The paradoxes in the policy of the government and the Peronnist opposition
A year after the establishment of parliamentary rule human rights, political prisoners were risking their lives he paradoxes in the policy of the regime and that of in a hunger strike to obtain their release. They are no the Peronist opposition have become so glaring that prisoners of you would be tempted to think at first glance that the champion of human rights.
former consists of Machiavellian demagogy
We think that these Alfonsin parades at the UN as the standardbearer of paradoxes are more apparent than real. They require Latin-Americanism and the peoples of the Third World, explanation and a deeper analysis. Indeed, Alfonsin was named by the Inter-American Court making deals with the IMF to pay a foreign debt that
" at the same time as the he himself calls usurous and whose origins are unknown.
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, of which the In the past, the Monroe Doctrine, aimed against the president is the commander in chief, maintained that European imperialist powers, was designed to subversion, siven under the dictatorship for Latin America the private preserve of Us imperialism.
were justified. It is the Supreme Council The watchword of the Monroe Doctrine was "America that has been made responsible for trying the chiefs for the Americans," meaning of course for the North of the military dictatorship in accordance with a law Americans. Today, Alfonsin is raising the watchword passed by parliament. Moreover, at the same time that of a Latin America for Latin Americans, meaning for
Alfonsin was being given his title as a champion of the developed bourgeoisie of Latin America.
latter is suspended in midair. Rights as its "man of the year,' the orders Angel FANJUL
The first parliament since the establishment of the dictatorship is first session with an uninspiring record It has passed a very mixed bag of laws and solved none of the fundamental problems facing society. The deputies did not "have the time" to consider the bill on the political prisoners. They rejected Comte MacDonald's bill for creating a joint congressional commission to conduct an inquiry on the violations of human rights by the military juntas.
The "disappearance" of 30,000 people, many of whom died after torture; the murder of thousands of citizens; the forced exile of thousands more were, thus, not sufficient grounds even for setting up an investigating committee. This is indication enough of the scale of values of this
The Peronist opposition, through the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) launched a general strike on September 3, 1984, in protest against the government's policy and in defense of the workers. But the same Peronist opposition is loudly proclaiming the need for labor-management collaboration in defense of democracy. It has been making deals with the Argentinian Union of Industrialists (the bosses' association) and with the Countrycountryside), and with the employers as a whole, that is, with the enemies of the workers, in order to establish itself as a group that can put pressure on the
Union of Industrialists, the Countrymen's Society, the CGT and the military caste come up with policies from that of the government, who is left for the government to represInternational Viewpoint 6 May 1985
These are glaring paradoxes, and it is necessary to consider carefully how they can be explained. It is common in the orbit of the left organizations to hear simplistic answers. As such people see it, these paradoxes reflect a simple truth. Americanism, parliamentarism, the fight against wage contracts, on the one hand, and acceptance of social pacts on the other, only reveal the continuity between the Alfonsin government and the military dictatorship. Nothing but the form has
The Alfonsin government, supposedly, is only the dictatorship in civilian clothes. In other words, nothing important has happened, nothing has changed, the task is simply to dip into the old arsenal of struggle programs to mount an assault on this execrable government, which is the heir of the ones that went before.
We, however, maintain that these paradoxes are more apparent than real. They arise in fact from the objective contradictions and limitations of a bourgeois
In the first place, contrary to the judgements that are commonly made, it is clear that the Alfonsin government does not directly represent any of the key elements in the power system. To be sure, some of these elements support it, but they, nonetheless, keep their distance
The Alfonsin administration is not even the real representative of the conglomerate of tendencies that make up the Radical Civil Union, the party that put it in power.
In reality, the Alfonsin administration operates as an arbitor standing above the various tendencies in its own party. It is conditioned by them, but it acts over
It reflects them, it takes them into account, but it does not represent them. In any case, it reflects an unthe dictatorship but of a But at the same time, stable internal balance. This is the source of the trials and tribulations of the Radical parliamentary fraction and of the Alfonsin cabinet, as well as of the government's policy in general.
From this standpoint, the Alfonsin government is advancing a policy of a general defense of the system, defense of the ruling classes, but it does not represent any ruling stratum in particular. operating over their heads, and in this sense only it can be said that it reflects the tendency toward a new bonapartism, a bonapartism arising form the ruling classes' lack of any overall coherent perspective rather than from a balance of forces among contending sectors.
