In Argentina, as elsewhere, workers must learn the lessons of their past struggles in order to prepare for those of the future.

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Workers in Argentina are suffering an acute degradation in their living conditions. President Milei has imposed measures that constantly increase unemployment and reduce wages, driving the broad proletarian masses into poverty, with the official figure rising in a few months from 45% to 57% of the population. The shock measures, agreed with most of the provincial governors, known as the ‘Ley de bases’ (basic laws), imposed severe austerity by eliminating social assistance, particularly in the health and education sectors, and making swingeing cuts in social budgets. These include massive redundancies in the public sector - between 50,000 and 60,000 have been made so far, with plans to cut a further 200,000 jobs - wage and pension freezes, all with the pretext of controlling inflation, and an increase and reinforcement of the state's repressive arsenal. In the first days of the present government, when it launched a new escalation of aggressive measures against workers and worsened the already deteriorating conditions of the exploited, large spontaneous demonstrations were held, but the trade union apparatus and left-wing factions of capital trapped workers' anger and the will to fight, preventing discontent from being transformed into a conscious and organised force.

The manoeuvres used today by the bourgeoisie generally appear whenever workers’ combativity threatens to explode on to the streets, which is why a vital and crucial task for the exploited is to look back at their past struggles, in order to learn from them, by recognising the positive experiences of these struggles, but also by reflecting on the mistakes and negative experiences, because this allows workers to identify and evade the traps set by the bourgeoisie so that they can prepare for future struggles.

The need to reappropriate the Cordobazo experience of 1969...

The tradition of workers' struggle in Argentina was affirmed in the period between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, with the rapid industrialisation of the country and the growth of the proletariat; however, the impact of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave of 1917-23 plunged the entire working class worldwide into a long period of counter-revolution. In Argentina, this period of counter-revolution took the particular form of a government ‘democratically’ elected but, in reality, led by the army, strongly marked as elsewhere by the measures and need for state control both over the national economy and over the whole of social life, which are characteristic of the period of the decadence of capitalism. But in Argentina, Peronism[1] has given it a ‘social’ colouring, with its claim to be based on the trade unions and the ‘popular strata’ of the nation. Peronism came into being in the midst of a succession of coups d'état, sometimes instigated by the military, sometimes by civilians, to tighten the bourgeoisie’s hold on the working class.

It was only with the end of a period of 40 years of counter-revolution, at the end of the 1960s, that the wave of international resurgence of workers' struggles, of which the Cordobazo was one of the most significant expressions, that the Argentine proletariat once again showed its strength and fighting spirit [2]. First and foremost, it is necessary to retrieve the experience of this period of struggle, in which the working class affirmed its ability to mobilise on its class terrain and developed its struggle and solidarity in the face of the attacks of the bourgeoisie, following in the footsteps of workers in France during the massive strikes of May 68 and later, during 1969, in the “hot autumn” in Italy. This movement was in complete opposition to the methods of struggle falsely portrayed as socialist or communist by the leftist organisations, notably the ideas glorifying ‘guerrilla warfare’, the ideological weapon of the Eastern bloc at the time, then spread with the approval of the bourgeoisie not only in Latin America, but hyped by Stalinist and leftist groups throughout the world.

The Cordobazo, on the contrary, was a massive workers' mobilisation which, although called by the big trade unions to prevent workers from taking the initiative themselves, was able to show great determination and assert a strong combativity in the struggle, with the tendency to extend the movement, with assemblies in the streets and on the barricades, disregarding trade union instructions to stop the movement. Instead, workers extended the strikes and demonstrations. Despite the traps set by the bourgeoisie and its trade union apparatus, and the illusions it put forward, this movement was a strong and clear encouragement to the international resurgence of the class struggle, allowing the proletariat to regain confidence in its own strength, based on a powerful feeling of class solidarity in the ranks of the workers in struggle. In particular, workers were able to mount a courageous resistance against the ferocious state repression then led by a military government. Overall, workers showed their capacity to go beyond the corporatist framework in which the unions tried to confine the movement. As a result, demonstrations and strikes continued or were maintained in many sectors throughout 1970.

... but also the need to learn from the failures of the past in order to avoid the traps set by the bourgeoisie...

But it is also necessary to look back at the events that took place in the last decade of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. In particular, we need to develop a critical reflection on the experiences associated with the ‘piqueteros’ [3]  (known at the time as the ‘new social subjects’) and the ‘comedores populares’ (soup kitchens) [4], because these are not expressions of proletarian struggle, although the bourgeoisie, through its trade union structures and its entire left-wing political apparatus, continues to present them as models that workers should follow in their current struggles.

