STATEMENT FROM THE TMB – ARGENTINA

What did Milei win?

The electoral victory of fascism had the support of the Trumpist faction of imperialism, sectors of the big world bourgeoisie, such as Elon Musk, the fascist movements of Brazil and Spain, such as Bolsonarism and VOX, the anti-Peronist right and, socially, mass sectors of the Argentine middle class. Thus, he won with around 55% of the vote.

The economic crisis provoked by the imperialist encirclement of the IMF creditors was one of the most important instruments of finance capital against Argentina. The inflationary escalation in Argentina of 142% so far this year, inflation that is generated in the periodic devaluations demanded by the IMF, was what precipitated Massa’s defeat in the elections and Milei’s victory.

The Decline of Peronism

These were external factors that led to the defeat of the ruling party’s candidacy. Nor can we forget the internal factors, the social policy of Fernandez-Massa, a last-minute welfarist, but not structural even for a social welfare state, because in the final analysis, they are a capitalist government of vassals to imperialism, which did not break with the IMF, which transferred to the working people the payment of the debt taken by Macri. They were also a cowardly government, trying at all times to reconcile between NATO and the BRICS, a decadent and typical representative of the parasitic bourgeoisie against the working people. Added to this is the political betrayal of sectors of the ruling party in several provinces and municipalities that considered that their political positions were already assured with the results of the first round.

Why did Milei win?

Despite Massa being one of the Peronist politicians closest to the White House, Biden did not support him directly because the primary interest of imperialism is to get Argentina out of BRICS, in this, Biden and Trump surely agree. The White House still did not support Milei because in the dispute over Argentina in world geopolitics, the US Democrats were not interested in winning over a Trumpist who would aim for Trump’s victory or that of another Republican in the 2024 US presidential elections. So, getting Argentina out of BRICS is Milei’s most important task for the imperialist bourgeoisie.

With this strategy, the NATO mainstream media supported Milei and tried to camouflage him as a mere exotic outsider, an anarcho-capitalist still necessary to get Argentina out of the economic crisis. Hence, each faction of the big world bourgeoisie had its own interest in Milei’s victory. Elon Munsk, for example, interested in Argentinian lithium, tried to support the facho, as he did in the 2019 coup in Bolivia. The right-wing opposition to the current Peronist government, deeply demoralized since the collapse of the Macri government, joined Milei as a way to defeat Massa and move forward with an adjustment program, such as the already announced privatization of YPF and nationalised radio and television media.

A government that is ready to carry out shock measures against the current geopolitical tendencies of Argentina, and against its proletariat

Milei aims for radical reaction in all lines in its economic program and in the role of Argentina in the world capitalist market. In addition to the break with BRICS,  and with the tendency towards the end of Argentina’s historical dependence on the IMF, as indicated by the recent agreements with China in this regard, Milei also came to abort Argentina’s rapprochement with the trend of the world economy towards de-dollarization, pointing to a new and suicidal dollarization of the economy.  As Menem did in the 1990s with convertibility as a form of dollarization; he was responsible for the qualitative leap of the neoliberal dependence of the economy. The middle class, which now supports Milei, will soon be hit by the far-right’s austerity measures. Milei can bring together the worst of Menem with the worst of Macri.

At the time of the 1917 Revolution, Lenin considered absolute control of the Central Bank by the Soviet state as the first measure for the construction of national sovereignty and socialism in the USSR. The elimination of the Central Bank, as Milei announces, or the simple autonomy of the Central Bank, as Bolsonaro did in Brazil, in Argentina would mean the end of monetary sovereignty in Argentina, and a free hand for financial-speculative capital to circulate unhindered in its offensives.

The government of Milei, a lover of the Argentine military dictatorship, threatens to apply measures typical of Pinochet-style shock treatment, which will take the current economy from crisis to collapse.

