REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY OF ARGENTINA. PCRA
Dear comrade organizers and participants of the 27th International Seminar "Problems of the Revolution in Latin America"; I bring greetings of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina to this event, in which we are participating once again with the objective of knowing and exchanging visions on the development of the struggles of the working class and peoples of Latin America and the whole world. The theme chosen is very timely: "The struggles of the working class and peoples, and the inter-imperialist disputes".
We are living in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. We reaffirm the validity of the Leninist theory of imperialism which, among other questions, raises the division of the world between oppressor countries and oppressed countries and takes this as the fundamental division of the world today, regardless of whether the countries oppressed by imperialism have predominantly feudal, semi-feudal or capitalist social relations.
The imperialist bourgeoisies not only exploit the working class and oppress the peoples of their countries, but oppress and plunder the whole world, turning most of the countries of the globe into colonies, semi-colonies and dependent countries. We must stress the validity of the Leninist conception, later developed in depth by Maoism, which differentiates the bourgeoisie in these countries into an intermediary bourgeoisie, which subordinates itself to imperialism, from the national bourgeoisie, which can confront imperialism. National liberation movements are thus intertwined with the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. This theory of Lenin's is absolutely valid.
We analyzed in our 13th Party Congress, held in October 2022, the first since the death of our historic general secretary, comrade Otto Vargas, that there is an aggravation of the contention among the imperialist countries and the factors of war, rebellion and struggles of the peoples of Latin America and the world are growing.
The invasion of Russian imperialism in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 produced a profound change on the global stage, opening the possibility of a new world war and a deep economic crisis.
The pandemic, the war, the alarming inequality in the world where the richest 1% accumulates more wealth than the rest of humanity, the devastation of nature and climate change, are all consequences of the character and voracity of capitalism in its imperialist phase.
As our party Central Committee headed by comrade Jacinto Roldán recently analyzed, the economic crisis is accelerating the contention and the dangers of war.
In China, the economic situation is complicated and affects the world economy. We are witnessing the contraction of the world market with a fall in external and domestic demand for industrial goods and a fall in the price of raw materials. In July, Chinese exports fell by 14.5% year-on-year while imports fell by 1-2.4%. That adds to the fall in domestic consumption.
In China, the housing bubble burst again. The works that are paralyzed are multiplying while many buyers suspended the payment of mortgage loans, creating a cascade of debts that was affecting their entire economy. Country Garden, a real estate giant that is one of the 500 largest companies in the world, has just fallen. Its losses have been 70% so far this year and its debts are estimated to be between $160 billion and $190 billion. The Chinese economy is in deflation, stagnant due to low domestic and international demand, the severe real estate crisis and rising military spending. It had to devalue the yuan this week. Being the second largest economy in the world, this affects the entire global economy.
There were also economic shocks in Russia, which is suffering from the cost of war and NATO blockades. The ruble fell by 7% in July from the previous month and so far this year it has been devalued by around 27%.
Europe continues to suffer from rising food and energy prices. Due to the cooling of the world economy, its exports fell. Since 2019, wages have fallen by 3% in Germany, 3.5% in Italy and Spain and 6% in Greece. At the same time, the workers' struggles are growing and there is a phenomenon of growing union membership.
Germany, the main European economy, had zero growth in the April-June quarter. The Netherlands has just entered a technical recession (two consecutive quarters with negative growth). Japan's government has lowered its economic growth forecast for this year to 1.3% from 1.5%.
The United States has given itself a policy to face the recession and achieve a soft landing of its economy. It was not affected by the price of energy since it has a record production in oil, with more than 18 million barrels per day. It has been controlling inflation. But it does so at the cost of a steady rise in the interest rate. Now the US Federal Reserve has raised the rate to 5.5%. With this increase, it already has had 11 rate hikes within the current cycle of monetary contraction, which began at the beginning of 2022. This is very risky for the Yankee economy because it raises the cost of financing, slows consumption and discourages investment. And although it has made progress in decoupling its economy from that of China, it still has a high relationship in some branches, so the stagnation of the Chinese economy will be a headwind at this time.
That is to say that the current growth of the inter-imperialist contention and the factors of war in the world has as a background this economic situation and the sharpening of the need of imperialisms to place the consequences on the oppressed nations and peoples of the world and secure their spheres of power throughout the planet.
Putin just said that "The war will not end if Ukraine does not surrender." Despite this, the resistance of the Ukrainian people to the invader is still strong. After a year and a half of Russian imperialist invasion, Ukraine is a devastated country, with thousands of deaths and immense destruction of its economy and energy, health and education systems.