This is why bourgeois ideologists try to hide the fact that, since the Cordobazo, it is the trade union forces and the left wing of the bourgeoisie which have consistently worked to sabotage and drown workers’ fighting spirit and to divert the tremendous proletarian energy which manifested itself during the Cordobazo and frightened the whole of the bourgeoisie. Among other obstacles, the nationalist poison, contained in the anti-imperialist credo exploited above all by the left of capital and the various defenders of Peronism, constantly diverted workers’ anger towards mobilisations against the seizure of capital by companies of ‘foreign origin’ on national soil. The state's main asset, which prevented the development of workers' consciousness from advancing further, was the barrier erected by both its trade union apparatus and the left. At the level of the trade union leadership, this was above all possible thanks to the creation, in the face of the discrediting of the official CGT which was deeply linked to Peronism, of the CGT-A [5] (which had played an important role in the bourgeoisie's recuperation of the massive Cordobazo strikes). The ruse of Perón's return to Argentina, with the complicity of the left, was the product of negotiation between bourgeois factions to subjugate the workers. It was used both by the Peronist-based Justicialist Liberation Front and by the other political parties to lure the workers into the democratic electoral circus of 1973. This created the illusion that the only way out of poverty for workers was through the ballot box and democracy.

During the 1990s, unemployment grew, as did discontent, but all the growing anger was swallowed up by supposedly more radical sectors of Peronism, in the face of unemployment caused by the austerity policies of Carlos Menem (who also came from of Peronism). Pointless initiatives such as roadblocks were initially promoted and encouraged by sectors of the Peronist Justicialist Party, notably Hilda Duhalde [6]. In order to win their sympathy and guarantee their subsequent affiliation to the Justicialist Party, she offered subsidies to the unemployed and food to their families. Various left-wing organisations reactivated the ‘piqueteros’, particularly during the ‘corralito crisis’ which marked the country's economic and financial collapse at the end of 2001, and succeeded in bringing them together and mobilising them, in order to limit, control and divert discontent, The slogans used were totally unrelated to the interests of the exploited, such as the defence of nationalised companies or the promotion of minority actions, ranging from looting shops to putting factories that were due to close under self-management. Even today, various leftist organisations have come together within the Movement of the Unemployed (MTD) to compete and share control of the ‘piquetero movement’, once again using, as the Peronists did, free food distribution and soup kitchens to lure the unemployed into their nets.

These forms of action, although they seemed to express solidarity and decision-making through assemblies, in reality represented the negation of conscious unification, discussion and collective reflection, and were ultimately the means by which the bourgeoisie controlled the mobilisations of the unemployed. The trap was so effective that the entire left and far left apparatus of capital, in all its components, from Peronist factions to leftist groups and ‘alternative’ or radical trade union organisations like the CTA [7], used it to carry out their work of manipulation. In so doing, they exploited the fighting spirit, the material difficulties and growing poverty of the workers, their real material needs for help, to benefit their petty political tricks, but above all they prevent any initiative by workers to wage the struggle on their own class terrain.

In their work of specific control over the proletariat, the left-wing organs of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, like the unions, carry out their ideological manoeuvres by sharing out the work, always trying to divide workers so that they cannot unite their discontent, nor express their solidarity in struggle. In short, the aim is to discourage, prevent or sabotage any attempt or initiative by workers to take their struggle into their own hands, to achieve a form of organisation which breaks down the division imposed by the bourgeoisie and which the unions reproduce by dividing them into corporations, companies or sectors... and this division of labour is founded by the left of capital, which presents itself and the unions as workers’ true representatives.

In Argentina, where the crisis is hitting workers particularly hard, with the national economy on the brink of bankruptcy for years and inflation rates at staggering levels, this is the scenario built around the CGT or CTA unions and the ‘opposition’ parties linked to the left of capital. But in this enterprise, the leftist organisations are also exercising their bourgeois function as touts by pretending to distrust the unions as well as the left-wing parties, or even to fight them, when in reality all they are doing is seeking to undermine their credibility by sowing illusions about the possibility of winning them back to the cause of the proletariat by supposedly ‘putting pressure’ on them. Recently, in the face of escalating attacks by the Milei government, this grotesque choreography has been repeated step by step. The CGT hypocritically feigns indignation and calls for the mobilisation of this or that sector in the face of the measures decreed by the government, and even for massive demonstrations, as on 9 May, to ‘defend the national economy’. The Trotskyists of Izquierda Socialista (IS) and Partido Obrero (PO) called for ‘the CGT to guarantee the success of the strike on 9 May...’. The manoeuvre thus achieved its objective: giving credit back to the CGT, which enables it to divert workers' discontent towards the pure and simple defence of the national economy, by imposing the chauvinist slogan “the fatherland is not for sale”, demonstrating nonetheless clearly that the CGT and the leftist apparatus which promotes it are instruments for the defence of national capital, whose essential function is to sabotage the struggle which was taking place on a class terrain, to weaken the working class in the face of the attacks it is suffering. Another leftist group, the Movimiento de los Trabajadores Socialistas completed the manoeuvre: while claiming to distance the workers from the control of the CGT, it called on them to create and join another trade union structure, which it presented as different by calling it ‘a fighting trade unionism’.

