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The binary logic of good guys versus bad guys that encompasses practically all the media, networks and forums, with few exceptions, is that we are facing sequence IV of the films that Stallone put together.
The truth is that, whatever position one takes towards events in Europe, and whether they lead to even greater events or whether it is a lightning offensive that Russia will stop in Ukraine, there would be no doubt about the global economic effects that will reach Argentina.
The volume of that reach shows mixed opinions, except for the energy issue.
Everyone agrees that the country will suffer very problematic consequences, being soft, because the spike in oil and gas prices will affect local rates, exactly when that issue is or would be the main battle in the fine print of the agreement with the Monetary Fund.
And, as if that were not enough, the rise to the clouds of food raw materials means that the tension with agricultural producers and export oligopolies will increase, which among us is summarized under the generic “the field”.
It is the old question that we would again be victims of our advantages: we produce (even in abundance) what the world requires, but the lion’s share goes to a handful of living and we dispute how the tail segments are distributed.
From another perspective, the international crisis could be a reason for local exploitation and, especially in the case of agricultural commodities, resigning ourselves to the fact that it can only hit us negatively is an immobilizing diagnosis.
Enrique Martínez, former head of INTI, current coordinator of the Institute for Popular Production and, precisely, one of the most relevant productivists of the national thought staff no consignistahighlights the obviousness (obviousness?) that, for example, Using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to make wheat more expensive in Argentina would mark the resounding symbol that everything is seen as a business, instead of seeing food as a social good.
And it adds one of the central challenges: the conflict will raise the price of wheat because Ukraine is one of the largest producers in the world, but that should affect importing countries. Not us, unless our producers act like the bowler who increases the price of mineral water if there is a flood.
That, for countless times, is where the matter of with what concrete political force and with what effectiveness decisions could be made that do not fall into the descriptive adventurism that the debt is not paid because it belongs to Macri; that then Macri and his henchmen are the ones who pay for it; that a snap of the fingers would suffice to nationalize, for example, foreign trade; or that it would be enough to return to schemes such as the National Board of Meats/Grains/National Food Company/etc.
Martínez warns against the danger or futility of the bureaucratic centralization which would mean going back to the models of the last century, when the dispute was between national States, in the framework of a production capitalism rather than almost exclusively financialized (Things before slips of paper to speculate on things, said quickly but with no refutation in sight).
Today, very much in contrast, this -digitalized- financialization of capital forces renew the productive head. Not to mention the way in which algorithms come to determine how “the masses” think and act, or the abstraction “people”.
What’s more If we ask ourselves how concentrated octopuses are controlled, the margins to apply retentions, the efficiency in detecting and sanctioning evasion and avoidance maneuvers, wouldn’t it be more practical to focus on how to expand the market and, thus, the price of essential products, through a better regionalized economy, intervening with new actors in the value chains, instead of, alonebattle against the perfidious gains of an immutable enemy?
Is it only on the demand side and the “supervision” of the great Power factors that we should try to get out of or manage the productive and inflationary quagmire?
Are oligopolies expected to act as if they weren’t?, as Martínez also asks, and as if it made common sense to aspire to their eradication.
However, prior to the “technical” issue of solving supply and demand in a dependent country in presumed development paths, the mother of the sheep continues to be With what political drive is it facing the tremendous challenge of not hitting the same stone again?
With what force is it done, that does not represent what already governed until just two years ago with a renewed will (2021) 40 percent of society?
Regrets are useless.
The very curious but useful electoral experience that managed to get rid of Macri, unifying the “right” and “left” of Peronism (and a little further) to synthesize it in controversial but equally effective terms, was hit by a universal pandemic. And now, on top of that, a war or international episode of unpredictable gravity.
The feeling is powerlessbecause it occurs in the midst of the most indescribable indebtedness legacy that, in the region, any government of any time and place has suffered.
We are buckled between possibilism and voluntarism.
Depressing one, easy the other.
In the legitimately provocative concept that one comes out of the labyrinths from the top, the only hopeful perspective is that the factions of the Front of All -None and none of its referents have the power to impose conditions on the other- appear united, in explicit modeabout a clear story that this and that will be done, with such and what derivations, regarding the agreement with the IMF and, sooner or later, with what tactics and strategy regarding the internal market.
That has no way other than Alberto and Cristina showing themselves togetherexplaining what is the unit foragainst what Argentina is facing in the correlation of internal and world forces, what efforts will be in charge of whom to achieve what objectives, who will be chosen as allies.
Without that image of unity with what goal (even that), with elementary arguments about which interests will be touched towards which perspective, exhibiting the against and the favor of the measures to be taken, and calling for even modest but concrete achievements, it is possible to be insistent and even exhausting: the lurking photo of 2023, which is just around the corner, will be some Larreta with some radical guitar player. Forgive the redundancy.