As Argentina faces a catastrophic second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 30,000 daily cases and 550 daily deaths in a population of just 44 million, the Morenoites of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PTS) , in coordination with their allies in the pseudo- The parliamentary group of Workers of the Left and the Left Front (FIT-U) demands that the Peronist government of President Alberto Fernandez ban the export of vaccine components produced in the country to the rest of Latin America, in order to speed up the vaccinations of Argentines.

The PTS and FIT-U stepped up their campaign for this reactionary nationalist claim as the second wave gained momentum at the end of March, and Argentina’s pseudo-leftes struggled to help and cover up the role of the Peronist unions in maintaining workers in high-level conditions. contagious workplaces and pushing teachers and students back to schools.

Like the rest of Latin America, Africa and Asia, Argentina faces severe vaccine shortages, with just 7 percent of the population fully vaccinated to date. Still, the number is much higher than in some of the larger countries in the region, like Colombia and Peru, which have suffered from even worse COVID-19 outbreaks, not to mention the poorest countries in the region. like Bolivia and Paraguay. , where only 5 percent of the population received a single injection.

So far, the bulk of the injections distributed nationwide have been for the Russian-designed Sputnik V and Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccines, while a minority have been doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield, the target of demand from AstraZeneca. ban on the export of Morenoites.

The governments of Mexico and Argentina reached a deal with AstraZeneca in August to produce 150 million doses for Latin America by 2021, with the components being made in Argentina and the fractionation and bottling done in Mexico. In Argentina, components are produced at the mAbxience plant in the city of Garín, in the northern industrial belt of Buenos Aires. While the company was able to produce components for more than 40 million vaccines, it was not until the last week of May that the 1.6 million first doses were distributed in Mexico and Argentina, AstraZeneca admitting to multiple delays in the Liomont plant in Mexico, and blaming some of them for a delay in shipping industrial components from the United States.

On March 31, in a week that saw a 36% increase in daily new cases of COVID-19, ITF-U staged a stunt in front of the mAbxience factory with the motto “Missing vaccines are in Garín “, where FIT-U lawmakers introduced their bill demanding the export ban. FIT-U’s two-time presidential candidate, MP Nicolás del Caño, said bluntly: “from here they took the equivalent of 40 million doses. This means that almost half of Argentina’s population could have been vaccinated. “

The day before, the PTS had published on its website Izquierda Journal an article by senior member Patricio del Corro in which he described exports as “theft” (“se fugaron”).

The bill became the focus of FIT-U’s intervention in front of more than a thousand teachers, during an online meeting of the Ademys union that called for a 48-hour shutdown opposing the back to school order from the mayor of Buenos Aires Horacio Larreta, right wing opposition to the Fernandez government. The Morenoites urged the assembled teachers to sign a petition complaining about “exports to Mexico” while pretending to be concerned about how “the population is suffering the consequences of an escalating pandemic”.

Such reactionary policies denounce any claim that the PTS and its pseudo-left allies in Argentina and around the world, organized around the Izquierda Journal “Network” of websites, are in any way associated with Marxism or socialist internationalism. Their demand for a ban on vaccine exports is in no way linked to a workers’ perspective. Instead, it covers the most reactionary policies launched by the capitalist nation-state system.

Last month, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused the global distribution of vaccines of being characterized by “a scandalous injustice which perpetuates the pandemic”. He added that “a small group of countries that manufacture and buy the majority of vaccines in the world are controlling the fate of the rest of the world.”

The Morenoites do not oppose this “scandalous injustice”. Rather, in a separate echo of the faded claims of Argentina’s ruling class, they think Argentina should be a member of this “little group of countries.”

In Mexico itself, where the umbrella organization to which PTS is affiliated, the “Trotskyist Fraction” (FT-CI) has a section, there has been no attempt by the Morenoites to mobilize workers at the factory. du Liomont to guarantee maritime transport. vaccines scheduled for the rest of Latin America.

