Stalinists Condone Argentina Coup

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The military coup in Argentina, together with the ban on five workers parties and the jailing of an estimated 5,000 political and union leaders is a massive set back to the working class in South America.

It comes less than a year after President Peron's administration was forced to withdraw state pay laws by a general strike, and alter the working class in Argentina again and again had shown its militancy and willingness to fight in defence of living standards.

Only a bankruptcy of leadership held back the working class within the limitations of Peronism.

Scandalously, Argentina's small Communist Party (which has not been banned), has in effect now welcomed the coup. It issued a statement emphasising the similarities between the aims of the junta and its own programme.

REESTABLISHMENT

In Moscow, Izvestia saw the coup as being a 'reestablishment of order?

These reactionary statements confirm the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism in Argentina as in the international workers movement.

The coup is much more than the replacement of one repressive bourgeois government by another.

It marks a change of strategy on the part of the Argentinian ruling class from one of incorpor ation and arbitrary terror to one of head-on collision with the whole workers' movement.

Peron's government had been crippled as an instrument of the capitalist class by internal conflicts related to Peron's own refusal to resign.

The symptoms of this weakness have been the rapid worsening of Argentina's economic crisis. Production has been falling sharply and inflation has risen to more than 600% over the last year.

Peron attempted to deal with this crisis partly by incorporating the trade union leadership into the state. She obtained the support of the Peronist metal workers' leader Lorenzo Miguel for the anti-working class economic measures promulgated by economy minister Mondelli at th beginning of March.

And while the leadership of the CGT, the main trade union federation formally opposed the measured, in practice they conspired with the government to squash all protests against them.

The other arm of Peron's policy was terror and repression. The right-wing terrorist organisation, the triple-A (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance) set up by Peron's deposed advisor Lopez Rega has conducted systematic murders of local workers' leaders.

In the last three years, the murder of almost 700 workers and local trade union leaders has een reported in the press: and ver the last few weeks hundreds more have been kidnapped.

In addition, Peron's government banned the left' Peronist Authentic Party in December and introduced new draconian security legislation which, as if to symbolise the elements of continmoy, ing of the military coup. came into force on the Far from stabilising capitalism in Argentina these measures have led to growing resistance from the working class and have exposed the corrupt and collaborationist nature of the Peronist workers' leaders.

The military government has lost no time in instituting the kind of policies towards which the Peronist government was moving but which it did not have the political strength to implement.

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be 2 The struggle of the Arab eople will not be held back iy Zionist brutality or efforts ib foster religious divisions. This is the main conclusion that must be drawn from the violent ionfrontations in Lebanon and srael over recent weeks.

The balance of forces throughput the Middle East has been lifected by the progress made by Let wing forces in Lebanon in their against Falangist provocation. Peron with AAA organiser Lopez Rega.