they have already looted, and where the collection of interest and debts is no longer safe, as in Argentina. They look a shelter to guarantee their profits and flows to the US, where a cycle of capital reflux and recovery begins, while the semi-colonial world sinks into economic turmoil. It is an inevitable process in the world imperialist economy, which Macri cannot stop even increasing the interest rate of Lebacs (Argentinean bond, TN) by 100%.
Nations already strangled and plundered by financial capital like Argentina are pushed to the IMF, which imposes worse conditions of looting and subjection. Taking advantage of this situation, Wall Street recreates a new financial bubble with the external debts of these countries, a new and brutal round of plundering the semi-colonial world. Wall Street’sbanks had made profitable businesses lending those nations the dollars that the Federal Reserve gave them at rate zero. Today, they do it via the IMF.

Clearly, USA is coming for everything. In Middle East, the "seven sisters" - Exxon, Chevron, BP, etc. - seek to keep the control of all the oil, after carrying out a genocide against the Syrian masses and surrounding the revolution in the last trench. This is what the re-imposition of the blockade on Iran means. Whoever does not kneel and refuses to open its customs, the fate of Chinaawaits, whose products Trump has just imposed new taxes for 200,000 million dollars, while threatening to increase them by 25% in 2019.
This is how the rotten imperialist capitalist system works: developing some areas of the planet at the cost of sinking the majority. The parasitism and imperialist looting deepened, constantly sharpening the conditions of the 2008 crash.

In order go into higher adventures in the commercial war, USA needs controlling its own working class and impose an iron discipline in his "backyard." We are facing a real re-colonizing offensive of US imperialism in Latin America. They areredoubling the plundering of wealth and natural resources, guaranteeing the collection of external debts, approving labour flexibilization plans and remaining in full control of the Atlantic trade roads. To this end, it multiplies its military bases in the region, strengthens the Southern Command and shields its servant regimes, taking the Armed Forces to the street, like in Brazil, or as it will do in Argentina, if the situation demands it.
In these plans there is no place for any native bourgeoisie, intermediary in the business of Wall Street. US imperialism wants all the businesses, and it disciplines its agents, even putting them in like Lula or as it threatens to do with Cristina Kirchner. The "Bolivarians" kneel and apply the plans of their US masters by starving and killing the people as Maduro does in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua and Evo Morales in Bolivia. And from La Havana, the new Castroist bourgeoisie legalizes private property in the new Constitution of capitalist Cuba.

Workers’resistance in Argentina is a battle of the war carry out by the working class and the poor peasants of in Latin America against the re-colonizing offensive of US imperialism and IMF and G20’s plans, as in Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, etc. The war cry must be the one of the Bolivian workers against Evo Morales: "Right wing bourgeoisie and masistas are the same crap".

 

THE WAR OF MACRI’S GOVERNMENT AND THE IMF AGAINST THE WORKERS AND THE PEOPLE DEEPENS AND CLASHES WITH A MASS POLITICAL STRUGGLE AND AN UPRISING OF THE WORKING CLASS

It is not true that Macri’s government is "adrift" and without a "clear plan" as they repeat from the bosses "opposition" and even from sectors of the left. His plan is dictated by the IMF and Trump, and he throws the whole crisis to the exploited. The latest devaluation, together with the inflation and the new round of tax increases, mean a new theft of wages and the pockets of working families. The recession deepens and unemployment generalizes with the industrial bankruptcy that has begun: 40% of the installed industrial capacity has been paralyzed.

The working class refuses to accept these conditions imposed by those at the top. Before each decisive attack of the government they have responded with hard combatslike: in December, facing the dismissals and emptying in the state like in Rio Turbio and Astilleros Río Santiago, against the attack to the public health and education as in the case of the workers of the Posadas Hospital, the teachers of Moreno and of the whole country and the students. Union bureaucracy was the guarantor of isolate one by one the struggles, so that the government concentrates all its strength to defeat them. These enormous struggles have aroused the sympathy of the exploited, which has been reflected in each one of them.

