Argentina: Hernan Camarero, full interview

We share the complete interview that Alejandro Bodart conducted with Hernan Camarero, Argentine historian, director of the magazine Archivos and the Center for Historical Studies of Workers and the Left, for the last broadcast of 2020 from Panorama Internacional.

Alejandro Bodart: Hernan, You are a student of the history of the labor movement of our country. Can you tell us what were the main political trends in the nascent Argentine working class??

Hernan Camarero: In the history of the formation of the working class in Argentina and after the constitution of the labor movement, because it is important to differentiate these two levels, one can recognize four great traditions, political identities and cultures. That is precisely what is interesting when one does the history of the working class and the labor movement in Argentina., what is your wealth, its density, its complexity and diversity. that locates it, without a doubt, like the labor movement that brought together, in the whole of Latin American history, a greater capital of experiences and lessons, which were very useful for the times that followed, They even are today when one examines them..

Throughout the first stage, We are going to identify the first stage as the cycle that opens from the training process to the decade of 1.870 a 1.880, look how early we're talking about. One could identify two major trends, two great currents, one was that of the militants who grouped around the Marxist program. The role of some emigrants was fundamental, initially emigrants who came from what had been the repression of the Paris Commune experience in 1.871 and later in the '80s a series of German emigrants who escaped from Bismarck's anti-socialist laws. I mention these two experiences, there were also them from other places, a group of militants from Italian immigration and some cadres who already had experience in the Spanish labor movement. I mention this aspect that now seems overstated, but it is very important, the role of immigrants, the role of cadres trained in previous experiences, that fulfilled a truly exemplary function in the process of formation of the labor movement as a collective subject.

He said then that initially, product above all of the dissemination of Marx's work in the Río de la Plata, a socialist-marxist current was forged, which after various steps ended up coagulating in the decade of 1.880 the experience of a first newspaper, who played a very important role.

At that time the press, newspapers played a group-building role, builder of movements and parties. That first great newspaper was the newspaper El Obrero, that came out in 1.890. And many therefore believe that that date, in 1.890, marks a germinal moment in the history of the labor movement, that the previous years and decades are in some way a kind of proto-development or prehistory of the labor movement. And that with the founding of the newspaper El Obrero, in 1.890, and also towards the end of that year and the beginning of 1.891 of the first federation or attempt to forge a workers' federation, the labor movement emerges in Argentina as an actor. I wouldn't say weight yet, but it is marking a profile in the social and political context.

Let us remember that we are talking about the period where Argentina had strong economic development with the agro-export model., with an oligarchic-conservative regime that, by the way, did not leave many loopholes for the development of the labor movement, that is to say, This had to be a counter-current process.. The foundation of the newspaper I mention, of the first federation and also of the commemoration of May Day for the first time, as international workers day. All of this places us in the year '90., ’91, like a fundamental year.

This first current later took steps towards the founding of what was considered something imperative and very necessary, which was the founding of a workers' party.. This generated some very interesting discussions., discussions that are later republished in the history of the left-wing labor movement. The big discussion at that time was, if a party had to be founded, a party that fought for the political independence of the working class or did we have to insist on the creation of a federation of unions, that is to say, The union struggle had to be prioritized to further galvanize the class and then launch it in a party form. That party or union debate, party or union organization, It was something that greatly marked the field of the socialist movement of those years.

Finally, The group that prevailed was the one that proposed the idea of ​​founding a party. There was a process that lasted between 1.892 Y 1.896, In the middle another important step was taken which was, in April 1.894, found the newspaper La Vanguardia and finally in 1.896 the foundation of what will be the International Socialist Workers Party, which later takes the name of the Argentine Socialist Workers Party. Finally it is known as the Socialist Party.

This Socialist Party, in which initially the one who is going to be your future leader, Juan B. Fair, It didn't have such a central role., rather, he was winning it in the second and third congress and imposing his positions and reformatting that Socialist Party into a program and a strategy., What were the characteristics of Argentina that turned the PS into a strong party?, and I would say successful as a political enterprise, but very weak as a leadership of the labor movement, He did it under a strongly reformist program. That is to say, a reform program, a program that renounced a revolutionary strategy and above all that renounced the dimension of class struggle understood as practices of direct action.

Juan B. He was just talking about the need for class struggle, but a little bit that I understood it as a public debate, a debate in which he forced the bourgeoisie to also structure itself as a party, that finally in Argentina there will be parties around ideas and programs. He said that this is the party of the working class with its program, rather it was a minimal program. There was a maximum program that had been voted on in the congress of 1.896, but it was a program that was stated above all for the first of May or for the days of commemorations, but in practice the party behaved with a minimal program.   

Well here is our party and our program, and launched the challenge that the bourgeoisie also forge its parties. Somehow in the debate and in the confrontation of ideas of the programs and especially in parliament, progress was made in the extension and deepening of a political democracy or a social democracy.. That is to say, It is very clear that the Socialist Party ended up being one of the first parties in Argentina, that had its influence on the labor movement, which also helped the constitution of the labor movement and the union movement, but it was guiding him towards a clearly reformist alternative, parliamentary and very integrated into the system. To a large extent it was even a game that had a certain drift or a certain imprint, in your program, liberal democratic. That is to say, It combined certain very characteristic features of the tradition of Marxist socialism, but it was an incomplete party as a Marxist party. Justo himself denied his status as a Marxist in orthodox terms..

