SOCIALIST CHALLENGE called for the Argentinian junta's overturn long before Denis Healey and the Tories 'discovered' it was fascist But we also back Argentinian's claim to the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). With our international co-thinkers we say that workers throughout the world will do best if Thatcher loses this fight.
pean and American business, put in to control Argentina for them. They AT THE END of the first world war Argentina was in chains. A handful of families ran the great wheat and beef-producing ranches while most worked the land in crushing poverty. The cities were a playground for a narrow business elite aping European lifestyle - by super-exploiting millions of poor immigrants in search of a new world.
Has this all changed?
Argentina has joined the dozen SO developing countries' (ADCs) like Hong Kong, Korea, Brazil and Mexico who are Have broken with third world underdevelopment.
Per capita income is Tennes India's; most people live and work in the towns. Is it now a 'normal' capitalist country, like Britain?
Economist Ricardo Parboni offers a different account in The Dollar and Rivals (Verso, £3.95).
Dubbing Argenta-style growth 'dependent development' he says has happened at the behest of foreign capital. Britain's economy is run from tne insiae — by our owli banks and multinationals.
Argentina is run from the outside. It is industrialising occause European, Japanese and American multinationals have shifted production there, faced with declining profit margins and growing instability at home.
They choose countries whose governments have decided, revolutionary threats, to 'embrace development in whatever form, provided or shodarose, is mash benefit tel women's oDoression. solldarnosc. Reds, Mayakovsky, Turkey, Laurence scoll s of the people would consolidate stratum opposed to comParboni.
TRUESID. says 'When these countries abandoned non-alignment, they opted for economic subordination' This does end dependency - it tightens the noose. Why?
• The price of growth is foreign debt.
By 1978 the non-oilproducing ADCs owed $270bn equal to Britain's whole annual produce.
Juan Perón attack him only because he has got out of hand. If the fleet drowns him tomorrow, Haig will put someone worse in his place the day after. The most important thing is to sink the gangsters behind him - with Thatcher and Reagan at their head.
But does foreign capital still enslave Argentina? looks at modern Argentina - its economy, its people, and its government - and asks 'is it still in foreign chains?' ARCEN NI 1979. This is now $32 bn. in went to service this debt per cent This was $180 per worker.
In lic sale ycal ai Alan Freeman N ARGENTNE CN Argentinian workers' pay averaged 37 US cents an hour. So the tribute exacted by the parasites of Wall Street and Westminster was valued, by them, at ten weeks work. • Both finance and machinery is supplied and owned by the advanced countries wno tnereby control in dustry.
Argentina's
mushrooming car industry is equipped and owned by Japanese, Italian and German capitalists.
Once foreign capital has a toehold it can use takeovers, technology, and straight corruption dominate 'DOLA the industry.
Workers even pay for their own chains. In neighbouring. Brazil the British American Tobacco Company - now closing controls over plants many per cent of cigarette market. Since 1914 l nas brougal omy $3m. into Brazil; , between and 1yl9 took out $80 m.
These companies vir tually have the government in their pockets. On 1 January 1965 a special law effectively gave BAT an interest-free 'nonrepayable loan' of $100 m;
years later the ministers who passed the law joined the board of the MUST GIE VISA AKC . 2228388889 company. The deputy who challenged this was sacked by Brazil's president!
• Industry is set up to suit the multinationals' world division of labour.
Capital goods, finance • are shir ped in; consumer and food are shipped out of the mos I nis is one dramatic indicators of dependency.
In 1978, 75 per cent of Argentinian exports to the consisted of food, goods rav materials; only 15 per cent America into this category, and 50 per cer exports consisted o capital goods.
----- pull-quotes -----
DOES THATCHERSM HAVE A FUTURE! Sir Freddie's Crashanti We say Galtieri is a stooge of Euro-
VISAS Pickets Argentine Embassy: both Labour and Tory governments had warm relations with this