Buenos Aires, January 2002 SOME IMAGES recall the Paris Commune of 1871. Not because they are comparable wisely. events, of course but because they bring to mind Marx's phrase, 'the political form at last discovered. ' Pre-revolutionary crisis, dual power, revolutionary days, Is medio crition. Crisis of bourgeois hegemony and complete loss of the legitimacy of its state mechanisms of domination. Categories abound, multiply and repeat.
But it is difficult to contextualize them in a landscape where daily life is broken (as Trotsky would say) and the 'civil society', the 'multitude, the 'nation', the 'people', are in a state of insubordination, and self-management, exerting forms of direct participative democracy (without any political-institutional mediation). country'.
Nobody sleeps anymore, the neighborhood, village or popular Assemblies - however they are described - take place at night and have become generalised. Thousands of people communicate, listen, deliberate and propose, in hundreds and hundreds of meetings. They organize the protests and demonstrations of the week Every Sunday, in the Centennial Park of the Federal Capital, the coordination of the Assemblies of Buenos Aires takes place. Here the young, the unemployed, the working, the swindled savers, pensioners, women, children come together... as well as the militants of the left organizations who must hang up their party flags and handle their questions Although the political weight of its presence does not go unnoticed, in particular the diverse Trotskyist organizations (PO, MST, MAS, PTS), the Communist Party and the Corriente Clasista Combativa (in which the Maoists of the PCR predominate).
The assemblies are built in opposition to the multi-sectoral dialogue' proposed by the government and the Catholic Church, with the support of the trade union bureaucracies of the two CGTs.
Manoeuvre
What is at stake, however, is not only the rejection of this maneouvre from above for 'discussing the problems of the It is true that there is an instinctive feeling of opposition nies; taxes on speculative to 'politics' (mainly against the disguised corruption of politics), but the deputy Luis Zamora (Autonomia y Libertad) can take part in meetings, marches and caceroleos, fit of 380 dollars a month; without being insulted or regarded with distrust. Moreover, this power from below is developing a consciousness for itself' and a payment of public service movement where anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist demands are advanced. What began as a movement of indignation at the "financial corralito' and the dis- the indebted companies to the missal of the infamous Supreme people; increased budgets in Court of Justice, advances in education and health; free and the direction of a true transi- public education at all levels; tional programme, including: cuts in military and police Non-payment of the foreign expenditure; judgment and debt; breaking with the IMF; punishment of those responsirejection of the Free Trade ble for repression; reduction of Area of the Americas; against the pay and privileges of politidollarization and for a South cians. American currency: nationaliza- Constituent tion of the banks; renationalization of privatized public compa- Assembly To the general demand "that financial capital; suspension of ney should all go, that not all dismissals; immediate food ingle one is left' (referring t and medical assistance to the the political leaders and govunemployed; creation of a mil- erning Peronists, radicals and lion jobs; unemployment bene- Frepaso), is now added the sloEgan of a Free and Sovereign derogation of the law of labour Constituent Assembly' and flexibility; elimination of the tax above all "5 representatives of of 13% on wages and pensions; the Popular Assemblies in the suspension of the cuts for non- Congress' (for the discussion of the national budget). Cuba and charges; one to one weighting Plan Colombia are not absent of all debts and credits: imme- from the Assemblies: the diate return of the money of demand to end the imperialist the small savers; distribution of blockade is expressed and solidarity demonstrations are held.
Obviously, there is a link that connects the struggle of the masses in Argentina with the revolts of Seattle and Genoa, the movement against capitalist globalization and the World Social Forum, the insurgencies in Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia and the formidable radicalization of ever wider layers of youth How should the 'social composition' of the Assembly be defined? In a provisional fashion: it is not 'working class', nor is it an amorphous partnership of the middle class. The Assembly is "polyclass'. It expresses the deep mutations of the social framework and the devastating effects of an imposed neoliberal model. But, first of all, the Assembly is 'popular': somewhere the small saver, the housewife, the worker or the unemployed are no longer humiliated and find a common identity.
On Monday, January 28, this common 'popular' identity was finally able to express itself on a broader scale: a march of 20 thousand piqueteros started from the locality of La Matanza (Province of Buenos Aires) and ended in the historic Plaza de Mayo.
This immense column of the working class met with the enthusiastic support of the vecinos and retailers, facilitating the insurgent union between piqueteros and cacerolas.
The stores did not lower their shutters for fear of being looted, but offered coffee and refreshments to the demonstrators. In any case, as the selforganization movement is constructed and the social laboratory de + velops new experiences, the dilemma becomes more urgent: how to translate this democratic political radicalism into a real socialist alternative of power. I. Karl Marx, 'The Civil War in France', p.290 in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1977. A special Socialist Outlook feature examining the 1871 Paris Commune and its lessons for today.
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