First published in Spanish, Sunday, 24th July 2022 Por un gobierno obrero. Abajo el gobierno de Alberto y Cristina - Corriente Obrera Revolucionaria (cor-digital.org)

Argentina continues in free fall and every week is experienced as the road to a new catastrophe, with a deterioration of wages due to devaluation and price increases, a debacle in our living conditions, higher unemployment and an attack on pensions, increases in public transport, electricity and gas services fares.

In this scene, the government of Alberto and Cristina fulfill the demands, not of the workers and the poor people, but of businessmen and big capitalists. They are coherent, since as a bourgeois government they are the state administrators of their businesses.

Many of these businessmen and economic groups ask for devaluation and, if they do not get the government to do it, they achieve it through market mechanisms, such as the run of these days. The increase in prices is an expression of a devaluation that has already been imposed. Then the government only has to legalize it by splitting the exchange rates, one dollar for the agribusiness, one for imports, another for tourism and so on ad infinitum, while for those of us who live in pesos, "better luck next time".

The A&C government must guarantee the agreement with the IMF and the plan imposed by this organization to pay the debt. All the measures taken by the current Minister of Economy, Silvina Batakis, go in that direction. If there are some differences within the ruling coalition, these are not on breaking the agreement, but on how it should be paid.

But these elements that we have listed so far are part of a characterization with which perhaps a large part of the Left and sectors of activism agree, however what we try to outline in an approximate way in this article is what should be the way out of this crisis.

The first point we want to raise is that, unlike what is proposed by the great majority of the Left nucleated in the FIT-U [front of Argentinean Left Parties PO, PTS, IS, MST] and its satellites, the solution for Argentina is international. Any program that proposes a national solution to the crisis, no matter how left-wing it may seem, is false and tends to confuse the workers and the vanguard.

We raise this because the program of revolutionaries starts from the analysis of the capitalist system at world scale and how its particularities are expressed in each country. If we take the particularities as the norm, we will surely end up putting forward a program that responds to the conjuncture without unity with the internationalist tasks posed by the situation.

In the case of Argentina, it is clear that we must raise "Down with the government of Alberto and Cristina and their pact with the IMF. For a workers' government". This statement gives the idea that it is the working class who should rule in the scenario of economic chaos and pauperization of our conditions. Now, how do we prepare this scenario so that it becomes a revolutionary situation, in which the leadership of this process is a fourth-internationalist revolutionary party? For some members of the FITU, like PTS and PO, it is by the magic word "socialism". PTS says "for a socialism from below" and PO, "for a popular movement with socialist banners". Here they are already beginning to confuse the vanguard and to programmatically overlook the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and its different stages.

Socialism is a social regime; in order to develop its program, which is a transitional stage, a workers' revolution must first take place. To propose a program of socialist reforms without first destroying the bourgeois State is nonsense and makes the program unfeasible. That is why to promote, as PTS does, “the state monopoly of foreign trade to avoid the flight of capital and to be able to choose what we buy and what we sell abroad”, or “the nationalization of the banks so that we can give another destination to credits and deposits” of course! “under workers' management” is to destroy the program for which we revolutionaries are fighting to turn it into an accumulation of slogans that will end up in a bill to be voted in Congress. This way of seeing the program starts from a fundamental error, which is ignoring that capital cannot be separated from the capitalists and that is why a revolution must take place to modify this relation of force in production. By omitting the struggle for power, it becomes a redistributionist and statist program. The Russian revolutionaries raised the monopoly of foreign trade after having made the revolution to fight against the law of value that rules at world level. This has nothing to do with the national and redistributionist approach.

Revolutionaries fight for the destruction of the State, which is why our transitional program seeks to bring the bourgeois State to its agony before we seize power. These statist measures advanced by Centrists only strengthen in the eyes of the workers the institutions that we must destroy. To raise "management" and not "workers control" is another programmatic nonsense. Workers’ control means dual power in production, management is convergence with capital, they are opposite lines.

