union bureaucracy
MASTICON HE UN SALARO 1U910 & the crisis Isabel Perón's "transfer of powers" for a thirty-fiveday period to Italo Luder, the recently elected president of the Senate, is not just an anecdotal incident, but a new phase in the political crisis in Argentina and in the development of solutions aimed at alleviating that crisis. The departure of the president, even if it is only temporary, indicates to what extent her role had been reduced to that of a "figurehead" buffetted among forces that are trying to share out power today: the armed forces and the trade-union bureaucracy. The departure of Isabel Perón indicates the desire of these forces to maintain the present institutional facade, at least for the moment; basically, that means respecting the electoral calendar, which calls for elections in 1977, with or without Isabel Perón. Given that she has been shown to be incapable of even playing the role of a figurehead, it was necessary to break 24
PUR UN FLAM DE
OBREROS * PLASTICOS
NUESTROS ARGENTINA: by JEAN-PIERRE BEAUVAIS in the person who will be charged with taking her place, according to the constitutional rules. Hence this interim step, the first in a "painless" replacement process. Buf these ridiculous masquerades cannot conceal the depth of the economic, social, and political crisis now rocking Argentina. Nor can they ameliorate this crisis, not even partially. The Rodrigo plan The economic situation, which is at the origin of the current crisis, is chaotic. Inflation is accelerating from week to week, and even from day to day. No one among Argentine economic circles ventures to predict what the inflation rate will amount to by the end of the year. Based on what has already happened, it should be at least 200 percent for the year 1975 as a whole.
Argentina's dependent economy is now being hit full force by the international recession, which is reducing to zero the already modest maneuvering room upon which the Peronist regime (and behind it the Argentine bourgeoisie) had relied to impose the policy of the "social pact, " with the aid of the trade-union bureaucracy and with a few minimum concessions to the workers thrown in. Exports of agricultural products, the main traditional resource of Argentina, have suffered from the crisis now rocking the European countries, which are the major importers of Argentinian agricultural produce. Concurrently, the rise in the sales prices of Argentine industrial products has rendered them uncompetitive just at the moment when the conquest of new markets was becoming much more difficult because of the world conjuncture. The total value of exports suffered a sensational decline that took on catastrophic proportions during the first few months of 1975 (decreases of 30-35 percent, according to various estimates). The Argentine authorities, in panic, decided to take radical, although classic measures: Make the workers pay for the economic crisis and for a potential eco-: nomic upturn. Such was the meaning of the "Rodrigo Plan, "named after the minister of economics, Celestino Rodrigo. Apart from a new and important devaluation of the peso (an attempt to boost exports), the plan called for a massive increase (100-150%) in rates for public services. But it wos aimed mainly of limiting wage increases (to about 40%), as a prelude to a future wage freeze, despite the fact that in June 1975, when the plan was announced, the cost of living increase was estimated to be 150% during the period in which the wage increases of 40% were supposed to occur. It is easy enough to make some calculations based on these figures. And all the workers did so: The Rodrigo plan aimed at reducing the purchasing power of the workers by about 50%. That is a reduction of the same order as the one achieved by Pinochet on the other side of the border, by means that are well known. The plan was thus a real declaration of war on the working class. In this sense, it revealed the political stupidity of the team around Lopez Rega, the regime's strongman at the time. Celestino Rodrigo was a member of that team, To believe that such a plan could be imposed without provoking a massive résponse from a working class as combative as the Argentine proletariat revealed political blindness of rare dimensions. But above and beyond the "Lopez Rega Clan, " the reactions of the Argentine bourgeoisie were also quite rc vealing: Up to a few days before the enormous workers mobilization that was to sweep away the Rodrigo plan and force its author to resign from his ephemerally held ministerial post, the essential body of bourgeois rectaner the CGE (Contedith the excepion of some - General Economic Confederation, an employers organization including small and medium-sized companies). They did so, of course, out of well understood class interest. But the fact that the Argentine bourgeoisie had supported proposals whose chances of being applied were so slim showed how great was the disarray of the ruling closs. Initial workers response The announcement of the Rodrigo plan coincided (and this was why it was published so hastily) with the annual meetings of the national parity commissions charged with negotiating labor contracts for whole sectors of workers (especially in the metal industry, public services, the banks, and construction). As these negotiations went on, the mobilization was organized. Initially uneven according to sector and region, the movement very soon became generalized, revealing an extraordinary combativity of which the Villa Constitución strike two months previously had been an advance indication. Sectors of workers who for years had been considered uncombative participated in the mobilization alongside the workers of the metal industry, the automobile industry, and the graphic arts and printing industries, traditionally the most combative layers. For the first time, the movement was not limited to one or two provinces, like Córdoba or Santa