Trump y Milei

The election yielded many surprising results, but we can undoubtedly say that it was a victory for Javier Milei's government. He won in 16 provinces, when he was only expected to win in seven. In others, he did not win, but he is practically tied with Peronism. In the province of Buenos Aires, he reversed a defeat that had been very deep only six weeks ago, which is a significant political point in favor of the government; in several districts, he reached 50% or more, which is another point favorable to the government. So, when one looks at the national map, with 16 provinces out of 24, and in others practically tied, the victory in the province of Buenos Aires clearly shows that the government has emerged stronger from this electoral process on 26 October. This is an indisputable fact.

One has to look at the most important cause of this. I believe that yesterday we tried to emphasize this very much in the speeches we made at the central headquarters: there was an enormous, enormous, enormous weight of US intervention in Argentina. Without that intervention, the election would undoubtedly have been different and the result would have been different; the election would have been different because no one knows what the dollar exchange rate would have been without US intervention, but the intervention was there, so it is a fact that Milei invokes in his favor: "I have the support of US imperialism, which the other capitalist political forces in Argentina do not have," but it is undeniable that without that support, the exchange rate would have been different, and the economic situation would have been different from the chaos that was unfolding. And the United States appears to be intervening directly.

Here, something similar is happening, although on a larger scale, to what happened at the beginning of the year with the intervention of the IMF, also in Argentina, which had allowed the government to win the elections in the City of Buenos Aires when inflation was rising again – it was reaching almost 6% – and there was a danger of a sharp jump in inflation. The IMF intervened to try to prevent this from happening and, ultimately, with this intervention, the Monetary Fund managed to temporarily calm economic situation, for only a few months, and win the elections in the City of Buenos Aires. Here, the same thing is happening again: a major intervention in the economy, but above all in politics, by US imperialism, which is operating as a form of extortion against the country.

I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that the Argentine people went to vote with a gun to their heads, and that gun was put there by Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when they said very categorically, very categorically, at the meeting they had with Milei and the Argentine cabinet at the White House, that if Milei did not win these elections, not the ones in 2027, these midterm elections, the United States would withdraw its economic support for Argentina. Given the country's economic situation, this would obviously that would lead to chaos, and that was extorting the Argentine people, because ultimately it was either the American bailout or Milei's vote or chaos, and for a significant part of the population, that worked as extortion in which they had to say, well, I'll vote for this or I'll have to put up with another run against the peso, I'll have to put up with a sharp devaluation, a new rise in inflation, a further drop in my wages. That is what was at stake for the population.

And it is important to see this, especially because we cannot embellish democracy as if it were a system in which the people or each citizen chooses freely, according to their beliefs and preferences. That is not how the democratic process works. The people vote under the influence of a very deep clash of forces, and that clash of forces ultimately conditions the decision that each citizen makes. The clash of forces that took place here was clearly heavily influenced by Yankee imperialism, and on the other side, there was no counterforce that the working people could bring to bear. We did not arrive at this point with a period of strikes, struggles, and large mobilizations that could counterbalance this enormous extortion by Yankee imperialism. Therefore, in a capitalist democracy where the big capitalists, starting with the United States, hold the upper hand, this extortion worked and led to a reversal of votes in different parts of the country, allowing the government to win the elections. This is a fundamental fact for understanding the electoral process we have just witnessed.

Is it the only one? No, it is not the only one, but it is the starting point for an analysis. Why is it the starting point? Because, on the one hand, it speaks to how the current social system works, in which one social class holds real power, controls the banks, controls the stock market, bond trading, interest rates, productive forces, layoffs, prices; all of this is controlled by the capitalist class, and the people have to go and vote conditioned by this process. On the other hand, it reveals the lack of action on the part of the workers to match this clash, and there are those directly responsible for this, who are fundamentally linked to the weight of Peronism in the labor movement through the trade union bureaucracy, which throughout this period did nothing to confront the government and, by imposing a certain demobilization, obviously favors the advancement of this extortion.

Now there are other factors that also played a role, undoubtedly. Several people said, and there is some truth to this, that the September election in the province of Buenos Aires functioned as a primary. What does that mean? It means that it anticipated a possible result in the final election—which was to be held in October—and that a significant part of the population saw that Peronism could win again and went out to vote for La Libertad Avanza, either because they had not voted before and decided to vote, or because they had voted for other political forces, generally centrist forces—forces that in the province of Buenos Aires responded to certain mayors in the interior—who said no, in this situation, we are voting for La Libertad Avanza.