... The need to rediscover our class identity, a decisive issue for the future of struggles

Even during the violent economic and financial crisis of December 2001, when the working class in Argentina was totally trapped by the piqueteros movement, with the unemployed separated from the rest of their class, and with the inter-classist demonstrations, in the days of banging pots and pans, or even on a purely nationalist and bourgeois terrain, the workers nevertheless showed a strong reaction and combativity in the face of the attacks and the brutal deterioration of their living conditions. Just last year, there were major strikes in the docks and port services, in the education sector, among public transport workers and even among doctors. But today, all the work of sabotage and the traps laid by the unions, combined with the strengthening of the government's repressive apparatus (as in the days of the military dictatorship, there are constant references to cases of ‘disappearances’ following arrests during demonstrations), all this has led to a widespread demoralisation in Argentina's working class.

Today, it is fundamental for the development of the struggle in Argentina on its class terrain, and for it to join the struggle which is beginning to develop on an international level, to integrate into the discussions, in the assemblies, the link between the brutal blows dealt to their living conditions by the bourgeoisie in the midst of yet another economic crisis and the whole arsenal of the state which has been put in place to encourage polarisation between support for Milei and opposition to his government. This strategy has worked until now, with workers waiting for the moment when Peronism and the huge union structure, which they still see as being on their side, will respond to the attacks. A fundamental need is to recover their identity as a working class, their autonomy, their confidence in their ability to take the struggle into their own hands. And to do this, as in other countries, they must be wary of the division of labour between the right and the left, where the former openly assumes responsibility for the attacks and the latter pretends to defend the workers in order to prevent them from going their own way. In particular, we need to understand that the left, the trade unions and leftism in all its variants, are not expressions of the workers' struggle but, on the contrary, class enemies and servants of the capitalist state. We must not delude ourselves that they will call for struggle against the bourgeoisie; and, above all, we must be wary when they call for actions because they do so when they know that discontent and combativity are growing in order to derail them into dead ends. Peronism, in particular, remains a bulwark of the bourgeois state because it still enjoys a great deal of sympathy among workers who, for example, complain that they don’t call for enough demos. When they do, it's because they're trying to divert the proletarian struggle towards dead ends.

Workers must take into account the lessons they have learned from past struggles around the world, the traps set by the bourgeoisie to derail their struggles, and the experiences of struggles which must be taken up in the process of politicising the struggle. As in the post-1968 period, but under quite different and more difficult conditions. Today, working-class combativity is forced to find its way in the midst of an irreversible acceleration of the decomposition of bourgeois society on all levels, jeopardising the very future of humanity [8] . It is thus more than ever necessary to make the link with the context of the redevelopment of class struggle at world level. The resumption of struggles in Britain in 2022 marked a break with the period of passivity and resignation which had followed the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns at the end of the 1980s about the bankruptcy of the communist perspective and the end of the class struggle, and the revival of the proletariat's fighting spirit on an international scale was confirmed by major mobilisations in France and other Western European countries such as the United States and Canada. The slogan ‘Enough is enough’ was taken up everywhere, showing the determination to oppose the same increasingly brutal and intolerable attacks on living and working conditions, as well as the wage cuts and redundancy plans that all the national bourgeoisies are trying to impose. It is by reappropriating its past experiences that the working class in Argentina, as elsewhere, will be able to gradually recover its class identity through a process that is admittedly slow, irregular and discontinuous. Nevertheless, the conditions are gradually ripening that will enable it to regain awareness of its class identity and move towards the politicisation of its struggle, developing an awareness of the ultimate objective of its combat: the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of exploitation on a world scale.

Milei's madness and arrogance are in fact those of the bourgeoisie as a whole, which mercilessly attacks workers' living conditions. In order to have the strength to repel the attacks of the bourgeoisie and to develop their struggle, their consciousness and their unity, workers must absolutely dispel all illusions about the left parties, the unions and the leftists and reject the traps that they set.

RR/T-W, 23 September 2024

 

[3] Read (in Spanish) : DESDE ARGENTINA: Contribución sobre la naturaleza de clase del movimiento piquetero (I) Acción Proletaria 177, 2006 and Argentina: the mystification of the 'piquetero' movement, International Review 119

 

On the role of the ‘union of piqueteros’ in sabotaging the current mobilisations, see also the article : Argentina: La crisis golpea a los trabajadores con inflación, precariedad y miseria

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[5] CGT-A: CGT of Argentina, a split led by Raimundo Ongaro which broke with the pro-Peronist line of the CGT union and was quickly dissolved when Peron returned to power in 1974.

[6] Wife of the country's ex-president, also a Peronist between 2002 and 2003, Eduardo Duhalde, who was also responsible for the bloody repression of the piquetero movement in June 2002, and who was previously vice-president under the Menem government. His wife is still a senator.

[7] CTA: Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos.

[8] Capitalism leads to the destruction of humanity... Only the world revolution of the proletariat can put an end to it; Third Manifesto of the ICC, December 2022, published in International Review no. 169.

Rubric: 

International class struggle