Democracia Obrera

Segunda Época

 

 

Argentina is today the weakest link of the imperialistic domain chain in Latin America.

The labor and popular revolution that has begun in Argentina is sister of the yesterday's combats of Ecuadorian masses and of the revolution Palestinian today.

The revolution that has begun deserves to triumph

Long life for the revolution

 

We overthrown De la Rúa and Cavallo and we put in crisis the infamous regime with a general strike, with revolts for bread, with barricades in the streets of the working class; and with the rebellion of the ruined middle classes

 

In these bandits’ cave which is the Legislation Assembly (both chambers of the parliament meeting together) of the PJ and the UCR they choose an illegitimate government

 

The revolutionary struggle of the exploited should not stop until demolishing the power of the bankers, the slavery employers and the IMF

 

Down with Duhalde and the gorilla and anti-workers regime

 

For a national congress of delegates of the whole working class and of every popular sectors that enter in the struggle:

• to vote a labor and popular plan and to expropriate the expropriators.

• to set out self-defense committees against the bands of hoodlums of the PJ and the UCR and the murderous police.

• to expel the traitor union bureaucracy from all labor organizations.

• to organize a new shove of the masses to sweep the infamous régime and to impose a workers’ and popular government based on the fighting organizations of the insurgent masses

 

 

 

Ten days that shook Argentina

The general strike on December 13th and the independent actions of the masses on December 19th and 20th overthrown the government of the ruling class and imperialism

and dislocated and provoked a serious crisis to the infamous, anti-workers and sipoy parties’ regime

 

On December 13th, the workers lead a political general strike against De la Rúa and Cavallo’s government. But this general strike was different from the six previous general strikes that the union bureaucracy was forced to call. This time, the strike did not decompress the situation and could not be drove after the employers’ “Frente Productivo”. With this political general strike and the following revolutionary actions, every sector of the working class, the exploited masses and the impoverished middle class, the protagonists of these ten days that shook Argentina, were joining the struggle. From December 17th there was a generalization of the struggle against dismissals and wages cuts, like in Telecom, Zanón, Foetra, ferroviarios, Emfer. The state workers in Neuquen, the council workers in Córdoba and in Santiago, were de vanguard in the fight.

 

On December 19th, while the thousands of hunger masses assaulted the supermarkets, and the police begun the massacre that ended in the assassination of more than 30 workers, the church, the PJ, the Alianza, besides the employers’ UIA and “Frente Productivo”, besides the trade union bureaucracy, were in the site of Caritas, attempting to save the De la Rúa and Cavallo’s government, trying to reach an agreement on a devaluation plan to face the boisterous falling of the Cavallo’s economic plan. But no agreement came out from this meeting. While the hours were passing, the masses continued advancing into the streets, until they imposed a great achievement: the revolutionary withdrawal of the De la Rúa’s and Cavallo’s government, opening an enormous crisis in the heights. This was the response of the working class and the people to the crack that beat Argentina as a result of the world economic crisis, and to the economic blow imposed on their backs by the imperialism.

 

In December 1999, after the working class left wounded to death the “Menemato” with its struggles, De la Rúa began his government killing two workers in Corrientes and promising from that city, that he was going to put the country in order. But two years of generalized political struggles of the working class, with seven general strikes, stopped the De la Rúa’s government to become a strong “Delarruato”, defeating the workers’ movement.

 

From December 13th, the workers overpassed the dams of the regime and the trade union bureaucracy. Finally, on December 19th and 20th, the trade union bureaucracy of the official CGT and of the “dissident” CGT, was surpassed by an independent action of the workers and the masses. Independent action that the bureaucracy, the church and the ruling class were trying to prevent until the last minute in their meeting in Caritas. When the massive assaults to the supermarkets begun, De Gennaro and the CTA were collecting signatures for a petition “against poverty”. ¡Pathetic! Thousands were assaulting supermarkets and the leaders were collecting signatures. The “piqueteros” leadership of D’Elía and Alderete -who had took to a dead end the two “Asambleas piqueteras”, and who had made a pact with the government to administrate the charities of the “planes trabajar”- appeared on TV, while the assaults were taking place, whimpering and condemning them, just like vulgar scared reactionaries.

 

The workers had been harassing the “citadel” of the infamous regime and of the government of De la Rúa and Cavallo with their political general strikes, with their local upsurges, and with their piquet lines, such as in Mosconi and Tartagal, and with their uncountable number of struggles, such as in Córdoba and Neuquén. On December 13th, the political direction of the struggle was already clear: the cry was “out with De la Rúa and Cavallo” and “out with all of them”, against every one of the bourgeois institutions. The plunderings were not a war of the poor against the poor but they were a direct attack against the bourgeois property.

 

In contrast to other opportunities, the middle classes did not support the government –after being its social basis- this time. Facing the attack from the government they entered in the scene through the cracks opened by the working class. The great mobilization of the “cacerolas” in the night of December 19th, welded the workers and people’s unity again, and left the government and the regime without their social basis. This turned the field to the side of the workers.

 

But all this was not enough. Those who supported De la Rúa did not want to give up. It was necessary one more enormous revolutionary journey on December 20th. It was the most revolutionary journey in this period. It was the day of the barricades and the confrontation with the police at Plaza de Mayo all over the day. Just then the resistance of the exploiters was broken, the government of the privatizers monopolies and Repsol was overthrown, and the plan of  “national unity” of the “Frente Productivo” was dismantled. If the police was enraged in Plaza de Mayo and the snipers killed seven young people, it was not because of the stubbornness of De la Rúa, but because they were in panic facing the possibility of the people coming into the Casa Rosada. Some officials of the government said that they were afraid of that a scene like in Rumania in 1989, when the people took justice in their own hands against the officials of the old regime led by Ceaucescu.

