In Argentina, the struggle continues
In Buenos Aires, the Workers’ Socialist Movement (Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores, MST), a Trotskyist party, is holding a day school for militant workers from the Italian Hospital. It’s 8:30am and the worker militants are trickling in, carrying pastries, sandwiches and maté gourds (a local tea). They are here to discuss everything from the history of the Argentine workers’ movement to the concept of exploitation and the legal framework in Argentina under which unions operate. Some comrades are dressed in their hospital scrubs.
These workers are facing a fierce offensive from President Javier Milei and the hospital bosses and are struggling for their own living conditions and the rights of their class.
Argentinian workers have experienced a protracted crisis for most of the 21st century. Hyperinflation has eaten away the purchasing power of workers’ salaries as much as it has eaten away the credibility of the major political parties. This includes Peronism, the nationalist party that historically has attracted working-class allegiances. Since last year’s election of Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist and far-right outsider, a new offensive has been launched against every aspect of working-class life. In the first six months of the Milei government, poverty levels rose by more than 11 points to reach 53 percent of the population.
Two significant sectors facing attacks are health care and universities. Nurses and medical professionals from the Italian Hospital are discussing the history of the Argentine workers’ movement to prepare for the struggles of today. Between sips of maté they give thoughtful answers to questions about labour history and thought experiments about how left-wing trade union militants should respond in various scenarios.
One of the questions passed around on slips of paper and discussed in small groups is something like: “You’re creating a new trade union. What principles should it adopt to prevent bureaucratisation?” Another is: “A local factory is being shut down. What political and legal tactics do you adopt?”
These are not purely hypothetical questions. In 21st century Argentina, there have been waves of working-class struggle resulting from debt crises, hyperinflation and a series of bosses’ offensives attempting to radically restructure government and society in favour of capitalists. In 2001, under President Fernando de la Rúa, a wave of protest known as the Argentinazo was unleashed. Protests, strikes, factory occupations and unemployed workers’ struggle partially pushed back a government offensive and toppled five presidents in the space of two weeks.
Today, the workers are answering very practical questions, and some have direct experience of trying to figure out how to respond to workplace closures. A discussion about the limitations of workers’ cooperatives ensues. They also talk about the possibility of demanding the government nationalise private firms.
In the crisis of the early 2000s, a range of strategies were adopted by Argentine workers, many of whom were left with factories and workplaces abandoned by the bosses. Some were occupied and transformed into cooperatives, but most of these could not last after government subsidies were withdrawn. As one comrade comments, “The market forces us to exploit ourselves”. Other workplaces struggled for nationalisation: “That workplace closed down, but each worker was guaranteed a job”.
Our translator, Frederico, tells us the period during and after the 2001 Argentinazo was important in rebuilding the influence of Trotskyist groups, including the MST, in the trade unions. Influence was built through hard-fought battles against the entrenched Peronist leadership. When Frederico says “hard fought”, it is not a metaphor. Going against the hegemonic Peronist leadership in trade unions is no small thing in a country where Peronist trade union bureaucrats are willing to cheat, collude with the bosses and threaten the left with hired muscle.
On our lunch break, the comrades share pastries, including those named by the anarchists of the early Argentine workers movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These were given outrageous titles, which parodied the villains and methods of the workers’ and radical struggles: bolas de fraile (“friar’s balls”), facturas (“bills”) and bomba (“bomb”), so named after the anarchist penchant for individual violence. Cesar, a socialist militant introducing the discussion, references these pastries as an example of the hidden history of the working-class struggle that existed long before the arrival of Peronism in the ’40s and ’50s.
A revolutionary socialist lawyer joins the second half of the meeting to teach the delegates about their rights and the relative and always conditional protections of capitalist law. The lawyer comrade is conscious of conveying the gulf between the pretty words of the law and the reality of workplace exploitation. As she says of a UN convention on labour rights, of which Argentina is a signatory: “The bosses use this paper to wipe their asses”.
Delegates, she says, should know their rights so they can be steadfast defenders of the workers they represent. She is quick to demonstrate, through legal precedent and a wealth of practical examples, that the courts cannot be relied on: they enshrine only those rights that are backed by the organisation and force of the workers.
On Wednesday, we head to the Hospital Garrahan, the largest paediatric hospital in Argentina. Norma Lezana is chairing a meeting of health workers from across the country. Norma is another MST militant and secretary general of the union. They meet in a room in the hospital; others join on Zoom. Worker after worker rails against the inaction of the dominant trade union bureaucrats. One says:
“Enough of controlling the nurses and saying that we are doing politics; the truth is the bureaucracy should be ashamed. We don’t want more [leaders] who don’t represent us. We want true union representation that defends the workers and the entire health team, of course, but for us nurses, as the most discriminated against in the entire health system, there is total disgust and total indignation.”
Another comrade from the province of Río Negro talks about the collusion of the provincial governors with Milei’s austerity plan, including Peronist governors:
“Their relation to the privatising project is explicit. The governor of our province? He invited us to withdraw from the public health system if we are not satisfied with that. And this has been happening. The [health] teams are empty in the mountains. They’re closing! They’re closing the intensive care services.”
In attendance at the meeting are activists from the universities. Two socialist students from the medical faculty of a Buenos Aires university speak on the importance of linking the struggles of the public health sector to the fight for public universities. The students are preparing for a march on 12 November, building from a wave of university occupations last month. They invite the health workers to their demonstration and explain that the medical school is discussing the struggle taking place at the Hospital Garrahan.
Another speaker, Luciana Franco, from the nursing graduates’ association, talks about the struggle of Buenos Aires nurses to win official recognition as “professionals”. Nurses from the association are about to attend the Buenos Aires legislature to pressure politicians to adopt their plan for professional recognition. They have been invited there by Cele Fierro, a deputy from the Workers’ Left Front—an electoral coalition of revolutionary parties from the Trotskyist left.
After the meeting, Norma invites us back to the hospital later in the week. From 10 in the morning to 10 at night workers from the Hospital Garrahan will be on strike. A festival will take place all day as part of the struggle. As Norma says, this fight is to defend three sectors: the public health system, the families of the patients who rely on the hospital and the workers inside it.
On Wednesday morning, we wake to the news that Donald Trump has won the presidency in the United States. What this means for workers in the US and around the world is still unclear. Surely it will give a boost to far-right projects the world over, including the government of Javier Milei. Milei believes, or hopes, that Trump will waive debts that the Argentine government owes to the US. If delivered, this could significantly boost the credibility and success of the Milei’s economic shock plan.
The left the world over could learn a lesson from the serious, hard-headed organising taking place in hospital wards and tyre factories, on the streets and in the universities in Argentina. In the face of rising inequality around the world, a climate crisis and the surging influence of the far right, no-one is coming to save us but us.
