Thursday, June 13, 2024
ARGENTINA: LARGE PROTESTS BY THE MASS AGAINST THE IMF ADJUSTMENT POLICY IMPLEMENTED BY THE MILEI GOVERNMENT
The news:
“ They repress the protest against the Ley Bases in the Plaza del Congreso
In the street there were sticks, rubber bullets and pepper spray. While the crowd was expressing itself in total normality, the security forces began to repress the protesters. The races continued until the night. By Laura Vales for Página 12. June 13, 2024 - 09:50
(Source: Leandro Teysseire)"
· The government used tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings and water cannons to clear out the mass protest that gathered in the Plaza del Congreso against the Ley Bases. The operation began shortly before four in the afternoon, when the demonstration had been going on for seven hours in the plaza and inside the legislative building the senator from Córdoba, Carmen Alvarez Rivero, was speaking in favor of labor reform. "A law (on employment contracts) that is 50 years old is of no use to us. "We have to respect the freedom of the businessman, who must be the authority within his own company," said the senator when the tear gas began in the street. The police first tear gassed the protesters who were against the fences, who responded by throwing stones and even with some Molotov cocktails. The operation then advanced on the square with water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets. Earlier, they had tear gassed a group of opposition deputies when they approached to participate in the protest. It was clear that the objective of the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, was to empty the square so that the Senate could move forward in the debate without nearby street protests.
Until the closing of this edition there were groups of people who tried to return to the square, in a militarized Congress neighborhood. Due to the violence unleashed, a hundred protesters were injured, according to estimates by the Provincial Commission for Memory. There were also numerous arrests; the Ministry of Security recognized that there are at least 18. The Office of the President, which disseminates the activities of Javier Milei, published a statement in which it described the "terrorist groups" to those protesting and said that the demonstrators had tried to carry out "a coup d'état", for which he congratulated the actions of the security forces."
OUR COMMENT.
Let us review: before the general elections in Argentina, it was clear that the dispute was between two representatives of the Argentine big bourgeoisie, lackey or servant of imperialism, mainly Yankee.
Both, as far as the economy is concerned, were faced with the reactionary task, which is a necessity for imperialism, of re-launching bureaucratic capitalism, which despite the great differences in discourse, that is to say in the demagoguery typical of any electoral farce, implies applying the economic adjustment package agreed with Yankee imperialism and the bosses of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the previous government of Fernandez and his Minister of Economy and former candidate for the Peronist party Massi, both representatives of the bureaucratic faction of the native big bourgeoisie. The latter were in favour of applying the adjustment programme of Yankee imperialism and the IMF as a death by pauses but sure, that is, in stages always pending the electoral farce and with anesthesia or sedatives (social "redistributive" programmes) to try to contain the anger of the masses for longer. The opponent in that farce, Milei, was in favour of applying the adjustment without anesthesia, a quick death and that is what he is doing now with his government and reaping the anger of the masses, as shown by the news all over the world.
Regarding the character of the government, of the parties and their leaders or representatives, it is necessary to point out something, that is to say the following: that, what determines the class character of the governments, of the parties and of their leaders or representatives is not in most cases their class origin but the political thought and the programme that they represent and defend.
Those of the comprador faction like Milei (as was Macri or also the Peronist Menem, etc.) It defends an ideology and program based on private initiative, that is, on the private monopolies of the large companies of imperialist financial capital in Argentina or the monopolistic companies of its native economic agents, and private investment as foreign direct investment (FDI) or the same but associated with the foreign capital of its native agents in the economy. That is what is fundamental in the economy in the case of the buyer and its representatives in politics. Meanwhile, in the case of the bureaucratic faction of the Argentine big bourgeoisie, its representatives in the economy and in politics are in favor of the participation of the State as a lever of economic activity and for state investment. Of course, things are not as easy as distinguishing black from white, but they have different lights and shadows, nuances. Based on this, to characterize them one must keep in mind if their political creed is reactionary bourgeois-democratic or fascist, or also indecisive between the two.
The Argentine history on this subject says: That from the end of the last century until 1945, the process of industrialization (development of bureaucratic capitalism) was under the control of the so-called conservative governments (of the comprador faction), which from 1930 to 1945 adopted a policy of industrialization by import substitution based on private activity and investment; manufacturing production based on the import of machinery, equipment and industrial inputs in the face of the fall in agricultural exports.