 

We were in front of the dislocation of the employers’ regime, and in front of a phenomenal crisis in the heights, in which no one of the bourgeois factions had any solution for the situation. At the beginning, terrified, the bourgeoisie accepted to raise the very weak government of Rodriguez Saá. It was a popular front government, a class collaboration government, between the national-market faction of the bourgeoisie and the official leadership of the working class, and it had only one objective: to save time, to take the masses out of the streets by the swindle and the sweet words of the demagogic promises.

 

The raises of Rodriguez Saá was possible because of the vacuum opened by the revolutionary crisis in the heights, and because of the panic and disband in the lines of the bourgeoisie facing the beginning revolution. It was a “sui generis” peoples front government that even if premature, achieved the objective of confusing and bringing workers out of the streets. But, at the same time, this achievement allowed the palatine coup that overthrown it.

 

The peronist governors organized the putch, and it was imposed when Duhalde was designated as the new president. This was a government based on the PJ and the UCR, that is, the last attempt for a government on the basis of the “Pacto de Olivos” (Olivos agreement), and supported by the great national and foreigner exporter bourgeoisie and by the imperialism, the same bourgeois factions that joint together to organize the genocidal coup d’etat in 1976. But this is a weak government, because it does not have any social basis and because it is confronting with an up surging mass movement that feels victorious.

 

After more than ten days of independent actions of the masses that shook the country, the bourgeois regime is dislocated: there were five presidents in ten days during a huge revolutionary crisis. Every institution of the regime has lost its prestige, all of them are hated by the workers and the people: the Ministers of the Supreme Court have to run away through the basement of the tribunals; if the Legislative Assembly could meet and usurp the workers’ and people’s triumph passing the anti-workers laws established by Duhalde, it was only because they are protected by thousands of policemen armed up to their teeth and by bands of hoodlums organized by the police and the barons of the PJ. Not only De la Rúa y Cavallo are worried about their safety: as it has happened with the militaries after the fall of the dictatorship in 1982, at the present, no one of the politicians of the PJ and the UCR –who have arrogated to themselves the representation of the people to expropriate its triumph and to designate two presidents in a week- can move calmly along the streets because of the fear to the reaction of the workers and the people. The outstanding figures of the old government, De la Rúa y Cavallo, live in secrecy, protected by their partners of the PJ and the UCR.

 

But the most extraordinary achievement is that the workers have broken the corset of the trade union bureaucracy in a generalized way and nationally. In the previous periods, this break took place locally and sector by sector, such as Tartagal and Mosconi, the fish-workers in Mar del Plata, the bus-drivers in Córdoba. This is the first time since 1975 that the workers overpass the dam of the trade union bureaucracy and the statized unions. When this happened in 1975, the ruling class and imperialism organized the military coup that preserved the bureaucrats. Only because of this, the independent actions that marked the beginning of this revolution are the continuance –with different ways and different characteristics- of previous heroic deeds of the working class, like the deeds in the 70s. The spontaneity of the masses overcoming the traitor leaderships was one million times more effective than any struggle controlled by the trade union bureaucracy.

 

As we will see later, the government of Duhalde is not more than the last and desperate attempt to save the rests of the old regime, born in the “Pacto de Olivos”, kept up by the parties of the ruling class, which are hated by the masses. This is the answer of the national and foreign exporter bourgeoisie –the same that created the enormous business of the external debt, the same that supported the military dictatorship- trying to achieve a new place in the world market, on the decline of the bourgeois factions that have got enormous profits in the previous period. It is an attempt to open a new cycle to guarantee the payment of the external debt to the USA imperialism, on the basis of an increment of the appreciation extracted from the workers movement and a devaluation of the Peso.

 

But the workers’ movement and the masses are in state of rebellion and insubordination. The bourgeoisie could momentarily close the crisis in the heights, but the revolution still alive at the bottom. The journeys that have opened the revolution still open today. Every sector of the working class and the masses that feel that it is attacked comes into the struggle. The masses are in a pre-insurrectional state. The confidence of the masses in their own strength has been enforced. There is a conquest for the consciousness, and there is where the revolution lives. This is the reason why the bourgeoisie and imperialism are frightening. They know that they must launch a furious attack against these masses that feel victorious. This is the new relation of forces achieved.

 

While we are writing this article, there are uncountable struggles: for the payment of the wages and against the dismissal of workers, such as the workers of the Hospital Italiano; the workers of Emfer, occupying the box offices at the train station; the uprising against the councilor of the people in Pilar; the mobilizations that in different cities –like in La Plata and Mendoza- are taking place with a few minutes and a few meters of difference between each other; stoppages of the streets facing the most elementary demand; the spontaneous protest meetings of the savers, who were swindled by the bakers; the indignation and the war in the streets after the assassination of  three youth in Floresta. All of these struggles are proving that the spark can appear at any moment.

 

The second great achievement of the revolution is that the workers are conscious that the governments can be overthrown with the struggle in the streets. Other achievement of the revolution is the weakness provoked for the slavery employers, the bankers, the imperialist monopolies, and the owners of the privatized companies, who are fighting between them. The princes who have expropriated the victory of the people after the overthrown of the king, can only armor their regime, as it can be saw in the parliament surrounded by hundreds of policemen. It is only the betrayal of the trade union bureaucracy what obstructs new actions of the working class and its allies to overthrow this government and demolish the bourgeois regime deepening the revolution. ¡This is the pending task!

 

The Argentine revolution is before a crossroads like the one exposed by Trotsky in the 30s: “After the war, a series of revolutions that meant brilliant victories took place: in Russia, in Germany, in Austria-Hungary, later, in Spain. But it was only in Russia where the proletariat took the power fully in its hands, it expropriated to its expropriators and, thanks to it, it knew how to create and to maintain a Workers State. In all the other cases, the proletariat in spite of the victory stopped because of its leadership, to half on the way. The result of this was that the power escaped from its hands and, moving from left to right, it finished being the booty of the fascism.” (León Trotsky, Where is France going?)

 

The revolution is in front of new revolutionary journeys or new counterrevolutionary blows. Will these counterrevolutionary blows be able to stop the enormous strength unleashed by the revolution? It depends on the development of the leadership under the heat of the national and international combats.

