[The following article, entitled "The Government at the Crossroads," was published in the January 24 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the weekly newspaper of the Argentine Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST — Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The military chiefs are worried. So are the bourgeois politicians and the bosses as a whole.
There is no lack of reasons for this, for the economic outlook remains bleak, in spite of the good crops. The bosses know that their plans are resting on a fragile and shaky foundation: there is no hope of solving the economic and social crisis, the state deficit continues to mount, and they have already given up any attempt to stop inflation. But what they are most worried about is the discontent that is beginning to surface in the workers' movement after a year in which the bureaucracy has generally managed to keep the lid on struggles.
The bosses need a pilot who can guide them through troubled waters, who they can have confidence will govern the country with a firm hand, and who will have the authority to negotiate with the workers' movement and to harmonize the interests of the big landholders, the industrialists, the medium-scale stockgrowers, etc. The search for this judge whose word is law has taken up the time of the bourgeois politicians, but fear of workers' struggles is still there without any hope of getting rid of it, while the noose of economic difficulties is tightening and discontent is obvious. All this is reflected in the hard line taken in political speeches, in Lanusse's nervousness, and in the discussions going on in the army. So it is that the "pact of guarantees" for the armed forces is again being presented as an ultimatum. And the most alarmist versions talk about right-wing coups within the regime and troop movements.
The situation is a difficult one for 208
the bourgeois order, and it will not end with the discovery of any great leader that can save it. Lanusse presented himself as this person, but the political situation and the loss of prestige the workers' struggles have brought the government appear to have "used him up"; the clever political leader for whom the bosses clamor can't be Cámpora the top Peronist candidate]; and Balbin [head of the Radical partyl, who is doing a balancing act so he can remain on the good side of Peronism without breaking relations with the army, will not end up convineing the other parties and the bosses.
Nevertheless, necessity breeds impudence, and some kind of "arrangement" may be worked out. It is in hopes of doing so that they have come up with the idea of having two rounds in the March elections: Once the electoral weight of each party has been established, the military will be able to make its weight felt by stepping in and dividing up the spoils. No candidate will get more than fifty-one percent of the votes, and this opens up the possibility that it will be the armed forces themselves who, after March 11, will propose "the man who can bring about unity and agreement" -and that they will do so with the backing of the Radicals and the Peronists. Anything to save the existing institutions. ...
With or without a "certificate of guarantees," no bourgeois agreement is going to guarantee a stop to our starvation wages, an end to unemployment, and the salvation of the coun try from imperialist penetration and capitalist exploitation.
In order to bring this about, we workers must reach our own kind of agreement. We must agree to struggle for a minimum wage of 1,200 pesos [U.S.$1 equals approximately 10 pesos] and a fifty percent hike in wages beginning with last December, and to kick the bureaucrats out of our unions. We must agree to follow the example of the compañeros of SOMISA [Sociedad Mixta Sociedad Anónima - Mixed Corporation] and TENSA [Talleres Electromecánicos Norte Sociedad Anónima - Northern Electrical-Mechanical Works Company]. This is the agreement around which the Front of the Workers will be built, and we must develop and maintain it not only in union struggles but also in the political arena. If we all join together, we can do it.