“What is at stake goes far beyond domestic interests and the economy. Milei is being supported directly by big capitalists like Elon Musk, interested in lithium, and by multinationals, and indirectly, by the White House, all to get Argentina out of the BRICS. The destruction of the country would be a detail “to think ahead” (like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya). Like the logic by which the U.S. sacrificed Europe in the war in Ukraine: “the European Union!” (Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary for Political Affairs of the European Union) And the U.S. shows no concern with the future consequences of its policies even with its main imperialist partners, much less with the Argentine semi-colony.”

(TMB, Monday, October 23, 2023, BETWEEN IMPERIALISM AND THE BRICS, A materialist balance of the Argentine elections). https://tmb1917.blogspot.com/2023/10/entre-el-imperialismo-y-los-brics.html

The fragility of the fascist Milei

Milei does not have a political base of its own, he will be supported by Macri’s PRO, especially the wing of Macri and Patricia Bulrrich and hard-line anti-Kichnerism sectors of the UCR, such as the UCR of the province of Mendoza. If compared to historical parties and movements such as Peronism and the UCR, Milei also does not have a party even like the PRO with any territorial construction. If Milei moves forward with his plan to break with China, taking Argentina out of BRICS, he will be in contradiction with agribusiness and its political and parliamentary representatives (since agribusiness has China as its main market) and sectors of the rural middle class.

Also in his plan of mega-devaluation and raising of tariffs and fuel, he will clash with the working population and the strong union political apparatuses, hegemonized by Peronism. It remains to be seen to what extent if during the transition Alberto Fernández would not assume the political cost of devaluation and tariff adjustment measures. In addition, the fiscal adjustment that he is going to undertake will lead him to enter into a harsh contradiction with the political apparatuses at the head of the provincial states and with the working-class population of those provinces, to the extent that the financing of the provincial states themselves is cut.

The Catholic Church did not officially declare itself against Milei in the elections, but its majority is part of those who oppose him. A significant section of the evangelical churches spoke out against Milei’s proposed measures, while another sector remained neutral towards Milei. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/elecciones-2023-las-iglesias-evangelicas-le-responden-a-un-sector-dentro-del-credo-que-se-pronuncio-nid12112023/ . If there was a sector of pastors of Pentecostal evangelical churches who supported him slightly in the face of his measures of attrition, they will return to apoliticism.

In short, Milei’s government will be a weak government, without important support from the ideological, political and economic trends of bourgeois society and that will clash with important sectors of the population, and its Pinochet-style shock adjustment measures will lead it to rapid decline.

The working class, and oppressed and exploited people need to take stock of the inability of Peronism to defend them from this fate and to prepare its independent organization, in the unions, the neighborhoods, schools, and a new, communist and revolutionary party to confront fascism, imperialism and its agents.

For a period, we have been holding semi-public Zoom educational meetings on some of the basic politics of revolutionary Marxism, on alternate Sunday afternoons. These are on a semi-open, invitation only basis at this point, though we may make them more public at a future point.

So as to share some of this to a wider audience, we have created a new page for educational materials on this site, which can be found here.

At the moment we are publishing transcripts/notes of the presentations for these events. We do hope to be putting regular podcasts up in the not-too-distant future, which will of course be announced when we do this.

Gaza Genocidal Siege is like Hitler’s Siege of Leningrad

We Need a Unified Struggle Against Imperialism: Palestine and Ukraine

(This leaflet was published by IUAFS on 11 November 2023. A PDF of it can be downloaded by clicking on the IUAFS banner image above)

The most overtly racist regime on the planet is slaughtering Palestinians like the murder machine it is. More than 10,000 are dead already, with thousands more buried under the rubble. Half are children, since half of Gaza’s population are under 18. Israel’s terror-bombing and starvation of the Palestinians, stopping all essential supplies including fuel for hospital generators, medicine, food and even drinking water, is driven by racism similar to Nazism. Netanyahu’s defence minister Gallant justified this by saying that Palestinians are ‘human animals.’ This is the politics of genocide; they would like to see the deaths of a couple of million people. Or at least the fear of this causing a mass flight of an entire ‘unwanted’ population. They are also preparing similar crimes on the West Bank, over a hundred are already dead at the hands of their bloodthirsty settlers and troops.

