Argentina: What Happened to the Revolution? : Argentina Indymedia (( i ))

Argentina: What Happened to the Revolution?

This comes from the new issue of Class Struggle, paper
of the Communist Workers Group of NZ. I've put the
footnotes at the end of individual sections. Workers
Democracy (CWG's sister group in Argentina, see below
for info on them) has written a reply criticising the
article which I can post if anyone is interested. Just
to give some idea of the far left spectrum in
Argentina I've added to the end of the article some
links to a couple of views of the 19/20 and of the
general situation in Argentina that differ markedly
from the CWG's.
SH

Argentina: What happened to the revolution?

One year after the momentous Argentinazo of December
19 and 20, workers and poor people flooded once more
to the Plaza de Mayo in the centre of Buenos Aires.
Unlike last year where the state forces killed 33
mainly young people and the level of protest forced
the resignation of the De la Rua government, this year
there was no confrontation and Duhalde’s government
did not fall.

A temporary stalemate exists. The bosses are relying
on the union bureaucrats and so-called socialist
parties to divide and rule the workers. However, the
forces on the militant left wing of the movement are
regrouping around the occupied factories to defend the
most important conquest of the revolution and to unite
workers on a revolutionary action program. A member of
the Communist Workers Group who recently visted
Argentina assesses the prospects of the continuing
revolution in Argentina.

Argentina December 20 2002

The mass rally on December 20 this year (100,000 in
Buenos Aires and 100,000 in the rest of Argentina)
shows that a temporary stalemate exists between the
two main classes in Argentina. On the one side
Duhalde’s government was not challenged. It was able
to pay the IMF $20 billion, make another 50,000
workers unemployed, and still rely on the union
bureaucracy to buy off the majority of unemployed with
benefits of US $20 a month.

On the other side, an increasing number of the ranks
of unemployed, employed and students are becoming
angry at the treachery of the bureaucracy and the
‘left’ parties, and are openly looking for ways to
break from their control and find an independent
working class solution to the bosses’ crisis.

While the bosses were able to prevent the workers from
using December 20 to make another Argentinazo, what
was significant about this years rally, was the
emergence of a class struggle left wing of the mass
movement that marched separately and that broke openly
with the control of the official union bureaucracy of
the CTA/CCC and the unofficial left bureaucracy that
has emerged in the last year to administer the
unemployment schemes*. Instead of of falling into the
trap of trying to bring down Duhalde with street
fighting, these as yet small forces rallied behind
demands for strike action, for defence of the factory
occupations, and for a general strike leading to
national workers congress in the new year.

On balance we have to say that stalemate continues but
that the current situation opens the way for a
deepening and widening of the revolution, to overcome
the splits in the mass movement, and to break from the
bureaucracy by mounting mass defence pickets of the
factory occupations by all the sectors in struggle.

[*Some instances of class struggle forces at least
partially breaking with the bureacracy were; a rally
in Neuquen that rejected the CTA controlled rally
limited to the demand to bring down the state
governor, and rallied instead with a contingent from
Rio Negro to block a bridge and demand “out with them
all”. At the Plaza de Mayo, the MTD Anibal Veron
(named after the first piquetero martyr in Salta)
marched to the Plaza but left rather than particpate
in the union bureaucrats ‘commemoration’ of 2001; the
joint column of the CS, RSL and DO, after marching to
the square along with the FTC and Brukman/Zanon
contingents, left to go to the Obelisk at Republic
square to honour the fallen comrades.]

Brukman and Zanon leading the fight

The most visible sign of this healthy development was
that of the Brukman and Zanon occupied factories
leading their own column, closely associated with two
other colums, that of the FTC and that of the combined
forces of the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL),
Socialist Convergence (SC) and Workers Democracy
(DO).* All of these columns marched behind banners
calling for a strike on the 19/20 instead of a
stage-managed ‘commemoration’ organised by the
bureaucracy; for a general strike to bring down
Duhalde and “get them all out”; for all factories to
be nationalised without compensation and under workers
control; and for a 3rd national workers congress of
mandated delegates for every 100 employed, unemployed
workers and popular assembly members.

It was important that Brukman led the way. Brukman is
the factory that represents the most politically
advanced workers who are calling openly for the
nationalisation of their factory without compensation
and under workers control.** The bosses are
determined to re-take this factory because at the
moment it is a powerful example of how socialism could
work in Argentina.***

Zanon is another leading example. Zanon is a large
ceramics factory in Neuquen on the far west of
Argentina whose workers are running it at 80% capacity
and providing jobs for unemployed. Zanon was recently
visited by Hebe de Bonafini a leader of the Mothers of
the Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Dissappeared) who
immediately saw that workers were in control and were
capable of producing without bosses. She reported that
Zanon was proof that workers could run society not
only in Argentina but the whole world.

