• When in the ’80s of the last century, Margaret Thatcher proposed to reset Great Britain and change it from the roots to adapt it to the pure laws of the market, she believed that she should unleash an internal war. He did it after having triumphed in an external war that we Argentines know very well because it was against our country and to maintain the illegitimate and illegal occupation of our Malvinas Islands.
  • In the series Sherwood (a black police series set in this time, but with many reminiscences of those years) a lawyer who defends victims of state repression under the Thatcherite government describes very clearly the objectives of the “Iron Lady”: He believed that in order to discipline the entire union movement and the labor movement, he had to deliver an exemplary and disciplining defeat in one of the nationalized industries. He had to provoke a confrontation and win the battle. The chosen industry was coal and the Thatcherite general staff prepared as if for war.
  • The historic almost year-long miners’ strike in 1984-85 was the response that ended in defeat (mine closures, thousands of redundancies) that allowed Thatcher to transform into Thatcher. Together with Ronald Reagan in the US, they were the architects who enabled the cycle of neoliberal hegemony in the world.
  • The arguments at that time—to defeat the miners—were similar to those given now: we must “modernize” the economy and labor relations, end the “privileges” of the organized union movement; “free” the economy from corporate shackles and allow the market to make Britain great again.
  • Of course None of that happened and Britain only made the lives of subsequent generations worse and more precarious.
  • That is why when on April 8, 2013, after a stroke, Margaret Thatcher died at the age of 87 at the Ritz Hotel in London, Thousands of British men and women took to the streets to celebrate the breaking news: Thatcher is dead.
  • The epigones in Argentina, those who today want to emulate the Iron Lady and carry out a “calco and copy” of that counterrevolution, reproduce the forms and arguments.
  • The labor reform does not have a “technical” or “economic” foundation in the strict sense: it has a political foundation. To achieve a new adaptation of the Argentine economy to the rules of a market in crisis, the working class must be disciplined even more and, through them, to the entire society. Their capacity for struggle and resistance must be curtailed, which, let us tell the truth, is weakened, but due to “lack of use” or exercise, due to the complicit passivity of the union leaders.
  • And here a reflection is necessary about what many of those who say they oppose should think about. mercybut they buy their arguments: if the weight of the working class in the productive framework has decreased dramatically, as many “analysts” maintain, why is labor reform at the center and in the first place on the Government’s agenda?
  • For two reasons: because with artificial intelligence or with technology included, the question of life or death for businessmen (and for capital) continues to be increasing the rate of exploitation of workers, which is the origin of all profits.
  • But, secondly, because they are aware that the achievements sustained today by the formalized labor movement can operate as a floor and even a symbol that must be destroyed to achieve not only an increase in the rate of exploitation in these sectors, but a process of enslavement and disciplining of the entire society (of the precarious, of the informal, of the students who aspire to have a job tomorrow, of education and public health to seek the objective of their privatization). That is to say, it is a political plan or, if you like, a war plan, against the popular majorities of the entire society.
  • It is not only about taking away rights from the “organized labor movement”, as is commonly said, it is about “dis-organizing” it and complying Thatcher’s wet dream: “There is no society, there are individuals.” When he referred to “society”, he was talking about any type of collective organization that sought even a minimum balance in that tremendously unequal relationship that exists between the business community, the owners of all things and the individual worker.
  • Now, what is the difference between that successful experience in Great Britain and this ongoing phenomenon in our country?
  • Several. One is that the world is not aligned with the same “principles” as in those years and with neoliberalism on the rise (an alignment that Menem enjoyed in our country and allowed him to carry out many counter-reforms). In fact, the neoliberalism that Milei postulates is in crisis in a world that has more of a chaotic dynamic than a unity of purpose.
  • Two: the battles, Milei has them in front of her and not behind her back. It is true that he advanced in the adjustment, that he liquefied salaries (which were quite liquefied), as it is also true that in emblematic struggles such as those in Garrahan he had to retreat.
  • Three: it is also true that there is a weakening of union organizations and leaders more willing to negotiate than to combat, as it is true that they consider that, weakened and all, the organizations continue to be an obstacle to their plans and that there are combative sectors that can fight to transform these organizations into something else.
  • In short: no one has won this party in advance (nor was it won in advance from Great Britain), regardless of electoral triumphs, the subordination of the political system or the polls. The possibility is absolutely open that the apprenticeship project “Thatcher” in Argentina died before being born.

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    Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com



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