What does this mean? Well, it marks the conclusion that a significant part of our country's population has reached about Peronist politics and the very recent experience of the failure of the government of Alberto Fernández, Cristina Fernández and Sergio Massa, to which a large part of the population said, “I don't want to go back to that; I don't want to go back to rampant inflation, I don't want to go back to the economic disorganization we had”. So the September election also appears to be a kind of stepping stone that anticipated a result for October, with the possibility of correcting it by voting for La Libertad Avanza over those who had voted for another party and without changing their vote, or over a section of the population that had decided not to vote and now decides to go out and vote. This is important because we had a heated debate with Peronism during the election campaign, because they were saying that they were the guarantee to defeat Milei, that it was Peronism that was going to stop Milei, and precisely what is evident from this electoral assessment is that when a section of the people see that Peronism can win, they decide to vote even for their executioners, as is undoubtedly the case with Milei's government.

So, on the one hand, we have very strong extortion from imperialism, which intervenes in Argentina's economic and political situation and conditions the people's vote. On the other hand, when the Argentine people see that those who had governed until very recently could win again, they decide that this should not happen and vote for the current government. And then there is a failure that also explains Milei's victory over a group of governors united in what was called the United Provinces, which basically consisted of the governor of the province of Córdoba, the governor of the province of Santa Fe, the province of Santa Cruz, the province of Corrientes, and the province of Chubut, who lost their districts and had formed this group of governors, not with the intention of actually confronting Milei, but with the intention of achieving a good electoral result in order to negotiate with Milei his economic plan and his integration into the post-election cabinet on 26 October. That bloc suffered a truly devastating defeat because they lost their provinces, and they lost by a wide margin.

Perhaps the most acute case of all is the governor of the province of Santa Fe, who came third in a very poor election, but the same applies to Schiaretti and Llaryora in Córdoba, who were the driving forces behind this movement, with Schiaretti even harbouring presidential ambitions, and who suffered a significant defeat in the province of Córdoba at the hands of La Libertad Avanza and the PRO. So we have these factors that largely explain the victory of La Libertad Avanza.

That said, it is still important to compare La Libertad Avanza's vote with itself, rather than with the other parties. This also demonstrates the limits of the victory, because while it is true that the government managed to win in 16 provinces and reverse the Buenos Aires election, when one measures the votes obtained by La Libertad Avanza and Juntos por el Cambio two years ago and compares them with the current election, one observes a very significant drop. Here we have the data: approximately, La Libertad Avanza and Juntos por el Cambio had a little over 14 million votes in 2023, and currently have 9,300,000. Some may object that Juntos por el Cambio also included votes from what is now Provincias Unidas, because Juntos por el Cambio included the governor of Santa Fe, the governor of Chubut, and other political forces more closely linked to radicalism. If we subtract those votes, we get approximately 1 million votes that have now gone to Provincias Unidas, which got a little more than 1,600,000. If we subtract the votes from Cordoba Peronism, which was not in Juntos por el Cambio, the drop-in votes is approximately 3 million. In other words, it is an important government election, but compared to itself, the coalition it formed with the PRO shows that it is not an overwhelming election either. It has these important limitations that we are pointing out.

Here we see a parallel with Macri in 2017, when he also won a significant victory, with approximately 41% of the vote, and also won the province of Buenos Aires. At that time, there were primaries, and Peronism had won the primaries but lost the general election. If you look at September, it works like those primaries we mentioned, where Peronism won here in September and lost in October. Then, when he had to carry out his program, he encountered a deep popular rebellion on the one hand, and then the inconsistency of his economic program on the other. What is the program that Milei is now promoting? What is his explicit purpose that he just stated yesterday when he won in his headquarters? He stated, "We are now going to pursue structural reforms, we are going to pursue labor reform, we are going to pursue tax reform, we are going to pursue pension reform," and he called on the governors of the United Provinces to support him in Congress and to open a series of dialogues and debates to agree on a common agenda.

This is the program he has just outlined. Now, what will happen with this dialogue? Will it lead to a coalition government? It does not seem to be Milei's intention. In fact, the change of foreign minister that took place in the run-up to the elections, with Werthein leaving and Pablo Quirno, a member of the economic team with close ties to Morgan Bank, taking his place, suggests that this is a government that will continue to be governed by a small international financial clique, now with more support than before, where what is growing most is precisely the weight of the sectors most closely linked to US financial capital. So we will see what political course they take. It seems that the government will tend to close itself off within this clique and that it will operate its economic policy in two ways. One alternative is to accelerate currency devaluation, which was one of the possibilities that the government could implement after the elections – and there is pressure for this from a sector of the bourgeoisie – or another possible scenario that cannot be ruled out in any way is that the government intends to maintain its current economic and financial scheme. Some international newspapers anticipate that if this happens, it could be a real disaster for Milei.

For the Argentine people, either scenario is complex, because a currency devaluation would impact prices, thereby devaluing wages and pensions and representing a confiscation of workers' earnings by a sector of capital. That would be a currency devaluation. Now, if this currency devaluation does not happen, and there are many factors against an immediate devaluation, for example, if the currency is devalued, all the future dollars held by the Central Bank represent a significant loss, so it would have to be postponed.

