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The Argentinian government’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has reconfigured the country’s general situation. Economic policy is now subject to the IMF’s authority and will remain so for years. This subordination has been well received by the country’s traditional political forces, though in different ways. President Mauricio Macri, the governors, and the country’s main union federation, the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), all openly support the deal. Meanwhile, the main opposition forces, led by former president Cristina Kirchner, are not discussing the possibility of breaking the agreement with the IMF. This means that the political regime is now much more subordinated to international finance capital, and it is set to worsen people’s living conditions, making working people pay the cost of this crisis.
The Party of Socialist Workers (PTS, its acronym in Spanish), which is part of the Workers Left Front (FIT), has a clear position against these developments: We must defeat the IMF, Macri, and the governors. The Kirchnerist opposition, in alliance with the union bureaucracy, the Catholic Church and the adherent governors, are not an alternative. The big bosses, bankers and landowners must pay the costs of this crisis. For that, we must build a great political force that mobilizes the great masses of workers, women, and youth. We must fight for a government of the working people that breaks with capitalism.
At the moment, there is no mass resistance on the streets and there is a low level of class struggle. In this situation, the PTS plans to organize and prepare thousands of workers and thousands of students and young people who share our views. Alongside the other political forces in the FIT, we want to move forward with a process of political agitation to reach the vast majority of working people with our proposals so that millions can take these ideas into their own hands.
We want to prepare ourselves politically to oppose those who advocate resigning ourselves to the “lesser evil.” We have a program to unite the ranks of the exploited and the oppressed: employed and unemployed workers, youth in precarious jobs, the women’s movement and others. When the mass movement breaks through the apparatuses made to hold them back, there has to be a social and political force that can intervene in those mobilizations and show the people that they can tear down the whole regime of the IMF and the capitalist parties.
The current economic and social collapse in the country could blow up at any moment. It will only take a spark to shatter the passivity of the working class and open a new chapter of class struggle in Argentina.
As part of this preparation, the PTS has developed class-conscious and revolutionary tendencies inside the unions (teachers, transport, service sector, and state employees). We formed the Movement of Militant Tendencies (MAC) to intervene in the workers movement nationwide. We also intervene in the student movement in virtually all public universities in the country, as well as in schools and community colleges. We also built the women’s organization Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses), the main militant organization in the Argentinian women’s movement, which has played an important role in the massive mobilizations for the right to abortion and for the rights of working women.
The PTS fights to develop a sense of solidarity and coordination in every struggle in order to win. We encourage workers’ initial tendencies toward regroupment and coordination of the working class in response to attacks by the government. These tendencies constitute a base to move towards bodies of coordination and other organizations that help recover the historic experience of “workers councils” (and also of every other oppressed section of society) for when struggles intensify.
The PTS denounces the truce between the union leadership and the government, and we call for a 36-hour strike with the perspective of an active general strike, to defeat the IMF, Macri and the governors. Whether this eruption of class struggle begins through the unions or without their intervention, we are getting ready for the masses to jump into action. This will open a new period of class struggle in Argentina and allow for the defeat of the regime of the IMF and the capitalist parties.
The PTS, with a few thousand militants across the country, puts all its forces and resources in the service of this perspective. The parliamentary forces of the FIT (the PTS together with the Workers Party, PO and the Socialist Left, IS), along with three members of the national congress and almost 40 seats in provincial and municipal congresses (the result of almost one million votes in the last elections), are also at the service of this perspective. The FIT will intervene in the upcoming elections with Nicolás Del Caño of the PTS as our presidential candidate and PO’s Romina Del Plá for vice president. Our media network is also at the service of this task, with La Izquierda Diario (sister site of Left Voice) consolidating itself as the most important left-wing newspaper in the country, receiving about 25 million visits in 2018. We also produce a radio show called El Círculo Rojo (The Red Circle), the video productions of TV-PTS, our magazine Ideas de Izquierda (Left Ideas), the book publisher IPS (Institute for Socialist Thought), the Karl Marx online University and the Center for Study, Research and Publishing Leon Trotsky (CEIP).
All this activity is directed at constructing a large revolutionary, internationalist workers’ party that the working class and the oppressed need to achieve victory. In this regard, PTS has put forward a proposal to form a large party unifying all working-class organizations that consider themselves revolutionary and socialist, starting with the program and the perspectives of the FIT.
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