Update from the struggle in Argentina

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PO 846 - 15 Apr 2004

The 6th National Workers Assembly

CHRISTIAN RATH

The 6th National Workers Assembly (ANT) will be held in an
exceptional political moment.

Eight months ago, the 5th Assembly had characterized the Kirchner government as a capitalist government and called for breaking with the IMF in the strategic perspective of a "workers government," and pronounced itself in favor of independence and struggle against the national bourgeoisie and "its" government. The organizations convening the ANT had taken responsibility for an agenda of struggle based on a list of demands. This list raised: general increase in wages of 50 per cent, a minimum wage equivalent to a basket of goods
and services covering basic family needs, the extension of welfare plans to all the unemployed and the doubling of its amount, the creation of new jobs through the annulment of labor flexibility plans, the reduction of the workday and massive plans for popular housing and public works with workers under union contract. A policy, sustained by the ANT, which demanded the breaking of ties with the
IMF, refusal to recognize the foreign debt, the nationalization of the banks and the expropriation without compensation of plants and factories gutted [by their owners].

Jobs, welfare plans, wages…

The 6th National Assembly has the objective of voting in favor of a nation-wide plan of struggle. It is time for action on the demands of the exploited and laboring masses which cannot be postponed

The decision, made by the government, to eliminate social welfare plans obeys the need to pay the debt.

The nonsense over replacing the plans with "real jobs" has been laid bare after one year of government. A plan of public works to supply running water and sewers to all inhabitants of the province of Buenos Aires (which would, by the way, bring about a revolution in public health conditions) would cost 3.2 billion dollars, less than 10 percent of the debt owed to the banks, much less than 20 percent of the mass of incoming dollars from the sale of exports.

The ANT will be attended by all those who have been in the forefront of the transformation of the workers movement into a piqueteros organization; at the hour of defending the strike, regaining the gutted trade union and unifying all the exploited population.

Among those convening the ANT the idea of convening regional assemblies in each corner of the country is taking shape; with the purpose of organizing the struggle for the demands, the regaining of the unions and the reconstitution of workers union confederations through congresses of rank-and-file shop stewards.

Federal March

The board of convening organizations will place before the ANT a proposal for organizing a Federal March against hunger, unemployment, lack of safety on the streets and the drug trafficking police and judges.

The proposal considers that the crisis of lack of safety on the
streets is the result of the decomposition of the capitalist State.

There is no such thing as a problem of "public safety" in a vacuum outside the social massacre being carried out against the people. Three quarters of prison inmates are youth under 25 years of age, precisely the weakest link in society, together with the elderly, which requires no comment. The aim is to banish hunger, unemployment,
poverty and the Bonaerense (Buenos Aires police
force), opposing to the mafia, workers control of public safety.

Political Front

The policy of workers independence before the pseudo-nationalist government allowed for the period of frank expectations in the K (Kirchner) government to be born with struggle, while those groups that came to form part of the pro-government collaborationist spectrum were falling apart. Bearing witness to this, during thesevery hours, with the crisis that pits, within the CTA, Kirchner's (D'Elía's) "shock troops" against the rest of the apparatus, is the decomposition of the attempt to form the "piquetero bureaucracy," another of the signs of failure of the "nationalist" government.

At the time of the previous ANT, the exploiters had just obtained a political victory, by opposing the electoral way out as an alternative to the people's rebellion.

What situation do we confront today? An acute political crisis and a growing current of struggle in the working class. The PO proposes a political front of piqueteros organizations, left-wing parties, trade unions, shop stewards, and peasant organizations, to develop a unified, all-encompassing alternative, an alternative for power.

A front conceived as one intervening in the political process for a workers solution to the capitalist crisis.

When the national political crisis draws near to the testing point, the great piqueteros movement will assume the responsibility of providing its own response, in terms of a program of action.