Argentina: Ground zero for anti-IMF movement
By Andy McInerney
The global capitalist economic system--the system where a
handful of billionaires can privately profit from the wealth
that billions of working people socially create--is in deep
crisis, and that is having dire political consequences. Nowhere
is that more evident today than in Argentina.
One month after mass protests forced two governments out of
power in Argentina, tens of thousands of people are in motion
again. Demonstrations against the economic program of newly
appointed President Eduardo Duhalde took place in cities across
the South American country on Jan. 26.
The new protests are a sign that the maneuvers within the
Argentine ruling class cannot resolve the deep political crisis
provoked by economic depression and International Monetary
Fund-sponsored austerity. The growing organization of the
Argentine mass movement raises the prospect that the workers
can confront the state with their own organs of power--the
first signs of a revolutionary situation.
The Jan. 26 protests, known in Argentina as "cacerolazos" or
pot-banging demonstrations, involved simultaneous actions in
over 100 cities and towns. The German Press Agency DPA
estimated that in the capital city of Buenos Aires 100,000
people converged on the Plaza de Mayo. They demanded the
unfreezing of bank accounts and an end to the government's
devaluation efforts, and condemned the nine-member Supreme
Court for approving Duhalde's financial measures.
Banks were boarded up and thousands of police were
mobilized. Battles broke out after midnight between cops and
demonstrators; over 30 were wounded by police tear gas and
rubber bullets. Duhalde warned of "civil war."
Until recently, Argentina was held up as a model for
economic development. The Central Intelligence Agency estimated
that in 2000 its 37 million people had a per capita gross
domestic product of $12,900--the highest in Latin America and
higher than all the countries of Eastern Europe, Russia
included. The vast majority of the population--at least 80
percent--live in cities or towns.
Today, the country's economy stands in ruin. It is a
testament to the devastation cloaked behind words like
"globalization" and "neoliberalism."
Half the population now lives below the poverty line. People
are bartering compact disks and electronic kitchen goods for
potatoes.
Officially, 20 percent of Argentine workers are unemployed.
Unofficially, estimates of unemployment and underemployment go
as high as 50 percent. It is the worst economic depression
Argentina has ever experienced--even beyond the impact of the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
Victims of the IMF
The crisis in Argentina is first and foremost a crisis of
production. The depression that began in 1998 has meant that
factories across the country have gone idle. Production in
Argentina declined by 11 percent in 2001 alone. Overproduction
in the auto and steel industries has hit the country especially
hard.
But the impact of this crisis--a reflection of the world
capitalist economic crisis that stretches across every
continent--has been exacerbated by the International Monetary
Fund's draconian demands as a condition for making loans. The
IMF and other international banks have tied loan packages to
demands to cut social spending in areas like social security
and health care. Public institutions like electricity and water
had to be sold off.
That leaves the Argentine workers especially hard hit by the
crisis. Any hope for a "safety net" is gone.
The Argentine ruling class racked up a foreign debt of $132
billion. But that money was never destined to build up the
infrastructure. On the contrary, those loans were made only for
schemes that would maximize profits for the foreign-owned
corporations and banks, mostly from the U.S.
For example, the last loan that the IMF granted to the
Argentine government was for $8 billion in August 2001. Of that
$8 billion, $5 billion were designed to "shore up the Argentine
currency reserve." That means the only effect of over half the
August loan was to maintain the one-to-one currency exchange
rate between the U.S. dollar and the Argentine peso.
Capitalist rule weakens
Caught in a deadly vise between the demands of the IMF and
the anger of the working class, the Argentine ruling class is
desperately grasping at straws to solve its crisis. In
December, then-Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo froze bank
accounts to prepare for a currency devaluation.
That move triggered a Dec. 19-20 mass uprising now known as
the Argentinazo. Cavallo and President Fernando de la
Rúa were forced out, as was de la Rúa's
short-lived successor, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá.
