[“EL PIQUETERO” Nº 4 - MAIN ARTICLE] TO MILITATE THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN IS TO STRUGGLE FOR POWER

“EL PIQUETERO” Nº 4 - MAIN ARTICLE

Boudou [TN: Argentinian vice-president] for 2015: The ‘kirchnerist decade’ ends in Ciccone [TN: financial and corruption scandal in Argentina related with Boudou] and UCEDÉ [TN: right wing party, former supporter of 76-83 dictatorship, Boudou’s original party]

TO MILITATE THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN IS TO STRUGGLE FOR POWER

The challenge of the Coordinating Committee in defense of the Left Front: we have until June 12^th to call for a FIT’s [TN: “Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores” – Left and Workers’ Front] Open Congress

Juan Marino

@JuanMarinoTPR

Parliamentary elections in 2013 will take place after Cristina Kirchner gave up the attempt to reform the constitution and run for a third period, as she has publicly announced. Immediately, a discussion was opened within kirchnerism about who will replace Cristina in 2015. Both Diana Conti [fiercely supporter of Cristina] and Depetri [pique-trucho, “false-piquetero”] stated that Boudou could be a good replacement. Nothing could show better the nature of kirchnerism: the 'winning decade' might conclude in Ciccone and pro-dictatorship UCeDé as the official candidates for presidency - and even more as part of a 'left wing' that has nothing better to offer [both Conti and Depetri were considered 'left' elements within kirchnerism against the Scioli's 'right'].

This preference of a sector inside kirchnerism towards Boudou is part of a general orientation of the national government that paves the way to the government for the right in 2015. As all the media pictures, Cristina wants to maintain both Scioli and Massa inside the kirchnerist lists, trying to avoid a big electoral fiasco in the 2013 elections. The formula Scioli-Massa, boosted by some pro-imperialist and right-wing actors, could even find its way through kirchnerism instead of Boudou. Kirchnerism proposes us to choose between bane and gallows. On the other side, what can cloud the future of Scioli-Massa is the thought that if they participate in the Frente para la Victoria’s [Cristina Kirchner's party] electoral lists, themselves can be drew by the bad electoral results of Cristina. What matters, however, is that all the alternatives to kirchnerist exhaustion imply a pro-imperialist way out of the political situation.

Behind the so called "model deepening" and "let's go for everything" [slogans of kirchnerism] there is not a radicalization of kirchnerism but the preparation for a return to the 90's. Conservative restoration is born within decomposed kirchnerism itself. The failure of the nationalist attempt poses the "nac & pop" [nationalist and popular] reconversion behind the supporters of dictatorship and menemism [right wing peronist Argentinean president between 1989 and 1999].

A DECADE OF SOYA, DEVALUATION AND LABOR OUTSOURCING

Cristina Kirchner's government arrives to parliamentary elections showing the real nature of the "kirchnerist decade". Behind the "kirchnerist epic", its real agenda arises, which pictures it as a decadent capitalist force.

The “money laundering” [blanqueo de capitales] is about the creation of three new financial products: the CEDIN (real estate and building) and BAADE (petrol and public opera) which, under the name of "Argentinian Saving Bond for the Economic Development" will be available in the bond market but will also have a dollar version that could be bought in the derivative market in pesos [Argentinian currency]. Its goal is to develop a "two sides" exchange market (hidden devaluation), and so it's a big step towards the devaluation of the official exchange rate.

The refund of the wheat export taxes is also a great concession to the agrarian capital that developed the capitalist lock-out in 2008 and now is claiming for devaluation. It is about a 15% hidden devaluation of the rate known as "wheat dollar". So evident is the operation that the president of the City’s Bank [private bank with participation of Buenos Aires city government] stated in “El Cronista” [economic newspaper] that "Cristina Fernandez denies the devaluation in her speeches but in fact she's announcing it with the 'wheat dollar'".