 

The working class, the exploited masses, the impoverished middle class without any organization to centralize them, with an enormous spontaneity and without a revolutionary leadership, in the center of an economic crack, have opened the crisis, but they did not take the power, what was possible. A revolutionary stage was opened. It can only be closed by counterrevolutionary actions as hard as the revolutionary actions that opened it, or a new revolutionary dashing of the masses will deepen it.

 

The working and people’s masses begin the revolution and put Argentina in the way of the today Palestine and yesterday Ecuador

 

Argentine workers must feel an internationalist pride because when the imperialism was celebrating the success of its assassin bombs in Afghanistan, in Argentina we beat them in the opposite way: we overthrow the government of De la Rúa and Cavallo, their agents in Argentina, that the wanted to use for keeping their backyards in calm while they bomb the Arabic masses.

 

These extraordinary independent actions -that have left exhaust and dislocated the bourgeois regime and every one of the institutions- were possible because the world economic crisis has brought the semi colonial Argentina into a bankruptcy. Argentina was the weakest link of the imperialistic domain chain in the region. The submerged rocks of the world crisis, that put the Argentine bourgeoisie without any place in the world market (“the country is in bankruptcy” says Duhalde), have been opening, for four years, important cracks under the floating line of the bourgeois regime.

 

The Argentine revolution is one more of the revolutions given birth by the world crisis. Particularly, it is the daughter of its third round, that hit Turkey and the United States themselves that were brought into a recession. Nothing will be like it was before because the crisis left the periphery to hit on the heart of the imperialism. The North American imperialism is in fight –even bombing the masses as in Afghanistan- to maintain its supremacy. This is why, if in the previous rounds of the crisis, the imperialism helped Mexico or Russia, this time they will only help Turkey because it is a key country in their plans to dominate the East. For the rest of the countries that are dragged into crisis, they want to force them into a liquidation to impose a new dive of its domination, converting them just in protectorates like in Kosovo, or imposing puppet governments like in Afghanistan. ¡But, to impose a direct government of the trustees from the IMF, they have to defeat the masses! Argentina is an outstanding expression of the world confrontation between revolution and counterrevolution; it is expression of this convulsive stage of the world situation, crossed by cracks, crises and revolutions. As in every semi colonial country, the two big forces that are confronting each other are, in one barricade the workers leading the rest of the exploited masses and the poor middle class, and in the other the imperialism and its native partners.

 

As in Palestine –the other great revolution of this period- the working class and the exploited masses in Argentina had their “Intifada” during the previous years of fierce resistance, speaking the language of the stones and the fire in revolts as the “Santiagueñazo”; years with confrontations with the gendarmerie and the police like in Cutral-Có, Jujuy and Salta. This happened before the workers and the exploited masse could pass to the offensive in December 2000, when the uprising in Mosconi took place opening a period of blow to blow fights against the bourgeoisie and its government, making way for the revolution in December 2001, after eight general strikes, revolutionary journeys, the defeat of the police in the streets, generalizing the “piquetes”, and building new organizations that the bureaucracy and Stalinism have dissolved.

 

As in Palestine –where the Oslo Agreements blew up and the counterrevolutionary device agreed by the nationalist bourgeois leadership, the imperialism and its gendarme state of Israel was dismantled by the intervention of the masses-, the workers and the people in Argentina have surpassed and deeply weakened the damns of the bourgeois, sipoy and pro-imperialist regime with their actions. As the Palestine workers and people surpassed their leadership, the PLO, in Argentina the counterrevolutionary device of the trade union bureaucracy over the workers movement, and the Stalinism over the unemployed movement, was overflowed by the masses with an independent action that has an historic meaning.

 

Our revolution is not at all a national, isolated, event. The Argentine revolution is not only the continuance of the Palestine revolution, but of this other great revolution begun by the workers and peasants in Ecuador two years ago and that it was defeated because of the Stalinist leadership of the trade unions and the peasants’ organizations, as well. It is sister of the “uprising for the water” in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The imperialism and the sipoy bourgeoisies come with fear that the flame expands.

 

Duhalde: the last senile attempt for a government's of the Pacto de Olivos

With Duhalde came the exporter bourgeoisie and the Unión Industrial, the same alliance that with imperialism organized the genocidal coup in 1976.

 

With the enthronement of Duhalde a new usurpation by the exploiter, swindlers and sackers of the people was consummated in the Legislative Assembly. The government of Duhalde is different from the government of Rodriguez Saá, which flirted with the labor class and went to look for the support of the CGT a week before. This time, in the same parliament that granted the superpowers for Cavallo, it was imposed a government of the Pacto de Olivos, which is the agreement between the bourgeois parties, Menem, Duhalde, and Alfonsín, against whom the workers have arose. The assumption of Duhalde was product of a Bonapartist agreement behind the people’s back –agreement achieved in secret meetings like the ones that gave the re-election to Menem.

 

Duhalde’s government is the last intent of this regime of the parties that supported the military dictatorship, that protected the genocidal militaries, that discharged the hyperinflation with Alfonsín, and that supported Menem and Cavallo –and their delivery of the country- first, and De la Rúa y Cavallo later.

 

The government of Duhalde –like any anti-workers government- received the benediction from the church. The same church that blessed the sabers of the military dictatorship, which confessed the torturers, that preached to surrender before the British in Malvinas, and that send its priests and nuns to put out with holy water the flame put on by the exploited.

 

For the time being, and because of the treachery of the trade union bureaucracy and the piqueteros’ leadership, it is the exporter, national and imperialist bourgeoisie –today devaluationist- who is in power. This is the bourgeois faction led by Acindar, Fortabat, Techint, etc., the same bourgeois faction that organized and brought their better cadres, like Martinez de Hoz for the military dictatorship in 1976. They have a plan perfectly adapted to the interests of the yankee imperialism and in detriment of the interests of the European imperialist powers.

