Re: AUT: Argentina: Diary of a Revolution

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Barry

I agree that the article could be useful as a report
helping to tell us what's going on in a corner of
Argentina - for this reason alone, it is worth
reading. I also want to avoid sounding like an expert
on Argentina and issuing detailed advice, when my
knowledge of the place is not extensive.

At the same time, it seems clear to me that the
reformist strategy that Jordan endorses is untenable
for at least two reasons.

Jordan assumes that that the present situation in
Argentina will continue well into the future, when in
fact this situation can only be very temporary. In the
article I posted the other day (Argentina: what
happened to the revolution?) Dave Bedggood of the
Communist Workers Group argues that the situation can
be likened to a 'stalemate', where neither the ruling
class nor the working class is able to force a victory
and vanquish the other.

In this stalemate, the ruling class still has its
state and still controls almost all of the economy.
The workers, however, have won a small part of the
economy (the occupied factories), have won some
unsustainable reforms (the emergency benefits being
administered by left bureaucrats, including many
piquitero leaders), and have won unprecedented civil
liberties (it has been very hard for the cops to
victimise protesters and union leaders). Because the
workers even have a sort of 'shadow society',
consisting of occupied factories, Assemblies, and
other grassroots organisations like some of the
piquitero unions, we can call the situation in
Argentina one of 'dual power'.

It is only this stalemate which has provided the space
for the constructions of the projects of autonomy
which Jordan cites. Where Jordan goes wrong is *not*
in praising these projects, but in thinking that they
do not rely upon the destruction of capitalism and the
taking of power by workers to survive, let alone grow
to the level where they can provide the necessities of
a decent life to Argentineans. I say this for two
reasons. In the first place, the stalemate I have been
describing is economically unsustainable, and must
shortly be resolved by either workers' revolution or a
counter-revolution which will most likely resemble the
'Chilean 'solution' of Pinochet. In the second place,
it is not possible to build a post-capitalist economy
in tiny fragments like the occupied factories and
communal farms that exist in Argentina.

Why can't the stalemate continue? The occupations,
reforms, and civil liberties the workers enjoy are
incompatible with the need of capital to cut business
costs to restore profit levels and escape from the
crisis (a process which some argue is poised to begin,
with huge numbers of workers in the reserve army of
labour, and the removal of the tie with the US
currency making exports to Brazil potentially quite
profitable and also making Argentina look an
attractive bargain basement proposition to foreign
investors - if they can hold onto what they buy).
History shows that situations of dual power never last
long, let alone provide the stability in which
economic construction and the alleviation of suffering
can take place. Situations of dual power end either in
workers' revolution or in counter-revolution.

Why can't a post-capitalist economy capable of meeting
workers' needs be built up out of economic fragments?
Consider the case of the occupied factories. There are
over 100 of these, yet they seem forced to barter
crudely with each other, and are continually under
threat of reoccupation by the bosses' security forces.
In order to operate properly, sophisticated factories
like (say) the famous Brukman in Buenos Aires need to
be part of a complex economic arrangement which
delivers them raw materials and machinery and provides
a place where their output can be used. Even more
importantly, the factory's workers need to acquire at
least basic consumer goods if they are to be able even
to work.

Brukman makes sewing machines, so imagine the network
that would be required to get it functioning properly
-imagine, for instance, the other factories needed to
provide the myriad components of the machines, the
clothing factories that would be necessary to make
production worthwhile, the acquisition of raw material
for these clothing factories, which would require
substantial economic control of primary as well as
industrial production...

The lesson, surely, is that in order to have one
factory, one 'fragment', you need to have a whole
economy. Only a large-scale democratically planned
economy is capable of getting even one occupied
factory firing on all cylinders, and thousands of
factories need to be firing on all cylinders if the
misery of the Argentineans is ever to be relieved.

You ask what the alternative to Jordan's strategy is.
Surely this alternative is precisely what Jordan
rejects - the seizure of power by the workers. When I
talk of workers' power I don't mean a gang of
bureaucrats ruling in workers' names, but rather the
replacement of the capitalist state by the organs of
dual power already waiting in the wings.

This was the demand of the second national congress of
employed and unemployed workers which was held last
July and whose declaration I posted on this list a
week or two back. It is also the strategy of the
'Class Struggle pole', a United Front of militant
unions and small political groups which calls for a
new national assembly of workers - a Soviet of Soviets
ready to take power - to coincide with an indefinite
general strike protected by workers' defence militia
and designed to continue until the Duhalde government
falls over. Is this course of action utopian, or
doomed to bureaucratic degeneration even if it
suceeds? The Brukman workers didn't think so when they
voted to march behind the banners of the Class
Struggle pole on the anniversary of the Argentinazo on
December 19 and 20.

Cheers
Scott






=====
"Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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