The popular riots sparked by Argentina's latest austerity program have been widely described in the press as "austerity riots". It would be more accurate to call them "IMF riots", for the instant impoverishment of a considerable number of Argentine citizens is exactly what the IMF prescribed and got.

For years, the IMF has called for cutting wages and trimming public expenditure on pensions and basic social services as a condition of further loans, all the while extolling the overvalued dollar-to-peso link. With the blessing of the IMF, the country has been systematically looted by both transnational investors and their local allies. Workers, the poor and the elderly now face social collapse and a grim future in one of the hemisphere's wealthier countries.

Public gatherings are illegal, soldiers patrol the streets and the people are being told that in these circumstances they must choose between debt default and radical devaluation, both of which, they are also told, will prove equally ruinous.

The Argentine crisis is therefore above all a crisis of democracy, in which the IMF is effectively responsible for the imposition of a state of siege. It is unlikely to be the last, for the recipes for social disaster imposed by the international lending institutions will inevitably generate social tensions which cannot be resolved within the limited political choices which have so far been on offer.

In the current crisis, the IUF expresses its deep solidarity with our Argentinean affiliates and with the people of Argentina in their struggle for democracy and social justice. With all the resources at our disposal, we will fight to ensure that trade union and democratic rights in Argentina are not sacrificed for the satisfaction of the IMF.

Radical austerity and the suspension of democratic rights under a state of emergency are impossible to confine to a single country. The depth of the Argentinean crisis, and its likely international repercussions, highlight the urgent need for the labour movement internationally to fully commit itself to the practical reconstruction of an international financial system which currently places investment ratings over such basic human needs as a living wage, public health and education and support for the elderly. The system currently in place has again failed to satisfy elemental social and democratic criteria. It is time to ask, not how to lobby the IMF more effectively, but how to construct an effective political campaign to have it replaced.