According to Sebastian Premici, published in Pagina 12 [government-friendly journal], "this measure was performed by the Commerce Secretary, Guillermo Moreno, and the exporter cooperatives, organized in Capeco", implying “the refund of 30 dollars by tonne, i.e. 15% of the price". To clarify the issue, Capeco is the Grains and Oily Export Chamber, created by kirchnerism to face the entity that regroups the big multinational grain companies, the Oil Industry Chamber - Grain Export Center (Ciara-Cec). However, Capeco, formerly grouping "little and medium size" companies, started to represent Aceitera General Deheza (property of the former kirchnerista senator Roberto Urquia), UPJ (controlled by Los Grobo) and... Monsanto. In the queue there are the American CHS and the Brazilian Multigrain. So, instead of being an "anti-monopolist heroic deed", finished as a mask under which the kirchnerists agrarian capitalist (both national and foreigners) organize its business and lobby. In fact, Capeco is headed by Peretti, well know ultra-kirchnerist agrarian capitalist and president of the Argentinian Council of Producers (CAP). Hence, the difference between kirchnerism and the macrist opposition [Macri is the right wing major of Buenos Aires], in this field, would be if the capitalists need a 40% total devaluation or if a 15% sectorial one is enough.

Also, we can’t avoid pointing out that one day after the announcement of the presidential measures, Clarin [right wing opposing journal] issued an article about the launching of the first transgenic wheat between Argentinean Bioceres and French Florimond Desprez in the joint-venture Trigall Genetics. As they say: "we expect to improve the profit between 10 and 15% and it will be available in 2016" (Clarín, May 8th). Its place of application will be the Mercosur [economical area of Brasil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina], because "in Europe the regulations and banners about transgenic products is more complicated" (Idem). As you can see, with its measures the government encourages the Argentinean workers to eat transgenic bread.

Lastly, the presence of the Transport National Secretary in the takeover event of the new General Secretary of the Train Trade Union (Sasia) shows that kirchnerism is still the ally of the labor outsourcing bureaucracy that killed Mariano Ferreyra. The picture of the last political events shows clearly the nature of the decade of kirchnerism in power as a whole: ten years of soya, devaluation and labor outsourcing.

AFTER TEN YEARS OF INFLATION EATING SALARIES, WE ARE IN THE FOURTH CONSECUTIVE QUARTER OF FALL FOR THE INDUSTRY, WHILE 255.000 JOBS WERE LOST IN THREE MONTHS

Kirchnerism goes to elections also after a big effort to negotiate wages under the inflation rate and trying to pass the "long run collective agreements", i.e. more than 12 months. With the aid of the trade union bureaucracy, the government has imposed its aim in lots of key trade unions: UOM [metal workers], AYSA [water company], SUTERH [doormen], UOCRA [construction workers], bank employees, meat workers, Luz y Fuerza [electricity workers], UPCN [state workers]. What government and bureaucracy presented as a general increase of 24%, is in fact less than 22% because all the agreements were partitioned. But it's worse: Luz y Fuerza, SUTERH and AYSA accepted the long run collective agreements (18 months), what is a disastrous precedent under the current rising inflation. Expected inflation in 2013 according to the index made by the patronal opposition in Congress is 27%, and this doesn't take into account that the basic products inflation rise to a greater degree.

On the other hand, under the ongoing "Rodrigazo" [name of the economic shock made by Celestino Rodrigo in Argentina in 1975], the Supercard [credit card issued by the governmet] and the prices controls are not more than an imposture. In June, the Banco Hipotecario [private bank with public participation] will issue a 25% annual rate credit card against the 40% of the privates credit cards and with 0,25% supermarket-tax (against 3% of the privates). What's the limit of this credit card? 1000 pesos! A farce that cannot even afford the indigence living standards that is about $1650. The measure couldn't be more wicked: to use a credit card to eat today is to hypothecate future. By this, the government is recognizing a hopeless situation, as the salary is not enough or even the people are unemployed. But, where there is a need, the government doesn’t see the lack of a right but the opportunity to indebt workers. It’s the same that it has done with the victims of the recent floods.

The government also tries to appear as defending the "price controls" while its scope has been shrunk from 10.000 products to only 500. 9.500 less products! The same hypocrisy can be seen in the so called "struggle" against supermarkets when Cristina herself has inaugurated the new Wall Mart supermarket in Pilar, in a televised event. "To look is to care" [referring to look over prices], seems to be about looking aside instead of going to fight for our salary. Another conclusion of the kirchnerist decade can be drawn: instead of being the government that put the collective agreements back (as it claims), it's the government that used the collective agreements to restrain the purchasing power at the same level that in 2001, in the capitalist bankruptcy.