[*The Frente Trabajadores Combativos (FTC) is a class
struggle formation of unemployed, employed and left
groups and individuals who have broken from the
bureaucracy. Socialist Convergence (SC) is a fraction
of the Morenoist LIT (Workers’ International League)
in Argentina with members in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela
and the Carribean. The Revolutionary Socialist League
(RSL) is another ex-Morenoite group taking a
non-sectarian approach to party building in Argentina.
Democracia Obrera (DO) is a 1998 split from the PTS
(Socialist Workers Party) committed to building
reforging the 4th International and playing a leading
role in building class struggle united fronts in
Argentina.

**On December 21 the night after D20, Brukman hosted
an adaptation of the Brecht play “The Mothers”, a
homage to the women in the 1905 revolution in Russia.
It also showed a documentary film on the life of
Argentininan revolutionary film-maker Raymondo Gleyzer
who ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorship in 1976. The
working class audience fully participated in this
cultural act joining in the production and celebrating
the links between these outstanding examples of
revolutionary art and the living revolution in
Argentina.

**On November 24 the police raided Brukman and
arrested the workers at gunpoint. They were charged
with breaking machines in the factory. They were
released on a technicality and returned to find the
factory in the ands of the boss and scab workers and
guarded by police. With the support of hundreds of
other workers who rallied in their defence they broke
through the police lines and re-occupied the factory.
Late in December they were issued with another court
order demanding they vacate the factory. They are
rallying support for another attempt by the state and
the boss to remove them in January.

***http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solildarity/message/1975]

ISACO joins the occupations

In an important symbolic act, on December 20 itself,
another occupation took place at ISACO, a factory that
made car parts and at one time employed over 200
workers. ISACO shut down in December 2000, and was
finally declared bankrupt on 24 November this year.
When the former workers heard this they decided to
camp outside to prevent the factory being stripped of
machines. They reoccupied the factory at 7 am on the
20th with plans to restart production under workers’
control. They took this decision conscious of the many
other occupations that have already taken place.*

[*At a recent meeting the ‘interbarrial’ of San Martin
(North Buenos Aires) as well as student and teachers’
unions decided to join in a festival on the 11th in
the factory to build support for a return to
production but under workers and not the bosses’
control.]

Defence committees

Almost all attempts by the bossses to get the police,
the justice and the union scabs to retake these
factories have so far failed. The recent retaking of
the Halac medical clinic at Cordoba on the 17 December
succeeded only because the numbers defending the clinc
were too small to stop the police. The lesson being
drawn is that all of the sectors in struggle have to
unite to form mass defence committees against the
bosses’ attempts to retake the occupied workplaces.
Hence the common columns marching on the 20th put up
the demand for unity to defend the occupations,
clearly against the bureaucrats’ measures to divide
the movement.

Build for a general strike

The second lesson is that as well as these defence
committees, the rest of the sectors in struggle
(unemployed, employed, and members of neighbourhood
Popular Assemblies) have to unite behind a general
strike to bring Duhalde down. They must take
seriously the demand raised spontaneously on December
20 2001: “out with them all, not one must remain”.

Instead of organising another Argentinazo to bring
Duhalde down, the union bureaucrats are conducting
negotiations with Duhalde and the IMF to do a deal to
rescue the Argentinean economy and avoid a popular
revolution. They are jockeying to contest the April
elections, or they are taking a fake left line and
calling for elections for Constituent Assemblies as if
these would solve Argentina’s crisis. That is why the
class stuggle tendency in the movement united behind
Brukman and Zanon puts the demand on the bureacuracy
for a general strike to bring down the government now,
and for a National Congress of employed, unemployed
and Popular Assemblies.

‘Workers to Power’

It is all very well to bring down a government, but
who will rule in its place? The experience of the
unemployed movement that has called for “workers to
power” for more than a year, and of the factory
occupations points to a workers’ revolution as the
solution to Argentina’s crisis.* That is why the
‘class struggle’ currrents united on the anniversary
of the Argentinazo around the demand for ‘workers to
power’ and for a 3rd national congress of workers
early in 2003 that can become the basis of a workers’
government.

[*Contesting the April Presidential elections is
conceding now that Duhalde cannot be brought down by
other means. Demanding a Constitutent Assembly, a new
bourgeois parliament elected by all adult citizens,
now, as the PO (Workers’ Party) does, concedes that
dual power organs like workers councils or soviets
cannot be built now. However, if Duhalde is not
brought down and dual power organs are not created
before April 2003, then both contesting the elections
and calling for a Constitutent Assembly may be
tactical options that can be used to advance the
workers’ struggle.]

All the “left traitors” line up to serve the boss

But we find that the revolutionary situation in
Argentina that opened up over a year ago by workers
looking for their own solution to the crisis has been
met by opposition from all the political currents
across the spectrum of Argentina’s class structure.
Most workers have lost faith in any of the Bourgeois
parties including the left Peronists like Duhalde (or
his predecessor Saa, who is waiting in the wings with
the retired General Rico as a running mate for the
Presidency).