Fe. It was a national mobilization, and the industrial suburbs of Buenos Aires participated totally, which was something new. Local or branch-wide coordinating bodies sprung up almost everywhere, made up of rank-and-file delegates or members of the "internal commissions." Products of the fact that the bureaucratic apparatus of the CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo - General Confederation of Labor) had been outflanked, these coordinating bodies began to play the role of real alternative leaderships. This very quickly became the case in Córdoba and Santa Fe, but it also happened in Buenos Aires, especially in the banking sector and in the MaUnder these conditions, and after resorting to all the means at its command in attempts to slow down the movement, the bureaucracy was forced to give ground. To frontally oppose such a mobilization would have resulted in a rapid loss of the control the bureaucracy still exercises over a good part of the working class. Thus, the bureaucracy and the employers, who several days before had been hailing the government projects, agreed during the meetings of the parity commissions, which were going on concurrently with the mobilization, to enact wage increases that went well beyond the limits set by the Rodrigo Plan. The average increase was close to 100 percent, in some sectors going as high as 130% or even 140%. If the percentages seem large
ARGENTINA at first glance, they must be compared with the estimated cost of living increase of 150%. In face of this situation, the Isabel Perón-Lopez Rego government had only two alternatives: Either yield to the pressure of the workers and ratify the contracts, which would throw the Rodrigo plan into the trashcan only a few days after it was announced, or engage in a test of strength not only against the working class, but also against the trade-union bureaucracy. The bureaucracy, although it is a pillar of the Peronist regime, could hardly have backed down and repudiated the contracts it had signed only the day before without totally discrediting itself and losing exactly what it wanted to preserve by signing the contracts in the first place: its confrol over the majority of the working class. That is a vitol question for any trade-union bureaucracy, no matter how corrupt or bought-off it may be. For Isabel Perón-López Rega as well, to opt for a confrontation with the workers and the trade-union bureaucracy would have meant to opt for breaking the Peronist movement, because of the decisive role that this bureaucracy plays in the Peronist movement.. Such a choice amounted to political suicide. Nevertheless, that was the road that was taken. The general strike The mobilization redoubled as soon as Isabel Perón announced in a provocative and hysterical speech that no wage increase above 50% would be accepted and that consequently all the parity accords that had already been concluded and went beyond this limit were null and void. A spontaneous general strike immediately paralyzed several provinces in the interior, notably Mendoza, Córdoba, and Santa Fe. And, very quickly spilling over these initial limits, the mobilization spread to nearly the entire country. During these massive mobilizations, the interfoctory coordinating committees proliferated and increased in strength; their character as alternotive leaderships for the movement was accentuated, a character they had already begun to acquire during the first phase, that is, after the announcement of the Rodrigo plan and before the government's decision not to recognize the new labor contracts. Completely outflanked, the bureaucracy, which was still trying to gain time and resolve the crisis through negotiations, finally found itself compelled to jump on the bandwagon. It proclaimed a forty-eight-hour general strike for July 7 and 8 for the recognition of the contracts and for the resignation of López Rega, the strongman of the Peronist regime and symbol of its political line.
From that point on, events moved rapidly. On the government side, there were petty maneuvers and diversionary operations such as rumors that this or that minister would be replaced. But with no effect. The crisis was too violent and too deep to be resolved by a simple patchwork job. Beyond the government, the whole political edifice that had been erected by Perón was shaken and threatened to collapse entirely. Peronism and the union bureaucracy The Peronist party was in total confusion, torn between the Lopez Rega clan, which up to that time had been all-powerful because it was the "regime, " and the trade-union bureaucracy, which in the light of the events appeared as the last and sole recourse for the Peronists in their efforts to maintain power. But more serious and fundamental than the crisis that was shaking the political apparatuses was the sudden sharpening of tension, difficulties, and breaks between Peronism and the Argentine mosses and between Peronism and the Argentine working class, a fear that lies at the center of the concerns of all the owning closses, all the defenders of order. For each party, sector, and faction of the bourgeoisie, whether it be allied with Peronism like Arturo Frondizi, or in "measured and complicit" opposition like Ricardo Balbin (the leader of the Radical party), or even the fiercely anti-Peronist far right (like Manrique), the crisis was not simply a crisis of Peronism, but a crisis of the entire system of bourgeois rule, of which Peronism is an essential component because of its influence over the Argentine masses, even though that influence is on the wane. This was exactly the analysis made by the great majority of military officers during the crisis. In theory at least, power was never so easily available for the taking as during those weeks when the mass mobilization was receding and the government was completely falling apart. But the officers did not take power, even though their role had been and