Socialists Without Borders
Once again, Argentina finds itself in a profound economic crisis and appears to be heading towards a pre-revolutionary situation. The struggles that have already begun will define whether the country plummets into an even more undemocratic and dictatorial society, further precarized, with rampant social decay, or if it rebounds towards the establishment of workers’ power organs under the leadership of revolutionary organizations capable of overthrowing the current anti-worker government and regime, which defends the military caste, and establish a workers’ government.
On December 10, 2023, Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina, a particularly sinister character. Milei is the founding leader, just three years ago, of the so-called ‘La Libertad Avanza’ (LLA), a libertarian movement integrated by conservative forces such as the Movement for Integration and Development, the Movement of Retirees and Youth, and the Libertarian Party, as well as other right-wing and far-right personalities like the racist Espert, a deputy of Milei who makes threats of violence against the left. LLA is the product in Argentina of a global reactionary political movement inspired by the Tea Party in the United States, which now has significant influence in the Republican Party.
Milei is an ultra-orthodox libertarian who proclaims himself an anarcho-capitalist whose political formulations push reactionary neoliberal ideas to their extreme consequences. He declares himself a staunch enemy of all types of public social security aid, even in cases of extreme urgency; an enemy of the existence of any type of state-owned entities, of any role of the state in education because he absurdly considers that public education is nothing more than anti-capitalist indoctrination, and he is also a declared enemy of free public health, labor and union rights; a vehement enemy of social fighters and indigenous communities defending the environment because he wants to privatize and exploit as much of nature as possible, ridiculously denying that climate change is real, and in the area of human rights, he denies that there were 30,000 disappeared during the military dictatorship of the 70s, mainly because he knows that his agenda can only be imposed by dictatorial methods and needs a rehabilitated army to carry out internal repression.
Clearly, he also opposes abortion, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and any type of social protest, and any struggle for environmental protection, and openly declares his contempt against los negros de mierda’ (impoverished and unemployed workers from the poorest and most abandoned neighborhoods) and against the socialist and revolutionary left, which he also refers to as ‘zurdos de mierda’.
Milei is akin to the international conservative populist trend that includes from Bolsonaro, Trump, and Viktor Orban of Hungary to Mariano Rajoy, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, and Mario Vargas Llosa, among others.
The emergence of LLA in the Argentine political superstructure put an end to the alternation during this century of populist governments, led by Kirchner’s Peronism, and right-wing populism, grouped in the front formed by Together for Change [Juntos por el Cambio], which includes Macri’s Republican Proposal -PRO, Carrió’s Civic Coalition, and the Radical Party.
THE ‘LIBERTARIAN’ AGENDA WILL DEEPEN SOCIAL INEQUALITY
The libertarian agenda has nothing to do with freedom or progress. It is a recycling of the old neoliberalism that is now presented as an urgent necessity:
- Reduction to zero the role of the state in the economy and social services. It seeks the elimination of all types of legislation that regulates the conduct of private businesses, from environmental to labor and commercial legislation. This means a reduction in taxes mainly for capitalists and the elimination of everything that represents for the capitalists an obstacle to obtaining immediate profits.
- A cult of the ‘free’ market as the supreme mechanism for ‘economic growth,’ and supposedly for ‘social welfare.’ This is the old fallacy that the market spreads wealth, creates all the jobs needed, and promotes investment when, on the contrary, global economic data show that it has led in the last 40 years to the super concentration of wealth in a few hands and to the stagnation and decline of real wages and to conditions of widespread poverty.
- Dollarization of the economy to supposedly control inflation by eliminating the financial and monetary policy of the national state. This is nothing but the abandonment of Argentine monetary sovereignty to hand it over to the U.S. government and central bank as if there were no political manipulation of monetary policy in that country. And as if all state monetary policy were inflationary.
- General privatization of all public services from health to education to the retirement system. Introduction of vouchers for private education. This is nothing but the tacit acknowledgment that the capitalist economy does not increase real wages and that the state will need to subsidize private schools.
- The libertarian ideology is a repressive capitalist agency that in the name of ‘individual rights’ and ‘personal freedom’ reserves exclusively for capitalists the freedom of expression and private property.
