THE MILITARY TAKES OVER
ARGENTINA «4 The coup d'état of General Videla (behind whom lurks the silhouette of General Lanusse) resulted from four tendencies that dominate Argentine social, economic, and political reality today:
*the failure of the Peronist project of containing the combativity of the workers within a framework of "national unity" and class collaboration, under the aegis of a charismatic Bonaparte supported by a trade-union bureaucracy that still held hegemony within the working class;
*the loss of control by this bureaucracy over growing sectors of the masses, graphically demonstrated by the victorious general strike of June 1975 against the plan of Minister of Economics Rodrigo and by the subsequent emergence of new organs of workers self-organization: the regional coordinating bodies;
*the crisis of leadership of the bourgeoisie, which led first to the division of the Peronist movement into factions and then to the failure of the attempts by Radical party leader Balbin to replace the government of Isabelita with another government of "constitutional national union" built around himself;
*the worsening of the economic crisis, from which there was no way out within the framework of the capitalist system apart from the repression of workers combativity, and the growing imperialist pressure to force such a repression. Historically, the second experiment with Peronism in power failed for reasons similar to those that accounted for the failure of the first: the impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of a capitalist economy with the demands of a highly organized and extremely combative working class from the moment that the downturn in the economic situation deprived the Argentine bourgeoisie of the maneuvering room needed to grant reforms to the workers without threatening the profitability of industry. The concrete role that had been played in the mid-1950s by the exhaustion of the currency reserves accumulated by V. LOPEZ during and immediately after the second world war was played this time by the sharp curbing of imports of Argentine agricultural products by the Common Market countries and by the negative repercussions on the Argentine economy of the generalized recession of the world capitalist economy. Perón's cherished hope for a massive flow of European and Japanese capital into Argentina was thwarted both by the unfavorable evolution of the balance of payments in capitalist Europe and Japan during 1974-75 and by international capital's fear that the powerful combativity of the Argentine workers would not be able to be reined in. But the second Peronist regime ended in a political and social climate appreciably different from that brought about by the "liberating revolution" of 1955. At that time, the anti-Peronist coup occurred before the working class had actually felt the negative effects of the class-collaborationist po'icy of the Peronist bureaucracy of the CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo - General Confederation of Labor) on its standard of living, before these effects had been taken out of the hides of the workers. The sharp decline in the standard of living came after the conquests of the workers during the Peronist period. Thus, the illusions in Peronism remained intact. In fact, in light of the poverty brought about by the post-Peronist regimes, the living and working conditions under Perón appeared idyllic in retrospect. The growing discontent that had accompanied the end of first-edition Peronism was quickly forgotten. This time, the sharp decline in the standard of living of the workers preceded the fall of second-edition Peronism. The disenchantment was sudden and deep. The central bureaucracy of the CGT, implicated in innumerable corruption scandals and partially responsible for the murderous gangsterism of López Rega and the AAA (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina — Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance), was so profoundly discredited that during the great workers struggles against the Mondelli plan many workers assemblies demanded the resignation
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of the CGT leadership simultaneous with the resignation of the government. This time, the crisis of Peronism seems quite definitive. The defeat of the Mondelli plan After defeating the Rodrigo plan, known as the "famine plan, " through a thunderous general strike in June 1975, a strike that completely outflanked the Peronist trade-union leadership, the Argentine working class in fact triggered a crisis of the system in the country. During the nine months that followed the victorious general strike against the Rodrigo plan, this crisis increasingly caused the paralysis and advanced decomposition of the bourgeois regime. The plans of successive ministers of the economy - Bonanni, Cafiero, and Mondelli -were defeated; López Rega, Isabelita Perón's "gray eminence, " had to flee the country, a chain of corrupfion scandals was uncovered, along with proof of the complicity of the police and the government in the murders committed by the AAA; the disorganization of the economy became increasingly pronounced, with the simultaneous appearance of galloping inflation (a 423 percent rise in prices in twelve months), high unemployment, and growing shortages in a whole series of basic necessary goods (meat, eggs, groceries); there was a vertical fissure in the Peronist apparatus, first politically and then in the trade unions. The coup appeared as the only way to reestablish a bourgeois regime with the slightest unity and effectiveness. Although the combativity of the workers defeated the successive plans to "prune" the economy at the expense of the toiling masses, thus dealing death blows to the hegemony of the Peronist bureaucracy within the working class, the emergence of an alternative workers leadership proceeded much more slowly than the erosion of Peronist control. That was the dangerous feature of the development of the situation, as was clearly seen by revolutionaries; the project of the officers was able to slip in through this "gap, " This was clearly seen during the mobilizations that defeated the Mondelli plan. This was the sixth plan of "economic pruning" since the Peronist return to power. It was blocked by the working class even more rapidly than the preceding plans. If would have limited salary increases for all categories of workers first to 12 percent, then to 20 percent, while the cost of living had risen more than 400 percent (some latitude was allowed for additional raises, but more strongly limited, in certain branches). The "pruning" of public finances was to be accomplished by the layoff of 500, 000-700,000 publie service