| |
Argentinie-crisis background-info (english) Wereldsurfer - 03.01.2002 14:47
MASS STRUGGLE TOPPLES ARGENTINE GOVERNMENT By Andy McInerney Argentina´s government on Dec. 20 became the latest casualty of the economic crisis sweeping Latin America. Caught between the vise of the International Monetary Fund and the demands of the Argentine masses, President Fernando De la Rua and his hated Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo resigned in disgrace. Ten days later, on Dec. 30, his successor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa tendered his resignation. The result is that the third-largest economy in Latin America is in a free-for-all, and the traditional political parties of the Argentine ruling class are proving themselves bankrupt in the face of the crisis. More and more, two possibilities are taking shape: a return to the military government that ruled Argentina with an iron fist during the "dirty war" of 1976-83, or a workers´ government that breaks the back of International Monetary Fund exploitation. The resignations followed mass demonstrations on Dec. 19-20 by wide sectors of Argentina´s workers and unemployed. Supermarkets around the country were sacked. Riot police in the capital city of Buenos Aires opened fire on the crowds, killing at least 27. Over 2,000 people were arrested in what became known as the "Argentinazo." De la Rua declared a state of siege hours before stepping down. But the handwriting was on the wall. Urgent requests to international bankers for emergency economic aid went unanswered. The government of Argentina was left flapping in the wind by Wall Street and the U.S. government. The toppling of the Argentine government represents an important victory for the millions of workers in that country who have been waging strikes, blockading roads and staging mass demonstrations against De la Rua´s and Cavallo´s IMF-dictated austerity measures. It provides them with a taste of their social power when they act in a united way. But the victory presents an even more vital question: Which class can lead the country out of the economic depression it has faced for the last four years? A SOCIAL TINDERBOX Argentina has been a social tinderbox for years. Production has declined for four straight years--falling 11 percent last year alone. Unemployment is running at an official rate of more than 20 percent, but unions and social organizations estimate that figure is closer to 50 percent after factoring in the underemployed and the marginal economy. Some 15 million of the country´s population of 36 million live below the poverty line. On top of this unstable situation, the IMF has been more and more strident in demanding harsh austerity measures from Argentine workers. In early December, the U.S.-dominated banking outfit withheld a $1.3-billion loan disbursement until the government cut back further on social services and spending. De la Rua had already cut pension payments. Institutions were privatized. But the financial vultures demanded more. The immediate trigger for the most recent protests was a run on the banks beginning Nov. 30. Thousands of Argentines lined up to withdraw their savings, fearing currency devaluation. Big investors shifted million of dollars out of the country. Facing a currency crisis, the government ordered a limit on withdrawals to $1,000 per month. Besides being a signal of the government´s bankruptcy, the move pushed wide sectors of small business owners and others in the middle class into opposition. Those caught in the middle between the basic social classes can be hard hit in an economic crisis, quickly losing whatever property they had managed to accumulate. In the midst of this economic crisis, protests have been steadily growing. Throughout the Dec. 19-20 "Argentinazo," the working class was at the center of the movement. There have been seven general strikes in Argentina since De la Rua took office in 1999, including a massive strike on Dec. 13 that shut down the country. The "piquetero" movement- -organized groups of unemployed workers who have been staging militant road blockades and other actions--is growing. Reports are increasing of factory seizures by the workers. These were the groups that formed the basis of the movement that took to the streets in major cities around the country on Dec. 19. Emboldened by the display of their own strength, thousands of residents in the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and Rosario expropriated dozens of stores and supermarkets, filled with goods they had been unable to buy. Workers in Cordoba set the town hall ablaze to protest government plans to cut wages. SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE The "Argentinazo" crossed the bounds of private property. Something had to give. De la Rua and Cavallo stepped down so that the capitalist system would have a chance of standing. Despite the vast outpouring of the masses, no political force was able to channel the social outburst into a battle for state power. The result was that De la Rua´s resignation was followed immediately by the re-emergence of the Justicialist Party (PJ), the main opposition bourgeois political party. The PJ--itself divided into numerous factions--installed a wealthy senator, Carlos Puerta, as acting president on Dec. 21. The next day, the PJ-dominated Congress announced Adolfo Rodriguez Saa as interim president, ostensibly until elections could be held on March 3. Rodriguez Saa announced a series of measures reversing the economic course charted by De la Rua and his predecessor, PJ leader Carlos Menem. He announced a moratorium on payments of Argentina´s foreign debt. He announced a job creation program aimed at putting 100,000 people to work within one week and a million more over a longer period. And he announced a new currency that would not be pegged to the dollar--essentially easing the move to currency devaluation. The PJ has a long tradition of populist demagogy. Gen. Juan Peron created the party in the 1940s. Peron´s government was based on material concessions to the working class but brutal defense of private property--a model of what Marxists call a Bonapartist regime. Peronism stabilized bourgeois rule while speaking the language of the masses. Over the years, it moved further to the right, dropping much of its anti-establishment rhetoric. With Rodrìguez Saa, a revival of traditional Peronism appeared possible. But it proved short lived. While the trade union mobilization stalled after De la Rua´s resignation, undoubtedly impacted to some extent by Rodriguez Saa´s demagogy, the petty bourgeoisie continued to mobilize. Terrified by the prospect of the new currency and a potential devaluation--and the corresponding loss of their savings--middle-class elements took to the streets again on Dec. 29. While many of the demands were the same--against corruption, against