In this framework, the measures announced by Cristina about the rising of "familiar payments", AUH [financial assistance to unemployed mother regarding the children they have], scholar aid, are not only limited measures without indexed, universal and permanent nature, but they’re also a deferred subsidy to the capitalists so that they can continue paying misery salaries. The Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria (TPR) supports every measure that helps to afford our living, but we reject the kirchnerist imposture: to support misery salaries and then "defend" the material conditions of workers plundering the ANSES [pension fund used by the government to pay many of the social aid plans] and giving money to the capitalists. In order to really improve the living conditions of workers we defend the same slogan: salary according to the basic needs. Workers' salary has to be fully paid by the employers, not by the State. If the employer cannot pay the salaries, so we have to expropriate the company and put it under workers' control.

The same can be said about labor indexes: they talk about "job generation" while the 50% of the workforce is precarious, outsourced or non-registered, the 30% of the urban population is under poverty, half of the workers earn less that $3500 (pesos), in the last three months 255.000 jobs were lost and the industry is falling since a year ago. We don't accept the kirchnerist blackmail and we struggle for a revolutionary alternative against the failure of the nationalist attempt.

THE THIRD RUN FOR CRISTINA SINKS BECAUSE OF KIRCHNERISM REVERSE UNDER THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND THE POPULAR EBULLITION

This whole scheme is sinking because of the current political and economic crisis. While Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Juan Manuel Santos go for a third run for the elections (the last one with the soulful support of FARC), as a Bonapartist way to arbitrate against mass struggle and within political crisis, Cristina is incapable to run for a third run because the political experience she represents is already exhausted and recoiling. Polls show that more than 80% of the population is against a third run for Cristina; the positive image of the government has tumbled (10 points lost because of the corruption affair with Lázaro Baez); the 54% of votes collected in 2011 elections has evaporated in front of Cristina's eyes, due to her policy (unable to give a solution to the crisis), and also to the rising popular demonstrations against the government.

The kirchnerist celebration on May 25^th, actually, was surrounded of demonstrations showing the popular discontent with the government and the popular boiling climate that shakes the country. On May 22^nd, the Memory, Truth and Justice Front [TN: EMVJ, left parties and popular organizations front to fight for democratic rights] demonstrated against governmental repression and espionage. On May 23^rd, a massive demonstration filled the streets in Resistencia, Chaco, against the brutal repression of Capitanich and Bacileff Ivanoff [TN: governor and vice-governor] against native peoples, teachers and piqueteros. On May 24^th, lots of classist internal committees and the left went to Labour Ministry to demonstrate against wage-tax [TN: tax over salaries] and for the universalization of the family aids. On May 25th in several cities as Buenos Aires and Córdoba, demonstrations saying "Go out Monsanto!" were developed, as part of the international anti-Monsanto day. On May 29^th, there will be a CTA-Micheli [TN: opposition Argentinean Workers Central] national strike and pickets. There are several demonstrations against lay-offs as in Line Bus Nº 60, Lear, Latingráfica and Firestone. Fel-Fort workers developed strikes and assemblies during 5 days claiming for permanent jobs to precarious workers and others demands. In SUTEBA [TN: Teachers from Buenos Aires] elections, the teachers voted massively the Multicolor list against Baradel's kirchenerist bureaucracy, wining the leadership of the most important and big branch of the union: La Matanza.

IN ORDER TO MAKE THE MASSES BREAK WITH THE GOVERNMENT BY THE LEFT, A NEW CLASSIST LEADERSHIP IS NEEDED

The backlash of the government and the popular ebullition scheme pose the need of a political leadership to achieve a left way out of the crisis. The masses rupture with the government, to be developed in a strategic direction, has to express in the formation of a political alternative. On the contrary, if this doesn't happen, popular struggle will be contained and kirchenrist exhaustion capitalized by the political currents which seek for a pro-imperialist way out of the crisis (right and FAP), or eventually recycled inside kirchnerismo through its 'endogenous right' (either Boudou or Scioli-Massa).

This is clearly verified in the policy of the opposing trade union bureaucracy: after the 20N [TN: first national strike against Cristina Kirchner], Moyano [leader of the anti-kirchnerist CGT] started to organize a front with the peronist right (De La Sota, De Narváez, and Lavagna). The isolated struggle days called by opposition CTA has the aim to increase the influence of Micheli, to improve Unidad Popular [Micheli's party] bargain power in the FAP's lists. The conclusion is that if the left doesn’t have a powerful intervention as a political alternative in the power struggle, is fertilizing the pre-revolutionary situation to be solved in a right-wing sense.