A huge wave of protests and rage at these crimes traverses the globe. Earlier, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, fighting a war against US-backed Nazis in Ukraine, correctly compared the Israeli siege of Gaza with Hitler’s siege of Leningrad. Governments including Jordan, Turkey, Chile, Venezuela, Spain, Iran, Iraq and Colombia have rightly condemned it as genocide, and nine countries have broken diplomatic relations with Israel.  Biden, with Sunak’s support has moved warships into the Eastern Mediterranean to threaten Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran – protecting Israel and threatening any nations inclined to help Gaza militarily. The United States and its allies own this genocidal slaughter.

The Zionists hope to use this butchery to induce any survivors to flee and be ethnically cleansed. Netanyahu openly stated that he wants Gazans to flee to Egypt. This is how they are attempting another Nakba in Gaza, underlining the close kinship between Zionism and Nazism. The original 1948 Nakba was a similar monstrous crime.

Sunak’s vile government defends this. It has tried motivating cops to attack the rights of Palestine Solidarity supporters to demonstrate, implying that they are supporters of Hamas. Hamas are popular among Palestinians because they are seen as incorruptible and militant fighters, but they are just one, militantly Islamic ideological trend – many other trends, some secular and leftist, support and/or are involved in the struggle. The stories in the imperialist media about “beheaded babies” and “rape” by Hamas are discredited lies. Evidence has now emerged that many if not most of the October 7 victims were slaughtered by Israeli forces, under Israel’s ‘Hannibal Directive’ which mandates that they slaughter their own troops and even civilians to prevent them being captured.

We must support the struggles of the Palestinian people for liberation no matter who leads them. The government’s attacks show that the pro-Zionists in government, neoliberal mercenaries all, have genocidal views.  Braverman suggests that carrying Palestinian flags is grounds to arrest people. She expresses racialised hatred of Palestinians – a dangerous extremist herself.  Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was destroyed by Zionist destabilisation, much of it organised by the Israeli Embassy. The neoliberal wing worked closely with Zionism. All these parties are dominated by ‘Friends of Israel’ and critics of Zionism face witch-hunting. Including the Tories’ attempts to ban solidarity marches.

Yet there are many millions of people in this country who are familiar with the genocidal oppression of Palestinians. Racist, anti-working-class bigotry which is dragging politics to the far-right is bound up with vile attitudes to Palestinians and Muslims, just as before WWII Hitlerian Jew-hate poisoned political life.

Similar politics are behind the war in Ukraine, where the West has peddled the most incredible series of lies, about Russian’s supposedly raping women, killing babies and engaging in ‘genocide’. Almost exactly the same lies as about the Palestinians. In fact, the deaths of civilians killed by both sides since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, over 500 days ago, are considerably less than the more than the likely 15,000 (or more!) deaths Israel has inflicted on Gaza in just over a month.

There are considerable similarities between what Western imperialism is trying to do in Ukraine and what the Zionists are doing in Palestine. In 2014, the US spent $10 billion organising the Maidan coup that brought Nazi Banderaists to power as part of their programme of NATO expansion, aiming to get Ukraine into NATO to threaten Russia with US strategic weapons from close quarters. As part of this, the Nazi regime abolished the legal equality that previously existed between languages, and began persecuting Russian speakers, who are close to half the population, particularly centred in the Donbass region in the South Eastern half of Ukraine. In Crimea, where the majority is actually Russian, they voted to join Russia at that time.