Although Justo had an insertion in the international socialist movement, He was a figure of the second international, perhaps its most prominent figure in Latin America for a few years, He was a rather heterodox Marxist., very unclassical. In that sense, you could say very creative.

We have this first big current, which is that of the Socialist Party. I already marked something that is very important., was strong as a party. Party that began to get many votes already into the 20th century and began to get parliamentarians, deputies and then senators. After the Sáenz Peña Law was opened in 1.912 began to have representation in the senate.

He was strong in the electoral process, in legislative action, in cultural action, in the cooperative movement. Very important, It was an interesting experience, Above all, Justo himself pointed it out, This is about workers being trained in social management through cooperative work., as prefiguring the society to come, Socialism gave a lot of strength to cooperatives. But it was very weak, I say it again, as leadership of the labor movement.

To put it very schematically, It was in that sense, a match, perhaps as reformist or in a reformist imprint as the battlement social democracy already was, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Only the German Social Democratic Party led the labor movement, while the Argentine Socialist Party failed to lead or organize the labor movement.

If socialism didn't do it, who did it? It was done by the second current that began to form in the 80s and especially in the 90s., what was that of anarchism.

Anarchism was very important for the history of the labor movement in Argentina. Above all, since in 1.897/98, the current of the so-called Organizing Anarchists was strengthened, those who founded the newspaper La Protesta Humana, those who proposed an anarchism that rejected the anti-organizing approach and that struggled to fight, obviously, for an anarchist proposal against the State, against the bourgeoisie, against all forms of oppression and domination. But it also gave rise to the union struggle and that was the great merit of the anarchist organizers., They launched into the labor movement. And that is why it is no coincidence that, in 1.901, in a scenario in which socialism, rather it left an empty space of representation, of organization, It was the anarchists who ended up founding the first great organization of the labor movement, what was the FOA, Argentine Workers Federation, in 1.901. Which later became the famous FORA, Workers' Federation of the Argentine Region.

In those years anarchism became the great direction, turned FORA into a fighting entity, what led to grouping, to mobilize between 15.000 Y 20.000 workers, launched them into great struggles against the State and against the bosses, and several general strikes. Even with that which was so characteristic of anarchism, not only doing union struggle, but also other types of combat. For example, They organized the Tenants Strike in 1.907; women organized, They were very important in the fight for the emancipation of women. One points to anarchism halfway between a workers' struggle and a broader popular struggle.

The truth is that anarchists and socialists were the first mass expression of the labor movement. A third stream was added to them, already at the beginning of the 20th century, It was Revolutionary Unionism. It was a very strong current in Europe, especially in France and Italy where they led the labor movement, with Labriola's proposals, Sorell et al.. That they arrived to the lands of the Río de La Plata with great force, They managed to win a sector of the Socialist Party and in 1904/1905 They broke with the PS and were founded as an autonomous current.

What did revolutionary unionism propose?? Initially it was a movement to the left of the PS. They questioned the parliamentary horizon, PS reformist. He argued that the country had abandoned the class struggle and workers had to be organized in their daily struggles and in their especially revolutionary struggles., That's why the name Revolutionary Unionism.

So they ended up forming a current of their own, They became strong in the labor movement, They displaced socialism and then went for the leadership of the labor movement. In 1.915 they got it, when they achieved the leadership of the FORA, at the famous Ninth Congress, in 1.915. That is why this FORA was called FORA Ninth Congress., that is, the FORA directed by unionism.

The interesting thing is that unionism began as a revolutionary current, but then it moderated in its program and strategy, he adapted more and more to the regime, especially under radical governments. And it began to become a group, in a current that is above all negotiative, more pragmatic, even with increasingly bureaucratic trends. Let's say that it was defined by a strongly economic orientation, who renounced political combat.

The union movement was a serious problem for the labor movement., because he blocked, It blocked the possibility of the working class in Argentina fighting for their own political party., to adopt a program with revolutionary characteristics. The unionists initially said, the only revolutionary thing is the union, not the party. There cannot be a workers' party, every party is bourgeois, every party means playing on the terrain of the bourgeoisie. They gave up the political struggle, to the party form and finally ended as all unionisms end, adapted. I always say a slightly provocative phrase, “There are no happy endings in revolutionary unionism”. Antonio Gramsci said, “Revolutionary unionism is a contradiction in terms”, because unionism can never be revolutionary. Because what the union struggle is about, is to improve the conditions of the sale of labor force. For it to be revolutionary it has to take a political program.

Let us remember that the history of revolutionary unionism in Argentina was after being a current very to the left, that questioned the reformism of the PS, ended up negotiating with the radicals, They ended up adapting to the regime in the 1930s and finally dissolved into the ranks of Laborism and Peronism..