 

This government, behind speeches such as “in defense of work” or “in defense of the national”, is trying to impose a plan designed by the yankee imperialism, Bush, and the Secretary of Treasure, O’Neil. In the first place, with a 40% devaluation of the Peso to steal almost the half of the workers’ wages, all at once, and imposing an average wage of 200 dollars. This lets the bourgeoisie to recover their profit rates. Their models are Chile and Brasil, with a “floating dollar” and misery wages.

 

“If someone can guarantee that the inflation will not pass the 10%, I will sign it just now”, said Lamberto, the second man after the Minister of Economy. “If it is not so, it will be the hell”, continued, giving an idea about the lack of confidence on themselves between the officials of the government. Duhalde himself thinks that “if this comes out bad, elections in 90 days”. What reigns is not the trust, but the cynicism. ¿Prices control? The rise of prices is unstoppable, in spite of the speeches herd from the government, because the basic commodities are, at the same time, exportable goods, so the prices are established internationally, that is in dollars, by the international companies that control the grains market like Molinos, Cargill, Monsanto, etc. For the expropriated middle class, it exists the “promise” that it will be considered the possibility of returning their savings in one year or two. On the contrary, according to Clarín (1/6/02) “Those enterprises that are in bankruptcy will liquefy their debts immediately”.

 

As we explain in other article of this issue, the imperialist plan is to bring into bankruptcy whole countries, like Argentina, to control them still more than up to now. But this means that our country is, at the same time, the battlefield for the inter-imperialist disputes. The devaluation affects –like in every struggle between different bourgeois factions- the interests of the European monopolies that kept the privatized public companies. But the government said that it will “negotiate” with them, and this means that the rates of the public services will rise.

 

Duhalde’s plan benefits in first place the banks –most of the are foreign banks-, for whom their stability and profitability is saved by the robbery of the deposits to cover the flight of capitals for 150.000 million dollars, by a tax over oil exportation and a new indebtedness. At the end it will be an enormous increase of the foreign debt.

 

In the second place, the plan benefits the national and foreign exporter-producer bourgeoisie, particularly on grains and intermediate goods like steel and derived- that has adequate the prices to the new rate between the peso and the dollar, even before the devaluation was announced.

 

On the third place, the plan guarantee the payment of the external debt with a new appreciation slice extracted from workers and with the increase of the exports product of the devaluation. To the IMF that charges the debt in dollars, the devaluation doesn't affect it in the most minimum thing, but rather it is the guarantee of getting paid. In exchange for that, it speaks of a help of 15 or 18 thousand million dollars, that will never arrive to the country, and that will be a kind of guarantee for the new plan. Also, with the devaluation and the reprogramming of the payments of the foreign debt, impelled by O'neil, they will revalue the Argentine bonds and will favor the small north American owners –who were kept aside of the previous mega exchange operations when Cavallo delivered most of the reserves-. This is the reason for the rise of the stock market and the fall of the “country risk”.

 

For the working class –the truly protagonist of this revolution that has begun, the class that has put its body and the death youngsters to overthrow the De la Rúa’s government-, the plan of this anti-workers government is a cruel robbery of the wages with the devaluation and inflation. And if the workers came into the streets, they have prepared the repression. But, because of the hate provoked by the repressive forces like the police and the Gendarmerie, while they are saving time to prepare the breed of military officials, they are ready to send into the streets the paid hoodlums’ bands organized by Duhalde and Alfonsín.

 

The government and the regime are making use of a praetorian guard of hoodlums paid by thousands of government officials that came from the bourgeois parties, police spies and trade union hoodlums –the same combination from which the Triple A arose in the 1974.

 

The brutal attack and the provocation against the left parties at the congress, the attack against the unemployed in Lomas de Zamora, the provocation of the hoodlums in Plaza de Mayo during the assumption of Duhalde, are just a sample of what they have prepared for the working class. These bands will be the basis for the future fascist bands. So we cannot wait a minute more for raising self-defense pickets in every workers and people’s struggle. Against those gossips that do not see the revolution when it is in front of their eyes, the magnitude of it is in the size of the counterrevolutionary answer prepared by the bourgeoisie and the imperialism.

 

But, be careful! Penetratingly says La Nación to Duhalde: “The boss from Buenos Aires, who has take the power is in conditions to mobilize his people to demonstrate affection to him. But the incidental popular dialogue between confronted multitudes would be a worse remedy than the illness”. The old gorilla newspaper -that like an fat old woman from the Barrio Norte, cried from its pages for de dismissal of Rodriguez Saá, terrified because of the visit of the president to the CGT- has clear that the firewood is more than dry: it is just burning, and that this government could get many votes in a Parliament that is defended by the police, and could have the support from Washington, but it has not got any social basis yet.

 

The weak government of Duhalde looked strong because the workers were momentarily took out of the streets. But the workers rebelled just when the “emergency” law was announced. This time, they come into the scene without any coordination but with hundreds of struggles, even before the attack begun. So, Duhalde is tending to look more and more like Rodriguez Saá. That is, what he really is: a weak government, mounted on a revolution, deformed, unconcluded, but a revolution.

 

But the bourgeoisie did not put all its cards on the table. The bourgeoisie is a very perspicacious class because it has been saving its property for centuries. Even if the bourgeoisie say that “they have burnt their bridges”, they are talking just about the “Pacto de Olivos”. If this attempt fails because of the intervention of the workers and the people, they have more cards, like to get rid of the old regime, and to try again with a flirtation with the workers’ and people’s movement with a new popular front, like the government of Rodriguez Saá, to disorganize their forces besides an operative of “Mani pulite” to embellish the institutions, trying to get the support from the middle class. This is the plan of Elisa Carrió to save the employers’ regime. Meanwhile, they will prepare, from the Council for the Defense of Democracy, the intervention of the military officials with the counterrevolutionary blow to defeat the revolution. So, it is decisive for the working class to stand up, setting up a real independent program to win over its allies from the middle classes in the streets. And only building workers’ struggle organizations this can be done: struggle committees, pickets and self-defense committees in every factory and in every neighborhood, and a great national congress of employed and unemployed workers.