This came to a head at the beginning of 2022 when the Nazi regime, with its US backers led by Biden, planned a much bigger offensive to re-conquer the Donbass. Russia intervened in the Donbass region to stop this ethnic cleansing and genocide taking place. Given the chance, this oppressed population voted to join Russia. Russia is not denying the right of Ukrainians to their own state, and there are no Russian troops in the Ukrainian-speaking West of Ukraine. US-UK-EU Imperialism falsely accuse Russia of annexation of Ukraine to cover up their grand-scale policy of annexation in Palestine.

This was recently exposed in Canada when in unison with the stooge Zelensky, a Zionist who vows to make Ukraine a ‘big Israel’ through the expulsion or killing of Russian-speaking people, the Canadian neo-liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was seen publicly saluting a 98-year-old veteran of Hitler’s SS. The West’s support for Zionist Israel, as well as their support for Nazi Ukraine, are really signs of the rehabilitation of fascist barbarism that is taking place in Western politics. This understanding, about the lies of imperialism about Ukraine, needs to become as widely known as the facts about Palestine and Gaza: we need a unified struggle against imperialism. In Palestine and Ukraine, one side right, one side wrong! Solidarity with the Palestinians! Solidarity with the Donbass and Crimea!

The Liaison Committee of the Fourth International, together with the comrades of ClassConscious based in Australia and the United States, and a number of our joint allies in the Marxists Speak Out Network (MSO), though not as yet MSO itself, agreed to criticially endorse the declaration of the Rome Peace Conference held on October 27-28. We endorsed with reservations, which are stated in the Open Letter which we sent to the Conference during its meeting. But despite these reservations, we agreed to endorse the declaration itself, as there is much good material in it, despite the flaws, and we consider the bringing together of such an international gathering of anti-war activists, clearly standing for the defeat of NATO and defence of the peoples of Donbass and Crimea, to be a step foward towards the creation of a new Communist International, a key part of our immediate aims.

Stop the Third World War – for a true and a just peace

The clash between Russia and Ukraine, due to the direct involvement of NATO, threatens to unleash a third world war.

The Euro-Atlanticist elites justify their direct support for the puppet regime in Kiev as “necessary to repel Russian aggression”.

Actually, the real aggressor is the US-NATO-EU coalition, which took advantage of the Soviet Union’s dissolution to economically and politically subdue all of Eastern Europe in order to encircle and defeat Russia. The final step in this strategy would be the definitive annexation of Ukraine to NATO and the European Union, and regime change in Moscow.

Only the foolish and forgetful can believe that the blockade led by the United States of America has triggered this war to defend the principles of democracy and the self-determination of peoples. The truth is that this blockade, after supporting the Euromaidan coup, financed and armed the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi groups to hurl them against the Donbass republics and Russia itself. The truth is that the US-NATO-EU bloc uses the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder to establish its supremacy thus preventing a multipolar order based on respect for the peoples and the sovereignty of nations from coming into being. If this blockade succeeds in subduing Russia, the doors will be wide open for war against China.

Preventing the third world war is the first duty of all those who have the good of humanity at heart. It is therefore necessary to build a great/ strong international coalition for peace and brotherhood among nations.

Such an alliance must be able to set in motion the different souls fighting against militarism and imperialism in all their forms. To start this process, we invite you to join the European Peace Conference that will take place in Rome on 27 and 28 October 2023.

As signatories of this Appeal we ask for:

• the immediate halt of arms shipments to Ukraine;
• an end to the sanctions on Russia as well as the Russophobic campaign;
• the invalidation of the statement condemning Russia as a terrorist state;
• an armistice between the belligerent forces;
• a truly neutral and democratic Ukraine;
• the stop to the arms race and the dissolution of NATO.

Finally, we call upon the peoples to fight against all forms of imperialism, and nationalist chauvinism and we advocate the advent of a multipolar world based on respect for every people and all nationalities.

FOR A TRUE PEACE, FOR A JUST PEACE!

Divided We are nothing, united we can do everything.