The labour movement is in a phase of mass political struggle, opened since the revolutionary journeys of December 18 and 19 against the pension reform, where they escaped union bureaucracy’scontrol by imposing a general political strike.
This mass political struggle remains latent and generalizes to the entire working class, who everyday draw the conclusion that it is not possible to stop the onslaught on their living conditions if the government is not overthrown. The rage and the fight against Macri unifies the exploited breaking all division and barrier of trade and profession, above the unions. The war cry of "Out with Macri" (Out with Macri, TN) is heard in every mobilization and struggle of the masses and the workers of Rio Santiago Shipyard shout again "Everybody out". They have become the vanguard of the fight against the plans of the government and the IMF.
The working class does not accept to pay the party of those of above who, in the midst of the crisis and the misery of the workers, keep making fortunes. Capitalists do not lose. The crisis is for the workers and the masses. The flight of dollars and capital is a record. With interests of more than 60% in the Lebacs, the bankers, the bosses and the transnationals make super-profits without investing a peso. They are movedby their thirst for profits, to the point that they have paralyzed the machines to go to the financial game. They, the bosses, are causing the crisis that is leaving millions of workers out of the productive process.Capitalists never lose and every crisis is an opportunity.

0If the numbers are not good enough, they declare bankruptcy, keep the money and leave workers unemployed. They become importers and go to financial business.
While the different fractions of the bourgeoisie are fighting over the loot, they all fully agree that it is the working class that must bear the consequences of the crisis on their backs.They are all under the discipline of the IMF and Wall Street. Precisely, the governors of PJ and the bosses' partiesfrom the parliament give governance and are ready to vote the 2019 budget dictated directly by the IMF. The own Alicia Kirchner in Santa Cruz applied an adjustment against the workers that even Macri envies; she gave a 2% wage increase to the teachers and even not paying to the public servants.

The labour flexibility demanded by G20 and IMF is already here. It means devaluation,which reduces in a single blow the value of labourforce for transnationals and the bosses. It is the unemployment and the paralysis of production with dozens of factories applying suspensions to impose a situation where the working class gives up its conquests and works in conditions of slavery.

As part of this attack, Macri and the governors have started a real crusade against public servants. The "zero deficit" flag of the IMF is to pay the foreign debt. The application of next year's budget is already underway. They are imposing it with thousands of dismissals (as in Agroindustry and Military Manufacturing in Villa María and many other places). They are closing ministries and have a policy of emptying in the companies that are controlled by the State as in the Shipyard, Fabricaciones Militares and Rio Turbio, so that the imperialist transnationals may keep them for very low prices.
The attack of the government and imperialism is in all along the line. Macri needs to defeat the workers movement to finish imposing the plans of imperialism The "lack of confidence" in Argentina that the bourgeois press talks about means that transnationals and bosses are not sure if they can achieve it. The social peace between the classes has been broken.Whether the working class imposes itself by giving a way out to the capitalist crisis opening the way to the revolution the plans of the imperialism of subjection of the nation will be imposed.

 

THE MULTISECTORALS OF THE UNION BUREAUCRACY WITH THE BOSSES POLITICIANS OF PJ AND KIRCHNERISM: A POLICY OF CLASS COLLABORATION TO PREVENT THE EMERGENCE OF THE ORGANIZATIONS OF SELFORGANIZATION OF THE WORKING CLASS

If the attack of the government and the IMF is imposed, it is not due to lack of combativeness and predisposition to the struggle of the working class. Union bureaucracy and the collaborationist leaderships of the workers' movement, which after the fighting in December, prevented a second attack that would blow up the plans of imperialism and the Macri’s government. And they have given the government a truce him respite and in the face of the uprising of the workers movement have called in August the general strike for September 25 seeking to dismantle the struggles led by workers, give the government time to be strengthened and for the devaluation to get to the prices in supermarket, which they are already imposing.