Industrialization began with the governments of Juan Perón (1946-1955) and Arturo Frondizi (1958-1962), when the State began to direct the process of industrialization, that is, the development of bureaucratic capitalism in industries. The military coup of 1976, with its policies of commercial and financial openness, put the buyer back in control of the economy, giving rise to a new stage of greater integration into the world market, with a strong process of downsizing and restructuring in the manufacturing sector, and greater volatility and difficulties in sustaining economic growth. Economic policies that received a new boost in the 1990s with the Peronist government of Menem: “new open and flexible industrial model”, “an economy with greater degrees of transnationalization and greater weight of the primary sector”. In short, more given over to imperialism.
And, in the present century, we have the governments of the representatives of the bureaucratic faction of the Argentine big bourgeoisie, of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner between 2003 and 2015, who privilege the action of the State in the economy. A study by a "neostructuralist" from the German FES on Argentine economic development says:
"The decline (of the Argentine economy) began in the mid-1970s, precisely due to the interruption and abandonment of industrialization policies. Between 1975 and 1990, the gap between Argentina's GDP per capita and that of the United States and Australia widened significantly. The growth periods recorded between 1991 and 1994, and between 2003 and 2011, were unable to significantly alter this situation. Argentina's insertion into globalization has meant less growth and widening gaps, despite the different approaches implemented in the 1990s and in the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner between 2003 and 2015" (The challenges of productive transformation in Latin America, volume II Southern Cone, Argentina—Matías S. Kulfas 149, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Regional Project for Social-Ecological Transformation, 2020).
And, the study, on the policies implemented by the various governments of both factions in the present century, says:
The policies implemented during the first decades of this century have been erratic, blurring the results and not marking a defined course.“
And the current government of the ultra-reactionary Milei will not be the exception, but it will cause greater pain and misery to the masses for a new accumulation of capital with the overexploitation of the proletariat and other working masses of the country.
But before leaving the subject, we want to quote the part referring to the most advanced „Argentine“ industry, in the language proper to these institutions of imperialism, in this regard the study says:
„The Argentine manufacturing sector is a heterogeneous network where some plants located on the international border coexist with small and medium-sized companies that present technological imbalances and considerable gaps in productivity. Likewise, as part of the country's opening and integration processes in the globalization processes, many sectors mutated to an open and flexible production model (Kulfas, 2018), characterized by a greater presence of imports, assembly and regional integration processes. As an example of this, (...) industrial branches with lower and decreasing integration coefficients can be seen 5 , such as the automotive and electronics industries" ( 5. The integration coefficient is the quotient between the added value and the gross production value of a given branch. Higher levels in this coefficient imply greater added value per production unit, generally, greater intersectoral links and relations. On the contrary, low levels of integration reflect maquiladora or assembly activities)
That is to say, as the industrialization process advances, the development of bureaucratic capitalism in Argentina, the penetration and dominance of imperialism in the country advances, the semi-colonial character of the Argentine Republic.
We believe it is necessary to repeat in this regard what we have been taught:
It is not possible to understand the reality of a country, in this case Argentina, without looking at the economic fact, the economic fact also contains the key to all the other phases of the history of the Republic. And, although the economy probably does not explain the totality of a phenomenon and its consequences, it explains its roots. The economy, the social relations of exploitation, are the root of political processes; but, the economy of a country must be seen within the international economic system, not in isolation. From this point of view, the economy is analyzed in terms of politics to find the laws that the class struggle of a country follows; analyzing the path followed by the economy of the country in history, the relations of agrarian production, industrialization and other economic terms, all with a single goal: to establish the general laws of the revolution, in this case, the Argentine revolution.
Industrialization in backward countries is tied to and developed in accordance with the imperialist powers, in the Argentine case mainly with Yankee imperialism. Imperialism does not allow backward countries to develop an independent national economy or industrialization; on its semi-feudal basis, a monopoly capitalism is established, linked to feudal landowners and which generates a large bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie controlled by imperialism, whose intermediary is the sucker for national wealth and the exploitation of the people.
The economic condition of this Republic is, without a doubt, semi-colonial and as its bureaucratic capitalism has grown and, consequently, imperialist penetration, this character of its economy has become more pronounced.
The most superficial glance at Argentina clearly confirms the semi-colonial dominance exercised by Yankee imperialism, mainly in collusion and conflict with other imperialisms. For this reason, Argentina is becoming more and more an arena of contention between rival imperialists.