The Palestinian prison breakout from Gaza has given rise to a new wave of bloodthirsty racist hysteria in the imperialist media. The racism is obvious when you consider one salient fact: the Hamas surprise attack on Israeli forces and parts of the nearby settler population appears to have inflicted a similar level of deaths and injuries that have been inflicted on Palestinians many times since 2007, when the Israeli organised coup against Hamas’s 2005 election by the Palestinian in a free vote, overthrew the movement in the West Bank and confined it to Gaza. To Israel, killing 1000-2000 Palestinians in periodic massacres was regularly dignified by the disgusting phrase “mowing the lawn”. And indeed, one recurrent and even well-publicised phenomenon during such atrocities as Operation Cast Lead (2009) and Operation Protective Edge (2014), which both killed thousands of Palestinians, was to see Israelis camped out on high ground overlooking the Gaza Strip, cheering and drinking in celebration of the bombs falling.

Those fulminating at the supposed ‘barbarism’ of the Hamas militants who led the breakout, from what even former British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged in 2010 is a “prison camp”, for alleged killing of Israelis in the vicinity of Gaza, never had any problem with this. Such phenomena are a symptom of the fact that Israel is not a normal state. Its adult population in the surrounding area is recent armed settlers who are direct beneficiaries of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population to Gaza. There is a considerable popular awareness that they live on land taken from the Palestinian population, and fear and loathing of that population. Hence the bloodthirsty celebrations, and the fear of revenge if there was ever a break out.

Some apparent evidence that seems to suggest that the political Hamas cadre were at pains not to ill-treat the prisoners that they took. Amid the fog of war, it has already come to light that many of the claims made by Israel are false; like the grotesque one about ‘beheaded babies’ that Biden lied that he had seen photographs of, but now the Israeli military say they don’t have any evidence. Many more of these claims are likely to be shown up as false. The claim of a massacre at a ‘rave’ that was taking place near to the Gaza fence at the time of the breakout also looks very suspicious – such lies go around the world but then it turns out there is no actual evidence for them. Apparently in one case a picture of suffering, injured children was posted online with the claim that they were Israeli children, only to emerge later that the image was of Palestinian children (!!). The same kind of lying and falsification has been legion over Ukraine.

Their purpose is to whip up and enhance racist hysteria. There is no concern for human life in this hysteria, but rather the demonisation of the ‘other’: Arabs and Muslims. That is the purpose of the fatuous comparisons with 9/11 that are being bandied around. the truth is that the Palestinian people have suffered many ‘9/11s’ at the hands of Zionism since 1948, and arguably since Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising their homeland to a third-party, racist colonial movement.

Now we see an attempt by the ruling class to extend the criminalisation of dissent that we have already seen over Ukraine, to the issue of Palestine. This now extends to criminalisation of support for the Palestinians per se – though they will have problems with that, as the Palestinians have literally millions of sympathisers in Britain today.  The racist sociopath Home Secretary Braverman is blatantly inciting the cops to arrest people for carrying Palestinian flags, on the supposed ground that the display of the flag is some sort of ‘harassment’ of Jews. This is blatant, and premeditated racist harassment and thuggery by the government and cops. a reflection in reality of the genocidal politics of Zionists in all the major bourgeois and pro-capitalist political parties. They have no problem with a genocide of the population of Gaza. This has already led to the arrest of one young Asian man in Manchester simply for carrying a Palestinian flag, prime facie a racist arrest in itself.

The Labour Party itself is led by vicious racists, with Keir Starmer as the bigot-in-chief. He was put into office as the result of a prolonged dirty-tricks scam campaign against Labour’s former left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, led by the Zionist lobby, which the Blairite right-wing eagerly followed after they previously failed to discredit Corbyn with more conventional reactionary smears than the ‘anti-Semitism’ scam they finally settled on. But what is very visible now is the racist nature of that scam, as encapsulated in the genocidal politics of Keir Starmer himself. This culminated in Starmer’s endorsement, in an interview with LBC’s right-wing ‘shock jock’ Nick Ferrari (11 October) of the plan by the Israeli Defence Minister fascistic Likud thug Yoav Gallant, for a complete siege of Gaza. Evidently modelled on Hitler’s siege of Leningrad, the civilian population are being, as we speak, deprived of all fuel, food and water, with mass starvation and dying of thirst, patients dying from lack of power for hospital care, etc. This atrocity is as premeditatedly murderous as Auschwitz. But Starmer endorsed it, and said that Israel has the right to do it.