This new bonapartism is the reflection of an overall social crisis, and this is the reason the government has adopted a language open to many interpretations. In the UN, Alfonsin has raised the banner of Latin-Americanism and of the Third World in general. He has identified himself with the goal of unity of the peoples
Until recently, this vision of Bolivar (1) was the exclusive heritage of the revolutionary left that called for a socialist federation of Latin-
Today, the bourgeoisie is taking up this banner for its own purposes, rejecting obviously the socialist and revolutionary road by which the peoples can attain such unity. contradiction explains why in the mouths of its bourgeois advocates this demand assumes an ambiguity and utopian tone.
However, when you have a bourgeois government acting above the head of its own class and raising such a standard with a certain independence, this means that something has changed or is about to
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), hero of the independence struggle of the Latin-American
change in Latin America. And what has changed in our opinion is the consequence of factors that all revolutionists have to consider in their tactical and strategic formulations.
The first such factor is that the perspective of the workers fighting independently for the revolutionary transformation of society and with the objective of a socialist federation of Latin America is not one that can mobilize the people today. That is because of the failures of the societies where so-called Actually Existing Socialism can be seen. But no other perspective has taken form.
The second factor is that the margins of maneuver for populist formations Peronism in Argentina, APRA in Peru, etc. - which have dominated the mass movements of the oppressed and exploited since the Second World War, are becoming exhausted.
The third factor is the absence of a class-struggle perspective with credibility for the masses, while the decline of the populist mass larger margin of maneuver for the national bourgeoisies and for the ideologues who advocate solution to the crisis.
On the other hand, the lack of an independent working-class perspective and the decline of the populist movements does not mean that the possibilities for the society evolving are exhausted. It continues to develop in a deformed way, constrained by outworn modes of production.
With all the deformations and distortions that Latin America has undergone, which Alfonsin pointed out at the UN, the society has continued to develop. Semi-developed national states have arisen that can no longer fulfill even the role assigned to them in the international division of labor. These societies need a new policy. The vision of the Argentinian Union of Industrialists and the Countrymen's Society, of the various sectors of the ruling class, does not extend beyond defending their special interests.
However, from the standpoint of the
December 10 1983. Buenos Aires on the occasion of the investiture of Raoul Alfonsin (DR) historic interests of the system, it is necessary to work to reorient the countries whose structure has changed. This is exactly what Alfonsin says. And in so saying, he differentiates himself from the special interests and rises above them. That is why he is using a new language.
Alfonsin does not talk about the necessity of bowing to the IMF plans. He speaks of the need to restructure the functioning of this institution in order to salvage the world monetary system. He proclaims to the imperialist powers that without moral standards the system will perish.
At the same time, Alfonsin is telling his peers — not Guatemala, Haiti, Bolivia or the Caribbean countries but Mexico, Brazil, and other semi-industrialized countries in Latin America - that they have to agree on action to stimulate capitalist accumulation on the basis of enlarged reproduction in these semiindustrialized countries, at the expense of 24 others. In Alfonsin's mouth, the Monroe Doctrine is assuming a new meaning: "Latin America for the semi-industrialized countries of Latin America."
Alfonsin decries the fact that living standards have been falling for six years in Latin America, that the Gross Domestic Product of the region has fallen by 10%, that the value of its exports is going into the accumulation of usurous capital in the capitalist centers. All of this is true. We revolutionists also point this out.
However, what Alfonsin does not say is why this situation has come about. He is trying to convince people on the basis of moral criteria. The values of morality and justice are by no means unimportant. But they themselves are subject to the implacable laws of development, since they are subordinated to the prevailing mode of accumulation and social organization. And Alfonsin says nothing about that, any more than the Peronist opposition, which criticizes the procedures but not the essence.
However, history has shown that the hearts of the international bankers are not easily moved by appeals to morality and justice. On the other hand, Alfonsin's pretensions are not without logic. They reflect the evident need to seek solutions to the crisis that will not shatter the existing structures but only modify them. They represent a bourgeois democratic task in the context of the mode of production prevailing in Latin America.
If the workers fail to unblock the system by revolutionary methods, as they have up till now, the bourgeoisie and its ideologues will try to do this, with all their cowardice and frustrations.
The Swiss Social Democrats have responded to Alfonsin's request for loans by exposing the fact that 20 billion dollars (almost half the total national debt) has been syphoned off from the Argentine
International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
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Avenida de Mayo 700 600
FONSIN
September 1983. A 60,000-strong meeting addressed by Alfonsin (DR, national economy and deposited in Swiss banks. Alfonsin has pointed to the fact that 80 billion dollars leave Latin America every year to swell both usurous and productive capital in the creditor capitalist centers.