remains deciThis attitude on the part of the officers was not the result of the traumatic experience they went through with the failure of the 1966-72 military dictatorship. If the Argentine army today wants to be a "professional" one, as the military commanders ceaselessly repeat, it is by deliberate and calculated will. They think that it is better to remain in reserve to intervene in case of a new aggravation of the situation. For them, this potential aggravation of the situation means essentially an even more accentuated loss of control over the working class by the trade-union bureaucracy: Thus, It is better to maintain an institutional framework that, even if it is only a ramshackle facade, at least gives the trade-union bureducracy the greatest possible weight and maneuvering room. It is from this starting point that the new features of the Argentine situation must be analyzed, new features
that emerged, although in o confused manner, just after the general strike of July 7-8. Victory of the workers, victory of the bureaucracy In effect, this strike can be considered both the culminating point of the crisis opened by the announcement of the Rodrigo plan and a radical turn in the unfolding and dynamic of that crisis. By placing Itself at the head of the movement the CGT effectively succeeded in bringing it under control, although not without difficulties and problems. But above all, this control enabled the bureaucracy to appropriate the fruits of the victory, a victory that was nevertheless fully the product of the massive and spontaneous mobilization of the Argentine workers. For the Argentine workers, the victory was twofold: On the one hand, Isabel Perón had to retreat and accept the wage increases called for in the contracts. This meant that the bourgeoisie had to abandon the Rodrigo plan. On the other hand, after some new and unbelievable catastrophes, López Rega had to leave first the government and then the country itself. That was the first step in the liquidation of his "clan" within the state apparatus and the Peronist movement. One after another, all the ministers who were politically linked to Lopez Rega had to resign, even his son-inlaw Raul Lastiri, the president of the Chamber of Deputies and vice-president of the Justicialist party. Cleverly utilizing the victory in order to convince the less combative workers to go back to work and by intensifying the repression (hand in glove with the employen; there were several hundred "political" layoffs in Buenos Aires alone), the CT step by step regained control of the situation within the workers movement. Within the Peronist movement and its apparatus, the trade-union bureaucracy made sure that López Rega and his clan would be eliminated. The policy of López Rega, with its fascist projects, was a short-term threat to the union bureaucracy. Moreover, the constantly increasing power that he and his henchmen had been accumulating within the Peronist movement ot the expense of the union bureaucracy was also eliminated. The time for confrontations and settling of accounts was drowing nigh. Nothing was easier, more clever, and more natural for the union bureaucracy than to appropriate the workers victory and utilize it in this sphere. But this does not mean that the policy of repression and terror of which López Rega was the symbol was going to be abandoned. Rather, it was to be more selective against the revolutionary organizations and combative workers, and it was to avoid the marginal 'screw ups" to which some trade unionists had fallen victim. At first sight, then, the trade-union bureaucracy appears to be the big winner in the crisis.
Within the Peronist movement it become the essential and uncontested power. Its weight there had never been so great and decisive. In face of all the forces of the bourgeoisie, including the armed forces, the trade-union bureaucracy had proven that despite all the difficulties and even if it had to make important concessions, it was a genuine and indispensable power instrument against an increasingly combative and mobilized working class. But therein lies its great contradiction and weakness in the new political period that has now opened in Argentina. Limits and contradictions The strengthening of the positions of the trade-union bureaucracy is the product of two basic features of this new political period: On the one hand, the spectacular new rise of the combativity and mobilization of the workers; on the other hand, the acute crisis of the entire system of bourgeois rule and of Peronism in particular. It is on that basis that the limits and weaknesses of the strengthening of the bureaucracy can be understood. If the new rise of workers struggles continues to develop (and all available information suggests that it will), then these struggles, even though they served the interests of the bureaucracy conjuncturally, will be a direct threat, especially in the specific Argentine situation. Because of the acuteness of the economic crisis, the big bourgeoisie's margin for granting concessions within the framework of its own system is much reduced. The withdrawal of the Rodrigo plan does not mean that the objectives set in the plan have been abandoned. Only their methods and pace of application will change. The bureaucrats' capacity for negotiation and maneuver against the working class will thus be very weak. They risk being massively outflanked again, especially since in the current crisis, outflanking the bureaucrats hos already proven to be quite advantageous to the workers. Even more fundamentally, however, the spontaneous and generalized strikes and struggles of June and early July cannot be reduced to a simple temporary outflanking. New sectors of the proletariar broke with the bureaucracy in struggle, accelerating and broadening a process that has been under way since the first Cordobazo in June 1969. That is what explains the basic fact that for the first time alternative leaderships arose in the course of the mobilization in all the major industrial concentrations of the country - and all at the same time. Without underestimating the very uneven character of this phenomenon, we can say that the breaks with the trade-union bureaucracy had a moss character throughout the country, which was never the case in the past. Of course, the absence of an actual recognized alternative leadership capable of centralizing and system-