employees. The CGT bureaucracy had agreed to the application of the Mondelli plan. The reaction of the working class was rapid and powerful: total rejection, the launching of spontaneous strikes, the removal of those delegates and "internal commissions" that had followed the central bureaucracy in supporting the plan and their replacement by provisional commissions, the designation of delegates mandated to call for a general strike in trade-union assemblies. But after first supporting the mobilizations, the leaders of the major trade unions, especially the UOM (the metalworkers union) and the SMATA (autoworkers union), did an about-face at the last minute. They proposed not to engage in a general strike, in order not to encourage a military coup. "The general strike is the last resort against the coup d'état, they said. The result was determined in advance. Divided and disoriented, the working class struggled in a fragmented manner against the anti-worker economic measures; under these conditions, the workers were little prepared to follow a general strike call against the March 24 coup, a general strike to which the leaders of the CGT gave lip service. In the course of the preceding nine months, new forms of self-organization of the working class, the regional coordinating bodies, had arisen in many places: in Córdoba in the north, La Plata in the western suburbs of Buenos Aires, in the zones of San Martín and Vicente López in greater Buenos Aires, and so on. These coordinating bodies played a growing role in organizing the resistance of the workers to the poverty plans of the successive Peronist governments. Against Mondelli, they managed to organize powerful mobilizations, going so far as demonstrations of 30,000 people and more. But to overthrow the government and the leadership of the CGT and make an alternative solution to the political, social, and economic crisis credible, it would have been necessary to move toward a centralization of these coordinating bodies on a national scale; that would have been the only way to organize a general strike. This national workers congress, or workers and people's congress, or national coordinating body, never
saw the light of day. The workers' spontaneity and the regional coordinating bodies were sufficient to paralyze the Peronist regime. But they were insufficient to impose the triumph of a working-class, anticapitalist, socialist solution to the crisis. It was in these conditions of total power vacuum that the army was able to strike with impunity without meeting massive or organized resistance. Military maneuvers and Peronist divisions In addition, the military chiefs maneuvered cleverly, permitting the Peronist regime to discredit itself completely. Postponing the coup in spite of the growing impatience of the far-right officers and imperialism, they drew the CT bureaucracy into the trap of supporting the Mondelli plan, which crushed in the egg any hope of resistance around the CT to the imminent coup. In the meantime, they centralized the whole repressive apparatus, both federal and provincial, in their own hands and got the chief of the Army Second Command appointed head of the federal police, thus setting up the apparatus of a victorious coup calmly, openly, and legally. Furthermore, taking advantage of the increasingly deep divisions rending the Peronist bureaucracy, both within the Justicialist party and within the trade unions, they sharpened the confusion by engaging in semi-public negotiations with a not negligible fraction of the Peronist apparatus. Thus, about forty trade unions refused to join in the call for the general strike against the coup that was issued by the sixty-two organizations of the CGT led by the head of the metalworkers, Miguel. Calabro, the governor of Buenos Aires, who appeared in the demagogic role of a "left Peronist" during the months preceding the coup and opposed the Mondelli plan violently at first, did a sensational about-face and played the role of overt accomplice of the officers. While the divisions within Peronism dealt the coup de grâce to this movement, they also sowed much disarray among the toiling masses. Alongside the attempts to begin the populist adventure all over again, there are now some subterranean "classical" (class struggle) currents within the trade unions as well as a Peronist Youth engaged in a orientation breaking with class collaboration (although this may not be definitive). The very form taken by the coup and the first measures of the Videla-Masera-Agosti junta confirm the political astuteness of the officers now in power. The junta clearly refrained from rushing into a head-on confrontation with the entire workers movement. For the moment, it is procticing selective repression. Only six revolutionary organizations adhering to Maoism or Trotskyism, including the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers party), sympathizing organization of the Fourth International, have been definitively outlawed. The Montaneros had already been ouflawed under the Isabelita government. As for the other workers organizations, like the Argentine Communist party, they have not been banned for the moment. Likewise, Peronism itself has not been officially hit. Only the trade-union bureaucrats who had called for the general strike against the coup were arrested (without having been maltreated up to now). The others have been left alone for the time being. Thus, it is not at all a Pinochet regime. At least not yet. The junta's dilemma remains fundamentally the same as that of the Peronist regime. It is one thing to try to divide the working class and paralyze it temporarily. It is another thing to disarm its combat potential over the longer term. Now, without breaking this combativity, the economic plan of the junta consists of combatting economic stagnation through a return to "free enterprise, " foreign investment in the petroleum sector, and reestablishment of the rate of profit, And this threatens to fail just as the plans of Gelbard, Rodrigo, and Mondelli failed. That is why the right to strike has already been suspended. That is why a "silent" purge against the most militant workers has begun in the big factories. Seventy trade-union delegates in the Astarea steel works, a good number of the union delegates at Ford, many delegates of Mercedes Benz and General Motors, the majority of the members of the "internal commission" of Terrabuai, etc. have been arrested. That is why on April 6, for the first time, a number of trade-union delegates were sentenced to very high prison terms for allegedly possessing arms. That is why the terror against presumed sympathizers of the guerrillas has been unleashed with greater ferocity than ever.
