The economic and financial crisis that has been troubling stock markets and production in the rich west for years is having a devastating effect on the countries of the so-called periphery. Above all there is Argentina which, after Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines, has been thrown headlong into the abyss of the crisis and social desperation.

In the Nineties, under the criminal Menem-Cavalo partnership, even while it received finance from the IMF, Argentina opened its doors to the crassest ultra-liberalism. Tariff barriers were demolished and American goods allowed to invade the Argentinian market, flinging the already precarious equilibrium into turmoil. With every service and any enterprise of national importance privatised, the road to the most unbridled and rampant of private capitalisms was opened up, throwing into crisis the little that was left standing of the economy in the name of immediate profit. The social state was completely dismantled and, following the recipes of the IMF, taxes and the cost of borrowing increased, thus completing the work of destruction of the Argentinian economy. In compensation the exponents of the bourgeoisie have, by means of theft, bribery and the proceeds of parasitic appropriation become amongst the richest men in the world.

The results are plain to see. Despite the monetarist recipes, inflation remains high, unemployment has climbed to 30%, the public debt has gone beyond 20% of GDP and foreign debt has climbed to $135 billion. For a devastated economy such as Argentina's, this is an absolutely unbearable weight. The financial imbecility of Cavalo, who pegged the peso to the dollar, has done the rest. When it comes to the living standard of the Argentinian population things are even worse. Besides the above-mentioned 30% of proletarians who've been thrown out of work with no chance of another job, not even via the black economy or as casual workers, the statistics show that 45% of the population lives under the poverty line. In numerical terms millions of families survive on less than 480 pesos per month (not even £350 for a nuclear family of five people). One of the major concerns of Della Rua and the successive presidents who have been flung into office during the present crisis has been to prevent the flight of capital abroad. By freezing the current bank accounts of small savers they have also condemned the great part of the population to bartering and begging. Anger and violence have grown in equal measure with the hunger, the economic and social poverty, the desperation of daily reality and the bleak outlook for the future.

The response

Spontaneously young people and students, workers, unemployed and petty bourgeoisie, first proletarianised and then pauperised, flooded into the streets. The focal points of their anger were the usual havens of capitalism: banks, offices, but above all, supermarkets and shops in general which were attacked as during long-forgotten bread riots in Europe. Hunger, and outrage against an incompetent and corrupt political class in the service of the big capitalist concentrations - both domestic and international - remain the basis of this latest insurrectionary outburst. Underlying everything there is the tragic unwinding of the crisis of capitalism in its neo-liberal version. As if following a script, the government of the former president could find no better response than to instigate a savage repression leading to deaths and thousands of wounded. The response has been characteristically proletarian. Throughout Argentina strikes and occupations have sprung up in the most important factories. Committees of struggle and to coordinate the protests have been formed. In their attempt to respond to increasing poverty and unemployment the associations of Pequiteros and the internal Commissions have moved against the trade unions and Left political parties whose involvement with capital has discredited them in the eyes of the working class. In the largest cities hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have participated in the protests and the clashes with the police. Even the seat of government has been attacked: a monumental symbol of the exploitation and financial robbery conducted on the part of its tenants, all in the name of a rampant capitalism which has no moral rules or laws except personal enrichment for the few and poverty for millions of proletarians.

One of international capitalism's weakest links has snapped and huge numbers of proletarians and the disinherited have been propelled into action by a single overriding need. Bourgeois reaction is doing its cowardly work. It is like a play already written and rehearsed a thousand times over but with two conspicuous absences: that of a real revival of the class struggle and a party capable of steering it.

Absent from the scene

The absence of these two elements allows the bourgeoisie to produce an alternative that confines itself to tinkering with its own political power set-up whilst the economic framework and relationships of exploitation remain firmly in place. The class content of a movement does not only derive from its sociological aspect, that is from the presence of proletarians, but above all from the political objectives contained and developing within it. First there must be an awareness of class antagonism, then the recognition of the conservative function of the trades unions and of the political left and the necessity for the violent overthrow of the whole capitalist economic and political frame. An indication of the second condition is the active presence of a revolutionary party that is well-rooted inside the proletariat as a whole. This alone can transform the anger, the determination to struggle and spontaneous rebellion into social revolution. Such a party will have clarified the terms of the revolutionary programme and its strategy. In the short term its task is to identify the class enemy and its accomplices on the Left in order to remove the political obstacles on the road to insurrection. In the medium term clarity is needed about what constitutes the new proletarian power and the economic programme stemming from it. In the long term, although a step towards its realisation must be made from the outset, there will have to be an international dimension to the struggle which, if it remains only a national experience, will inevitably end in defeat.

In Argentina the devastation of the economic crisis has taken a strong and determined proletariat towards struggle and self organisation, making it capable of expressing a sense of the hostility between classes and of identifying its political enemy. However, the second condition, the one concerning the existence of a revolutionary party, is nowhere to be seen, for the simple reason that the vanguard of the revolution does not come into existence from one day to the next, nor is it the product of immediate events.

Either the party will have to be worked for through time and for it to become rooted inside the proletarian masses, or the insurrectionary waves will always be dispersed and give way to defeat and a sense of impotence. The imperative for today's meagre revolutionary vanguards who are active internationally, if only in restricted circles, is to grow, to connect up, to accelerate the process of clarification of events in terms of the class struggle and of political perspectives, even if these are not immediate.

Historical necessity imposes the immense effort of giving life to political organisations capable of absorbing the advanced proletarians who are part of these spontaneous movements, so that the next outburst, wherever it happens to be, does not remain without an alternative class strategy.

Against the bourgeoisie in whatever guise it presents itself.
Against trade union traps.
For the organisation of the proletariat in Latin America.
For the construction of the world party of the proletariat.