Date: Thursday, May 2nd - 2013

Last Wednesday, thousthands of workers, students, and leftist organizations were part of the Internationalist Workers’ Day rally called by the Frente de Izquierda (FIT, the Left Front). Although there was a change of rain, there was still a great showing at the PTS demonstration and the common rally in Palza de Mayo. Both the PTS and the PO organized the most important demontrations during this event, both of which had the same showing of people.

After 4 p.m., the mobilization reached the Plaza de Mayo. The leaders of the parties that are part of the FIT (Left Front) were in front of the stage. Shop stewards and representatives from the unions’ anti bureaucratic lists were surrounded by the youth (among which the PTS youth stood out with their enthusiasm). Some of the important activists present included shop stewards from Kraft, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Alicorp, and other companies. There were also worker representatives from the subway such as Claudio Dellecarbonara, the Lista Naranja from the trains, the telecommunication workers Agrupación Violeta, combative teachers, and workers from dozens of factories and establishments in Buenos Aires, the northern, western and southern suburbs, including La Plata city, Berisso, and Ensenada. Among them, were key members of the CeProDH (Human Rights Organization Professionals) who have played a vital role in representing the most important struggles in the last few years such as Myriam Bregman, Alejandrina Barry, Victoria Moyano, and high school and university students.

The speakers at the event were Juan Carlos Giordano (IS), Christian Castillo (PTS) and Jorge Altamira (PO). In the evening, after the speeches, the act finished with all the participants singing the International, the working class hymn.

Christian Castillo “These are the red flags that annoy the president Cristina”
“The international capitalist crisis is already in its sixth year, leaving misery and unemployment for the working class. Today, we remember the Chicago Martyrs. In dozens of countries workers are marching against the austerity measures, against the budget cuts, just like the general strike in Greece.
We are going to honor the textile workers of Bangladesh. Today, in that country, tens of thousands are denouncing one of the largest social crimes: 400 deaths and 2.500 injured due to the collapse of an eight-story building in factories where workers were being overexploited by international companies. Long live the struggle and rebellion of textile workers in Bangladesh!

In this 21st century, the demand for the 8 hour work day, which was the motivation for the May 1st action for 143 years ago, is still a goal to be conquered. What is clear is that employers, and the governments that serve them, want to save themselves by unloading the burden of the crisis on the shoulders of the working class.

Europe is one of the epicenters of the crisis. Countries like Spain have an employment rate over 25%. All governments take action against the working class, under a large economic and political crisis. They had to elect a peronist Pope, who was an accomplice to the dictatorship, and is now disguised as a friend of the poor - in case anyone doubted the size of the crisis. Workers all around the world cannot be fooled by the new Pope, Bergoglio, and his calls to accept the governments’ attacks on workers in exchange for a bit of charity. The working class’ historical experience has left us with a political program on how to fight back during this crisis. Against unemployment, we must fight for the distribution of working hours between employed and unemployed workers. Against bank failures, we must fight for the nationalization of the banks and to put foreign trade under workers’ control. Against the economic downturn, we must fight for the nationalization of the main economic resources under workers’ management. Against the disaster of the imperialist European Union, we must fight for a workers’ government and for the United Socialist States of Europe. Against the discredit of the political ruling caste, we must pick up the program of the Paris Commune, updated by our comrade Raul Godoy, a worker of Zanon and FIT Representative in Neuquén who filed a bill in which every elected official, all representatives, senators and judges would earn the same wage as a teacher. And we would add that any office should be revocable. These demands attack the material basis, the salaries, of those politicians who serve the capitalists. These demands, along with the disbanding of repressive forces and replacing them with armed civilians, are the basis for building a new kind of State. Not a State in which the exploiter minority can oppress the majority, but one in which the working class can impose its will. A working class State, built over the ruins of this capitalist State, that will be a means to an end: the communist society, where a radical lowering of the working hours and a democratic economic planning put science, art, and culture in the service and within reach of all humankind.

In proletarian demonstrations of nineteenth and early twentieth century, workers shouted: Long live communism and freedom. In the XXI century we will remove the stains that Stalinism had put on the banner of communism and the working class will shout again: long live communism and freedom for all the exploited of the world.