In the name of the European Social Democratic parties, Willy Brandt has demanded that the imperialist centers give back to Latin America 1 per cent of what they spend in the arms race. While such "generosity" is not terribly moving, it is nonetheless indicative of something. The imperialist centers realize that they have to help the bard of Latin-Americanism get out of the crisis in which he finds himself, that they have to do something to mitigate the effects of international usury in order to offer him some institutional stability. Above all, they know they have to do this to keep such rhetoric from being exploded, because this could lead to the formulation of another alternative put forward by other social forces with other methods.
Faced with these paradoxes, you would have to be politically shortsighted to be satisfied with denouncing the patchwork, ineffective character of such reforms and counterposing to them the beauties of a revolutionary solution. Our task must be to show what material obstacles stand in the way of these ideoLogues achieving the goals they set themselves.
Alfonsin's deal with the IMF is not qualitatively different from the agreements other Latin-American bourgeoisies have made with this institution. (2) But it is very different from the accord that the military dictatorship, the Countrymen's Society or the Union of Industrialists might have accepted. Clearly, it amounts to the debtor submitting to the international usurer, but it is not an outright capitulation.
What has to be said is not that Alfonsin has capitulated but that the road chosen for developing Latin America is not going to get us where we want to go. The problem is what measures will be taken, starting now, to stem the flight of capital, International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
A4what measures will be taken to promote "integration" of the Latin American countries free from control by the international speculators and octupuses. Obviously, on this terrain, Alfonsin's highflown rhetoric comes into conflict with timidity or even a total lack of the slightest reform or progressive measures from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie itself.
There is no progress toward a monopoly of foreign trade or even of supervision of foreign trade. Nothing is being done about limiting the land rent on unused land, nothing about industrial production, nothing about nationalizing banking, nothing about inheritance taxes, nothing about lifting tariff barriers in Latin America.
Our policy cannot be to put an equals sign between the Alfonsin government and its predecessors. We have to point out how the workers can advance other solutions, even within the context of the present relationship of forces. What can and must be done amounts to quite a lot. First of all, an agreement for the formation of a front is necessary, both in Argentina and on the Latin-American level. On this basis, we could offer the workers a Latin-American assembly that would discuss a concrete action program to achieve the objectives that the bourgeoisie has proclaimed but been unable to achieve.
This initiative could be taken, for example, by the Bolivian Confederation of Labor (COB), the Chilean United Federation of Workers (CUT), the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil, and the tendencies opposing the Peronist bureaucracy in the Argentinian unions.
We do not say that such an operation can be successful or that it will have immediate results. But we think that it is possible and necessary to wage a longterm fight around it, which is the only effective way to find a way out of the impasse of the system. It is necessary to put forward an action program based in the present stage on control by the working people, by the producers, of all economic and political activity, control through which the working class can assert its leading role with respect other exploited and oppressed strata of the nation.
What is needed in the present stage of the struggle in Latin America is for the working class, the industrial workers an workers all together, to take the politica initiative by presenting concrete soluti and a plan for a society that will ma realizable the objectives that the bour geoisie has been unable to take beyond utopian speechifying.
In order to win the initiative, the working class has to take the leadership in all areas: The fight for human rights, to bring the criminals to justice, and to force the authorities to make restitution to the victims. The fight for an inquiry into illicit activities and for recovery for the publie domain of goods unjustly acquired. The battle around the foreig debt and deals with international banks The fight against inflation and unemploy ment and for economic development and social progress. The struggle against imperialist domination and drive towands war, for peace among the peoples.
On the question of the struggle agains imperialist domination and war the workers, the revolutionary tendencies progressive currents, and human righta organizations have managed to form a front of common action to put before the oppressed masses solutions that the bour geoisie avoids and conceals. It is impor ant to work energetically in all thes bodies to achieve a minimum acco around specific propositions for the bes round of parliamentary elections so as bo gain a forum for offering an independe working-class policy to all the oppresse sectors of society. This is one way, mor the only one, but one that can be taken to stimulate independent organization of the workers to meet the new tests of strength that are inevitably on the way 2. This accord was signed in September 198 Aldo Ferrer, president of the Buenos Province Bank, has estimated that it involed transfer about Domestic Product. or 40% of the from the country's exports, to interest on the debt." He noted tha "will have • an impact on the standard living." Cf. Latin Weekly Report of October 5, 1984.