WE HAVE TO END WITH THE SUBORDINATION OF THE CENTRIST LEFT TO CRISTINA, THE RIGHT AND THE FAP

A big sector of the left, however, showed a big subjection to the pro-imperialist parties. Libres del Sur leads the campaign for a new Alianza [TN: "Alliance", pro-imperialist center left coalition of the overthrew Argentinean president De La Rúa] with FAP and UCR. Even, Libres del Sur has justified a front with...Macri! The MST [TN: morenoist, sympathizer of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International] and PCR [TN: mao-stalinist] are struggling to set a common platform with FAP in the different provinces they run for elections. Marea Popular is prone to a front with the left paw of Argentinean caprilism, i.e. Claudio Lozano, without stating any anti-imperialist program, and without saying anything on the fact that Lozano supports two-lane devaluation and external debt payment. The main problem isn’t that they are developing a "reformist" orientation. To say this would be to embellish them, because they are not candidatures that express popular claims in a capitalist way, but they openly militate to build fronts with pro-imperialists features. It's not about a generic adaptation to the capitalist regime, but directly to their pro-imperialist representatives, with a center-left key or even right-wing. Therefore, the challenge and the call to break issued to these organizations have the aim to call their popular base to repudiate this policy and develop an anti-imperialist regrouping of the whole left.

The political destruction of the centrist left under these front-populists agreements doesn’t directly pave the way to the revolutionary left but weakens it into marginality and opens the way to the right. The historical experience of the working class is eloquent in this sense. Against any kind of self-reference sectarianism, the Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria states that the political destruction of centrism by the right and center-left doesn't show the strength of the revolutionary left but its isolation and inability to gain and defend possible allies.

Centrism is based in its oscillation between reform and revolution. That is why the only positive way to finish with centrism is that workers join the revolutionaries because they think we are an alternative. For sure, that political evolution towards the left needs the intervention of an independent workers party and an accurate frontist tactic to make workers break with centrist paralysis and draw the conclusions of the development of their own struggle. Thus, the only way to achieve this is through the systematic public denounce against the denaturation of the workers organizations when they are led by pro-imperialist currents and addressing to their militants a concrete political way out: against the unity with caprilism, the Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria proposes the consequential anti-imperialist unity.

TO DISPUTE THE ELECTORAL CAMPAING IS TO DISPUTE WHICH PARTY AND WHICH CLASS HAVE THE POWER

Thus, the strategic importance of the electoral campaign. The electoral campaign is a central episode of the class struggle, because in the elections a fight between parties and programs takes place facing the national crisis. The electoral political struggle is the most concentrated form of the class struggle, as strategic proposal of the different classes and their consistence are tested facing the framework of the capitalist bankruptcy.

Thus, if the workers, the left, the fighters want to struggle for power against capitalist parties, we have to take part in the electoral campaign. Through the party programmatic struggle revolutionaries have the ability to separate the masses from the capitalist parties and organize them in an independent shape. The only way to give an independent political representation, by the left, to the popular demonstrations that are currently shaking Argentina, is developing a party political struggle in the electoral campaign, promoting the independent organization of the exploited, and their combat against Cristina, the right and the FAP, and for a workers government.

Opposing the electoral campaign to the "class struggle" (as PTS [TN: morenoist party, organizer of the FTCI], “foquistas” groups, anarchists, autonomous or blank-voters in general do) means not having understood anything about both of them. The working class is realized as such through its own political party, and this is true both in its historical sense for its revolutionary mission, and in its daily and tangible struggle for the material development of the working class and the enlargement of its political, moral, recreative, cultural, affective, sexual and spiritual freedoms. The working class is such in the fullest sense of the term when it’s organized in a political party and struggles for power in every area addressing its rebellious agitation to all the exploited classes. The proletarian political party is the emancipator tool to impel the collective fight for the liberation of the working class and all the exploited.