In Latin America, we have seen the decline of phenomena like chavismo and kirchnerismo, which had been presented as an alternative to the crisis by the left worldwide. They believed that chavismo was socialism in the 21st century. Chavismo didn’t hesitate to make the workers pay for the currency devaluations, which cost over 700,000 votes that went to the right-winger Capriles.

This crisis revels the current debate on the strategies used by the left worldwide. We want to be clear. Any strategy that does not focus on the political independence of the working class is doomed to impotence and failure.

We are a political tendency that fights in different countries: in Chile, along with the working class and a student movement that has returned to the streets; in Spain, fighting to organize a youth that is jumping to conclusions based on the experience of the Indignados; in Mexico, fighting within the movement #YoSoy132; in France, organizing the Revolutionary Communist Current within the NPA, to provide a revolutionary orientation against the opportunistic policy of its direction; in Bolivia, where a Workers’ Party has recently been founded, we are supporting the return to a program based on the Pulacayo thesis and struggling against the COB, who is looking to create a party that focuses on electoral pressure, not a party of class struggle.
We want to offer a proposal to all of you, voted by the Congress of PTS; to set up a Movement towards a Socialist Revolutionary International Organization that leads to the reestablishment of the Fourth International, a call that we make to our comrades of the revolutionary left, like the CRCI, and also to the workers vanguard emerging in several countries. Because our task is not just to build revolutionary parties of the working class in every country, but to take a leap towards the formation of a Worldwide Socialist Revolutionary Party that buries imperialism and capitalism.

Comrades, in our country, kirchnerism is in an undeniable decline. They have showed that their so called reconstruction of the national bourgeoisie is what every other government does: take from the national budget and then hand it over to corrupt and mobster businessmen (like Lázaro Báez, Cristóbal López, Eurnekian, Brito, Szpolzky y others from menemism, Roggio, Cirigliano, Romero). A government with wealthy officials. The Kirchners had declared assets of $7 million, and now they declare assets of $89 million. They are just like the bourgeois opposition, those who were traveling in exclusive resorts during the flooding disaster. Not only do the kirchnerists and their business friends launder money, Clarín and employers linked to the bourgeois opposition do it as well. Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores is here to fight all the many faces of the bourgeoisie. The “national and popular” model is sinking. Rampant inflation, an energy deficit of US 12 billions, they don’t touch an acre of the landowners’ land while soybean producers take over poor peasants’ lands, multinational mining companies and banks are making record profits. On the other side, the working class is being robbed with a salary tax, unregistered work is at 35%, and almost one half of the workers earns less than $750 a month.

There are comrades from the most combative sectors: Kraft, PepsiCo, the opposition in the union of the food industry, those who confront the totalitarian bureaucracy of SMATA in Lear, the workers in the printing industry in the Bordó and Naranja union lists, railway workers who have won the Sarmiento union branch and the opposition to Pedraza in the Roca branch, combative teachers, state workers who confronted Macri’s repression, and the comrades who have just won in the largest factory of Buenos Aires, the iconic Coca Cola in Pompeya, for whom I ask for a round of applause. We know that employers will try to cast us out of these positions. Every activist knows that they have to be ready for an attack after the elections, if things don’t fall apart before that.

Our challenge is to develop a powerful worker militancy, driven by the workers’ discontent with the government, with employers, and with the union bureaucracy that divides itself around which capitalist they should support.

FIT is also preparing for the electoral battle, like we do in factories; and in schools and colleges, where we must set up a youth that fights for a students’ movement tied to the working class, to mobilize thousands against the regime and against employers. The influence of the classist left has undoubtedly grown amongst the youth and workers. We played an important role in denouncing the government’s spying program, “Proyecto X”, and fighting to prevent kirchnerism from taking over Plaza de Mayo. Those red flags that annoy Cristina so much are right here, in the struggle for the prosecution and sentencing of Pedraza and all the perpetrators of Mariano’s murder.

In the next elections we intend to win seats in the legislature and congress to work towards developing mass mobilizations, the only means to obtain new workers’ conquests and to reach the final goal of a workers’ government.

We see the election campaign as part of the preparations we can use in order to intervene in the crisis of kirchnerism, and we will do so by presenting a working class alternative, independent from all capitalist parties. A workers’ left, that is present in factories, that takes part in the workers’ struggles, and is by their side in the fight to defeat capitalists and their governments.

Translated by Giorgina Gé, Federico Trojo and Gloria Grinberg