 

A halfway revolution

 

We can say that the revolution in Argentina has begun. But it is unconcluded because of the treachery of the leaders, because of the leadership. This is the only reason for this halfway revolution we are facing at. It is a half-revolution that deserves to develop more strength than what we have seen up to now to demolish the regime and make the way towards a triumphant insurrection of the working class led by a revolutionary party. This already open revolution has to attack the capitalists’ property one thousand times more than it has attacked it before; it has to rise one thousand more barricades than it has rose before; it has to burn down and destroy one thousand more than it has burnt and destroyed.

 

The workers and the people did not overthrew De la Rúa and gave 30 lives to let same politicians and representatives of the bourgeoisie –responsible for the give up of the country and for the misery and hanger that forced us to go into the streets- still in government. We did not confront the assassin police during two days to let the bourgeoisie to provoke a furious rise of prices, to let them speculate with unsupplying of medicine and consumer goods. We did not face the bullets, while the trade union and the piqueteros’ leaders were hidden, to let them steal our wages with devaluation so that the exporter bourgeoisie and the imperialism continue getting super profits on our expense.

 

It is necessary for this hybrid revolution –half blind, half deaf and half silent-, which the bourgeoisie will try to stop and to smash, to be deepened and completed. The great triumph that is the overthrown the government of De la Rúa and Cavallo should not be enough for the workers and the people: we yet have to conquest the bread and workplaces for everyone; we have to recover the savings of the people; we have to break up with the imperialism and we have to end with the domination of a handful of bankers and monopolies who impoverish the workers and the small producers and who plunder the nation. We have pending to sweep out every institution of this infamous regime, the government of Duhalde and the Pacto de Olivos and their new plan of hanger and misery, fighting in the streets, making true the cry “out with all of them, no one can stay”. We have pending to put an end to this parliament of swindlers of the people, and their anti-workers and gorilla parties; to put an end to this Supreme Court and all the live members cast of videlist-peronist-radical judges who saved the genocidal military officers. We must dissolve the police, the intelligence services; we have to dismantle the para-state bands that are rising from the apparatus of the PJ; we have to dissolve the officials’ cast of the armed forced and punish the thousands of genocidal officials that the PJ and the UCR left free to kill the workers and the people, such as the three young of Floresta, Aníbal Verón, Victor Choque, Teresa Rodríguez, and our thirty martyrs of the 19th and 20th of December journeys.

 

 

It is necessary to get rid of the trade union bureaucrats, who are traitors, scabs and jailers of the labor class. Those that when the labor youth faced with the police in the streets, they met with the employers of the UIA to save De la Rúa (Daher and Moyano and the CGT). Those who, while we were solving the problem of hunger, they were collecting signatures on a petition "against poverty" (De Gennaro and the CTA). It is necessary to defeat the piquetera leadership of D'elía and Alderete that after liquidating the organization achieved in the Asambleas Piqueteras, when it was more necessary than ever before, they went to kiss the hands of Rodriguez Saá in exchange for that he chooses them to distribute the miserable “Planes Trabajar”. They are those that now are crawling before Duhalde because they want the same thing from him. The cry should be: ¡Asamblea piquetera now! not on February 10th giving time to the government.

 

We have to recapture the road that we begin with the pickets of Mosconi and Tartagal, of Argentinean Airlines and with the two Asambleas Piqueteras. But in a superior level, because now millions entered in the struggle for wages, against the discharges, to recover their savings, against the taxes, for nurseries for their children. Those who play these struggles are beginning to meet each other, to establish knots. The watchword of impelling committees that coordinate all those that are fighting, in each neighborhood, town, city, is on the agenda. The disposition for the struggle of the workers is enormous, but it spreads in multitude of fights without coordination. The unoccupied ones for here, those that want to get paid over there, those that want to recover their small savings on the other hand. ¡United it is easier to conquer! It is necessary to put in foot organisms for the political fight of masses in each neighborhood, town, city and county.

 

It is necessary to appeal for a great national congress of the whole labor movement -with delegates one for each hundred employed and unemployed workers- to unite our lines, that could be seen by all the exploited as an institution able to take in their hands the resolution of the problems of all the exploited in our own hands. In the same way that the bourgeoisie has its institutions -its parliaments, its forums, its congresses, its cameras managers, some publics and other secrets - to conspire against the people, to discuss how they exploit us better and how to brake the revolution that we have begun, the workers have to put in foot a great labor Congress, a true workers’ parliament, with a delegate each 100 employed and unemployed workers.

 

The revolution has begun. It is necessary to complete it for the only possible road: a triumphant insurrection to impose a workers’ and popular government based on the self-determination organizations of the workers and the people and on their widespread armament. That is, the victory of the workers’ and socialist revolution. 

 

Millions come into the struggle

Let us build bodies for the political struggle of the masses, coordinating them in each neighborhood, town, and county and in a national scale, to throw down the government of Duhalde and the infamous regime

For a National Congress of delegates of the whole labor movement! 

 

All those who feel they are attacked come up to the struggle. The task for this moment is to build regional congresses or coordination organizations that bring together our demands to grow up and strengthen the political struggle of the masses.

 

On December 20th, the employer created the ghost of the lootings to the houses of the workers to stop them from going to Plaza de Mayo. Thousands of workers were organized and armed to defend themselves. Those committees cannot be dissolved, they are key institutions -incorporating the housewives - to work out tasks like the control of prices against the real sackers who are the great employers. These commissions should be the basis for the coming out of a new self-defense organization of the workers and the people.

 

In the same way it is necessary to build thousands of committees of unemployed in the whole country, because they are millions and not the scarce thousands organized by D'Elía and Alderete.

 

The factory assemblies -to choose delegates and coordinate to all the factories of each area, to the unemployed workers and the town committees that arise- should be an enormous lever to impel these local centralizing bodies and a national congress.