MILEI’S FIRST MEASURES
The first measures of Milei’s government, through his Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, included the immediate devaluation of the Argentine peso by 50% and the halting of public works, even canceling public work tenders that were about to start. Caputo also announced a reduction in transport and energy subsidies, public sector job cuts, the elimination of state secretariats, and reduced funding for provinces.Days later, Milei introduced a decree of necessity and urgency (DNU) on December 20, 2023, which contains 366 articles and repeals or modifies 73 existing laws, aiming at completely deregulating the economy. Among the main measures imposed are the following: Repeal of the Supply Law, which allowed the State to set maximum prices and sanction companies that raised prices “unjustifiably”. Repeal of the Gondola Law [which required supermarkets to display a variety of brands for each product]. Liberation of rents, eliminating price and term controls. Liberalization of car sales, eliminating the internal tax on high-end cars. Reduction of corporate taxes, including the elimination of income tax for companies with less than 800 employees. Privatization of Aerolíneas Argentinas.
The inflation rate for December was 25%, compared to 12.8% in November, and 22.6% in January 2024, for an annual total of 211%, the highest in the last 30 years. Real wages have fallen by 20% since November.
PROTESTS BEGIN
Milei made the announcement of his package of Decrees of Necessity and Urgency, DNU, late at night on December 20 to prevent it from coinciding with an annual mobilization that took place during the day in remembrance of the social protest that overthrew President De La Rúa’s government, from the Radical Party, in 2001.
Milei’s national address late at night nevertheless ignited a massive repudiation reaction with crowds spontaneously taking to public squares to protest against his speech announcements, including the mobilization of middle-class sectors that supported him until a few days earlier.
Milei, who had focused his campaign on denouncing the “caste” in power, has been improvising all kinds of alliances as needed. For the runoff, he allied with old figures representing the country’s conservative politics, such as Macri and his former presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, whom he quickly integrated into his government as Minister of Security, after having called her a “murderous Montonera” during campaign debates.
Milei’s DNU decrees, to which he has now added a voluminous legislative package called the Omnibus Law, were subjected to approval and negotiation in Congress and have failed to gather the necessary votes.
MILEI’S CABINET IN CRISIS
Milei, who crowned himself with the flag of the fight against ‘The Caste’, pragmatically tried to integrate a de facto national unity government, displacing members of his own LLA, appointing officials from the Schiaretti government in Córdoba to his cabinet: Franco Mogetta as head of the Transport Secretariat and Osvaldo Giordano as head of ANSES; he also appointed officials from the previous government of Alberto Fernández and Massa, including Daniel Scioli as ambassador to Brazil, who maintains connections with Peronist governors; Marco Lavagna as head of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC); Flavia Royón as head of the Mining Secretariat, and Leandro Madcur as a liaison between the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
When Milei failed with his Omnibus Law in Congress, he decided to purge his cabinet, dismissing Mogetta from ANSES and Flavia Royón because they did not guarantee him the support of the Peronist benches he needed, and he is now aiming to restructure his cabinet with politicians from Macri’s PRO party.
The Decrees of Necessity and Urgency encountered strong resistance not only in Congress, but the CGT also called a general strike to repudiate his labor policy.
Milei’s repressive methods are already evident. The Argentine left joined the mobilizations and was subjected to fierce repression on the streets by the national government while protesting outside Congress as his legislative measures were being debated.
This initial failure of Milei does not mean that he has burned all bridges with the Kirchnerist opposition. Massa, his defeated rival, himself a neoliberal, has already shown signs of wanting to negotiate with Milei’s agenda and even met with the top union bureaucrats to dissuade them from the general strike action on January 24, arguing that it is necessary to first build a consensus of the opposition. Massa wants to help Milei gain time to consolidate a functional majority that facilitates formal governance.
MILEI’S MEASURES EXCEED HIS ‘MANDATE’
This new president obtained 56% of the effective votes in a presidential election where there was a 20% abstention rate, meaning Milei’s actual effective vote is only 42% of the registered voters. LLA’s strength in Congress is limited to 40 out of 257 deputies and 7 out of 72 senators, and they do not have any provincial governors.