THE PARALYSIS OF THE LEFT FRONT ISOLATES FIGHTERS AND PAVES THE WAY TO KIRCHNERISM AND FAP

This is not what the FIT is doing. As the foundational statement of the Coordinating Committee in defense of the Left Front poses, the FIT is prostrated facing the political crisis. The trend to FIT’s dissolution is so serious that PTS, instead of developing a big political campaign, has voted in its last Congress the initiative to solve the difference about FIT’s candidatures in the proscriptive primaries PASO [TN: governmental mechanism to curb the parties with less than 1.5% run for the elections]. Partido Obrero [TN: PO, Argentinean section of CRFI], finally, accepted this proposal and Izquierda Socialista [TN: Argentinean section of UIT] posed against that, but doesn't develop a public political struggle for an Open Congress to all the fighters in order to solve this situation. This is very serious: this left that denies an independent political intervention, is the left present, more or less, in the demonstrations that are shaking the country. Is the left that has the electoral legal habilitation in a national scope and has the practical and organizational capacity to build a left opposition. Therefore, is their responsibility to lead and convoke all the fighters.

However, their denial to intervene as a political factor curbs the independent political development of those thousands of fighters that go to the streets again and again. On the contrary, it paves the way for kirchnerism, the right and the FAP. It's not by accident: they are the same that deny the pre-revolutionary situation across Latin America and Argentina. They are the same that claim themselves as the Argentinian representation of the anti-capitalist centrism and they are the same that refuse, thus, the struggle for a second Argentinazo [TN: 2001 popular uprising and revolutionary situation in Argentina]. They don't use their parlametary seats as an integral part of the popular rebellion (what corresponds to a revolutionary deputy), but they consider themselves as "claims defenders", what in several moments makes them stand in the same path with the capitalist parties.

As examples of this we can mention the presence of Izquierda Socialista in the #18A [TN: right-wing leaded demonstration against the government. It took place on April 18th]; their participation with kirchnerism in the March 24^th demonstration and the vote of Liliana Olivero [TN: FIT and Izquierda Socialista deputy in Córdoba] about the Argentina-Iran memorandum. Also, we can mention PO’s refusal to fight for "Overthrow Macri! Overthrow Bruera!" [TN: Bruera, major of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires province] facing the political crisis opened by the floods in Buenos Aires. To this enumeration of political mistakes we have to sum up a long list of political events where the FIT didn't issue even a press release, showing its lack of policy. As what doesn't go forward goes backwards, and in policy vacuum don't exist, the FIT's crisis drives the working class vanguard to isolation and easies the development of kirchnerism and others front-populist alternatives.

FACING THE COLLAPSE OF THE KIRCHNERIST GOVERNMENT, LETS OPEN THE LEFT FRONT TO ALL THE FIGHTERS WHO WANT A LEFT WAY OUT OF THE CRISIS

The Coordination Committee in defense of the Left Front, on the contrary, has been organized to fight against this paralysis and dissolution and to pose an alternative, showing how the Left Front should intervene. The Open Congress to all the fighters proposed by the Coordinating Committee is an attempt to solve the current disintegration of the FIT, pointing the need of a left alternative leaded by the FIT and thus gathering all those who support Left Front. The time is running: the deadline to submit political alliances and supports in PASO is on June 12^th on June 17^th is the deadline to constitute provisional committees of the electoral lists and on June 22^nd to submit the candidatures lists to PASO.

Thus, we have until June 12^th to achieve the call to an Open Congress. There are several activists and militants, as the pages of this newspaper show, that have explicitly supported this proposal. We call the Left Front to answer, finish its dissolution and call the Congress to vote a program, the campaigns and the candidatures. Also several parties that are not in the Coordinating Committee, have publicly asked for their incorporation to the Left Front. The same goes for the 1.000 signs and dozens of supports to the Coordinating Committee: we want a public answer. Silence is not the method of revolutionaries, who always prefer to work transparently. The truth is always revolutionary. To hide and dodge the discussion only reflects FIT's paralysis and its political inability to develop an answer.

The Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria commits itself to develop a strong electoral campaign of the Coordinating Committee in defense of the Left Front, calling FIT to open itself to all the fighters and lead the left opposition in our country. This is the only way we can give form to a revolutionary outcome, posing the workers as a power alternative in the national crisis. Facing the collapse of the government, the working class and the fighters have to militate the elections to achieve a left way out. Let’s go for a socialist and workers alternative. Let's go for a workers government. Let's go with the Coordinating Committee in defense of the Left Front.

May 27^th, 2013