To re-submit the working class to the bourgeoisie they have set up a real "opposition" front of class collaboration with sectors of the PJ, Kirchnerism and part of trade union bureaucracy with Moyano and the CTAs and the picketer bureaucracy of the Vatican called 21F (named for the act performed on February 21 by those who today make up the front).
An "anti-Macri front" that seeks to restrict the struggle of the working class against the government, instead ofagainst all the bosses and the capitalist system. Its sole purpose is to prevent an independent action of the masses and the emergence of bodies of self-organization of the working class, such as the coordinating ones in the 70s. Therefore, before each hard conflict of the class, they set up the so-called "Multisectorial" where the "Triumvirate" of Moyano, Yasky and Michelli, binds the fate of the workers to the "native bosses", where the workers must resign their demands. They want to show the bosses in “crisis” as allies of the workers, when, as we had said, in the middle of the crisis they are enriching themselves by reconverting themselves and gamble in the financial game.

Like the triumvirate of CGT, who have recently met the IMF, are part of the truce and social pact with the government and bosses. Kirchnerist union bureaucracy has nothing to envy the triumvirate of the CGT. They were the ones who scabbed the enormous struggle of the lecturers by signing a miserable 25% wage increase,which after the devaluation was even lower than the initial 15% offered by the government. The union bureaucracy in all its variants is the guarantor of the government's attack on the workers, as it is the "triunvirato" of the picketer bureaucracy (CTEP, Libres del Sur, CCC) of the Vatican, which prevents unity among employed and unemployedworkers, and which has transformed the unemployed movement into a "beggar" of the Welfare Ministry.

PJ and Kirchnerism, together with Moyano, preach about "moderating" the attack. But there is no room to moderate anything in the current offensive of imperialism in the country and in the region driven by the fierce trade war. The bourgeoisie cannot grant anything. Therefore, the government deepens the repression and persecution against workers, by imprisoning labour leaders such as Daniel Ruiz (a PSTU militant and dismissed oil delegate) and member of social organizations such as Grabois, making effective the extradition of Facundo Jones Hualato Chile, and even inciting fascist gangs, like the one that kidnapped and tortured Corina de Bonis, a teacher of Moreno.

The government and imperialism know very well that with deception to the masses is not enough to impose the conditions of slavery and misery that they need to apply for the sacking of the nation. That is why Macri also resorts to the genocidal officer caste of the Armed Forces. It armors, because it seeks to avoid a new mass attack in which Macri ends up as De la Rúa in 2001. That phantom already flew over the streets of the country last December where the combat of the working class drove back the police in the streets. The policy of the 21F to wait for the elections of 2019 disarms and disorganizes the forces of the working class before this offensive, which includes the installation of Yankee military bases as in Vaca Muerta.

 

THE FIT HAS ABANDONED ANY CLASS INDEPENDENCE POLICY. TWO ROADS AND TWO STRATEGIES IN THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT

Two paths and two strategies open up in the workers' movement. On the one hand, the one that states that to end up with the plans of the IMF and imperialism, it is necessary to build the self-organizing bodies of the masses in struggle by welding the workers' and popular alliance to overthrow the Macri government and the infamous regime of the bosses’ partiesas a whole. On the other, the one that states that, the working class can improve its conditions of existencewithout defeating the government and destroying the state and the capitalist system. This is the path proposed by the FIT and the reformist left to the working class, subordinating itself to the "Anti-Macri Front" in the parliament and in the Multisectorial with the employer sectors such as 21F.
The currents that make up the FIT have a clear campist policy, that is, that there are "progressive bourgeois camps" with which the working class must ally against the "reactionary camps". The FIT is in a parliamentary political front with sectors of the PJ and the Kirchnerism to present bills in the parliament, subordinating all action of the working class to pressure it for its approval. On the issue of abortion, his entire policy was clearly seen. They subordinated the struggle of the women to a front with the bourgeoisie, leaving the task of approving a felt demand of the whole of the women's movementin the hands of the parliament of the exploiters and the aristocratic Senate.

They are part and drivers of the Multisectorial. A clear example is in the struggle of the ARS, there they are on a front with the Kirchnersit trade union bureaucracy of the White List of ATE, which takes the workers on their knees before the mayor of Ensenada, Secco, with whom they get along happily. His "protocol" of propaganda actions to "make visible" the conflicts, the installation of tents, of holding festivals, of "defeating" the union bureaucracy by elections, of union leaders' meetings "above" without base mandates, and of alliances with "progressive bosses" have shown total impotence to overcome the division, decline and isolation that the union bureaucracy imposes on each struggle.

