Argentina

Presentation

We are publishing here part of our intervention on Alasbarricadas, a Spanish language anarchist internet forum ( www.alasbarricadas.org ).The thread, entitled “Anarchism, anti-imperialism, Cuba and Venezuela”, raised the question of what position to take faced with Chávez and his ‘Bolivarian revolution’ in Venezuela.

In recent years world capitalism has supposedly been battered by widespread popular struggles particularly in what the bourgeoisie likes to call the “developing world”. It is high time that revolutionary marxists contrast this chimera of revolution with the authentic movement of social transformation that is usually starved of media attention: the class struggle of the world proletariat.

What use is the "Internationalist Communist Group"? If verbal radicalism could frighten the ruling class, the GCI would doubtless be at the forefront of the forces of revolution. As it is, their pretence that anything can represent a movement of resistance as long as it is "violent" does nothing but harm to the development of proletarian consciousness.

Everything the government led by citizen K (1) says about the ‘fantastic revival of the Argentine economy’ after the debacle of 2001 is just lies. The reality facing the workers and the immense majority of the population is more and more disturbing...

Since we published the article ‘The NCI has not broken with the ICC’ (see our website), a number of sympathisers of the ICC have sent messages of support and financial contributions for the comrades of the Nucleo Comunista Internacionalista in Argentina, who, despite the terrible living conditions they face, are determined to continue political activity alongside the ICC. We want to give very warm thanks to all the comrades who have expressed their solidarity in this way. This can only encourage the comrades in Argentina to maintain their militant commitment; and it shows that, despite their geographical isolation, they are not alone. Such gestures are an illustration of the international nature of the solidarity of the proletariat, the class that bears within itself the communist future.

The development within the class of a deepened reflection, even if this mainly below the surface today, which can be seen in the appearance of a series of elements and groups, often young, who are turning towards the positions of the Communist Left, is obviously of vital importance, since it is one of the preconditions for the formation of the future world wide revolutionary party.

From the 20th of December to early January the economic and social chaos in Argentina was headline news. The economy went into free fall, the population took to the streets and five presidents came and went within as many weeks. These events expressed a spectacular worsening of the economic, social and political crisis in Argentina. This article seeks to analyse the main implications of this situation for the working class.

The massive eruption of workers’ struggles May 1968 in France, followed by the movements in Italy, Britain, Spain, Poland and elsewhere signified the end of the period of counter-revolution that had weighed so heavily on the international working class since the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. The proletarian giant stood once again on the stage of history, and not just in Europe. These struggles had a powerful echo in Latin America, beginning with the “Cordobaza” in Argentina in 1969. Throughout the region, between 1969 and 1975, from Chile in the South to Mexico on the US border, workers put up an intransigent fight against the bourgeoisie’s efforts to make them pay for the unfolding economic crisis. In the waves of struggle that followed, that of 1977-80 culminating in the mass strike in Poland, that of 1983-89 marked by massive struggles in Denmark and Belgium, and by large-scale struggles in many other countries, the proletariat of Latin America continued to struggle, albeit not in such a spectacular manner. In doing so, it demonstrated that whatever its different conditions, the working class is one and the same international class in one and the same fight against capitalism.

Presentation

We are publishing below extracts from a long article by the comrades of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional in Argentina which makes an in-depth analysis of the so-called “piquetero” movement, denouncing its anti-working class nature and the self-interested lies with which leftist groups of every hue “have dedicated themselves to deceiving the workers with false hopes to make them believe that the aims and means of the piquetero movement contribute to advancing their struggle”.

Argentina: Only the proletariat fighting on its own class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie

The events of December 2001 to February 2002 in Argentina have awoken a great interest amongst politically aware elements all over the world. They have provoked discussion and reflection in workplaces among combative workers. Some Trotskyist groups have even spoken of "the beginning of the revolution".

Last year, two groups in Argentina and Uruguay issued an ‘International Proposal to the Partisans of the World Revolution’, which we published in no. 46 of this Review. The question of the necessity for the regroupment of revolutionary forces, in the perspective of the development of the class struggle, is vital today. It’s necessary for the different groups to confront and clarify their respective political positions and orientations in the present period in order to envisage the rapprochement and common work which the present situation of the proletarian political milieu does not yet allow...