Socialist Action /January 2002
Can Duhalde Restore the Prospects of
Capitalism in Argentina?
By GERRY FOLEY
After promising with great fanfare that he would announce his economic
recovery plan on Jan. 4, Argentina's hastily installed new president, Eduardo
Duhalde, decided to postpone the unveiling. The bare facts are that within
the capitalist framework he has few options, but he also has to try to ride
the waves of a mass upsurge the like of which Argentina has never seen.
Indeed, few countries have ever seen as catastrophic a collapse of the
credibility of the bourgeois politicians as Argentina. Only Hungary after
its defeat in World War I comes to mind. There the collapse of the bourgeois
politicians was so complete that the parliament had no choice but to put
into office a government dominated by Bela Kun's Communist Party.
In Argentina, all the bourgeois press and pundits are saying that Duhalde
is the "last chance of the political class," that is, of the bourgeois
political parties. That might seem a sort of vindication for a politician
who had been the black sheep of Argentine bourgeois politics, but may also
be a poisoned chalice.
Duhalde, the former governor of Buenos Aires province, the country's
most important, has represented the old populism of the Peronist party.
He has been an outspoken critic of the neoliberal program espoused by the
majority of the Peronist party itself, to say nothing of the traditional
bourgeois conservative party, the Radicals, who were forced to drop governmental
power like a hot potato by the Dec. 20 uprising.
Ironically, in the last presidential election, the fleeing Radical president,
Fernando de La Rua, overwhelmed Duhalde in the Argentine capital, gaining
60 percent of the vote.
Duhalde has already been denounced by the former Peronist president,
Carlos Menem, for heading toward devaluation of the peso, which in accordance
with neoliberal doctrine, has been pegged to the dollar. Menem said, quite
correctly, that the measure would divide Argentinians into two classes,
the strong, who hold dollars, and the weak, who have only pesos.
What Menem did not acknowledge is that this division has always existed,
and the strong are now getting their dollars out of Argentina as quickly
as they can. Duhalde argued, equally correctly. that the dollar link can
no longer be maintained.
Duhalde is now busy getting pledges from Argentine businessmen that despite
the devaluation they will not raise their prices. The Argentine working
people will soon find out that these promises are even more devalued than
those of the politicians.
The basic problem is that the international capitalist offensive, under
the flag of neoliberalism, has destroyed the Argentine manufacturing and
service economy, and what is left- basic agricultural production and assembly
plants-cannot employ the population.
There is no solution to this problem but nationalization of the economy
and a state monopoly of foreign trade. And those are basic socialist measures.
They cannot be carried out without a socialist revolution.
The Argentine working people already have an historic experience of significant
state regulation of foreign trade, under the first Peronist regime in the
early 1950s, which they remember as a golden age.
Argentina has also had the richest and most enduring experience of working-class
mobilizations in Latin America. Likewise, it has more revolutionary left
activists probably than in any other country in the world, even France.
The last decades have brought fragmentation and confusion to the revolutionary
left, but they did not stop its growth. And if the present upsurge leads
to clarification among these forces, they may have the basis for forming
a revolutionary political leadership on the national level.
The imperialists seem to have decided that they can afford to let the
Argentine economy fall because in the last decades they have sidelined it
by destroying its manfuacturing sector and buying out its service sector.
But this may prove a disastrous miscalculation for them.
The stricken body of the Argentine economy is still four times the size
of the Thai economy, which has been touted as a showcase of development
in the Third World.
And a counteroffensive of the workers and impoverished masses in Argentina
could set an example for the entire Third World, which is being ruined by
the imperialist economic offensive.
The coming months in Argentina are likely to be a time of intense testing
and battles. The worldwide revolutionary movement will have to be attentive
to the lessons of these tests and ready to offer its solidarity in these
battles.
In the context of a deepening worldwide crisis, they can be crucial for
mounting general fightback against the disasters with which the capitalist
system threatens the great majority of the world's people.
Socialist Action /January 2002 |