There was a fourth current which was the Communist Party, which was also very early. It was the first Communist Party in Latin America along with the Mexican. It formally emerges with the name of the Communist Party, Argentina International section., surge a fines de 1.920, when he takes the 21 Zinoviev conditions of the International and is founded as a section of the Comintern. But in reality it had already arisen before, in January 1.918, under the name of the International Socialist Party.

What had been the International Socialist Party? It had been a break from the left, again a break on the left of the PS. Questioning things similar to that of the Revolutionary Unionism of a decade ago; the reformist horizon of the party, that turned its back on the class struggle, that denied the union struggle, that the fight for elements of the maximum program was forgotten, internationalism, antimilitarism, etc.

It emerged as an internal current of the PS, from 1.911/1.912, with a strong figure, which was that of Jose Fernando Penelón. He fought within the party, He fought for the Socialist Party to have an internationalist behavior during the First World War, They were against the PS deputies voting or being willing to vote to sever relations with Germany, violating what was the tradition and position of the International. Finally they were kicked out and they founded that little PSI, which in '20 took the name of the Communist Party.

In the early years, the PC was a rather weak party in the labor movement., had workers' cadres, but it was not the defining current. My point is that the Communist Party began to become strong in the labor movement from the second half of the 1920s., when they adopted the cellular structure. They broke with the organizational tradition of the old PS and took the form of cell organization; factory cells, business cells. That is to say, the workers of the same company grouped together under clandestine militancy, that the employers could not recognize it and on the basis, From below, forge control or worker power organizations.

With the organization of cells, The CP began to strongly penetrate the working class and especially the most exploited and least organized faction of the working class., what was the industrial working class.

Let us remember that at the end of the '20s, Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s in Argentina there was what was known as import substitution industrialization.. The industry grew a lot, the number of workers in the industry multiplied, of the meat, metallurgical, textiles, of construction. And that was a poorly organized sector.

The socialists did not pay attention to him., The unionists were very comfortable in the unions they managed: the maritime, the railwaymen. The railroad workers were the great labor organization in Argentina. The anarchists were among the most exploited workers., but they were already very weak, they had been defeated. The sea, anarchism suffered a strong defeat with the Centennial strikes, in 1910 and there began a decline.

So there was an empty space, the PC occupied that space. It was launched, as I say in one of my books, to the conquest of the industrial working class and began to organize those poorly paid workers at the base, lacking labor legislation. Where it was very difficult to organize the union struggle, because the boss expelled you as soon as he realized that you were won over by an anti-capitalist conscience. So the PC with that clandestine struggle, armored, with a lot of revolutionary disposition. And this must be recognized, inclusive, despite the fact that the PC was already adapting to the Stalinization process of the Comintern, We don't have to lose sight of this.. We already know that in the mid and late 1920s the Argentine CP was adapting to the bureaucratic and Stalinist drift of the Comintern.. Nevertheless, Despite this historical orientation, The practical militancy of the communists in the factories and workshops opened a space for insertion.

And the CP entered the 1930s and was very well established in the industrial working class.. So it was the fourth stream to arrive, but when it arrived, came with great force. And in the early '40s, there I propose a kind of counterfactual, well I'm not the only one, if the coup of '43 had not occurred, that made Perón appear, It is very likely that the dynamic would have been that the Communist Party not only finished gaining its total influence over the industrial proletariat, I was already directing. Look, I give you something that is impressive.. To 1943, the 6 secretaries of the largest industrial unions in the country, metallurgical, carne, construction, madera, textile and clothing, They were members of the Central Committee of the PC. That is to say, How long will it take for a left-wing party to have its leadership?, in its Central Committee 6 secretaries of the strongest industrial unions?, that was the communist party. That is to say, Its influence among the industrial proletariat was very strong.

It is likely that, passed a few years, He could even conquer the entire leadership of the CGT, which had been founded in '30, in which the socialists and unionists still had weight. But the PC was the party that advanced the fastest.

With this I close this description. It is no coincidence then that, one of the elements of the '43 coup, of Colonel Perón, be precisely an anti-communist strategy. That is to say, prevent the working class from being completely in the hands of the CP and therefore its anti-communist action, on the one hand, to persecute and persecute the communists very hard in '43 and '44, He filled the jail with PC union cadres. But at the same time, with the other hand, he tested these measures to address workers' demands.; increased salaries, aguinaldo, collective agreements. And there arose a new political phenomenon, The appearance of Peronism was the phenomenon that cut short a development of 50, 60 O 70 years.

Peronism always says, “we founded the labor movement”. Every now and then he says “we founded the CGT”, as if they had founded it in '45, In reality, it was founded in the '30s by socialist and union leaders., where there were also communists. Peronism tends to say that they are the point of constitution of the labor movement in Argentina, that's false.

The movement in Argentina had several decades of development in different variants, reformists, revolutionary, rejection of the State, combat against the State, integration, insertion into industrial workers, among the railwaymen. With very rich experiences, impressive programmatic debates about which there is a lot to learn, we have to go back to those debates; of programs, of tactics, maximum program, of what are minimal demands struggles, how to take legislative action, What place does cooperative work have?. The very important cultural struggle. The experience of working-class culture is very important, parties and currents that had libraries, that gave rise to the fight for the emancipation of women.