 

Who can appeal for a National Congress? In the first place, the heroic piqueteros that were betrayed by the leadership of D'Elía and Alderete; those who screamed in the piqueteras assemblies “Let’s finish with the union bureaucracy!”; and those that, ignoring to their leadership, they headed the revolt for the bread. Besides them, the dozens of thousands that are already fighting without waiting the order of any union bureaucrat neither of any trade union, those who are the vanguard in the streets: the railroad workers; the municipal workers of Córdoba; those of Santiago that overthrown the councilor; the workers of Zanón that have fought for months against the dismissals and the lockout; those of Emfer; the state workers of La Plata; the teachers of the whole country; the municipal workers of Lanús and Lomas de Zamora that face the Peronist councilors; the health workers of Tierra del Fuego that faced the ferocious repression of the police in Río Grande; the organizations of unemployed that exist all over the country.

 

It is necessary to assemble that Congress in a soccer court -like it was the tradition of the labor class when it conquered their unions - with a delegate for each 100 workers of each factory, of each state department, of each establishment, of each company and of each organization of unemployed in the country. To this congress it is necessary to attract the small merchants and the small producing of the city and of the country whose savings were expropriated to send their delegates; to the students; and to all the popular sectors in struggle. The objective: to raise a labor and popular plan; to unify the fights; to organize self-defense committees; to throw the government of Duhalde down and to conclude overthrowing to the infamous regime and to impose, with a triumphant insurrection, a labor and popular government, based on those struggle bodies, to impress a workers’ and popular way out to the crisis.

 

Before the new catastrophe that they discharge on the workers and the people, only the working class with its organizations can weld the labor and popular unity, to impose a favorable way out to the ruined middle classes and to save the oppressed nation

 

The classes that with the confrontation between them decide the destination of the combat, are the fundamental classes of the society: the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the proprietors of the production and change means; and the working class, the deprived class that sells its labor force and it produces all the wealth of the society.

 

The working class deployed an enormous spontaneity and energy in the fight, it finished overflowing and passing above the official leaderships and opened the revolution. But their different sectors have entered in the struggle in a desynchronized manner. In the revolution that began the plain organs of the working class have not weighed because of this new betrayal of all the wings of the union bureaucracy and of the leaders of the piqueteros movement, that in all the previous periods and combats took charge of to dismantle and to dismount once and again all that the masses conquered in the combat and of putting the general strikes to the service of the employers.

 

This way, the fight of the ruined middle classes for “out all of them; no one should stay”, and to finish with the corruption; their claim for a honest and cheap government, ends up being an utopian and illusory struggle for “out with the corrupts and the burglars” in general, that is limited to attack the bourgeois politicians, but not the real “burglars”, the expropriators and sackers of the people and the nation, that is to say, the bankers, the privatizers, the great pro-slavery employers and the imperialism. Only the working class can settle account with them!

 

The middle classes cannot impose a government, a regime, or a state to their image and resemblance, because they are an intermediate class, not a fundamental class in the capitalist society. They are not, as the bourgeoisie and the imperialism on one hand and the working class on the other, in the key roles of the production. It is also heterogeneous, and their higher and richer stratums always incline toward the employers. It cannot even solve their more immediate and more felt demand that is today to recover their savings. The working class, on the other hand, moves the factories, it controls the means of transport and the banks. It is the only one class that can return them their savings.

 

It is because of the treacherous leadership that the working class has not been able to give an independent answer to the ruined middle classes yet. There is a danger then: that the actions of this middle classes, their cacerolazos (pot banging) and mobilizations, even being progressive because they are directed against this infamous régime and its institutions, and removing its sustenance and social base, and against the bankers that swindled them, could come to an impotent end, and the bourgeoisie will attempt to use them to its favor at every turn.

 

So, the way out for the crisis will be imposed by the imperialism and the bourgeoisie, against the working class, with a bourgeois government as they have just imposed, and gaining support from the middle class as they did yesterday with the “convertibility”; or by the working class winning over the support of the ruined middle classes, with its fight in the streets, lifting a workers and popular program to solve the crisis, overthrowing the bourgeois power and establishing a workers’ and people’s government.

 

Only the working class with its organizations, via to impose a labor and popular way out to the crisis, can demolish this infamous, sipoy and anti-workers régime

 

It is not necessary to demolish this sipoy and anti-workers regime. What we need is not -as Carrió says- a “new” republic, which is not more than the deceit of the old republic with a washed face and that hides the ferocious dictatorship of the capital. What we need is a labor republic that is a million times more democratic that any employer republic with its parliaments and justice dominated in the shades by the capitalist cliques, a true dictatorship where everything is decided in the headquarters of the trusts in Washington. The capitalist cliques and the “markets” vote every day behind the peoples’ backs, the people that is summoned every two years to vote amongst different political employer. Of course that “the people has to vote a lot”, as Zamora says, but the people has to vote every day, clearly and in their organs of direct democracy headed by the only ones that don't have any privilege to defend: the workers, and defended by their armed militias.

 

The middle class has the hope -in reality an illusion- that before a strong dictatorship like the one of the capitalists, it can impose the strength of its number. But the domain of the monopolies only means a permanent attack on the democratic conquests.

 

The revolutionary workers should help to drain the experience of the people in the democracy of the employers and proclaim that they are disposed to fight for a Constituent Assembly imposed with the struggle in the streets on the ruins of the institutions of this regime of disgrace. That it breaks and ignore all the economic, political and military pacts of submission of the nation to the imperialism; that dissolves the presidential institution and the parliament and it replaces them for an executive and legislative unique chamber at the same time, formed by officials that win the wage of a worker and revocable at any moment; that dismantles and dissolve all the intelligence services and the police; that replaces this judicial power for workers’ and people’s tribunals, that are the only ones that will be able to judge and to punish the genocidists that are still free today and the murderers of the people like those of Aníbal Verón, of Teresa Rodríguez, of Victor Choque, of the 30 working class martyrs of the December 19th and 20th, and the “easy hammer” policemen that cause massacres every day as the one in Floresta. Only the working class, organized in their organs with direct democracy and supported by the armed militias, will be able to organize this Constituent Assembly. This way, The slogan for a Constituent Assembly can play an important role so that the workers and the people will identify this assembly with the workers’ republic.

