The presentation of the Workers’ Left Front – Unity, formed by the FIT and our MST received extensive coverage in the mass media and social networks. The press conference that took place at the Castelar Hotel was viewed as good news for workers, women and the youth, emerging as the only alternative to the bosses’ old politics alliances.
The news of this unity, qualified as “historical” in the media, was achieved after many years of effort, in which the MST has held up that flag for many years. Years during which thousands have demanded such unity of the left. While the political alliances, with shameful exchanges between one another, proving that they are more than just similar and share policies of austerity and submission to the IMF, our united front raises a solution of class independence, of rupture with the current model, for the capitalists to pay for the crisis. We are demonstrating that we are the only “third space” at the service of working people.
Here are some images of the presentation of the front at the Castelar and the political declaration with the 20 points of the programmatic agreement between the members of the Workers’ Left Front – Unity.
Guillermo Pacagnini
LEFT AND WORKERS´ FRONT “UNITY”
PROGRAM AGREEMENT AGREEMENT
The Party of Socialist Workers (PTS), the Workers’ Party (PO) and the Socialist Left (IS), members of the Left and Workers’ Front (FIT) and the Socialist Workers’ Movement (MST) agree to form the “Left and Workers´ Front – Unity” and present common lists of candidates in the upcoming national elections of 2019.
This unitary front, which brings together almost all the leftist forces of our country, is founded in the middle of a great national crisis that the capitalist class wants to make the working-class and popular majorities pay. The Macri government, after paying the vulture funds and endebting and mortgaging the country to finance the flight of capital, agreed on a package of greater austerity, service tariff hikes, pulverization of wages and destruction of thousands of jobs with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, as representative of imperialist financial capital, wants more: a new pension reform and labor flexibilization law, while tens of thousands of dollars will continue going to speculators and debt payments.
Since its inauguration, Cambiemos was unable to govern or legislate against national and working-class interests without the support of the governors – who applied austerity in their provinces, including Alicia Kirchner in Santa Cruz -, and of the Peronist legislators and senators who voted all the laws of austerity and give aways to multinationals, including the national budgets with tariffs hikes and the grand theft of retirees´ pensions.
In December 2017, tens of thousands of workers and young people mobilized to the Congress to oppose the pension reform law, suffering a strong repression. The ruling classes and the government took note of workers´ willingness to fight, and the labor reform bill that had already been agreed with the CGT was immediately “shelved”. The union bureaucracy, in all its wings, together with the “social movements” commanded by Pope Bergoglio, on the one hand, and Kirchnerism, with its “There is 2019” campaign on the other, united to prevent that force of the exploited from defeating the government and its austerity plans, allowing the great devaluation, the flight of capital and a greater robbery of wages that culminated in the colonial agreement with the IMF.
After the union bureaucracy and bourgeois opposition politicians played the role of preventing the defeat of Macri and his austerity in the streets, Kirchnerism put Alberto Fernandez at the head of its presidential formula with Cristina Fernandez, that aims to replace Macri. We maintain that the “Patriotic Front” that they offer does not present any favorable alternative to the interests of the popular majorities. They have already committed themselves to paying the fraudulent debt, including that taken by the government of Cambiemos. They propose to govern without breaking with the IMF, which implies the continuity of austerity and of the colonial pact signed by Macri. This will mean not only the continuity of backwardness and national dependence, but the worsening of the standard of living of working people, for the benefit of speculators and large employers.
We denounce a political operation that seeks to impose a polarization between Macrism and Kirchnerism and its allies. The latter -based on the just hatred that millions have of this government that starves people- calls for a so-called “patriotic unity” with the same politicians that provided “governability” to the government and voted for Macri´s laws. A front with the governors who applied austerity in their provinces to the same or higher level than the national government. With Sergio Massa, one of the main collaborators of the Cambiemos government since its inauguration in December 2015, and who maintains that popular neighborhoods must be militarized. With those who opposed the great “Green Tide” of hundreds of thousands of women, voting against the right to legal, safe and free abortion, and who, in their provinces, even refuse to practice the legal interruption of pregnancy.as leyes al macrismo.
We do not forget that Kirchnerism agreed to pay the fraudulent debt with the Paris Club, signed a secret pact with the multinational Chevron for the exploitation of Vaca Muerta, tried to negotiate to pay the vulture funds, while they maintained most of the privatized companies of public services -then benefited with subsidies and today with rate hikes- and the extension of soy production in the country in benefit of agricultural employers.
Working people are not condemned to having to endure a greater evil or a supposed lesser evil. There is another way out, and that is what our Front proposes: that the crisis be paid by those who generated it, the big employers, bankers, landowners and imperialism.
We advocate the political independence of workers against any capitalist variant, including the so-called progressives, and in no case will we call directly or indirectly to support any of these sectors in in the field of struggle nor in the electoral arena. Instead, we propose a solution of class independence to overcome this trap in which they try to cage people in.
With the constitution of the “Left and Workers Front – Unity” for the 2019 elections, the FIT and the MST begin a common experience, after having had many political differences. The critical situation and the catastrophe that threatens working people, leads us to explore a path together that begins with the political battle that lies ahead in the upcoming elections. From this unitary experience, will emerge the bases that will allow us to advance in greater agreements or not.
We propose to impose a political solution for workers through struggle and mobilization: to put an end to the oversight of the IMF and for an economic plan and an integral reorganization of the country whose priority is the defense of working people’s lives. We reject outright all support to the agrarian, industrial, financial and service bosses, political-electoral alliances with the center-left and permanent agreements with the union bureaucracy.