A nice, It is an experience that I believe can be learned a lot and that in the year '45 has a cut, but it gives rise to other experiences that I can later reincorporate, in which, for example, Trotskyism appears. Which logically in this first period will appear in the year '29, ’30, but as an undoubtedly very marginal current, very small.

AB: In one of your books you develop the impact of the Russian Revolution on these lands., Can you tell us a little about this??

HC: Well, the Russian Revolution was a process that had a great influence on the working class in Argentina and throughout Latin America., even beyond the ranks of the world of workers.

Initially the Russian Revolution, Of course, in its February chapter it had an almost universal character. That is to say, when one studies how the February Revolution was read, whose news arrives in March. Initially everyone was in favor of the Russian Revolution, that is to say, not only the left field. They not only welcomed the overthrow of tsarism, that the tsarist regime was known in the world as the representation of the despotic, of the most despotic autocracy.

Then everyone welcomed the fall of the Tsar and the establishment of a republic, in which that new word called soviet quickly began to be known, which was an organism, a council of delegates, of representatives, of soldiers, of workers and later also of peasants.

So the idea of ​​a republic, of a republic with a popular assembly or council, that portrayed the idea of ​​a very profound revolution, of a mass revolution. That he had achieved what seemed unthinkable, overthrow one of the most despotic and strongest regimes, ancient in the heart of Europe.

Initially everyone supported him: the anarchists, those who are going to be the international socialists who later found the PC, revolutionary unionists. But outside the left everyone supported, inclusive, for example, the newspaper La Nación, I write a book about this called Red Times, and there I commented how the newspaper La Nación, the newspaper La Prensa greeted, they said “Liberals and republicans welcome the events of Petrograd, because now Russia is going to get closer to Western Europe, to the values ​​of the republic, of the division of powers” ​​and then there is a great consensus.

Nevertheless, when the process deepened, I even want to say that it made the headlines, The issue of the Russian Revolution made headlines. All the newspaper headlines portrayed these events. But then as the months progressed and the internal dissidence became known, that's what they were called, within the post-tsarist camp, field that the February Revolution had opened. I speak as if I were an accordion that opens at its maximum from February to March, everyone in favor. But then that accordion is like it closes. It is closing, why? Why are increasingly condemnatory opinions being expressed?, of a trend that is initially not very clearly recognized, What is the tendency of maximalists?.

People begin to talk about a Lenin who, returned from exile, had disrupted its origins in the ranks of social democracy to adopt the Bakuninist program. Look how curious, It was said that what Lenin was proposing was a Bakuninist-type strategy. That is to say, the immediate establishment of the project of a revolutionary commune, Even in the ranks of the vanguard one read that Lenin had already been left out of the ranks of the International, like I had veered towards another approach. further, the suspicion that he was a German agent, that is to say, a paid agent for German imperialism. So that? To overthrow the provisional government, on which the figure of Kérensky stands out. then the fall, the eventual overthrow of the Kerensky government and removing Russia from the war, which was the position that the Bolsheviks had, It was going to be a goal tailored to the German Empire, Thus, he was a german agent.

Those things were reproduced very clearly. When one reads the newspapers from July or August '17 and they are reproduced in Argentina, I mean in Buenos Aires and it is reproduced in the Vanguarda.

The truth is that we know the outcome. Finally, the outcome is the October insurrection; the conquest of the Bolsheviks by the majority of the soviets, the establishment of a Soviet government and the beginning of the great transformations.

When that happens, an impressive polarization is generated.. Not just the traditional right, the liberal right, the conservative right, of course the church; which had enormous influence at the time, for example, one of the big newspapers was called El Pueblo, was of Catholic leanings. Can anyone see the Nation, The Press, The reason, but also the Vanguard of the socialists, condemning what was defined as the coup d'état of the maximalists.

A coup d'état against the republic, a coup against the rest of the left, even against the Mensheviks. A coup d'état at the service of German imperialism, because it immediately withdrew Russia from the war and allowed Germany to vacate its eastern front and concentrate on the western front. Those were the diatribes that occurred towards the end of '17 and beginning of '18.

Where did support for the October Revolution last?? In the ranks of the labor movement, there the nascent International Socialist Party. The Socialist Party was very confused, officially the leadership of the Socialist Party; Juan B. Fair, Antonio de Tomasso, Respect, They condemned Lenin's coup and condemned the idea of ​​a dictatorship of the proletariat. They said, We socialists do not support any dictatorship and it is also going to be a dictatorship over the proletariat.

From then on the Socialist Party formed its reformist program and said that what they are doing is crazy.. But what happened? That within the PS there were many sectors that spoke out in favor of the revolution. Among them, for example, a historical figure, Senator Enrique del Valle Iberlucea. That he had been in positions always arguing with Justo, but he was not exactly a reference for the left wing. Nevertheless, The senator from Valle Iberlucea began to support many of the transformations and spoke out in favor of the Russian Revolution. And the, how he was a senator, look at the reactionary climate and to what extent the bourgeoisie can hold the flag of the republic, that in the Senate a judge started a trial against him for his positions in favor of the revolution and the discussion began about the violation. And it was unleashed, that is to say, was expelled from parliament, just for expressing his position of support for the Russian Revolution.