ARGENTINA arizing such a process slowed down the dynamic. Likewise, the oscillations and opportunism of most of the revolutionary left facilitated the task of the CGT. But on the whole, a new and important step was taken by the Argentine proletariat in its struggle for political independence. In this sense, the "victory" of the bureaucracy cuts two ways, and it is very precarious. But the victory is precarious and double-edged aiso for other reasons, ones that relate to the crisis of Peronism. The Peronist project orphaned If the CT has now become the essential component of the Peronist movement, it is becouse there is not much alternative. What remains of the Bonapartist and populist charucter of Peronism is mired in crisis. And the tiade-union bureducracy, which was o priviledged instrument of this Bonapartism and populism, obviously cannot hope to fulfill that role alone and on its own account. This is a problem that Perón had well understood under other circumstances. For him, the trode-union bureaucrecy was essential for the Bonapartist project. But he always took core, especially when he was in exile and preparing for his return, not to hitch the Peronist movement solely to the union bureaucracy, not only in order to avoid becoming a prisoner of the bureaucracy, but also in order to preserve the credibility of his project, particularly in the eyes of important sectors of the Argentine bourgeoisie. But for the trade-union bureaucracy today, the end of Peronism as a populist Bonapartism means the end of the political project that gave the bureaucracy its force and cohesion. That is a problem that has been posed ever since the death of Perón, given the evolution of the regime under Lopez Rega. But it has acquired its full dimensions during the post several months, and the symbol of this was the fact that the bureaucracy placed itself at the head of a strike that was clearly directed against the Peronist government. The masquerade of "supporting Isabe| Perón" even while the strike was going on did not change matters, and nobody paid much attention to that masquerade anywayIt was not only because it spoke in the name of the Argentine workers that the CT moved from strength to strength under the successive military dictatorships of Ongonía, Levingston, and Lanusse. If was because the bureaucracy had integrated itself into the Peronist political project. If was not only because it made itself the defender of the immediate interests of the workers that the CGT was able to dominate, control, and line up the immense majority of Argentine workers. It was also because the bureaucracy offered them al-
28 ternative political objectives, through the vehicle of Peronism and its mirages. Peronism's mirages have now evaporated, and the political project General Perón represented has become decrepit; those are very hard blows for the trade-union bureaucracy. Even more than during the past few years, the bureaucracy will have trouble maintaining its influence over important sectors of the workers movement; it will be much more difficult to prevent more and more massive and significant breaks by workers previously dominated by the bureaucracy. This will be especially true in that the bureaucracy's own internal coherence will inevitably be affected by these new facts. Perón and Peronism as a political project were factors of cohesion and homogeneity for the trade-union bureaucracy Since these factors have disappeared, relations between the bureaucratic apparatus and the masses are much more tense and the conflicts among cliques with divergent interests, already numerous, will multiply. Divergent orientations are already beginning to take shape on various questions: relations between the bureaucracy and the state apparatus, relations with the armed forces or certain sectors of the armed forces, the problem of a political expression proper to the trade-union apparatus and distinct from the Justicialist party - all these questions are at stake. The apparent "victory" of the trade-union bureaucracy is thus strictly relative. The all-powerful position it has acquired within the Peronist movement in the midst of the crisis is the product of fartors that will soon turn against it, from the growing mobilization of the working class to the crisis of the Peronist movement. More than ever, the bureaucracy finds itself associated with the crisis-ridden regime of the bourgeoisie, with its state apparatus and its government, while at the same time the only way out for this bourgeoisie is to whip the working class into line. And this while the catostrophic economic situation makes the bourgeoisie's maneuvering room ridiculously narrow, if not nil; while the repression against the vanguard and the most combative workers is continuing and even intensifying, as is proven by the massocres of these past weeks; while military operations against the guerrillas, as in Tucuman, are on the rise. More than ever, the bureaucracy is in the position of occupying the forward posts in the battle to whip the working class into line while at the same time attempting to appropriate the advantages and fruits of the immense workers mobilization that occurred scarcely a month ago; the bureaucracy's character will thus become ever more violently contradictory, and class antagonisms will sharpen. More than ever, the events of these past months place on the agenda the necessity of the independent mobilization of the workers movement, the struggle for the