Revolutionaries uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat as a State-form which, in its stages, aims to disorganize the bourgeoisie, organize the working class and develop the international dictatorship of the proletariat, as a transitional form throughout the stages from socialism to communism.

In the program of Centrism, the dictatorship of the proletariat has been erased. Today, in a devalued form, we see it raising "workers’ government" as a possible transition, that is to say, a stage different to that of the dictatorship of the proletariat and not as the popularization of it, as it is raised in the Transitional Program. This slogan would rather be used to seek more deputies with an idea of a "parliamentary minority government". And guided by this theory they seek their allies in political formations, which do not have workers in their ranks or, failing that, they try to dialogue with social movements seeking some organizational tactic detached from production.

These are some elements to discuss in face of the workers, militant leaderships and activists in order to find a way out of the crisis. To confront this government and union’s bureaucracy, we must begin by kicking out the delegates and leaders who respond to them, and thus prepare and go forward in the task of recovering the unions. We stand for a general strike and a plan of struggle, tactical measures that must be carried out to develop a vanguard that expresses the program of the revolutionaries.

If we fight to bring down the government of the day it is not so that another bourgeois variant takes power, we already have nearby examples such as Chile. And if we propose a workers' government it is to show the superiority of the State-form of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the development of productive forces and the necessity of the United States of Latin America for the economic unity of our region in the need for a world revolution.

Opening a debate within our class is fundamental in the face of the crisis scenario in the midst of a pandemic and the war in Ukraine. We call on the currents that still vindicate the dictatorship of the proletariat and propose the reconstruction of the IV International to give us a deep programmatic debate to set up a revolutionary leadership. In this sense we call for an international conference of the Trotskyist currents to discuss the tasks before the war in Ukraine and the world crisis.

POUR RÉORGANISER LES COURANTS TROTSKYISTES QUI SE RÉCLAMENT ENCORE DE LA DICTATURE DU PROLÉTARIAT

La situation mondiale place les travailleurs face aux conséquences de la pandémie, de la guerre en Ukraine et de la crise économique, politique et sociale. Nous assistons à des processus inflationnistes mondiaux et à une augmentation des prix des denrées alimentaires et de l'énergie à la suite de la guerre et des sanctions économiques imposées par l'impérialisme contre la Russie de Poutine. Cela se combine avec des crises de la dette dans les pays semi-coloniaux et des attaques contre le mouvement ouvrier. Tous ces facteurs frappent durement les conditions de vie de notre classe.

Le conflit entre la Russie et l'Ukraine se développe au milieu d'une décomposition de l'impérialisme et d'un processus d'assimilation des anciens Etats ouvriers. L'impérialisme américain tente de reconquérir l'hégémonie mondiale, montrant sa faiblesse historique, tandis que les bureaucraties à la tête des anciens États ouvriers de Russie et de Chine tentent de maintenir la place qu'elles ont conquise au sein du système capitaliste en crise.

La soi-disant "opération spéciale" menée par le gouvernement de Poutine contre l'Ukraine envahit depuis plus de deux mois maintenant, essayant d'imposer par la force militaire les conditions d'un nouveau statu quo sur la scène mondiale, après la chute du mur de Berlin et le démembrement de l'URSS.

Pendant ce temps, l'OTAN utilise ce conflit de guerre pour accélérer le processus d'assimilation des anciens États ouvriers, essayant de leur imposer des conditions à caractère semi-colonial. Ainsi, sur le territoire ukrainien, se définissent des processus historiques inachevés, nécessaires à la survie du système capitaliste.

Comme il ne pouvait en être autrement, l'assimilation des anciens Etats ouvriers se pose dans l'arène mondiale et non dans les particularités de chaque pays. C'est pourquoi nous soutenons l'unité révolutionnaire du prolétariat ukrainien et russe contre leurs gouvernements actuels, contre cette guerre qui ne défend aucun de nos intérêts de classe.

Pour que l'internationalisme se développe, il faut avant tout reconstruire la Quatrième Internationale, donner une direction révolutionnaire aux masses ouvrières qui traversent ce processus historique, régénérer une avant-garde ouvrière qui puisse donner une perspective marxiste au prolétariat mondial.

