The crisis of Argentine capitalism is total – economic, social and political. It is no surprise that in such a situation the very regime of the ruling class totters on the edge of an abyss.
Economically the country is in free fall. The IMF estimates that in the fourth year of recession the country’s GDP will shrink again – by 10-15 per cent. But this is only the beginning of the misery.
To resolve this crisis in their own interest the ruling class must massively increase productivity. So the bosses are forced to launch a tremendous attack on the living standards of the working class and the middle classes.
The results are already unbearably painful for ordinary people. Nearly 200,000 lost their jobs in the first three month of this year alone. Around 15.5 million people (40 per cent of the population) have fallen below the official poverty line . Every day 10,300 have to be added to this figure.
The traditional lunch for school children, which is often their only meal during the day, is now cancelled in many places. Public employees don’t receive their wages.
Officially 24 per cent of the working population is unemployed. But the real figures are much worse because a huge number are underemployed – not earning enough to live on. The growing desperation of people is summarised in one of the many slogans on the walls of Buenos Aires which says “Jobs or Death”. Together with the sharp price increases that are really taking off just now it is not difficult to see that Argentina is becoming a social slaughterhouse
The political system and its institutions have lost any legitimacy. Today robbery is done in the name of law. Banks are simply stealing the money of the people by refusing to give them their savings back. Parliament then makes this robbery legal!
Corruption is widespread. When a well known Peronist politician, Grosso, who has been convicted many times, became a minister in the short-lived government of Rodriguez Saá last December he remarked disarmingly: “You should judge me by my skills, not my criminal record.”
The recent resignation of several ministers has laid bare the weakness of the government. Its roots lie in the revolutionary character of the period that opened last December. It is reflected in a wave of daily strikes, road blockades and protests of the “ahoristas” – the small bank account holders of the middle class. Again and again hundreds of enraged citizens surround the parliament and attack the deputies.
The police act cautiously out of fear that they could provoke another uprising like last December. A media tycoon admitted recently that the rich elite is ready to flee the country by helicopter taking their assets with them.
So it is not surprising that the Duhalde government is tottering. Duhalde comes from the apparatus of the Peronist party (PJ) – a bourgeois-populist force founded in the mid-1940s. One of its main characteristics is its roots in the working class via the unions. But these roots have been massively eroded in the 1990s by the neoliberal policy of Carlos Menem. The CGT lost many members and is split now in two factions. In addition a new union federation, the CTA, has come into existence, which is mainly based in the public sector and the unemployed
The central problem of the Duhalde government is that no class in society sees it as its authentic representative. Imperialism and the majority of the Argentine bourgeoisie consider Duhalde as an untrustworthy populist. In December he was able to stabilise things due to his traditional Peronism and his links to the union leaders.
Imperialism is wary of Duhalde and he is even isolated within his own party. Whilst the powerful Peronist provincial governors do not want him to fall nor do they want to be too closely associated with him because of his mounting unpopularity.
The governors themselves are split between pro-IMF lackeys like the powerful figures Reutemann and de la Sota and others like the governor of the province of Santa Crux, Kirchner, who pushed a more populist line. So the core of the government is reduced to the Peronist party apparatus of the province Buenos Aires
The middle classes are naturally opponents of the regime too since Duhalde – despite his promise to give them back their dollar savings – has continued the regime of the corralito.
Despite the growing combativeness of the working class the majority of the union bureaucracy still act as willing lackeys of the government. Since the December upheaval they have called an entirely one-sided truce. While hundreds of thousands of workers are losing their jobs the CGT and the CTA refused to act against the government. Worse the CGT offered Duhalde their support and became a crucial prop for his government.
In exchange for this the bureaucrats hoped to get more influence and posts. To a certain degree their manoeuvre was not without success. The latest governmental changes meant that the former minister for labour, a man with a union background, Atanasof, has been promoted to become chief of the cabinet.
At the same time we can see a divide emerging inside the unions. The right wing around CGT chief Daer seems prepared to follow Duhalde to the bitter end. On the other side the more far-sighted bureaucrats, under the pressure of intensifying class struggle, are now distancing themselves from Duhalde.
Moyano, head of the so-called dissident CGT, is denouncing the government, saying that it has not got the courage to stand against the demands of the IMF. He has announced a strike for 14 May. The CTA leadership too has stopped its participation in the regular consultations with the government and also announced a strike for the last week of May.
It is possible that faced with a radicalisation of the class struggle, Duhalde will fall sooner rather than later. The bourgeoisie might then resort to new elections to draw the attention of the masses away from the streets and the enterprises to the ballot box.
Since mid-April a wave of workers’ struggles in the provinces has grown in size and scope. Organised by the unions tens of thousands workers, most of them public employees, have gone on strike to demand their wages be paid. In provinces like San Juan, Jujuy, Rio Negro, there have been repeated clashes with the police. In Rio Negro the teachers have been on strike since the beginning of March and in San Juan thousands of public sector workers occupied the regional governmental buildings for days on end.
Another expression of the growing radicalisation of the working class is the increasing number of occupied enterprises where workers continue to run production under their own control. The most well known example is the ceramic factory of Zanon in Neuquen, which the workers have been occupying since last October. Another example is the women workers of Brukman– a garment factory in Buenos Aires which has been occupied since last December. These women have stood against all attempts by the bosses and the police to break their struggle.
We can now see the opening of a new chapter of the revolutionary process in Argentina. The organised working class- particularly in the provinces —has begun to enter the battlefield.
The decisive question is that of leadership. What is missing is a mass revolutionary workers’ party which can challenge the union bureaucracy and lead the working class to the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. It is this question which the comrades of the Workers Party for Socialism (PTS) in Argentina are throwing all their strength into addressing. The LRCI will do its best to support them in this.