As from the Iberlucea Valley there were other figures. an intellectual, linked to the party like José Ingenieros, also started in favor. That is to say, the ranks of socialism were moved. Even some time later a current was formed, a current called Thirdist. A very important current, over all youth, who directly proposed that the Socialist Party support the revolution and join the Third International, something that Juan B. Justo completely rejected. But they were expelled, That third-party current entered and strengthened the Communist Party starting in the year 1.921.

In the ranks of anarchism it was complex. Anarchists initially supported, even the October phenomenon, the idea of ​​overthrowing the government of the bourgeoisie, establish a government of the soviets. But they quickly began to argue that this was not a government of the soviets., if not a one party government. And then newspapers like La Protesta and then La Antorcha quickly retreated..

But there was an anarchist current, known as Anarchist Bolshevik, who maintained support for the revolution. Proposing that the Bolsheviks were not the central element, that the central thing was the process of objective revolution that was occurring and that this was a process that had to be supported. The Bandera Roja newspaper expressed that position of the libertarian camp, who maintained the position in favor of the revolution, at least until the year '21. After Kronstadt, obviously, and other events made them retreat.

In the ranks of revolutionary unionism there was also another current, they were called red unionists. They had a newspaper, The Union Battle. They were guys who said, we are unionists, but we recognize that the Bolsheviks have carried out a revolution like no one else has done.. They recognized that the program was disrupted, It had not been the unions that had taken power, had been the soviets led by a party. They said it is a revolution, we must support it., trusting that later they will get rid of the game.

I show the diversity of positions that existed, Logically, the news coming from Petrograd and Moscow was quite moving.. It was the revolution that allowed things like the distribution of land, workers control of production, They advanced measures for the emancipation of women; against the enslavement of domestic work, divorce, abortion; the total transformation of art, culture and aesthetic avant-garde. They were things that during the year '18, '19 and '20 kept the field of the labor movement in suspense, from the left. I would say that, in a majority way, overwhelming majority there was support for the revolution.

And in the ranks of the class enemy, The bourgeoisie, the big newspapers and the church, there was obviously a chase, a fight against the ideas of the revolution. What I see is that, yes in the first 3 O 4 years many support the Russian Revolution from different perspectives, I would say by the mid-20s., support for the Russian Revolution is more identified with the current that is explicitly referenced in the Soviet regime, in the party and in the Comintern. And that was the Communist Party.

I don't know if you understand. Initially the support is very broad, very diverse, but by the mid-20s that support is more referenced on a PC, who in some way assumes the place of ambassador of the process of the Russian Revolution.

The Russian Revolution continued to impact after the '20s, logically and in the '30s, but everything was now more mediated with the local reference, What were the communist parties?. I mean that the support exceeded the field of the ranks of the workers. For example, its impact on the world of culture, of intellectuality was enormous. Dozens of writers, of artists and painters, The most advanced of the avant -garde adhered to the revolution.

When one sees the world of good air writers of the 20s, Boedo's group, Florida's group, in both, Most of the writers adhered to the revolution. Everyone, including a young man, of which one would then believe it very little, What was Jorge Luis Borges. Who was a fan, Defender and admirer of the Russian revolution, there between the ’17, ’21 y ’22. He declared it, He affirmed it in his cards and wrote some poems called Red Guard and I don't remember the other titles. I was going to project a book, that I was going to publish under the title of the Red Psalms, where he honored the revolution. But after the ’21 and ’22 Borges was disappointed with the course of the revolution and turned towards other positions. Then he left and tried to cover that youth period, not adherent to Bolshevism, but adherent to the cause of the revolution from a libertarian communist perspective, That was a path that many followed.

The concept of libertarian communism, that is to say, people who came from a libertarian tradition, Burata and converged with the revolution. Let's think that was a journey that many toured. For example, In Argentina, The Mika Feldman Insurrexit magazine group, Hipólito Etchebehere, etc. I comment because then there were some of the first Trotskyists in Argentina. It was that generation of libertarians who adhered to the revolution and led to their support, Entering the ranks of the Communist Party.

So, As I say, The influence of the Russian revolution was felt in several workers of the workers. Good, The student world. I did not mention something as obvious as the university reform of ’18, arising in Córdoba, but then spread everywhere, Even in Latin America.

THE MOVEMENT OF THE REFORM OF ’18, Obviously it was also a movement that was referenced in the Russian revolution. Why? Because the Russian revolution was seen as a revolution made above all by a new generation. It was seen as a revolution made, where the role of intellectual students, merged with the workers who, In turn, they led a mass peasant movement, It was seen as a very effective equation. Then the place of the young people, Students appeared enhanced by the revolution. Then the entire ideal of the reform of ’18 was also inspired by the Russian revolution.

So we can see, There are many phenomena of class struggle, of the union struggle, of the student and cultural struggle, that had a very deep inspiration beacon in the Russian revolution. That was maintained at least during the whole first decade. Then unfortunately, the degeneration and bureaucratization process of the revolution regime, of the reactionary process, Thermidoriano who will end up directing Stalin, made support to the revolution take another character and cool very markedly.