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ARGENTINA If to this repression we add the arrests that had been carried out under the reign of Isabelita (among them the arrest of our comrade José Paez, former leader of SITRAM-SIRAC, one of the major trade unions, and former PST candidate for vice-president) as well as the hundreds of worker militants murdered by the AAA, we can understand why the emergence of an alternative leadership of the working class on a national scale is a slow and difficult process. The reactionary and anti-worker character of the economic policy of the junta is obvious: indefinite postponement of the parity commissions that the Peronist government had convoked for the month of April to discuss working conditions, maintenance of a 20 percent limit on wage increases; promise to the employers that the
PRESENTE Law on Labor Contracts, which prevented layoffs, will be repealed. The personality of the new minister of economics, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, is also significant. He had already occupied the same post during the military coup of 1962. He sits on the board of directors of several large capitalist firms and is the president of the Consejo Comercial Argentino (Argentine Trade Council), one of the country's employers' associations. His links with the sector of the landed proprietor oligarchy and with sectors of the export industries are well known. Will the junta be able to maintain an unstable equilibrium between selective repression and an attempt to maneuver with certain sectors of the workers movement? Only on the condition that the working class remains passive. But the deterioration of living standards is such that this passivity is more doubtful than ever, especially since the margins for action of the class, which have not been violently repressed, persist. Thus, as in Uruguay, the risk is that there will be a gradual move from a selective repression to a generalized one if a massive response of the workers does not break the strength of the officers in time. Imperialist pressure The coup was clearly encouraged by imperialist pressure. Imperialism had opted for Perón so long as he appeared capable of channeling workers combativity to6 ward objectives compatible with the maintenance of the capitalist system. When the outflanking of Peronism seemed irreversible, this movement lost all utility in the eyes of international capital. Hence the sudden refusal of credits from the International Monetary Fund to the last Peronist cabinet. Hence also the granting of a $127.6 million credit twenty-four hours after the victory of the military coup and the promise of a standby credit of $300 million. The asphyxiated financial state to which the Peronist regime had led greatly contributed to the effectiveness of the imperialist pressure. A few days before the coup, the Argentine treasury was unable to repay a modest loan of $30 million to the Chase Manhattan Bank that had fallen due; the loan had to be extended at the last minute. For imperialism, the establishment of a military dictatorship in Argentina completes the "pacification" of the southern cone of the South American continent. This is intended to permit a unification of the political regimes of this southern cone around the Brazilian military dictatorship in order to create a powerful pro-imperialist relay not only on the continent but also in the South Atlantic Ocean, where the victory of the MPLA in Angola has created the threat of Soviet military bases on the African. coast. In spite of the rivalry between Argentina and Brazil -a rivalry that persists and has obvious bourgeois economic roots independent of the forms of bourgeois government prevailing in Brasilia and Buenos Aires - this alliance is more likely to be forged under Videla than under Cámpora or Perón. It is also possible that the "liberal" economic and trade policy of the junta, which corresponds to the wishes of imperialism and the oligarchy, will lead the junta to take some distance from the project of the "Andean plan, " which strongly interfered with the hegemony of Brazilian capitalism in many South American countries. Moreover, the historic bankruptcy of Peronism seems to close the cycle of rise and decline in South America of nationalist populism with bourgeois leadership, a working-class rank and file, and an anti-imperialist ideology. It closes the cycle under negative conditions, since the workers struggle will be more difficult under the junta than under the Peronist regime. But it closes it without a crushing defeat of the working class. The possibility of a new rise by stages - of the type that is now occurring in Bolivia - thus remains, provided a crushing defeat in the meantime can be averted. Hence, this new rise could occur under the sign of a conquest of political independence by the Argentine working class. In view of the numerical and organizational strength of the class and in view of its exceptional level of combativity, this political independence would radically modify the situation not only in Argentina, but throughout South America as well. April 7, 1976