THE GENERAL STRIKE
Argentina
January 19th and 20th 1959 were marked by a new struggle of great scope by the Argentine proletariat.
Even before the various trade-union leaderships issued the call for a general strike to back up the workers of the national meat-packing plants, who were undergoing the assault of government repression, the general strike had already become effective on January 18th.
The toiling population of the entire country was swept up into the movement. It wanted thereby to express its opposition to the government's policy gramme. Frondizi, the new man of the industrial bourgeoisie, is trying to apply a policy aimed at restabilizing the badly compromised economic and financial situation of the country, by means of a substantial lowering of the masses' living levels.
Since the fall of Perón, Argentina has accumulated a trade deficit of $ 1,000 million. At the same time, the country's industrial production has ebbed considerably, and the whole of its economy is still disorganized. The toiling masses are face not only a steady rise in the cost of living but also a spread of unemployment.
Capitalist policy, aiming at stopping inflation and giving a fresh start to industrial production and foreign trade, is at reducing the masses' living level guarantees and various advantages to native and foreign private capitalists.
The turning back of nationalized enterprises to private hands, as well as the participation of imperialist capital in the exploitation of the national in oil and other teritees, complements the government's programme of aus-
"stabilization. Frondizi's trip to the United States, made during the very days of the general strike, had as its goal the obtention of further North American financial aid to back up this policy.
The success that the general strike had with the population was significant of the-scope of the opposition that this policy arouses among the toiling masses. The three groupings into which the Argentine trade-union movement is divided (known by the number of organizations which each comprises: "the 62," "the 32," and "the 19""). were obliged, much against their will, to back up the spontaneous strike movement. But the sectarianism and cowardice of the overwhelmingly majority Peronist leadership (that of the 62 so-called "Córdoba" organizations) prevented achieving a united front of all the trade-union organizations and permitted the other trade-union federations to limit the movement to only
The degree of discipline and combativity of the Argentine masses during the national general strike, despite the ferocious repression of the government, which put the workers under military mobilization, arrested and deported hundreds of trade-union leaders, and hurled the army against the workers, was extraordinarily high.
In spite of the partial success that the government scored as a result of its extraordinary repressive measures, of lack of coördination and cowardice among the leaderships, the masses will learn great lessons from this new and very serious class battle in Argentina: need of the rank-and-file level of factory neighborhood committees; united front and unification in a single trade-union federation ; and an independent workers' class party based on the unions.
• pre-revolutionary situation is rapidly ripening in Argen na, a country where the working class has in recent year given innumerable signs of its extraordinary fighting po-
By the forging of organs capable of unifying the struggle of the toiling masses on an adequate transitional programme, it is possible to pass over to a revolutionary situation.
Belgium