AB: Hernan, Very recently you published a job on the emergence of the leftist opposition in the third international in the region and in our country. Can you develop this a bit?

HC: If I started studying, Some time ago I had analyzed it. But now I returned on the bases of new sources, that they had not been so examined, which are the papers that Trotsky himself had deposited after his exile in Mexico, had deposited them at Harvard University. They were the papers of the left opposition.

In recent years these materials could be known more, And they are very rich to understand the germination process and first development of the leftist opposition and after the fourth international.

I was studying that phenomenon. The left opposition arose in Latin America, I would say in 3 O 4 main countries. I'm talking about a very small foci, that is to say, of a very limited group of militants, And now I will analyze the context a bit.

There was a small group in Mexico. Of course, that then will be developed in the ’30 and will be very important to support Trotsky when he arrives in Mexico, as a place of exile.

There is another important focus in Brazil. I would say that it was very interesting. Fortunately, many works are being done on that first leftist opposition and that first Brazilian Trotskyism. I highlight it a lot and in the article I use it to compare it with the Argentine case, And so then to understand the Argentine case, When comparing it with the Brazilian.

The Brazilian had the peculiarity that a current of opposition within the PCB arose, formed by important workers' paintings and very important intellectual paintings. Among which was the figure of Mario Pedrosa.

Mario Pedrosa was a great art critic, philosopher. A guy who was a reference in the intellectual field of Brazil, Beyond and much more important than its identification with Trotskyism. Let us remember that Mario Pedrosa was the only Latin American who attended the Foundation Congress of the Fourth International, in 1.938.

It was a very important guy for the position in Trotskyism in the ’30. In his exile in Germany he will know Trotsky's positions, of the opposition and will be linked to opposition paintings in Brazil. Some workers' paintings, intellectuals, Rodolfo Coutinho, Mario Xavier and others. And they will form a group, It is not that they are so numerous, They were not more numerous than the one that existed in Argentina in the first years ’30, But they had a very relevant structural location. They had workers of more or less important and intellectual unions with a lot of projection. They formed an opposition trend, which was quickly expelled from the Brazilian PC and formed the first group called Lenin communist group, which later took the name of the Communist League.

Some time later, Already after the ’30, They will take the name of the Leninist Obrero Party and will become a section of the fourth with some weight.

The interesting thing is that Pedrosa's group, Coutinho, Wolf Aristides and others, Eventually it could become an alternative to the direction of the PCB in the hands of Octavio Brandão and Astrojildo Pereira, Because they were a weak direction. That is to say, Hypothetically one can think that the left opposition could dispute the direction of the Brazilian party. And then Brazil is a relevant case.

Compared that of Argentina was weaker. Maybe technically is the first group. Argentines can also claim there, that Argentine obsession of being the first. The first great socialist party of Latin America, The first communist party and some say that it is the first group of the leftist opposition in South America. Already in the middle and end of ’29 what is going to be the first left opposition outbreak in the country will be, which was called the opposition communist committee.

What happens that this communist opposition committee is a very small and very weak group. It's more, It doesn't even arise within the Argentine PC.

What had happened is that the Argentine PC had had a very important place in the whole Latin American PCs, South American, especially, Because it had been the most reliable section for Moscow. The Argentine PC was a relatively large PC for the mid -’20, With some growing insertion in the labor movement. But also for the characteristics of the Argentine working class and the PC itself, where all kinds of languages ​​were spoken, We are talking about a multinational and multinational working class. And for the characteristics of Argentina, that it was a more possible country to be known or understood from Europe, that the countries that appeared with a more fully Latin American identity.

I don't know if it is understood. Argentina appeared with a very strong urban structure, A very strong working class, With certain parameters that Europeans could understand a little more. For different characteristics and because the PC itself was more or less strong, Buenos Aires became some way in the capital of the Comintern and here the South American Secretariat of the Comintern was forged. That initially had its leader in penis.

So, Buenos Aires operated as the Cominternian capital. And the leaders of the Argentine PC became, With the passage of time in leaders, some of them, “Apparatchik” Latinoamericanos. Types that went to the PCs almost as auditors.

The case of Victorio Codovilla is the best known. THE GREAT MOSCOVITA DEVICE, Stalinist, Not only from Argentina, but of Latin America, even beyond, Because we all remember the role he played in Spain. Very important elbow paper in Spain, He was in Cuba, He was in Chile, He was in Brazil. That is to say, The Argentine PC appeared as a party that, somehow, Some tend to compare with what was German social democracy for the second international, that is to say, A reference pole.

With such a strong PC, With an address that begins to be so strong, Codivilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi, The left opposition cost much more. That is to say, The Brazilian PC address was comparatively weaker. The Argentine PC had a direction with many links with Moscow.

So it was a difficult opposition that, It did not even leave the bosom of the PC, It arose from the breast of a dissident PC. The Argentine PC had several dissidents, several ruptures in those years.