Nous appelons à une conférence internationale les courants trotskystes qui revendiquent encore la dictature du prolétariat, affirmant que la tactique pour tenter de résoudre la crise de la direction révolutionnaire doit toujours être internationaliste, puisque même dans l'intervention de nos courants dans chaque pays, nous doit commencer, dans un effort maximal, par le soutien et le développement de nos tâches centrales, orientées pour promouvoir le réveil de la révolution dans tous les pays. C'est le mécanisme pour éviter de tomber dans les particularismes et les adaptations aux institutions bourgeoises.

La nécessité de concrétiser cette Conférence internationale est d'ouvrir un débat au sein des organisations trotskystes, sur l'importance de la construction du parti mondial et de ses sections nationales à l'heure où prévalent les idées de mouvements ou de coalitions électorales, qui entrent alors en crise, comme on le voit par exemple avec le PSOL du Brésil et son soutien à Lula, ou le NPA de France et sa campagne en commun avec la France Insoumise de Melenchon.

Ouvrir ce débat au militantisme et aux camarades que nous influençons nous permettra de pouvoir intervenir dans ce scénario mondial, dans une perspective marxiste.

Pour l'unité internationaliste des travailleurs contre l'impérialisme et l'OTAN. Pour l'expulsion des troupes russes d'Ukraine !

COR Chili - LOI Brésil - COR Argentine

TO REORGANIZE THE TROTSKYIST CURRENTS THAT STILL CLAIM THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

The world situation finds us workers facing the consequences of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the economic, political and social crisis.  We are witnessing worldwide inflationary processes and an increase in food and energy prices as a result of the war and the economic sanctions pushed by imperialism against Putin's Russia. This is combined with debt crises in the semicolonial countries and attacks on the labor movement. All these factors are hitting hard at the living conditions of our class.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is developing in the midst of a decomposition of imperialism and a process of assimilation of the former workers' states. American imperialism is trying to regain world hegemony, showing its historical weakness, while the bureaucracies at the head of the former workers' states of Russia and China are trying to maintain the place they have conquered within the capitalist system in crisis.

The so-called "Special Operation" led by Putin’s government against Ukraine has been invading for more than two months now, trying to impose by military force the conditions of a new status quo on the world stage, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismemberment of the USSR.

Meanwhile, NATO uses this war conflict to accelerate the process of assimilation of the former workers' states, trying to impose on them conditions of a semi-colonial character. Thus, in the Ukrainian territory unfinished historical processes are being defined, in the need of survival of the capitalist system.

As it could not be otherwise, the assimilation of the former workers states is posed in the world arena and not in the particularities of each country.  That is why we support the revolutionary unity of the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat against their current governments, against this war that does not defend any of our interests as a class.

For internationalism to develop it is of first order the reconstruction of the Fourth International, to provide a revolutionary leadership to the working masses that are going through this historic process, to regenerate a workers vanguard that can give a Marxist perspective to the world proletariat.

We call to an International Conference to the Trotskyist currents that still claim the dictatorship of the proletariat, maintaining that the tactics to try to solve the crisis of revolutionary leadership must always be internationalist, since even in the intervention of our currents in each country, we must start, in a maximum effort, from the support and development of our central tasks, oriented to promote the awakening of the revolution in all countries. This is the mechanism to avoid falling into particularisms and adaptations to bourgeois institutions.

The need to materialize this International Conference is to open a debate within the Trotskyist organizations, on the importance of the construction of the world party and its national sections at a time when the ideas of movements or electoral coalitions prevail, which then enter into crisis, as we see for example with the PSOL of Brazil and its support to Lula, or the NPA of France and its campaign in common with Melenchon’s France Insoumise.

Opening this debate to the militancy and to the comrades we influence will allow us to be able to intervene in this world scenario, from a Marxist perspective.

For the internationalist unity of the workers against imperialism and NATO. For the expulsion of the Russian troops from Ukraine!

COR Chile - LOI Brazil - COR Argentina

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