The “Left and Workers´ Front – Unity” raises the following points and offers them to the consideration of working class, student and popular organizations, so that they may be part of a plan of struggle to defeat the IMF, Macri and the governors, so that, this time, the crisis be paid by the capitalists, on the road to imposing a workers´ government. Against the truce of the CGT, CTA and the entire union bureaucracy with the government and capitalists. For national strike and a plan of struggle to impose this program:
1) Break with the IMF. No to the payment of the debt. Money for wages, jobs, health care, education and housing, not for the IMF. Nationalize banks and foreign trade to prevent capital flight, take care of small savers and provide cheap credit. For a workers´ government to impose a workers´ and people´s economic plan debated and managed by the workers themselves.
2) Immediate increase of wages and pensions. Let no one earn less than the value of the family basket. Given the escalation of inflation, monthly indexation of wages and pensions.
3) Prohibition of lay-offs and suspensions. Expropriation and nationalization of any company that closes, retaking production under the control of workers. No more precarious and under-the-table work. Permanent contracts for all. Work for all, distribution of work hours without affecting wages between employed and unemployed. Down with the flexibilizing labor reform.
4) Cancellation of the pension reform. For the 82% mobile and an increase of the minimum amount to cover the basket of retirees. For the restitution of employer contributions cut by Macri, Menem and Cristina Kirchner.
5) Elimination of the sales tax from family basket products. Abolition of the salary tax. Progressive taxes on great fortunes. Extraordinary taxes on the big capitalists (bankers, landowners and big businessmen) to solve the most pressing needs of the working people. Committees of price control and popular supply.
6) Cancellation of tariff hikes. Nationalization and re-nationalization without payment of all privatized companies under the control, administration and management of workers and control of popular consumers. Re-nationalization of the entire railway and subway system (public transit and cargo) under the control, administration and management of workers at all levels and control of popular passangers. Re-nationalization without payment of 100% of YPF and all oil companies: for a single national state oil company that operates under the control and management of its workers. For a national energy plan controlled by workers that brings natural gas and electricity to all households.
7) Expropriation of the landowning oligarchy, of the large sow pooles, as well as of the monopolies of grain, oil, dairy and meat processing. Expropriation of the four thousand main landowners, respecting the rights of poor peasants, native peoples and small farmers. No to the expulsion of peasants and natives from their lands. No more under-the-table work for rural workers.
8) No open air mining. Barrick and Chevron out of Argentina. No to fracking. Expropriation of those firms, almost all imperialist, without compensation and demanding they repair the damage caused, guaranteeing employment with equal pay to the workers of those companies.
9) For a single national state, public, free and secular education. No more subsidies to private education. Churches out of education. Real and effective separation of Church and State.
10) For a national state system of quality public health. For free and comprehensive state health care coverage. Nationalization without payment of the laboratories that profit with the health of the people. For the provision of free medicine to those who need it. Democratic control of social health care providers by workers’ committees elected by the base, so that they cease to be a fund with which the union bureaucrats enrich themselves.
11) For a national plan of quality popular housing and urbanization of the slums. For progressive taxes on uninhabited housing of real estate speculators.
12) For the right to legal, safe and free abortion. Sex education to decide, contraceptives avoid aborting, legal abortion to not die. Money for combating gender violence, not for the IMF. For the rights of working women. Equal work, equal pay.
13) Down with the Chocobar doctrine and police violence. No to the lowering of the age of imputability. Down with the reactionary and repressive reforms of the Criminal Code. No to espionage and infiltration of popular organizations. Dissolution of the intelligence agencies that spy on workers and popular fighters. Down with Project X and cancellation of the “anti-terrorist” law. Annulment of the legal charges against the more than 6,000 workers and popular fighters. Liberty of those imprisoned for fighting.
Punishment of the culprits of the death of Santiago Maldonado and all the material and political murderers of Rafael Nahuel. Jail to those responsible for the disappearance of Julio López and Luciano Arruga. Jail to the material and political murderers of Carlos Fuentealba. Gendarmerie out of the popular neighborhoods.
14) Life sentences in common prisons for the genocides, their civil accomplices and those responsible for the crimes of the Triple A.
15) For every legislator, official or judge to earn the same as a specialized worker or a teacher. Recallbility of all mandates by the voters themselves.
16) Popular election of prosecutors and judges with recallable mandates. Elimination of all their caste privileges. Trials by jury.
17) Bureaucracy out of the unions. Support for combative unionism. For the independence of unions from the state and governments. For the fullest union democracy and for the right of workers to organize without interference or state control. For anti-bureaucratic and militant union leaderships, of a class character, based on union democracy. We support the self-organization of workers against the regimentation of the union bureaucracy and the bosses’ parties.
18) For the defeat of the Macri-IMF pact and the governors. For a Free and Sovereign Constituent Assembly to discuss and resolve the emergency measures required to satisfy the pressing needs of the working population and promote a transformation of the country on new social bases.
19) For a government of the workers and the people imposed by the mobilization of the exploited and oppressed.
20) Down with the attempted coup in Venezuela driven directly by the intervention of US imperialism and its lackeys of the OAS, without giving any political support to the Maduro government. English and NATO out of Malvinas. Against the blockade and any type of imperialist aggression against Cuba. Support for the heroic Palestinian people. Down with the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
We support the struggle of the entire world working class against imperialist capitalism and its governments. We salute the popular rebellion in Algeria, the struggle of the yellow vests in France and defend the right to self-determination of the people of Catalonia.
For an international policy of support for workers’ and popular rebellions throughout the world, for the expulsion of imperialism from all countries, for the socialist unity of Latin America, for international socialism.