In the ’22 a current called Frentista had emerged, that was a current, one can say right. Raised the idea of ​​the single front, In that there was agreement, The Single Front propitiated by Lenin in the ’21. But I wanted to bring the agreement with the Socialist Party almost permanently. That is to say, almost liquidate the autonomy of the PC in the agreement with socialism.

He was expelled and created a small group that later. I mention it because some paintings that will then be from the leftist opposition and the Trotskyism, for example, They had had their militancy in Frentismo. One of them was Pedro Milesi, who was an important union picture, had had a frentista experience.

The other rupture was in '25, that of the "Spark" Communist Party, who took the workers' newspaper "the spark". This was a break on the left, a left wing of the PC that questioned the Codovilla Directorate, Ghioldi and Penelón, raising the fight for the maximum program. They were thrown and known as "the sparks". There were several paintings that were later Trotskyists. The sprinkler PC was not officially Trotskyist, Unlike, It was vindicated contrary to Trotsky, But many of his paintings then were Trotskyists, among them Héctor Raurich or as the ones he mentioned, Hipólito Etchebéhère, Mika Feldman and others.

He 27 The last breakup occurred, What is Penelón. There was a break where the PC leader troika, Where Penell was expelled and armed its own game in ´27 and ´28. Here I return to the left opposition story. The first leftist opposition group did not arise on the PC of Codovilla-Ghioldi, The official PC Let's say, The one that Moscow recognized, nor in the "spark" PC, If not on the Pylon PC. So, What I see and I think a little, I don't know if you remember Alejandro, In my article I use the concept of communist field. That is to say, What is happening in the years ´20, especially in the second half of the ´20, There are several PCs. Is the PC of Codovilla-Ghioldi, The official PC; The Pylon PC; The sparkist PC and the old Frentist trend. It is a divided match, where there are also passages between one and the other.

Then the leftist opposition formally arises from the Pyelón PC, But it begins to capture some militants who are in the official PC, where the pass between militants is quite important, And where also the left opposition is not raising the idea of ​​creating another communist party. What is the flag that indicates the leftist opposition?, This is very interesting. It raises with great force the unique front idea, It raises the idea that they do not want to create another communist party, but what they want is to regenerate the communist parties and the communist international of their stalinist degradation and their centrist drift. They say, What we are attending is a coagulation of a bureaucracy, In Stalin's hands, put Bujarins the others, where the struggle of the first four congresses of the International is abandoned. And that centrist orientation of the international is committing all kinds of disasters, such as disaster in China, where they agreed with Chiang Kai-Shek.

But, Also now from ´28 what new disaster added the comintern? The famous class line against class, The famous third period line, It was from ´28 to ´35. A delusional line, A sectarian line, Ultraizidist, where the PC began to state that the world had been polarized between only two alternatives: fascism and communism. In the middle there was nothing left, In other words, what was authentically revolutionary was going to communism and what remained in the middle, for example, Social democracy, I was going to end up playing in favor of fascism. From there came the theory of social fascism.

Obviously with this line what Stalin and his current was doing, was to spray the single front in the events, There was no possibility of agreement of the communist parties with the workers' bases of the Social Democrats currents, reformists. The single front was impossible, So much so that communist parties are launched to form red unions, Break the unions. That is seen in Argentina. For example, The CGT is founded and the PC does not enter the CGT, Because he says that CGT is a rotten organization, yellow, bureaucratic and we do not enter. Because the only trade unionism, It is a red trade unionism, class, separate. Then the PC is left out of the CGT to the ´35. That line the left opposition combat, He says it's a sectarian line, that denies the single front, of right -wing policies. For example, The Argentine PC adopted a program, as the program that begins to take the ´28 - ´29, which is a program of a stroke. Thus the Argentine PC begins to have a stages revolution model. Start saying: First the stage of democratic revolution will come, Agrarian and anti -imperialist, in which the working class can play with the national bourgeoisie and then the socialist revolution will come for another stage. This is a very important definition, that takes the PC from ’28 in its Congress and in ’29 a conference of Latin American communist parties and ends it imposing it in Buenos Aires. The Peruvian Mariateguista and Codovilla Delegation is even crushed by mariateguist theses and imposes the line of stages.

Look what paradoxical, It is the approach of a revolution in stages, that gives him a place in a class alliance with the national bourgeoisie, but combined with a sectarian and ultraiz leftist line.

With that drifting the PC makes quite important disasters. For example, It is not pronounced against the coup of ’30, It has no line to face the blow of 1930. It is outside the CGT and existing trade union agencies. Fighting the Socialist Party as if it were a fascist party, Any type is denied according to the labor base of the Socialist Party.

The leftist opposition, This is very interesting, Although it was a very small group, gave chair in that sense. Against adventurerism, of sectarianism, raising the single front line, raising the idea of ​​intervening in unions and real and existing organizations. And above all a very internal approach, This little left opposition raised: a totally bureaucratic spirit prevails, that suffocates all kinds of debate, that expels, The party and the international is becoming a device where there is no possibility of any type of dissident, then raised the reinstatement of the expelled.

