When he spoke that Sunday, just a few minutes after noon, he knew that the clock was beginning to tick. His Honeymoon It would not be like that of other presidents, but rather he was preparing for the unusual experience of launching a monumental adjustment plan, seeking to do so with popular support. That is why the form and content were going to coincide: that December 10, Javier Milei was going to give his inauguration speech with his back to the National Congress. He would announce that stormy times were coming but that others would be to blame. The politicians. The caste. He would only ask for blood, sweat and tears to endure the inevitable product of inheritance receivedpromising that a better future would come after that.
In an Argentina exhausted For long years of crisis, his opening story – partially modifying what was said during the electoral campaign – would have a hegemonic intention: to pass off the policies of big capital as if they were necessary for the general interest of the nation. In his speech, this would have a concrete expression: “There is no alternative to adjustment and shock. It will have a negative impact on activity, employment, and the number of poor and indigent people. There will be stagflation, but it is not very different from the last 12 years. “This is the last bad drink to begin the reconstruction of Argentina.”
Las conditions of possibility to issue such a story have already been discussed at length. Schematically, it can be summarized by saying that they are proportionally related to the failure of previous governments – especially the Frente de Todos and its banners of State intervention – and to the advance of right-wing demagoguery, in a context of low class struggle. Unlike the PRO, which at the time, and as Hernán Iglesias Illa related in his book We changedsweetened his speech with zero poverty and yellow balloons to gain popular support, Freedom Advances It expresses a radicalization of the right in the face of a deep crisis of the political regime. It is the right of the right.
However, after 100 days of government, the axis of the debate has shifted towards the sustainability conditions of this project. The time factor, the one that Javier Milei had in mind in his inauguration speech, is at the center of the questions: how long can these economic policies be endured, even by those who they chose to believe that after so many years of crisis there was no alternative. That we are bad but we are doing well, as Carlos Saúl Menem, so admired by Milei, once said when hyperinflation was ravaging Argentina. Time is running out on the story against caste and populism to achieve tangible results in the real lives of millions, because speeches do not make ends meet.
Carlos Menem -a reference for the current president-, for some years he was able to get out of are locked in after the chaotic period 1989-1991. Adrián Piva, in his book Accumulation and hegemony in Menemist Argentina, analyzes that that experience achieved consensus around the neoliberal reform program based on an “articulation of the effectiveness of coercive mechanisms (hyperinflationary threat, fragmentation of the workforce and increase in unemployment) with a certain capacity to channel demands or make certain concessions to various fractions of the subaltern classes. In this context, the conflicts linked to the restructuring process of Argentine capitalism, growing although fragmented and disjointed, could be isolated and had little electoral impact. This formula would work for a few years but would begin to go into crisis in the mid-90s and would collapse definitively in 2001.
Today the conditions are different, not only because of the international context (which is not that of the rise of neoliberalism), but also because of the configuration of the Argentine political regime, with Peronism in the opposition and many other factors such as hyperindebtedness, all points that They differentiate the framework of the teacher from that of his intended student.
In this picture, in the current public debate, long-term structural perspectives are intertwined with the growing unknowns regarding what will happen in the coming months.
The logic of the official story itself demands that after the supposed “last bad news” good news begins to arrive. In various journalistic interviews, the president predicted that the economy would have a “V” recovery, that is, after a sharp decline like the one we are seeing in recent months, a great expansion would come. However, with the engine of domestic consumption burst by the blender, the chainsaw and the recession, there are many who doubt this very optimistic perspective, without ruling out a “U” or even an “L”, that is, a recovery further away in time or a plateau. Inflation, for its part and against the official discourse, threatens to remain high based on high rates (the postponement of some shows that concern of the ruling party) and a dollar that – losing every month against inflation – at some point will possibly have to take a new leap.
At the time of writing this column, what the journalist Marcelo Falak called the “second phase of the Caputazo”, that is, the growth of unemployment due to the combination of the recession and the layoff of thousands of state workers which will occur in the coming days, ending March. The National Commission for Justice and Peace, which depends on the Episcopate, also warned this Tuesday about “a climate of very high social fracture.”
As we have analyzed in another column, in the wrong call craziness From Milei there is a method and a strategy. During all these months it sought to leverage itself on its point of greatest strength, which was the political capital of the 56% obtained in the runoff, to try to compensate for the weaknesses of not having its own governors, being a minority in the National Congress and not having its own strength or in unions or social movements.
However, the months to come threaten the president with putting the blender on that 56% if he fails to turn around the economic outlook. This is what some surveys are beginning to warn about, such as the one published by Zubán Córdoba a few days ago. That support from broad sectors for their demagoguery against caste can quickly mutate if the falsity of their solutions is exposed, which are enriching financial capital, energy companies, privatized companies and the countryside, while poverty is close to 60%. The political defeatssuch as those obtained in the National Congress, and self-inflicted ones such as the attempt to increase the president’s salary to $6 million, add to the combo of problems. Milei’s challenge from day 101 is to try to show political skill and expertise so that all these factors do not combine against him in a perfect storm that opens a major crisis.
Although they are not all bad for Milei. In the National Congress, although it is a minority and has suffered the defeat of the Omnibus Law, its DNU is currently still in force due to the lack of political will to overturn it in the Chamber of Deputies. In turn, different blocks collaborationists They show a good willingness to discuss new versions of that original bill that failed. Even Cristina Kirchner, in her February public letter, was open to discussing labor reform and privatization, while governors of all political stripes apply the adjustment in their own provinces. Arduous negotiations are expected in the coming weeks, with an uncertain destination and high points such as the salary tax and the discussion of the retirement formula. The path is not linear because the brutality of the adjustments and reforms also opens gaps between those at the top.
The key, however, is the union leaders of the CGT and the CTA who, beyond their words, continue to validate all the advances by refusing to call a national strike and plan of struggle, betting on negotiations and isolating and refusing to centralize the different struggles and claims that take place in the current situation. They are an essential part of the strategy of the Peronist leaders of letting Milei do the dirty work and then “returning” to the government to manage the ruins that remain.
For all this, It is not about analyzing the contradictions of Milei’s project, but about taking an active part in organizing its rejection. Despite the role of the union leaders, in the first 100 days we have seen the emergence of popular assemblies, banging of pots and pans, “molinetazos” against the increase in transportation, a massive mobilization of women on March 8, different unions that have come out to fight and social movement marches. In recent days, struggles have especially grown in different parts of the interior of the country, with special weight in education, health or metallurgists, among others.
The PTS on the Left Front From the first moment he was at the forefront of all those fights along with thousands of workers, neighbors and students, promoting democratic self-organization from below and also coordination. Without speculating or “giving it time”, but by empathizing and being part of the sufferings of working people, betting that a different solution will come from below, fusing the left with those who self-organize and also fight against the different bureaucracies. It is not about waiting for Milei to do poorly, but about contributing from today to rejecting her and building another alternative to get out of decadence. Because If Milei fails, we will not have to look back looking for options that have already failed, but rather forward, for a future for the great majority, which can only be anti-capitalist and socialist.. These will be some of our flags this Sunday, when we march on March 24, 48 years after the genocidal coup.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
