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As soon as the quarantine was adopted by the European countries, the thesis that quarantine set up an emergency political regime went around with more or less success. The so called “state of emergency” refers to a rule system that could be closer or further of the formal democracy, because it makes reference to the development of an extraordinary ability of the State to be the guardianship of the individual life, with relative independence of the characteristics of their political institutions. In the characterization converged a Left that defines itself as “pluralistic” and a Right that considers itself liberal. In both instances stand out those who called to a “rebellion” against quarantine, in Argentina we have had a discussion in defense of the quarantine confronting the FIT, abroad the insurgence against it was leaded by Trump, Bolsonaro, the English Johnson, the Italian Salvini and Sebastián Piñera.
In fact, the “state of emergency” was represented by the political field critic of the called “social distancing”. The defense of the individual or circulating liberty in a pandemic could be instrumental to the wealthy social classes as it represents a death penalty for the workers of the impoverish masses. Even more if it is taken into consideration, the health lack of health unprotection of the majorities, specially because of the high rate of privatization of the health system due to the destruction of the public system. The coercion of the State to content a sanitary crisis is relatively progressive contrasting the abandonment of the state role as representative of the “society as a whole” that has the obligation to maintain precisely due to the class antagonism of this society. Of course, a different thing is the real capacity of the state to undertake a real sanitary protection, as a result of its character of class and the monopoly of the means of production which the bourgeoisie displays. The liberal critic to the “progressive social distancing” during a pandemic shows its reactionary character, at least in the capitalist decadence era. The same as the “right to work”, that is the right to suffer exploitation, the right to life is one of the rights that could and must be claimed to the capitalist state.
Three or four months after the pandemic started, we contemplate extended popular rebellions –not “a state of emergency” that imposes the generalized political shut down, but a state of rebellion. This shows other fiction of the liberal critic – the one that says that history is made from above, through the institutions and not by means of the class struggle. The “decisiveness” of the state could not be characterized as reactionary in abstract terms, that is, independently of its content in each historical era. If that were the case, the Jacobine dictatorship in the French Revolution or the proletarian dictatorship headed by Lenin and Trotsky should be condemned.
Carefully considered, it is possible to see that Trump´s attempt to establish a “state of emergency” in the EEUU has not succeeded but it has sunk. Trump who has ruled through “executive orders” and police brutality. Both Trump´s and Bolsonaro´s aim to set up a police state have wrap up in the defense of individual liberties. Liberalism has a long totalitarian history in Latin America -natives massacre in the name of Illustration. USA´s popular rebellion has got a conquest that, in spite of being necessary, happened unexpectedly: the right-wing Supreme Court has just ruled the illegality of firing employees on the basis of gender identity. It is not mere bagatelle because the more significative malice against the right of sexual diversity was that it violated the conscience of that part of the personal in a working place that refused the diversity. In the middle of the warnings about the advance of the “state of emergency” has taken place the most extended uprising against police brutality and racism in history.
It is clear that the state of rebellion is a continuity of the popular rebellions previous to the pandemic that have to do with the process of the capitalist dissolution which repeatedly shows itself in an international crisis, increasingly accentuated and with it epicenter in the capital metropolis. To use quarantine as weapon of the “state of emergency” would have been necessary the set-up of a period of political reaction. There have been generalized attempts in this sense, but they have not flourished as a whole tendency. An aspect of Dialectics is to appreciate the phenomenon inside a diversified totality, when it is not at hand of the doctrinarian, the impressionism is the result. The pandemic has fallen on the capitalism as a catastrophe, just because it has exposed it insuperable mis statements and its dissolution trend. It clearly impulses a new era – the “new normal” will be the revolutions, the social distancing should be rival with masses political crowds. As anyone could be surprised this state of dissolution could be found enlarged in Argentina. The State present itself under the form of an “asymptomatic carrier” that goes and come between hospital confinement and intensive care – without testes, respirators or oxygen.
It has not currency or financing, is taken over in a generalized “bankruptcy proceeding” and face people resistance, struggles and strikes that if brought together would fit in the category of popular rebellion. In spite of govern by executive orders it is not a “state of emergency” because it would need the capacity to impose them in the time. For a people to march in the way of a government the judiciary structures are not enough – it is necessary political muscle. Argentina is governed by a confederation, about to be break, formed by the party in power that works as a coalition, the opposition where the command is in hands of the acquiescent, the governors of the whole political spectrum. It is not true that Alberto Fernandez were the referee, it is not the same that be a peacemaker, the same is the case of the Vice-President because in politics the VAR does not exist. The possibility of a special Bonapartism should be wait till the present unstable equilibrium blow out as a consequence of a political breakup.
Of course, the pandemic limits the popular rallies, but the layoffs and the work characteristics and protocols have unleashed a great number of conflicts, even when the compromise of the union bureaucracies with the state and the employers is fully working. There is a fright, which is a fundamental one, by the control of the working places. The crisis that the quarantine is suffering already lead to increasing struggles at the same time as the “reopening of activities multiplies the repressed claims and those that will be surge as a consequence of that “reopening”.
The crisis of the foreign debt, the political impasse that the governmental intervention in Vicentin´s holding, the preventive bankruptcy proceeding (fires and reduced salaries) that Latam claims, the pandemic sprout and the necessity to fight agains it with resources and measures of social intervention, all this presages a short term government crisis that will mobilize all the social classes.
It is necessary to coordinate all this fights with the method of class deliberations to defeat the attempt of the capital to throw the cost of the crisis over the workers.
On the other hand, it is necessary to approach the power crisis that is developing. With this purpose we put forward a congress of elected delegates by initiative of the combative organizations, with the aim to present an economic plan of the working class and with this the candidature to power. The nationalization without payment of the great industry and the banks under workers control is an immediate necessity to confront the catastrophe that is developing.
