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Argentina: Presidential election ends Kirchner era

Christian Gebhard, Neue Internationale 205, Dec.15/Jan.16

The run-off ballot in this year’s presidential election brought an end to an era. Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, won against Daniel Scioli, the candidate of the Frente para la Victoria, the party of the former president, Cristina Kirchner. With his election, the 12 year period of “Kirchnerism”, the presidencies of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner was over.

International framework

The victory of Macri and his right-neoliberal coalition “Cambiemos” is linked to a shift to the right in the political landscape of Argentine. This shift was already visible under the former Peronist governments and can also be seen in other Latin American countries, for example, Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia.

Macri’s programme is clearly neoliberal and includes strategic attacks against the Argentine working class to make the country more attractive for foreign investors, mainly US capital. To decouple wages from inflation while devaluing the currency is at the top of capital’s wish list. The most important question now is not whether social austerity measures will be imposed on the Argentine working class, but whether, and how strongly, Macri can incorporate the trade unions into his plan. With their collaboration he would hope to be able to implement it without the danger of facing a mass movement.

However, Macri’s election is not only of national significance; it is internationally important as well. Even before the elections, he promised to restrict collaboration between his government and the left-populist, Bolivarian governments of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. On the other hand, relationships with the US and neoliberal governments like Chile, Colombia and Mexico are to be strengthened.

Economic crisis

In December 2001, Argentina was facing a revolutionary crisis. Presidents were forced to resign, the unemployed occupied the streets and more then 200 factories were occupied by their workers. Despite the big revolutionary potential, the ruling class, with help of the imperialists, was able get the situation under control and calm down the mass movement. The most important instrument for this was the classic Argentine populism, Peronism, which represents a politics that tries to blur class differences.

Under the governments of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Peronism was able, on the one hand, to curtail and demobilise the mass movement. On the other, it regained control over important sectors of the working class as well as incorporating the unemployed movement. This succeeded through a revival of social partnership involving the labour aristocracy and the middle classes, made possible by an economic re-stabilisation that opened up space for concessions toward the working class and youth.

At the same time, the Argentinean radical left revealed itself to be unable to take advantage of a break between Peronism and the working class. By not applying the united front tactic toward the trade unions, as well as the workers’ party tactic to build a political alternative to Peronism for the workers’ movement, the Argentinean radical left missed the opportunities offered by the biggest crisis Peronism had ever faced historically.

More recently, the economic crisis that began in 2008, and its consequences, increasingly limited the concessions that could be made by the “anti-neoliberal” governments of Latin America, including the Peronist government in Argentine. Both the direct, internal consequences of the economic crisis and the external impacts of the crisis in imperialist countries like the USA or China, are having a big impact on Argentina. The decline in Chinese economic growth and the potential rise in interest rates in the US both lower demand for resources. Since the anti-neoliberal governments are highly dependent on trade income, for Venezuela it is primarily oil exports, for Argentina, mainly soya, a decrease in the world markets does affect these countries.

This is leading in several Latin America countries to the cancelation of promises that governments made to their working classes. The governments have even started to implement budget cuts in social spending. Such “solutions” are aimed at weakening the working class, thereby making the country more attractive for foreign capital. In Argentina, this was shown in the election campaigns prior to the run-off ballot. The two candidates did not differ substantially in their proposals for budget cuts, despite attacking each other rhetorically. They both made it clear that they expected the working class to pay for the crisis.

The measures implemented by the Kirchner governments did not go unchallenged. The Argentinean working class did not accept such attacks without a fight back and this forced the government to show its real face. Over the years since 2008, new splits occurred between some parts of the working class and Peronism. Although not comparable to the intensity of 2001, these are an important dynamic for Argentina. However, as the recent election shows, workers who break with their former leadership do not automatically develop towards the left.

How to build the resistance?

The politics of the Peronists moved to the right under economic pressure and this enabled the neoliberal forces in Cambiemos, around Macri, to stabilise themselves. However, although this political camp clearly gained a political victory by winning the presidential elections, the coming government will be skating on thin ice. Macri could not win all Peronist strongholds and only a part of the trade union bureaucracy is supporting him. This means his incoming government has an unstable basis and this will provide opportunities for the Peronists to stabilise themselves in opposition by using their still existing links to the working class.

This, then, is the political situation that revolutionaries face; they need to find tactical answers in the form of demands, mobilisations and methods of organisation, for the coming struggles against the new government’s policies but, at the same time, they must fight to prevent Peronism re-gaining the trust of the working class while in opposition. Their tactics, therefore, need to be set in the framework of the strategic goal of building a revolutionary workers’ party.

When someone talks about the creation of a workers’ party in Argentina, the subject of the Frente de la Izquierda y de los Trabajadores (Front of the workers and the left) the FIT is immediately raised. This electoral front, formed by three Trotskyist organisations, gained substantial votes at past elections. This shows that an apparently revolutionary perspective can indeed find favour with the people. In the recent election, it gained up to a million votes and won an additional parliamentary seat.

The FIT gained from the current crisis of Peronism and the drift of some parts of the working class away from it. However, the strong overall shift towards the right in the elections clearly demonstrates that the formation of an electoral alternative is not enough in itself to break the working class completely from Peronism or to initiate and intensify the development of the consciousness of the working class as a whole towards the left. A political alternative that is more than an electoral front is necessary.

Struggles against the coming attacks

There needs to be an all out fight against the coming attacks. Revolutionaries need to argue not only for a united front with the trade unions but also for the creation of a workers’ party. In both the economic struggles and the political struggles, revolutionaries need to fight alongside workers who are still tied to their Peronist leadership through the trade unions or the Peronist party. The experience after the year of crisis in 2001 showed that Peronism can recover and clearly this could also happen in the coming years in opposition. That is why it is indispensable to create a political alternative for the Argentinean workers, even if the majority do not yet have a completely developed revolutionary consciousness.

The FIT should take the lead in this task. It should actively agitate and work for the foundation of action committees, which should organise the defensive struggles against the coming attacks from the Macri government.

In all workers’ forums, the FIT should raise demands on the trade unions as a whole to break with bourgeois forces; with Peronism as well as with Macri. Instead of fighting for the trades unions to be allowed a role in “managing” the social cuts, they should lead an uncompromising fight against them. Strikes in different sectors should be coordinated up to, and including, an indefinite general strike.

Within those action committees, the FIT should argue the need for a workers’ party and thereby popularise the call for the founding of such a party among the masses of the Argentinean workers. The formulation and creation of a revolutionary action programme for this situation is particularly important. Only with such a programme can revolutionaries intervene effectively into the potential struggles ahead and combine the united front and workers’ party tactics in pursuit of the strategic goal; the formation of a revolutionary workers’ party.

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