On the contrary, offering “left” cover for the Mexican ruling class’s close alignment with US imperialism, the PTS counterpart, the Socialist Workers Movement (MRT), has promoted a wholly anti-scientific campaign to discredit the AstraZeneca vaccine. The MRT complained in a February 18 article that “the world’s least effective vaccine” was being used to immunize “Mexican grandfathers”. These blunt arguments were used by the United States and continental European powers at the height of their vaccine campaign, on the basis of conflicting imperialist interests completely unrelated to scientific results.

The Argentinian Morenoites’ demand for an “Argentina first” vaccination policy explodes all that is claimed in solidarity with their “sister parties” in Latin America, even less with the billions of international workers who have been refused. access to vaccines.

It is a particularly grotesque expression of their subordination and orientation to the national bourgeoisie in each country in which they operate, the main unifying characteristic of their international association. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically deepened national rivalries, pushing imperialist and backward countries into increased interstate capitalist competition, military reinforcements, and authoritarian forms of government.

The Morenoites of the FT-CI have meticulously followed and concealed such movements country after country, even to the point of launching their Argentine and Mexican sections into an almost direct conflict.

In Spain, their affiliate CRT has aligned itself with Franco’s right-wing opposition to the perfidious government of the Socialist Party-Podemos, even calling the ineffective social distancing measures decreed by the government an intolerable attack on individual freedoms. In France, their current CCR, which operates within the NPA, backed pressure from the Macron government to send young people back to universities amid the second wave of the pandemic, aligning themselves with the government’s hypocritical claim regarding student mental health.

In Brazil, where their MRT organization is leaning towards the pseudo-left PSOL, they have aligned themselves with fascist President Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump to promote hydroxycholoroquine as a cure for COVID.

The Morenoites also have, through their American spokesperson, the Left voice, promoted illusions about the eternal stability of American capitalism, downplaying Trump’s attempted coup and promoting Biden’s presidency, writing that the “amount of concessions” his government would offer workers depended on pressure from corporate unions.

In fact, the recent expansion of Morenoite operations in Latin America into the United States and Europe, funded by the resources of their Argentine parliamentary-unionist machine, aims to use their decades-old experience to support the corrupt ruling classes of America to facilitate the betrayal of the American and European workers’ struggles.

Nowhere has this role been clearer than in Argentina, where the old Pabloite Nahuel Moreno was the first to found the current that gave birth to the FT-CI. His aim was to subordinate the working class to “the discipline of General Perón”, a slogan inscribed on the header of his newspaper. In the 1970s, such subordination resulted in the disarmament of the powerful offensive of the Argentine working class, paving the way for the murderous repression of Videla’s military-fascist regime.

Now that it is back in power, Peronism faces widespread hostility to its policy of collective immunity and the economic catastrophe resulting from its handling of the pandemic. The share of Argentines living in poverty has climbed to 42 percent, while child poverty has now reached a staggering 57 percent, with 10 percent of the population living in extreme poverty. At the same time, annual inflation accelerated to 105%.

Under these conditions, the Peronist government desperately seeks to rekindle its old nationalist demagogy against “foreign interests”, in an attempt to defuse growing social opposition.

While the Morenoites intensified their vaccination policy “Argentines first”, the Peronist government was preparing a ban on beef exports, in order to deflect responsibility for the crisis embodied by meat consumption at an all-time low. At the same time, the government faces growing opposition to its continued commitment to honor payments on its $ 45 billion debt to the IMF, and to its negotiations with Brazil and Uruguay on drastic cuts in their debt. common import tariff, which will lead to increased competition from the three countries in the world market, leading to a further decline in the standard of living of workers in the region.

Unraveling the fraudulent “internationalism” of the FT-CI / Izquierda Journal coalition exposes the real reasons for their misuse of the terms “Marxist” and “Trotskyist”. Their attempt to equate Marxism with populist demagoguery and now, under the pressure of growing interstate capitalist rivalry, with reactionary nationalism, aims to poison public consciousness and block the development of a genuine socialist and internationalist leadership in working class. The fight to build this leadership, based on the legacy of Marxism, the Russian Revolution, Trotsky’s fight against Stalinism and the prolonged struggle against Pabloite revisionism, is undertaken only by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).