Nor are they enthusiastic to vote for left reformists
like De Ellia and Zamora who promise ‘popular
governments’ modelled on Lula’s World Social Forum
government in Brazil. As the peso's devaluation has
restored the competitiveness of Argentina’s exports,
the reformist left is looking to a revival of trade
with Brazil to rescue the economy. But there is no way
out of the crisis for workers via the bourgeois state.
The most that can happen is that Argentina’s crisis
will become joined with Brazil’s own ongoing crisis.
The World Social Forum is a ‘Menshevik’ international
that has to be confronted internationally by
revolutionaries.

Fake Trotskyists

The most treacherous of all are the self-proclaimed
‘Trotskyist’ parties that put forward the demand for a
Constituent Assembly as the solution to Argentina’s
crisis. The Constituent Assembly is a bourgeois
parliament that represents all classes. As we argued
in Class Struggle No 43, to call for a Constituent
Assembly when revolution is building is to reject
Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution in favour of
a Stalinist/Menshevik ‘two stage revolution’.

Trotsky’s theory makes it clear that in colonies and
semi-colonies fighting imperialism, there can be no
break with imperialism unless the working class leads
a socialist revolution. The national bourgeoisie are
completely dependent upon imperialism and workers
alone have the class interest and class power to lead
a revolution to expropriate the imperialists.

While the appeal of the elections to a popular front
and the various Constituent Assemblies are being
pushed non-stop, as yet none of these attempts to
divert the revolution has won the support of the class
struggle wing of the movement where the instinct is
for ‘workers to power’. The situation is ripe for a
revolutionary leadership to thrust itself to the fore
and to take the lead in building organs of workers
power against the union bureaucracy and against the
bourgeois state.*

[*‘Menshevik’ refers to the majority of the Russian
Communist Party after 1902 that held that history
occurs in a serious of stages. The WSF and the
Brazilian PT follow this ideology and this traps them
into forming governments with ‘progressive’
capitalists to defend bourgeois democracy rather than
fight outright for a socialist revolution.]

Where to from here?

The stalemate in Argentina is poised to end in one of
two ways. The bosses may succeed in dampening down the
revolutionary situation with a new round of elections
as a trap for the majority of workers, and the
systematic repression of the factory occupations and
militant wing of the mass movement. This would allow
them to impose a solution to the crisis on the backs
of the masses and avoid the threat of revolutionary
upheaval.

But for this to succeed the workers’ revolution has to
be strangled. The revolutionary situation that has
opened up in the last year has demonstrated the
necessity for the unity and coordination of all the
sectors in struggle around the factory occupations to
break with the union bureaucrats and launch a general
strike to bring down the government and put a workers
government in its place. The class struggle wing is
now drawing these lessons and embarking on that road
and building united fronts across the country. But
that will not be sufficient. There needs to be a
revolutionary party and program to lead the way
forward.

The Revolutionary Party

The single crucial factor that will make the
difference in which direction Argentina goes is the
existence a revolutionary party. The instinctive
struggle for ‘workers to power’ cannot happen
spontaneously. It has to be built, defended and
extended by creating organs of dual power. The
occupations are the starting point because only they
seriously challenge capitalist property rights. The
intervention of the revolutionary left in the
occupations is the test of their leadership. Here we
see the vanguard of the workers testing out the
revolutionary ideas of the more healthy parties.

Some like the Workers Party (PO) or Socialist Workers
Party (PTS), who try to contain the struggle for
sectarian or oppportunist reasons, are being exposed.*
Those parties like the DO, the CS and RSL, and other
militant workers that fight for the vanguard to adopt
a revolutionary action program and for organs of
workers power, will become the core of the Argentinean
revolutionary party, and part of a new world party of
revolution.

[*The PTS argued against the DO’s proposed demands for
December 20 at two recent meetings in Brukman and were
defeated. This did not stop the PTS bringing 20 workes
from Zanon to try to reverse this vote. They failed
and had to march behind banners that called for a
break with the bureaucracy. The PO recently lost 300
of its supporters in La Matanza (a working class
suburb of Greater Buenos Aires) because it is
administering the work plans and taking money from the
state.]

Here is the take on the 19/2O from Jorge Altamira, the
leader of the Workers Party - the large and
now-influential Trotskyist group that the CWG's
article accuses of selling out the revolution. The
Workers Party argues that 19/20 was an outstanding
success, and that Argentina is closer to revolution
now than it was a year ago
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solidarity/message/2192

Here is something else from the Workers Party from the
20th
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solidarity/message/2199

And here is an alternative view of the situation in
Argentina from an Argentinian anarchist group.
Organización Revolucionaria Anarquista's view that a
pre-revolutionary rather than revolutionary situation
exists in the country puts them to the right of the
Workers Party, close to the position of the powerful
Castroist/Stalinist Communist Party. They endorse the
Popular Fronts the CWG condemns
http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos10848.html

Esperabamos que un pentotero de dimensiones inauditas llegara desde Ganimides lleno de cornucopias de alabastro lustrado el 17 de enero del 2003

No llego.

Que paso con el pentotero y las cornucopias?.

Que hacer para tener nuestro propio pentotero alabastral en 3D

¡Miralos a los "democracia obrera" chamuyando en inglés! ¡¡Juaaaaaa juaaaaaaaaa juaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!