The Yankees, and NATO, are maintaining their supply of weapons, leaving the expense to the Ukrainian troops. This is how they act, according to their more global interests and the preparations for a world war.
Russian imperialism, for its part, is sending nuclear weapons to allied countries such as Belarus, which borders NATO member Poland. And it is increasing its presence in Africa, as seen in the coup d'état in Niger.
We continue to argue that the only way to stop the war is for Russian imperialism to leave Ukrainian territory, and for both the Yankees and NATO to get their claws out of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have the right to decide their own future.
In the world, blocs are being configured. In the Indo-Pacific the hand of the Yankees appears behind Taiwan, confronting the Chinese, allying with Japan, South Korea and Australia, with the support of NATO countries. The Russians and Chinese respond with their joint military maneuvers. Thus, the Pacific-Indian Ocean area is totally militarized and is a focus of conflict that can set everything on fire. In Africa there are coups, wars and looting. All of them have behind them the hand of imperialist contention. Taking this into account, at this time, is of utmost importance for countries such as Argentina, which is part of the dependent countries as are many countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Comrade Mao Tsetung explained the importance, in countries contested by various imperialist powers, of exploiting the inter-imperialist contradictions, which are concealed in the contradictions among the different groups of the ruling classes in each country.
Mao, in his unpublished writings, argues that "we must consider the struggles between the imperialist countries as important events. Lenin and Stalin described such struggles as reserve forces of the revolution."
In Latin America, the same thing is happening as analyzed above.
The United States is trying to recover positions to continue to be the dominant imperialism in what it considers its "backyard". Great Britain is advancing in its objective of consolidating its dominance of the South Atlantic, maintaining the main NATO base in the southern hemisphere in our Malvinas Islands. China and Russia are contending and advancing in the military and economic field.
In the midst of this contention and in the face of the growing oppression and plunder of our peoples and nations, in Latin America the rebellion and struggles of the peoples are growing. There are prolonged, massive and combative struggles, with a broad popular unity of the workers and peasants’ forces, with a great advance of the unity of the peoples and original nations, of women and youth.
Large towns burst onto the social and political scene again, occupying squares, streets and highways. These are struggles with advances and setbacks, achieving important gains. The struggles of the poor peasants and indigenous peoples and nations for lands and territories and for agrarian reform against landlords and states linked to different imperialisms are continuing.
We vindicate the struggle of the peoples of Latin America, we strive to establish relations with these currents and their political expressions, broadly and without sectarianism. We maintain that it is in unity and struggle, we fight to go beyond the reformist strategy and we offer our revolutionary perspectives.
After the large popular movements of the 1990s and early 2000s, governments emerged with great heterogeneity that adopted reformist measures and to varying degrees took anti-Yankee positions, constituting a regional axis. Experience shows that not breaking with dependency and latifundia, not destroying the state apparatus of the ruling classes and relying on one imperialism to confront another constitutes a road to defeat; it leads to a new frustration and makes possible the return of reactionary and right-wing governments in our countries.
The Situation in Argentina
This whole international situation is directly linked to what is happening in Argentina; the fate of our homeland is being discussed not only here, but also in different imperialist capitals that are associated with one or another sector of the ruling classes.
The working class and the Argentine people have a history of great struggles. It was those massive and combative struggles, and the popular protagonism that took place at that time, from the streets and at the polls, that led to the defeat of the Macri right in 2019 and its replacement with the Frente de Todos (today Union for the Fatherland), with special prominence of the working class and the peasantry and the movements we are promoting such as the Class and Combative Current, the National Peasant Federation and Not One Less Due to Drugs. There were also important student struggles against the Macri advances in which the Popular Anti-Imperialist Student Current and the Popular Unity Movement played a prominent role. In the fight against the pandemic, popular organization and protagonism were strengthened and the mass united front movements that we promoted were advanced.
Throughout the last period, putting the main blow on the Macri right that, today together with Milei, was and continues to be the main danger for the working class and the people, we fought for the government to respond to popular emergencies and break the agreement with the International Monetary Fund that validates the Macri scam and brings with it adjustment and dependency.
For 2 months the people of Jujuy have been fighting for teachers' salaries and against the reform of the provincial Constitution, which seeks to facilitate the handing over and looting of lithium to the imperialist monopolies and advances repression, prohibiting strikes and demonstrations. This is a struggle in which the indigenous peoples and nations that are defending their territories, together with the teachers and other popular sectors, are playing a great role, and that has been moving the country.
