Re: AUT: Argentina: Diary of a Revolution

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

It is sad that we have to have a debate on this list
over whether it is possible or even desirable to make
revolution in Argentina in the short-term. Once again,
some members of autopsy seem to lag behind the workers
on the ground in a revolutionary situation.

Mass workers' organisations capable of making
revolution clearly already exist in Argentina.
Subjectively and objectively, the Second National
Assembly of Employed and Unemployed Workers
constituted a 'Soviet of Soviets' capable of taking
power. The struggle, and the arguments inside the
workers' movement in Argentina, is over the strategy
these mass organisations should take in their quest
for workers' power, not over whether or not they
should take power. It is this struggle that is
documented in 'Argentina: what happened to the
revolution?'. Even the left bureaucrats that this
article criticises as blocks to the revolution call
for workers' power - they sell their strategies (ie
the call for a Constituent Assembly) on the basis that
they will facilitate workers' power.

Can the Argentineans really gain greater feedom within
global capitalism, or do they have to get rid of
capitalism to win even basic improvements in their
standard of life? This question, of the potential of
capitalism today to provide sufficient dynamism to
fund left-wing reforms in the semi-colonies, is really
a fundamental one which divides this list and the
international left on issue after issue - on
Palestine, East Timor, South Africa...it is the
question that divides reformsit from revolutionary,
Porto Alegre from revolutionary international.

Thos who answer 'yes' to our question seem very
reluctant ever to get down the nitty gritty of
actually stating how a material basis for left reforms
might be created in the semi-colonies. How does Harald
imagine that the Argentineans might be able to gain
more power over their lives within the framework of
global capitalism? The whole history of their country
speaks against this possibility. When capitalism was
enjoying its longest twentieth century boom, the
Argentineans made great efforts to establish a
national capitalism based around protected domestic
markets for a new industrial sector. Yet, despite its
huge earnings for primary produce after WW2 and the
protections tariffs afforded, Argentina still failed
to break out of its semi-colonial status and become
economically independent. When the long boom ended at
the end of the 60s and the US started to move to shore
up its own economy by breaking into protected
semi-colonial markets Argentina (like New Zealand)
began its long fall. To argue that Argentina can now
hope to establish economic independence, when the
global economy has suffered a 30 year failure to
restore the long boom and is heading for a possible
30s-style depression, is surely extremely utopian,
much more utopian than the call by the second national
assembly of workers for a workers' revolution.
















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

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