This is what was always behind the Zionist witchhunt in Labour; the drive to transform Labour from the ‘broad church’ the social-democratic left fatuously wanted, into a bourgeois body run from above by neoliberals and neoconservatives, funded by corporate donations. The completion of the Blair project. The Ukraine war has been a watershed in the transformation of Labour into something capable of rivalling the Tories for extreme reaction, as both main parties united to defend the West funding Nazis in Ukraine. Only a few weeks ago this was given substantial exposure, on an international level, as Zelensky, in cahoots with Canada’s Liberal president Justin Trudeau, a figure who Starmer would no doubt want to emulate, led two standing ovations for a 98-year old SS Veteran in the Canadian Parliament. This was a major international political scandal that did a lot to expose the real nature of the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine. But Starmer’s Labour Party is unfazed about supporting genocidal Nazis who want to slaughter Russians. And he has now dotted the I’s and crosses the T’s on support for Zionists aiming at genocide and/or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. That was the truly sinister objective of the ‘anti-Semitism’ scam in Labour under Corbyn, it is now clear.

By Leon Collis

This is a short opinion piece based on personal experience and conversations with comrades: Much has been in the bourgeois media recently about proposed changes to disability benefits. We really should stop calling them benefits: They are social security entitlements!

There are two main social security allowances many disabled people are entitled to claim: Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). ESA is for people who are unable to work or have limited capacity to work due to their disability. PIP is for disabled people who have care and transport needs.

Under the last Labour government, the ruling class decided that too many disabled people were claiming the social security allowances of: Incapacity Benefit (ESA’s forerunner) and Disability Living allowance (DLA) (PIP’s forerunner)

The ruling class decided that in order get around this problem as they saw it, they would scrap those particular allowances and replace them with new ones.  Hence the introduction of ESA and PIP.

These new social security entitlements go beyond filling in a claimant form: they require a full on physical assessment.  What’s more, the assessment process is run by the private sector.  The ruling class issue these companies with targets to deny a certain number claimants access to these allowances. Many of which are overturned on appeal. The government deny the existence of these targets. To make matters worse, many disabled people are constantly having to undergo reassessment despite no change in their condition.

Imagine the fear that one feels every time one gets a letter from the DWP.  This is because at first glance, its not possible to know whether it is just an annual rate change or a letter informing you that you are about to be reassessed.  Where you get a new form as if you are a new claimant.

New legislation has been introduced that means that those of us who are in the full support group of ESA will now be expected to seek work or face sanctions.  Disabled people in the support group of ESA until now had not been expected to work due to the nature of their disability or illness.

Some of us prematurely breathed a sigh of relief on hearing that the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) will be scrapped (this is the physical assessment for claiming ESA).  However, that is not until 2026/27.

So the government is obviously attempting another push to strip disabled people of their entitlements before the scrapping of the WCA. There has long been talk of merging the assessment process for PIP and ESA.  Currently they are two different assessments.

The ruling class always introduce these changes under the guise of helping disabled people.  In reality, it is a wealth transfer!

These constant changes lead to more ableism: Actions, attitudes and use of language that constitute prejudice towards disabled people. For example: The ruling class have long been pushing the idea that there is someone out there who is faking their disability.

Another example: In the environmental movement the rush to ban cars from our towns and cities fails to take into account that many disabled people do not feel able to use public transport for various reasons. This is a form of exclusion.

Finally, not introducing hybrid meetings (In-person and online participants) where people cannot get to an in-person meeting because of disability or illness is also a form of exclusion and therefore a form of ableism.