It was this policy applied for years, which today prevents the vanguard of the workers'movement, to reach this crisis with workers' organizations of struggle at the level of facing the attack of the capitalists. The refusal by the FIT to fight to set up a National Coordinator of Struggle to regroup the sectors that are resisting the bosses' attack, having the possibility to do so from the unions and internal commissions that lead and influence as the SUTNA, the opposing Sutebas, the UF de Haedo, etc., mean exactly subordinating the vanguard and working class to the Multisectorial and in this way be the last link in the policy of class collaboration that prevents the emergence of self-organization organisms of the working class.

This policy is also demonstrated in the program of the Constituent Assembly of the PO and the PTS. They call a Constituent Assembly to conquer a "generous democracy" but without calling to disarm the bourgeoisie and without destroying the infamous regime of the reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994. There is no democracy for the exploited without dissolving the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie, the caste of genocidal officers of the Armed Forces and all its institutions with which it imposes its power, without breaking with the imperialism that colonizes the nation and without expropriating the oligarchy. They use the Constituent Assembly as a slogan of power within the margins of the constitutional regime of 1853-1994, and not as a democratic slogan subordinated to the emergence of self-organizing organisms and legitimize the arming of the masses.

The FIT has abandoned the struggle for the socialist revolution as an immediate task for the working class at a time when capitalism is showing all its decadence and bankruptcy pushing the working class and the exploited to unprecedented suffering. It has embraced the program of the struggle for a "higher democracy" or more "generous" when imperialism has no room to grant concessions to the masses without being threatened to lose everything with a revolutionary struggle of the masses.

They go so far as to state that the attack of the IMF and the government is stopped by means of popular consultations and their plan of struggle for the separation of the Church and the state is a request. That is to say, that the IMF, which represents the greatest imperialist capitals, has promoted coups d'etat and imperialist invasions to implement its plans in the world, can be defeatedby the working class at the polls. Or that the genocidal, oligarchic and parasitic Church associated with the big bourgeoisie and imperialism can be defeated with signatures. It is a reactionary utopia that causes only to disarm and disorganize the working class against the offensive of the capital that comes for everything.

The FIT wants to democratize the democracy for the rich of Argentina, when imperialism tries to impose at every step in every semi-colony the most totalitarian government that allows the relationship of forces and does so using all its reactionary domain institutions, as today with the Army in the streets and sending the police, gendarmerie and their forces of repression to every workers' struggle. Its program is that of the world New Left, which for example in Europe promotes the democratization of the imperialist Maastricht as Podemos and the anti-capitalists, of which they are part.

 

MAY THE STRIKE OF THE 24THAND 25THOF SEPTEMBER BE A NEW 18THAND 19th OF DECEMBER: DOWN WITH MACRI AND THE REGIME OF THE BOSSES’ PARTIES AND IMPERIALISM! NATIONAL COORDINATION TO JOIN THE STRUGGLES!

There is no possibility of ending up with the IMF attack without defeating the Macri government. The solution is not in the parliament, which is a real Wall Street notary. There, nothing is solved. Everything is defined in the Yankee embassy and in the White House. In the struggle against the emptying and lockout of Vidal and Macri, the workers of the Rio Santiago Shipyard have tightened up. There the struggle of the whole Argentine working class is concentrated against the plans of labor flexibilization, dismissals and looting of the nation of imperialism.
The trade union bureaucracy wants the strike on September 25thto decompress the workers' struggle and prepares to continue calling a truce to Macri's government. We must transform the strike of the 24thand 25thinto a new 18thand 19thDecember with pickets, protests with pots and pans and fighting in the streets to impose the revolutionary General Strike and a plan of struggle to overthrow Macri and defeat imperialism. After the general strike, our struggle cannot remain in the hands of the truce bureaucracy. Down with the trade union bureaucracy!

Against the Multisectorial that subordinate the working class to the bosses, it is necessary to build the organizations of mass self-organization suitable for the political struggle. We must end up with the division and isolation of the struggles imposed by the trade union bureaucracy. From the hard conflicts that resist the employer attack as in the Rio Santiago Shipyard, the teachers of Moreno and the whole country, from the workers of Posadas, Telam, Agroindustria and all the state workers facing the dismissals, the companions of the factories that are closing and suspending, the picketer movement that fights for decent work, the students who take the collages and take to the streets and the militant workers' organizations, we must vote, in assembly, for the setting up of a great National Coordination of Struggle.