TASKS OF THE LEFT
The revolutionary left in Argentina, the only one that can offer a possible alternative for the exploited and oppressed masses of Argentina, has not managed to overcome its fragmentation and the marginality imposed by the electoral system. Despite the fact that the main left-wing organizations have formed a unified electoral front, they do not really present themselves with a single voice and a single socialist and revolutionary program. Their main weakness is their political pragmatism in adapting to the electoral mechanisms of the regime, including the one used to define candidacies in general elections, which are determined through the open primary elections, PASO. The left-wing organizations must, in order to become an objective political factor, present themselves with a single electoral formula from the PASO and not compete publicly among their different currents. If they decide their candidacies with their own democratic mechanisms independent of the state, they will be able to clearly present themselves against ALL bourgeois candidates from the beginning.
We recognize that during the presidential campaign in the electoral process, the PTS (Socialist Workers’ Party) as part of the Left and Workers’ Front (Unity), which presented human rights lawyer Miriam Bregman, a member of that party, as a candidate, fought an excellent battle, and although she obtained only 2% of the vote due to polarization, her voice remains as a national political reference, which provokes the hatred and attacks of Milei’s political followers.
These attacks have not been limited to Bregman and are launched against all those who fight and against the socialist left, with violent threats even invoking the use of firearms against social protest. These threats, in a country that experienced state terrorism under Isabel Peron, when her death squads physically attacked independent union leaders, the left, and intellectuals committed to social struggles, must be taken seriously, and we must reject them with all our possible strength.
As measures of continued precarization and repression of the population are put into action, social responses to them are in a waiting period. Soon we will know the magnitude of these social responses and the outcome of this next tug-of-war. We could expect the picketers, teachers, students, women, and other workers to return to the streets not just for better living conditions, but for their mere survival. It is also expected that different sectors will seek to accommodate the new government.
In Argentina, the situation is very serious but it can get much worse. In Argentina, revolution is urgent, there is no more margin for waiting. Either the masses mobilize, or we are heading towards unimaginable barbarity, which will be exacerbated in the context of a climate crisis that is already wreaking havoc in different places, like the recent storm in Bahía Blanca. That was just a preview… climate change will cause greater disasters throughout the hemisphere, including those resulting from the melting of Antarctica and the rising sea levels, as well as the already known consequences of heatwaves, more frequent floods, and infrastructure collapse, droughts, etc.
The Peronists, the Radicals, the PRO, those from La Libertad Avanza, American, European, Brazilian, and Chinese imperialism, cannot, and do not want to get Argentina out of crisis, and they cannot and do not want to, because everything that saves the workers and dispossessed of Argentina directly threatens their profits and privileges. There is no reconciliation of interests. It’s one against the other.
It is then the responsibility of the revolutionary left to give an internationalist response to the situation, to be able to explain this to these workers and dispossessed, and to put all the intention and energy into the participation in the upcoming struggles with their program and clear direction towards the seizure of power by the workers in their country and in the world. The breathable air in Argentina and in the entire world is running out. There is no more time to lose.The central policy of the revolutionary left should be the call for a United Workers’ Front similar to what Trotsky proposed for Germany in the face of the rise of Nazism. This must include the mandatory call for unity of action with the existing union leaderships, regardless of who leads them.
PROGRAM FOR THE RESISTANCE
STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ADVANCE OF MILEI’S GOVERNMENT DICTATORSHIP
- For a government of workers, youth, the left, and those who fight.
- Unconditional defense of all conquered rights.
- For a universal living wage for everyone.
- Prepare for self-defense.
- Organize the struggle in neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces.
- No to the payment of foreign debt. Out with the IMF.
- No to the payment of bank debts for citizens and small businesses.
- No to the payment of rents and mortgage loans.
- No to the payment of electricity, gas, telephone, internet, and taxes on houses, apartments, farms, and small premises, of citizens or small businesses.
- Call for international solidarity.
- Demand the restoration of secretariats under the democratic control of their workers and community organizations.
- Unconditional defense of the right to abortion.
- Defense of indigenous peoples and immigrants.
- Expropriation of large industry and large estates.
- Stop environmental pollution and land contamination – No to mining and megaprojects that destroy the environment for corporate benefit.
- Stop the export of food products. Food distribution is priority number one, organized by transporters and workers of large supermarkets and small owners of grocery and vegetable stores – directed by workers and unemployed organizations.
- Employment for all for the reconstruction of resilient infrastructure in the face of climate change.
No time to lose!
Down with the Milei government!
For a government of workers
!Socialism or Barbarism!
Socialists Without Borders