The recent PASO [primary] elections have opened up a new scenario. The candidate with the most voted was Milei, with 7,116,352 votes. Second came Together for Change with 6,698,029 votes and third the Union for the Fatherland (UxP), which we formed together with Peronism and other forces, with 6,460,689 votes.
A very large sector chose not to vote (69.6% voted), voted blank (4.8%) or voided their vote (1.2%). Keep in mind that in Argentina voting is mandatory. In total, if we take as a reference the 80.4% who voted in October 2019, there were more than 5 million people who did not vote for any of the candidates. These are votes that are in dispute, when the difference between Milei and Union for the Fatherland was 655,663 and between Together for Change and Union for the Fatherland this difference was 237,340 votes.
The first thing that the elections show is that the anger and weariness of the situation is very strong. We didn't see the magnitude of the vote for Milei. We came from provincial elections in which their candidates had not garnered votes, but important sectors of the masses used it to punish at the national level.
In the vote for Milei, different sectors converged. It is true that there is a fascist core that supports it, but it is a minority. The predominant thing among the mass that voted for him are sectors that used him to express their anger. He had many votes among the workers, in the slums, in the towns, among the poor peasantry and the youth.
With his proclamations against the political caste he managed to deceive sections of the masses with his "incendiary" speech. He even uses the slogan "they should all go" which was a popular slogan of the Argentinazo of 2001.
Milei vindicates Menem and Cavallo. His international reference points are Bolsonaro, Vox (the Spanish fascist party) and Donald Trump. He was an advisor to General Bussi, one of the main assassins in the Videlista dictatorship. He has close relations with Eurnekian, a businessowner friend of Mauricio Macri. They have the same general objectives, an Argentina for less than 20 million. Now he says that we must leave Mercosur and that he is going to break the agreements with China and Brazil. His candidate for vice president is Victoria Villarruel, from a military family, who supported the most fascist sectors of the Vindelista dictatorship.
His program and proposals on labor laws, public education, public health, scientific research, national culture, etc. are profoundly reactionary and need to be exposed.
Together for Change had a vote below their expectations. Bullrich now has trouble differentiating himself from Milei, compounded by Macri's flirtations with Milei. Macri presents himself as the big winner.
For UxP the campaign was difficult because of the adjustment, inflation, insecurity, we are seeing with this government, and in the face of anger it is not enough to say that there is a reactionary right that is worse. It is not enough to say that they want to take away your rights, when a large part of our people already lives without rights and are having a hard time.
Among the industrial proletariat the need to permanently fight for wages in order to defend them against inflation is creating unease. This is aggravated by the attitude of monopolies such as Techint, which, after lining its pockets with the construction of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, now is promoting the conflict by blocking parity with steel workers and creating layoffs at its Valentín Alsina plant. Or the attitude of Mondelez-Terrabusi, which is not respecting the increase in the non-taxable minimum by making large discounts on wages. The workers of its Pacheco plant, with its internal commission at the head, responded by blocking the gates of the company.
We stated that as part of the front we were campaigning for Union for the Fatherland, with our Ten Measures and for our candidates. And we are pushing everywhere the need for a national strike in solidarity with the struggle of the people of Jujuy and for the growing popular needs.
We carried out the campaign with struggle, without for a moment running away from being at the head of the needs of the working class and the people, and placing the main blow on the reactionary right. It is the popular struggle that unmasks the essence of these reactionary rights; it is here that the masses verify through their own experience the content of their proposals.
In the current international situation, with the deepening of the crisis, the growth of the contention and the growing struggles, unexpected situations may open up. In this process we are fighting to be the vanguard of unity and popular mobilization in order to confront this recalcitrant right and to make a leap in the accumulation of revolutionary forces.
We are fighting to prepare the Party and the masses for abrupt changes. Judicial and repressive attacks on the popular struggles and the movements in general, on the movements of which we are a part, and in particular on our Party, are a serious matter.
This is a time when the sufferings of the masses are increasing. All sectors of the ruling classes are working to dismantle the struggles and for the masses to play only on the electoral field. But the struggles are growing and the masses are not resigning themselves. We have been playing a big role in those struggles.
The situation tends to precipitate and we are fighting for the working class and people to find the way toward the seizure of political power and thus open the way to the democratic, popular, agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution in uninterrupted march to socialism.
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