devaluation--the class composition was different. The poor and working classes were largely absent from this second round of mobilizations. Even though the Dec. 29 demonstrations were smaller and restricted mainly to the capital city, they intersected with political maneuvering within the PJ itself. Rodriguez Saa resigned on Dec. 30, citing "an attitude of pettiness and haggling." His ouster reflects the strength of the "new" Peronists, the ones who have functioned as lackeys of Washington and the IMF. OPENINGS FOR WORKERS TO TAKE REINS The traditional bourgeois parties face a fundamental and ultimately insoluble problem. It is the same problem that faced and destroyed the De la Rua government. Any government loyal to the capitalist system must be loyal first and foremost to the IMF and U.S. imperialism. The extent to which Argentina´s crisis is linked to the imperialist world is evident from the reactions following De la Rua´s resignation. U.S. President George Bush insisted on Dec. 22 that Argentina´s government must follow the IMF austerity measures. "The IMF made some very tough but very realistic and very necessary demands on the money, and that is that the government of Argentina must restructure its fiscal policy and its tax policy," he told the BBC. Spain´s two largest banks own about one-fifth of the Argentine banking industry, according to a Dec. 27 Associated Press report. Spanish corporate investment amounts to 10 percent of the Argentine gross domestic product and 3 percent of Spain´s. So the ruling class of Spain stands to take major losses if Argentina´s currency is devalued. The role of the middle class--the small business owners and managers--will depend primarily on the ability of the working classes and their political leadership to point a way out of the economic crisis. As the events of Dec. 19-20 show, if the working class exerts a strong leadership, the middle classes will follow. But if the working class does not lead, the middle classes will turn elsewhere. This was the tragic lesson of Germany in the 1930s and Italy in the 1920s: the despairing middle classes can form the social base of fascism. In Argentina, the main force within the ruling class system that still has the organization and political vision to enforce the IMF regime is the military. There are potential openings in the world political situation for the workers to take the reins in Argentina. The economic and political crisis in Argentina exposes a fundamental contradiction in the world today. The focus of attention for the world´s biggest imperialist powers is in the Middle East, where they have resumed their endless competition for the world´s oil reserves. But the center of gravity for struggles against the imperialist economic order is in Latin America. Mass mobilizations have toppled two governments in Ecuador since 1998. Venezuela, under the presidency of Hugo Chavez, is embarking on a course opposite the one dictated by the IMF and Washington. The people of Colombia, facing a depression for the past two years, are responding with mass strikes and armed insurrection. Revolutionary Cuba still stands as a beacon of resistance throughout the hemisphere. Now the masses have awoken in industrialized Argentina. Five socialist parties signed a joint statement on Dec. 21 pointing toward a different way out: "the Argentina of the workers, the one that will expropriate those that have always exploited us." The task of building that Argentina, of leading the way, is the order of the day. ============================================== ARGENTINE LEFT PARTIES SAY: "WE DON´T WANT MORE OF THE SAME" [On Dec. 21, five socialist political parties in Argentina issued a statement on the resignation of President Fernando De la Rua. The following are excerpts, translated by Workers World.] The Argentine people and workers demolished the government of De la Rua and Cavallo in the streets. It is a gigantic people´s victory in the face of a crisis that involved the freezing of salaries, the seizure of the people´s savings and the generalized bankruptcy of the public finances. The De la Ruas and Cavallos, the Menems and Duhaldes, the Ruckaufs, Puertas and Rodriguez Saas are responsible for the social catastrophe and for the social disorganization that is destroying the very lives of millions of Argentines. The parties that control the Legislative Assembly are equally responsible for this disaster. They have neither the ability nor the authority to form a government. This is what the people rose up against, winning the streets, cutting off the highways, occupying work places, marching to the very seats of power. The Argentina of banking and big capital is bankrupt. It is the final stage of a system of exploitation, of a social, economic and political organization. Enough! We declare that there is a way out, but that this way out is incompatible with those that promote chaos for the benefit of surrender, for finance capital, for monopoly capitalism, national or foreign. This is the point. Neither dollarization nor the devaluation promoted by ruling sectors will get us out of this endless torment. They are variations of a new turn of the screw aimed at the confiscation of our own labor. They all have to go. We have to put an end not only to De la Rùa-Cavallo, but also to Rodriguez Saa, the parties that are looking for an agreement with the plunderers of the IMF. They are the ones that have to pay for the crisis: the bankers, the corporations of big capital, and the privatizing monopolies that have taken over the state patrimony. It is necessary to nationalize banking, freeing all salaries and deposits of the workers and even of the small producers and merchants. The millions of dollars of funds of the big bosses, with already $150 billion sent out of the country, must be frozen. All the privatized services must be re- statized, and the payments on the foreign debt must be stopped immediately. On this basis, it is necessary to reorganize the economy under a national workers´ plan and so put the paralyzed production back into motion. To do this, we need to allow the people to deliberate and organize themselves amid the struggle. This is an unavoidable prerequisite for restructuring a power that is rising up in the face of the present power. Another Argentina: neither of the Justicialist Party nor of the Alliance, nor of the failed pseudo-progressives. The Argentina of the workers, the one that will expropriate those that have always exploited us. SIGNATORIES: Workers´ Party (PO) United Left (Communist Party and Socialist Workers Movement MST) Revolutionary Socialist League (LSR) Socialist Workers Front (FOS) - END - ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 10, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org) Website: http://www.workers.org |
Read more about: globalisering | supplements | | |