A coordination that unites these sectors would undoubtedly have a million times more representativeness and authority than all the union bureaucracy together in all its variants, and would be a point of reference for the entire workers’ movement that struggles to organize and leave to the fight against the government. An organization that is the basis for conquering, as in 2001, a National Assembly of Occupied and Unemployed Workers with delegates with a basic mandate so that each sector of the workers' movement can attend with their demands to put the power of the exploited to work.
Faced with the crisis of the capitalists, the immediate task is to discuss and impose a single list of demands and an Emergency Workers’ Plan to exit the crisis with minimal and elementary measures to stop the debacle to which the bosses, the oligarchy and imperialism are driving us. The leak of dollars and riches from the nation are stopped, first stating that one more dollar of the external debt is not paid and nationalizing the foreign trade and all the banking under the control of the workers without any type of compensation and finish for once and for all with the financial party.

If the capitalists paralyze the factories, the workers must put them to produce. Expropriation without payment and under workers control of any factory that closes, suspends or dismisses. For a single national parity for the entire workers’ movement with a 42% increase in emergency trigger-clause according to inflation and work under agreement.

To end up with the unemployment and the farce of the "popular economy" of the cooperatives administered by the picketering bureaucracy that gives cheap labor costs to the municipalities... Let the revolutionary picketers’ movement of 2001 and its struggle for decent work return. Reduction of working hours and one more shift in all factories to end up with unemployment. Enough with the existence of first and second class workers.

Full rights for all immigrant workers. Same job, same salary! Papers for everyone now! Defense of the Senegalese workers! No to the immigrant prison! Down with the deportation law! Tripling the budget for health and public education! Legal, safe, free and quality abortion paid by the state and the employer! Down with the tariff abuse! For a single energy company under the control of the workers based on the expropriation of all the imperialist oil companies! To end up with inflation, which is a business of the capitalists, Elimination of VAT and the entire chain of intermediaries of the marketing of food! For supply and prices committees, centralized by the unions.
Public works plan under the control of the unions on the basis of non-payment of debt and the expropriation of all employers of the "home contractor", to rebuild the entire network of public schools and hospitals and carry out a housing plan at the service of the workers and the people.

We have to prevent the reaction from getting back on their feet. Yesterday they murdered Santiago and Rafael. Today the fight against hunger took the life of Ismael Ramirez in Chaco and fascist gangs attack and terrorize teachers and workers in struggle. For a unified self-defense committee of the workers' organizations to defend the classmates and face the repression of the state.
Immediate and unconditional freedom to Facundo Jones Huala! Freedom to Daniel Ruiz! Enough of persecution to Sebastián Romero and all the fighters of the December fighting. Absolution of the oil workers of Las Heras and the workers of Tierra del Fuego.

Deprocessing of Diego Parodi and the more than 7,500 workers and popular fighters. Judgment and punishment to the assassins of Santiago, Rafa and all the martyrs of the working class.

Not a military in the streets! Not a genocide in the barracks! Down with Macri’s decree 638. Dissolution of the genocidal officer caste and all the repressive forces, and the intelligence services. Dissolution of the caste of judges of the bosses’ parties, intact since the last military dictatorship.

It is about time to demonstrate in the streets and with the struggle, which is the only force capable of confronting imperialism: the working class, leading the struggle and the demands of all the exploited of the nation. Despite the leaderships that limit the working class to fight to democratize this decadent and rotten system that only has to offer misery and new wars and catastrophes for the masses, the struggle for socialist revolution becomes an immediate necessity, retaking the best traditions of our class. As in 2001, we must re-weld the workers'and popular alliance and this time end up with this infamous regime and all its institutions by setting up a provisional revolutionary workers' and people's government, based on the organizations of self-organization of the armed masses.
For the working class to live, imperialism must die along with its governments and regimes. Argentina will be socialist or Wall Street colony.

Editorial Board of the paper “Democracia Obrera”
(Workers Democracy)