 

On the contrary, the slogan for a Constituent Assembly never has to be used, as all the centrist left does (PO, MAS, MST, PTS) as a slogan for power. That way what they are proposing is a reformist way, that is to say the abortion of the revolution.

 

Before the new catastrophe discharged on the workers and the people, the only possible program is the one that attacks the property of the employer and of the imperialism

 

A national Congress of delegates of workers and unemployed, headed by those that overthrew De la Rúa, by those that opened the revolution and put their body and the dead comrades in the combat, would have the authority -a million of times more than the illegitimate and hated Asamblea Legislativa of the employers- to take out immediately a resolution to guarantee bread, work, wage to the workers and the restoration of their savings to the middle classes.

 

There is not a halfway: the only way to achieve that is attacking the property of the capitalists, otherwise -if yesterday they lowered our wages and sacked 4 million workers with the convertibility-, today with the devaluation, with the inflation, with the new economic catastrophe that discharged, the crisis will still being paid by the workers. The convertibility and the devaluation are the tips of the same rope to strangle the workers and the people and to continue plundering to the nation! Expropriating the expropriators is the only way to stop the catastrophe!

 

In the first place it is necessary to solve the problem of hunger that will worsen with the increase of the prices: it is necessary to expropriate and to put under the workers’ control all the companies producers of foods, controlled by workers’ and consumers’ committees to guarantee the direct distribution among the workers and the people. Against the misery of the handbags of food, which are bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, and that are dealt by the priests and the employer politicians who treat as beggars the working class that overthrew De la Rúa, it is necessary to expropriate and to put to work all the closed factories of foods under the workers’ control, what would allow to give job to hundreds of thousands workers immediately.

 

It is necessary to eliminate the IVA (tax on the consumption) and to replace it with a progressive tax to the big fortunes, and that the nutritious products, without any intermediation, get to the hands of the workers and the people in exchange for the cents that it costs to produce them (five cents the kilo of tomatoes, 13 cents the kilo of chicken, for example) and for the excessive prices fixed by the big monopolies that produce and distribute them.

 

Who causes the increase of the prices are not the small shopkeepers but the big monopolies of food and of the commercialization of cereals, medicines and products of first necessity, the big producers of chickens that prefer them killed between them in the big deposits to defend their earnings while there is a lack bread in the labor homes.

 

While the government's fight against the increases of prices is a deceit, the increase of prices it is used by the bourgeoisie as a wedge stuck between the workers and the people to divide them. The allies of the proletariat are not Cornide and the Camera of Merchants.

 

The working class proposes an alliance “not to the middle classes in general, but to the exploited layers of the urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie, against all the exploiters” (Transitional Program). The proletariat should unite with the poor layers of the middle class in committees for the surveillance of the prices, incorporating the housewives. The employers will argue that they are forced to increase the prices because of the increase of their costs. Against this lie, it should be imposed the elimination of the commercial secret and the opening of the of the great employers books to demonstrate that the escalade of the prices due only to the limitless increase of their earnings.

 

It is already necessary to guarantee work for everyone, reducing the labor day and sharing the available jobs among all the available workers, imposing a minimum living wage, and that, before the increase of prices before the imminent devaluation, it has to be automatically indexed according to the increase of the cost of life; and to expropriate without compensation and put to work under the workers’ control every company that closes or sacks.

 

The workers are the mains interested on a healthy currency and on the defense of the popular savings as the small producers and small shopkeepers want. And there is a simple step to back that currency and to guarantee the savings: to decree that, or the bankers and the capitalists that escaped of the country 150.000 million dollars bring them back into the country in 24 hours, or all their goods and properties will be confiscated. Telefónica, Repsol-YPF, Acindar, the big banks, expropriated under the workers' control: that is the guarantee for a healthy currency and for the savings of the expropriated middle classes! That enormous mass of wealth is the accumulated work of workers' generations and the only guarantee for a strong currency.

 

This Congress would have to solve the seizure of the deposits of the great employers in the central bank, to expropriate to the soaker bankers and to nationalize the banking, creating a unique state bank under the control of the workers that immediately returns their savings to the middle classes and that consider as paid all the debts from the usurious loans to the middle classes and the workers, and that bring of cheap credit to the small producers of the city and the country. It would have to decree the expropriation of the AFJP and that the pensions funds return to the state, in an unique national Box Pensions Fund under the control of the pensioners and the active workers. It would have to decree the nationalization of the external trade to prevent that the parasites soakers continues flying the money stolen to the people out of the country.

 

This Congress of workers should tell to the imperialism and the IMF that we won't pay no one more cent of the foreign debt, because we already paid it almost 20 times in the last two decades, at the price of the hunger of the people and of the sinking of the oppressed nation. That, starting from now, we declare ourselves their creditors, and that to recover what have stolen us, we are going to renationalize without compensation and put under the workers' control all the privatized companies, Telefónica, Repsol-YPF, Airlines, gas, water, energy. The Legislative Assembly declared a deceitful “suspension” of the payments that is not more than to legalize the default after the looting to which they have subjected to the nation. Only a congress of workers can fight to really break up with the imperialism, calling to all the labor organizations of Latin America to break up with the sipoy regimes and to unite to go ahead with a continental fight against the imperialism. That fire is what the imperialism already fears that expands.

 

As yesterday De la Rúa sending his bulldogs to murder in the Plaza de Mayo and the millions of hungry that got up for bread; as Rodríguez Saá himself, sending to the police to repress in Plaza de Mayo and the Congreso, and with the Fascist police murdering to ferociously the children of the workers and the people like in Floresta, this reactionary government of the PJ and the UCR has already militarized the city of Buenos Aires and the Great Buenos Aires with dozens of thousands of policemen. Even before assuming Duhalde, Alfonsín and this infamous government of the Pacto de Olivos they have built up the bands of paid hoodlums of the PJ of the Buenos Aires province to break their head to the left and the unemployed as in Lomas de Zamora.

