The key right now is to work with audacity, among the larger workplaces and among the masses, to prepare a great national strike.

…

Preparing the national strike and joining the PTP are not opposing tasks. From now up until the strike, the entire membership drive must be built by demonstrating the need and importance of the strike, and calling on people to join the PTP to become a part of preparing the strike. And these new members should join the PTP membership drive, to bring more people in for preparation of the strike.

The PTP membership drive must base itself on the masses and have a mass line. And the dedication and willpower to turn the PTP and PCR into forces of the masses. Building up strength in the economic struggle and the political struggle, including in elections, to pave the way for the Argentinazo.

Editor note: “Argentinazo” refers to the general revolutionary strategy of the RCP of Argentina, which is a preparation for a national mass-insurrection, based on factory occupations, mass militancy, broad class alliances, and theoretically modeled after the Cultural Revolution in China.

***

Now, an active national general strike

Working for the strike, the unity of the people’s forces, and the PTP membership drive

[trans.: The PTP is the Party of Labor and of the People - the electoral front of the PCR of Argentina]
Author: Ricardo Fiero
Hoy #1445, Nov. 14, 2012

1. 8N [November 8th]

“The 8N pot-banging demonstrations were a vast and diverse mobilization of protest and demands against the government” (Communique of the PTP and the PCR, 11/9). The Kirchner government doesn’t see them that way. The President claimed that the demonstrators “have a distorted view of the country”; Aníbal Fernández labeled them as “paid for by the ultra-right”; “Cuervo” Larroque called them “zombies”; and congressman Kunkel said they were “seditious” for violating the ultraliberal principle that “the people do not decide or govern but through their representatives.”

There were present, in the minority, groups of a right-wing clerical, conservative, reactionary character. Some of those fascist groups, like those of Cecilia Pando and Biondini, were created and strengthened by the state apparatus, always useful to the government for discrediting protests. But the most important “contribution” of the Kirchner government was to increase the political weight of Macrism through its media. The Kirchner government always seeks to polarize with Macri: there are big deals with the father of the head of the Buenos Aires city government, and political and business agreements within the city council.

Clarín [newspaper], swept up in the 7D dispute [between the Kirchner forces and the owners of private mass media], also made an effort to exaggerate and slant in favor of its own interests the content of the demonstrations, producing propaganda that wasn’t reflective of the many signs that protesters carried that were much more linked to the demands of the people.

2. Lies and truths
Who has a “distorted view of the country”? The workers who demand an end-of-the-year bonus so their income taxes don’t rob them of half of their holiday pay, or the President who maintains that anti-worker tax and who must know that a paycheck isn’t the same as profit? The retirees who demand the “82% adjusted” [82% of their working salary, indexed to inflation, as historically promised to retirees], or the President who vetoed the law that established that benefit so she could continue robbing the Social Security fund? The residents of Pico (La Pampa) who had to rise up to force the imprisonment of the murderer and rapist of a child against the indifference of the government, the courts and the police; or minister Garré who claims that “insecurity” is “a sensation”?

Who sees the reality? The sailors of the frigate Libertad who defended with arms the attempt to seize their ship, or the President and her ridiculous chancellor who make no serious effort to return the ship to Argentina?

Who has their feet on the ground? Those who demand an investigation of our foreign debt and not to pay any of it that is illegitimate, fraudulent, or from the dictatorship, or the President who brags that this government is the best repayer of debt in history, who is about to make a $3.385 million payment in December, while the imperialist vulture courts and funds seize the frigate Libertad, and any time now the corvette Espora? [The Espora is another Argentine ship that is currently docked in South Africa for repairs; there have been threats of its seizure under the same request by British courts that led to the capture of the Libertad].

Who is lieing? The employed, unemployed, and retired workers and the producers from the city and the countryside, who protest so that inflation doesn’t gobble up their incomes and the crisis doesn’t drive them to hunger and pennilessness? Or the government that ignores inflation and the crisis?

Who is fighting for justice? The 5,000 people arrested for fighting for their rights through strikes, picketing, and pot-banging demonstrations? Or the government that arrests them, the government whose Vice President is a con artist and whose high officials are responsible for the the Once massacre and the energy crisis, the government that declares it will no longer prosecute charges of genocide under the dictatorship when more than 80% of those crimes still go unpunished and aren’t being addressed in current trials?

3. Discontent and anger
The government was losing control over much of the movement of the workers and the people. It was losing control due to its policy of unleashing inflation and the crisis on workers and the people. In opposition to that policy, with different styles and positions and by different means, there developed a unity of action of workers’ and peoples’ forces. The government stayed hand-in-hand with the free collaborationism of Caló’s CGT and Yasky’s CTA [trans.: Argentine trade union federations]. The Kirchner government worked with all its might to get in the way of the formation of a coordinating center for the workers’, farmers’, indigenous, students’, and people’s struggles. The government failed at the Agrarian Federation’s Congress just like it did before at the FUA [Argentine University Student Federation] Congress.

Coming from a correct policy of unity in the struggle, the CTA’s general strike was advanced together with the main organizations of the unemployed, retirees, poor and middle-income farmers, indigenous people, and students. That created the conditions for the Moyano-led CGT to shift towards supporting the general strike, which the Azul y Blanca-led CGT had announced it would join. In this process of unity of action of workers’, farmers’, students’, indigenous and people’s struggles, new wellsprings erupted with the two pot-banging demonstrations, with much variety seen within them. This whole process was what brought about the government’s loss of the streets.

4. Join the PTP to prepare the national strike
The government, because of its policy, is losing ground among salaried workers and the middle strata, and is trying to pay for its clientelist apparatus by taking from those below it. Re-reelection [of Kirchner] looks difficult. The Peronists stir a bit, as they need official funding to survive, but fear being dragged down themselves by the government’s deafness to the people’s demands.

In the workers’ and people’s struggles, the masses seek to defend what they have won and to go for more. That the pot-banging demonstrators protest against the government, and that in their great majority give that opposition in ways not identified with the right-wing opposition forces, shows that what’s growing in those sectors is also to defend what they have won and to go for more.

The key right now is to work with audacity, among the larger workplaces and among the masses, to prepare a great national strike.

Very good conditions exist for a great regroupment of workers’ and peoples’ forces, patriotic, democratic and anti-imperialist forces. A regroupment that programmatically takes what the masses are expressing in their struggles: that those who raked money in thanks to the Kirchner government should have to pay for the crisis; to strengthen the struggles, and also for the upcoming elections.

The PTP membership drive is advancing with this wind in favor of what is surging from below. It is hooking up with hundreds and thousands of workers, farmers, students, women, youth, indigenous people, etc., who are looking for a position of struggle and a force that works for a political solution that goes for more. The same is true for the PCR’s membership. Forces for the struggle of the masses for its urgent needs, and forces with firmness in the political struggle for the working class to take center stage, with a program that unites it with the broader masses overall.

Preparing the national strike and joining the PTP are not opposing tasks. From now up until the strike, the entire membership drive must be built by demonstrating the need and importance of the strike, and calling on people to join the PTP to become a part of preparing the strike. And these new members should join the PTP membership drive, to bring more people in for preparation of the strike.

The PTP membership drive must base itself on the masses and have a mass line. And the dedication and willpower to turn the PTP and PCR into forces of the masses. Building up strength in the economic struggle and the political struggle, including in elections, to pave the way for the Argentinazo.