[Marxism] From RR fan to RR engineer: you are wrong

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Respuesta a:"Marxism Digest, Vol 26, Issue 45"
Enviado por:marxism-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Con fecha:18 Dec 2005, a las 12:00

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:04:57 -0500
> From: "rrubinelli" <rrubinelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Arg paying IMF debt
> To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition"
>  <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <003701c603dc$0745c820$6466a8c0@IBM982ADB3CB03>
> Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Paying or not paying a debt is a tactical, not a moral, decision.  Guy
> holds a gun to your head and says pay me everything now, you pay. 
> Or... you want access to international credit markets... you pay, or
> renegotiate, or promise to pay.

It is not a _tactical_ move if it takes off your shoulders tha main 
representative of the imperialist interest.  An Arg mainstream 
commercial bourgeois daily, not without some consternation, headlines 
"The privatized companies have lost their lobby".  It is "the main 
lobbyist", but this is what the IMF is.

Argentina has purchased, at a high price but lower than the price 
Ghandi paid for the independence of India (a price which cost him the 
life at the hands of an uncompromising Indian nationalist who did not 
accept partition) a high degree of economic independence.

> 
> But  whose money  is it?  Whose money is going to be directed into the
> debt repayment program?  Are the assets and properties of the foreign
> investment banks going to be seized to pay the IMF?  Bet not.

That's too sure a bet to be politically worthy of consideration.  Of 
course a bourgeois government will chose the line of lesser 
resistance, and will try to take due care of international 
conditions.  A weak petty bourgeois government such as Kirchner's 
will also think that you cannot open all fronts at the same time.  

The problem, however (and this has become the hidden secret of Arg 
politics since 2001) is that first through the one-sided "default", 
secondly with the devaluation, and now through an end to IMF 
monitoring, Arg is slowly taking grip of its own economy.  And there 
is something interesting in all this:  the prez who decided not to 
pay loathed the devaluation, and the prez who decided to take the IMF 
off the land loathed the "default".  Still, however, each measure 
allowed for the following one.

> 
> Are the $27 billion in Argentina's foreign reserves going to be used
> to not only repay the IMF  but to mitigate the forced devaluation of
> the savings of the general population when the dollar peg and dollar
> standard were abandoned?  Bet not.

No, they are not.  Nor, if one is a serious socialist, they even 
should.  The savings of the general population, to begin with, are 
not the main issue at stake save for a fraction of the petty 
bourgeoisie.  80% of Arg citizens had no savings to care about.  The 
working class, however, is benefitting from economic recovery, class 
struggle on salaries is the motto of the day, even the bluntest govmt 
officials (and believe me that there are cartloads of blunt officials 
in this govmt) publicly state that conflicts on wages are logic and 
should be understood as a parcel of the road to recovery (and it is 
already three years that conflicts are always solved with gains for 
the workers). The privatized and foreign companies cannot insist any 
more (because there is less money in the reserves) that the peso 
should be revaluated.  And, last but not least, this simple 
administrative measure has immediately destroyed the autonomy of the 
Central Bank (which has sent all the financial lobby to a rage).

> 
> Are the companies who benefited from "privatization" of state assets,
> another form of forced liquidation, companies who basically torched
> elements of the infrastructure, going to be required to restore those
> assets, pay the penalties, criminal and civil for fraud and arson?

Worse than that.  We are witnessing a particular instance of 
permanent revolution here, because the path that Kirchner is 
following claims, in the long run, for complete nationalization of 
these companies.  This will not take place immediately, nor 
heroically.  I wouldn't even bet that Kirchner will do this.  But if 
he doesn't, then he will lose the power he holds now.  Because the 
whole oligarchic lobby is already in mutiny against him.  The cattle 
raisers, who compose the core of our oligarchy and have kept the 
cattle stock in Argentina frozen at 50 million heads since at least 
1945, are already fueling a rebellion against Kirchner.

Too long to explain here and now, but think that large farmers and 
big ranches in Argentina are the equivalent to the oil-exporting 
lobby in pre-Chávez Venezuela:  they do not increase the production, 
and the Argies, a meat-eating people, are forced into hunger by their 
interest in foreign markets.

> 
> Will the money used to pay the IMF be made good by eliminating the
> expense of maintaining troops in Haiti?  Anybody want to bet?

Of course not.  But this has nothing to do with the issue at stake.

> 
> And yes, without  Venezuela-- no deal.  So don't what forget what
> happened to the fSU  20 years ago when the price of oil collapsed.

This you can tell our beloved Cubans.  Argentina is a different case. 
 We are giving enormous steps towards much more than dependency on 
Venezuela.  This coordination between A, B and V forewarns the world 
that a new bloc is taking shape, a bloc that vocally endorses the 
idea (and act) of a Confederation of Southern Nations.  In the end, 
if everything goes on well, what will happen is simply that the debt 
of Arg to Vnz will dissolve as an _internal debt_ of the SA 
Confederation.  Chávez (and K is privy to this idea, and supports it) 
is decided to turn Vnzl oil into the Monetary Fund of South America.

> 
> You cansubstitute debt for debt and but you're not doing anything to
> mitigate market forces; the sound you hear is  the spinning of new
> hedges, not the breaking of chains.

Wrong.  It is obvious that dear Rrubinelli has never lived in a 
subordinate, semicolonial, country.

Not only there _are_ broken chains and (first polls) 75-80% of our 
population believes so, but this action will force the whole thing 
ahead.

Best to all, even to rrubinelli (see what can love for railroads do 
to people!  it is evidently the civilized way to travel, as Amtrak 
said some years ago!)

Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[No necesariamente es su autor]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
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