 

In front of the repression of the employer state and their armed bands, the workers have the right to the self-defense: Let’s dissolve and disperse the bands of hoodlums of Duhalde, Menem and Alfonsín, the foundation of the future Triple A! For the dissolution of the police and all the intelligence organisms immediately! We have to build up self-defense committees and pickets, in the factories, companies, in each fight and mobilization, in each neighborhood!

 

To rise this program it is necessary to organize the whole country from the bottom in each factory, in each neighborhood and town, with coordination organs, struggle committees, pickets, self-defense committees, so that the working class with their fight organs and their direct democracy organs, uniting their ranks and rising these essential measures of a workers’ and people’s economic plan, demonstrate to the poor middle classes that, far from what the bourgeois politicians tell them -that it is “very difficult” that “nobody has the formula, there is a simple solution for the problems of the workers and the people: to attack the earnings and the property of the expropriators and plunderers of the people and the nation, what can be imposed only by the working class. It is a question of life and death con appeal for this Congress so the working class will be able to effectively head the workers’ and people’s alliance, otherwise, it will be the bourgeoisie who will win the desperate middle classes and will turn them against the workers.

 

The imposition of all these measures will be able only with a workers and people’s government based on the self-determination organs and in the workers’ militias.

 

The self-called workers’ and revolutionary left should break up with her politics of submission to the régime and the union bureaucracy and head the appeal for the congress of workers

 

The utopia of the middle classes, this illusion of an intermediate way out of to the crisis, neither bourgeois neither workers’, imposed with peaceful “cacerolazos” (pot banging), has imbued the left currents -particularly those that speak on behalf of the Trotskyism. It was seen clearly in their intervention, from Luis Zamora, going through the MST-IU, up to the PO, Socialist Convergence, the FOS, before the Legislative Assembly. On the Stalinism, there is nothing to say: they are always looking for the progressive bourgeois to whom the workers should be subordinated.

 

All these currents went to press to that Legislative Assembly of the bankers, the employers and the expropriators of the people, either so that they vote for Zamora and Walsh for president (!!) –that means “workers’” government, based not on the break with the bourgeoisie, but... in the Constitution of 1953! Either to press, as the PO, so that it was summoned a Free and Sovereign Constituent Assembly that assumes the power (that is to say, another bourgeois government, the same than the PTS outlines).

 

In that Legislative Assembly, Zamora and Walsh made very worthy interventions, anti-imperialists and denunciating the employers, the regime and their institutions, but not revolutionary at all. On the contrary, they were the most extreme expression of the pacifist petty-bourgeois utopia. It is so utopian the whole intervention of the left of the régime –self-called workers’ and revolutionary- that they forgot of speaking.... of the working class! which they diluted in the “people” in general. There didn't exist in none of their parliamentary interventions, neither the general strike, neither the pickets, neither the denunciation on the union bureaucracy and the treacherous leadership of the piquieteros’ movement, and less than less any allusion on the urgent necessity of summoning a National Congress of the whole workers’ movement, with a delegate each 100 employed and unemployed workers, to oppose it to the bourgeois institutions.

 

On the other hand, the PO proposed to summon to a new Asamblea Piquetera... but in February! It may be that they want to save time to distribute the plans to work that the former president Rodríguez Saá should have promised to them in the interview attended by one of their main leaders, without saying a word about it at the end -when the situation was such that anyone who were around could spoke if he wanted to- silently following D'Elía and Alderete that called to trust the government.

 

Although Zamora, worthily, denounced the political swindle of the Legislative Assembly and its genuineness, and correctly criticized the proposal of IU, nobody outlined the necessity to face that expropriation of the workers and people’s victory with the general strike and the struggle in the streets. No one said that the only class that can give a favorable way out to the exploited is the working class, overthrowing to the bourgeois regime, expropriating the expropriators and imposing a workers’ and people’s government based on its organs of direct democracy and in the widespread armament of the proletariat.

 

That is to say that amid an enormous revolutionary crisis that still opened, they denied any role to the working class. How does Zamora, or Altamira think, to achieve the “dissolution” of the Legislative Assembly and the convocation to a Constituent Assembly, if it is not with the working class sweeping that Assembly and with all the institutions of this infamous regime with the general strike, with its pickets, with new journeys like that of Plaza de Mayo, attacking the private property of the employers and the imperialism? Maybe with peaceful “cacerolazos” and pressure mobilizations onto the parliament, screaming until the fatigue that “Out with all of them, no one should stay”? What a petty bourgeois and pacifist utopia and illusion! More than that, maybe do Zamora, Altamira, Walsh think that the workers and the people will impose to the bourgeoisie that Constituent Assembly that they request peacefully, without defeating the forces of repression? It is lamentable that no one of them denounced in their interventions in the Parliament even the aggression of which the left militants had been object in the Plaza.

 

If it is not about the direct democracy of the self-organized working class and the exploited -like they began to do in Mosconi with the pickets-, if it is not about the strike committees, the Asambleas Piqueteras, that is to say, if it is not about the workers’ democracy, of what direct democracy is Zamora talking about? About an aseptic and without class content direct democracy, of the citizens, of the people in general, allowed peacefully by the bourgeoisie. But, what an illusory utopia!

 

The left acted in this crisis not as the gravedigger of the Argentinean semicolonial capitalism and of its infamous régime, but as what they are, its nurses. Their scandalous silence about the working class and the union bureaucracy, their negative to denounce it and to call to the workers to demolish that blemish in the labor movement and in their organizations, it is not more than the confirmation of their role as pressing groups the union bureaucracy and the regime.

 

Break up with that policy! From their parliamentary chairs, from the hundreds and hundreds of union posts that you occupy, where the workers brought yow not to pact but to fight: Head the appeal for a National Congress of workers, now!

 

 

National Committee of Democracia Obrera