Capitalism is attacking Argentine workers – and you could be next

Picture by Marcel Strauss.

As always, when a right-winger tells you he or she is campaigning for “freedom,” you are afraid. Very afraid. Because “freedom” in these cases means freedom for the richest financiers and industrialists to do whatever they want.

For them, “freedom” is for capital, not for people without capital to invest. Today’s example is the offensive against the working population taking place in Argentina, where the new far-right president, Javier Milei, is determined to test how far capitalist ideology can be pushed. So far, Argentines have resisted, but Milei, cheered on by major business leaders at home and abroad, is determined to push through his austerity packages. And he has shown no inclination to be stopped by mere democracy.

Still, there are no surprises here. President Milei pursued a program of extreme austerity and wielded a chainsaw at his campaign rallies. Unfortunately, enough Argentines bought into his sirens or were desperate enough, faced with the country’s agonizing inflation, to try anything to get him elected, ending the one-term rule of the otherwise dominant Peronists. Unfortunately, doing something new for the sake of being new rarely works when it is directed against you. And there is nothing new here. President Milei has simply spread the standard ideology of the far right, albeit with unusual vigor. Snake oil is snake oil, as Argentine labor is already finding out.

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