Now, if there is no currency devaluation and the government maintains the current exchange rate due to the conditions we have seen, this will undoubtedly also affect workers because it will represent a greater industrial crisis. The layoffs we are seeing in industry, commerce and services will continue, and this is having an impact on the Argentine people in the current conditions. That is why many have compared this election, even though it is only a parliamentary election and not a presidential one, to the election won by Carlos Menem in 1995, where he had a significant victory in the elections, but immediately after winning the elections he faced a major economic crisis, with layoffs, recession, and Menem's government went into decline from that victory in 1995 onwards. And that cannot rule out the possibility that if the government maintains the current exchange rate as it is and clings to a financial clique that is obtaining extraordinary profits in the very short term, at the cost of an attack on workers in the form of layoffs, suspensions, and a major industrial crisis, then either scenario is a shock scenario for the Argentine people.

Now, the Argentine people are entering this phase, undoubtedly in a state of confusion. We are not unaware of this, because a significant portion voted for Milei, and the activists who did not vote for him see Milei's victory as a blow. In what sense a blow? They know that Milei represses you with Patricia Bullrich in Congress, not because Milei takes this or that measure, but because the people support Milei, so the struggles feel isolated, because someone says, "Well, I'm fighting for Garrahan, I'm fighting for people with disabilities, I'm fighting at university, and if the people vote for Milei, it means that the people reject those struggles and support my executioner."

So this is experienced in a context of a certain demoralization, and we have to go out and explain now, precisely, and it is a major goal that we have now in the short term, that Milei's victory has the inconsistencies that we are pointing out here, but the main responsibility lies with Peronism, which has allowed Milei to survive after his defeat in September and has never put up a serious fight, never proposed an alternative program – because it doesn't have one – in terms of popular interest, and that therefore allows Milei to draw strength from where it seems he had none. So the way out now involves a great deal of organization, political assessment, and the need to build an alternative to Peronism, which a significant part of the population does not want because they rightly associate it with the failure of the previous government and which, therefore, does not appear to be a useful tool for confronting the government from the workers' point of view.

The vote for the Left Front also appears now as a balance, which is a point that we obviously must not shy away from in any way. And it is a balance that, if one takes the districts of the City of Buenos Aires and the province of Buenos Aires, we cannot in any way reject as positive, because it allowed us to re-elect the deputies we were putting up for election and even in the City of Buenos Aires to reach 9% of the votes, in the province to be the third force beating Randazzo, who had the support of many governors, In other words, we managed to draw a line of resistance against a right-wing advance and a decline in Peronism, which is an important achievement with far fewer resources.

In the interior of the country, the assessment has to be more exhaustive because each province shows different trends; there is no national homogeneity. But taken as a whole, the Left Front marks a line of resistance from which we can confront Milei. Now, we are not ignoring in any way that it is still a weak line of resistance; we have not made a leap forward after two years of libertarian government. It is a pending task, and it is a pending task that we have to resolve in light of the struggle that is coming, which will not be electoral because now the issue will pass through Congress in the sense that the government will be able to do what it wants and it will pass through the factories, it will pass through the universities, it will pass through the neighborhoods if the government is able to carry out this brutal offensive against the Argentine people.

The first guidelines issued by the government on labour reform, which it really wants to apply at a level of slavery that we have rarely seen, want to end Argentina's collective bargaining system, because Argentina has a collective bargaining system that sets the floor, not the ceiling. Here, they want collective bargaining to set the ceiling, not the floor, so collective bargaining as we know it today will cease to exist. They want the eight-hour working day to cease to exist and be replaced by a bank of hours. They want to directly destroy the redundancy pay system. In other words, this is a policy of a huge offensive against labor rights in Argentina, accompanied by an offensive against pension rights in Argentina and to reinforce a tax system that places the entire burden on workers and popular consumption.

This will lead to a huge confrontation. It is a scenario, I insist, of layoffs and wage confiscation, and the Left Front has to take a stand in this class struggle. There will be no other way to stop Milei. It is clear that it is not Kicillof, it is clear that it is not Taiana, it is clear that it is not Cristina, nor Massa, but that the solution lies in an intense class struggle. And this is a debate that must be fought to the end, even with the left wing of Kirchnerism. In the last days of the campaign, we saw Grabois and the CGT taking photos with [CGT Secretary General Rodolfo] Daer or at the closing rally, praising Massa and saying that he had helped the election campaign a lot. In other words, the left wing of Peronism ends up associated with the most rotten part of Peronism, Massa and the trade union bureaucracy.

I say this because they were the ones who said, "Don't vote for the left, don't vote for the Left Front, but vote for Kirchnerism as a line of confrontation and to stop Milei." And they failed. To stop Milei, we must take to the streets, we must organize struggles in the workplaces, and that will be the great task ahead for the Left Front.