Notably, the United States government did not intervene to
save its lackeys in Argentina--despite de la Rúa's
efforts over the past two years to accommodate every political
and economic demand made of him. Sensing that there was a
vacuum of political leadership in the working class, and taking
advantage of the crisis to deal an economic blow to European
capitalists who had invested heavily in Argentina, the U.S.
government was sending a clear message to the Argentine ruling
class and its political establishment: your existence depends
on us.
Duhalde, from the Peronist Justicialist Party, took power
amid this pressure from the U.S. But the Justicialist Party is
deeply divided into factions, and is despised by the masses for
its corruption and obedience to Wall Street.
Now Duhalde is offering the same economic program that
caused the uprising against his predecessors: currency
devaluation and more IMF loans. The Jan. 26 Associated Press
reported that his government was planning to appeal for a
massive $15 billion loan from the IMF--a loan that would
undoubtedly carry with it conditions for deeper austerity
measures.
A four-person team that includes a representative of the
U.S. Treasury Department is overseeing Duhalde's economic
plans.
The combination of economic crisis, contradictions with U.S.
imperialism, and crisis within the Argentine ruling class
establishment adds up to what Marxists call a pre-revolutionary
situation.
Spontaneity and leadership
Mass struggle has already brought down two governments in
Argentina. Mobilizations are continuing. Can the Argentine
workers find a way out of the current crisis?
The Dec. 19-20 Argentinazo was by all accounts a spontaneous
uprising. Millions of people were propelled into motion by the
growing misery of daily life combined with the arrogance of the
ruling class. The energy released by this spontaneous uprising
was enough to shake up the political establishment.
But without leadership and organization, even the most
powerful movement cannot carry out the changes that would
fulfill the demands of the millions making up the movement.
That was the reason why the hated and corrupt Justicialist
Party held onto power in the stormy days after the
Argentinazo.
Leadership has two components: which class will lead and
which organization will lead the class?
The movement that is developing in Argentina today involves
all classes, from the workers to the disenfranchised middle
classes to sections of the ruling class. But the groundwork for
the mass movement was laid over a period of months by the
working class.
The main force in this respect is the growing piquetero, or
picketers' movement--committees of organized, unemployed
workers that have staged a series of militant roadblocks and
other protest actions around the country since last summer.
These committees have grown up outside the bounds of the
traditional trade unions, and have energized the entire
Argentine working class movement.
The three main trade union federations have not been known
for their militancy. But they have responded to the economic
crisis with a series of general strikes, including one just one
week before the Argentinazo. These mass actions involving
millions of workers have emboldened the broader masses to take
to the streets.
In order to lead the movement to power, an organization
needs above all the confidence of the workers in the streets.
It needs to show its capacity to channel spontaneous protest
into effective action. It needs to be oriented toward replacing
the power of the exploiters with the power of the
exploited.
The need for such an organization in Argentina is more
desperate than ever, given the tremendous surge of mass
organization and protest.
Beginnings of popular power
A sign of the growing organization of the mass movement in
Argentina is the growth of Neighborhood Assemblies. These
committees have sprung up in neighborhoods across the country.
They were the organizations that called for the Jan. 26
demonstrations against Duhalde.
"The demonstrators, who in early January gathered in their
local streets or outside banks, have begun holding massive
neighborhood assemblies," reported the Inter Press Service on
Jan. 23.
"We are not Peronists, or Radical [Party] members, or
socialists," the leader of one Buenos Aires neighborhood
assembly said. (Agence France Presse, Jan. 26) "We are just the
hungry people who for the first time have organized themselves
and know their own strength."
These committees represent a feature common to every
revolution: the development of popular committees to organize
the struggle. These committees form the basis for a genuine
revolutionary struggle that can replace the rule of the
exploiting classes with the rule of the oppressed classes.
In addition to the Neighborhood Assemblies, the piquetero
movement is beginning to organize assemblies as well. "We do
not bang on pots and pans, because we have none," one piquetero
told IPS. These unemployed workers are organized into groups
like Class Conscious and Combative Current, Workers' Pole, the
Combative Workers' Front, and others.
Argentina has become ground zero for the movement against
the IMF and the rule of the bankers and corporate giants.
Reprinted from the Feb. 7, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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