But see how interesting, I raise it in my article. The leader of that little group, Roberto Guinney, That was an English immigrant, Like so many militants on the left in those years. In the group were all foreigners practically: Guinney was of English origin, Camilo López was a Spanish immigrant and Guinney's son, Manuel.

Guinney raised the idea, Today one sees those first pronouncements of the opposition communist committee and sees them quite naive. They said, "If freedom of criticism is reestablished, Freedom of trends, Trotsky's reinstatement and self -criticism of expulsions, We have no problem in reintegrating into that party. We don't fight for another game, We fight for the regeneration of communist parties ”. That was the first line.

That line how long will it last? Until 1.933, When Trotsky begins to raise the regeneration line, that there is no longer margin of fighting within the Comintern and especially the responsibility of the direction of the Stalin Comintern in the catastrophe of Germany. That is to say, When the delusional line of the third period leads to Hitler's triumph in Germany, that is to say, Because the KPD, The German Communist Party, He refuses any form of unique front with the Social Democratic Base. Let us remember what the kpd said, The main enemy is social democracy, Because it is a brake on the turn of communism, Social democracy is more dangerous than Hitler. So that's when Trotsky says, This is a historical betrayal, This is an unrecoverable crime, The kpd will never recover. Perhaps the main section of the Comintern, out of the Russian, It will recover from this tragedy and therefore the German PC is unrecoverable, And then the entire comintern also begins to be unrecoverable.

There the line begins to capture in the different sections of the opposition, Then begin to consider that, You can no longer fight for the regeneration of communist parties, Own organizations must be raised.

Until the ’33, I comment on my article, groups had emerged that were considered precarious, Waiting for a reintegration. Objectively they were not going to be, But in the public presentation, You saw that I raise it as a difficult identity situation, Because the types were not defined Trotskyists.

The Trotskyist term in ’29, In ’30 it was a pejorative term, Stalinists said it as a way to discredit them. They did not say Trotskyists for more than, Obviously his reference was Trotsky, They said left opposition. We are the working wing, internationalist, revolutionary, of opposition to degeneration and bureaucratization of the party. But we are a genuine current, The continuity of Bolshevism-Leninism, This is what they were called, Bolsheviks-Leninists.

The Trotskyist term will appear assumed, more fully, When these organizations form totally autonomous entities and that arises after ’33. The first groups, I said, It is the Communist Opposition Committee, that later takes the name of Ica in 1.930, Argentine communist left. They manage to get a first newspaper, is called the truth. Good, References are always the most traditional. The truth was obviously for the Soviet Pravda, And because the truth began to be the title of the first major Trotskyist newspaper in France, The truth. Then they get the truth, But two numbers come out, It is very precarious, We are talking about a small group, Guinney and López's group.

Then an interesting sector is added that were won for the ideas of the leftist opposition in Spain, Héctor Raurich and Antonio Gallo. In Spain a fairly strong opposition section had formed, What is going to be the Spanish communist left and there were Gallo and Raurich. They returned to Buenos Aires between '30 and ’31.

There is a problem that is interesting to explore. Who reads that article issues that are important, What are they, for example: When Gallo and Raurich come they fail to join the Ica. Son 6 O 7 on the one hand and they are others 5 O 6, But they can't create a common party, As much as the indication of the Spaniards is to enter the Guinney group. Nevertheless, They do not enter and form another group called Communist League and then for two years there are two groups, son 6 O 7 On the one hand and 7 u 8 of the other and they fail to splic and there are discussion processes.

It is interesting because from Paris and from Berlin, Where is the opposition address, The cards are, We see no differences from principles. Alright, There are discussions about the character of the program, But do a common experience, And then we see if in the common struggle an experience of conformation of an address and a program may arise. I placed it in my article, There is a fairly clear definition, Nevertheless, It could not and the two groups were separated.

Then came other stages, a figure that was important broke into the opposition ranks, What was Pedro Milesi. An outstanding guy, which was a union picture of the municipal guild. He stayed with the direction of the Ica, developed it in the following years. Transformed it after ’33 in the Internationalist Communist League, which was the name that opposition sections adopted. The Gallo and Rourich group also continued to act.

And well, I would say that Trotskyism began to have greater vigor, More adherents towards the end of the ’30 and early '. But at the time he managed to fuse almost all his strength in a single party, What was the Pors, Workers Party of the Socialist Revolution. That Pors lasted very little time. Of the implosion of the Pors, of the destructuring of the PORS, The new groups that will begin to mark the history of Trotskyism in the decade that follow.

This is interesting. Practically all the militants of the left opposition in Argentina and the first Trotskyism, From ’29 to ’43, Most of the leading paintings did not continue in the ranks of Trotskyism. They left Trotskyism or revolutionary movement.

Guinney died, His son Manuel abandoned the fight, The same Camilo López. Raurich and Gallo got into the Socialist Party, A time later. Milesi also abandoned the movement. So that's one finds as a turning point, For the ’44, When Peronism emerges, that raises the challenge of interpreting that it is that new thing that emerges, He already found a Trotskyist movement with new actors, Where the surnames change. It is already Trotskyism without Milesi, Without a rooster, Sin Raurich. Without fair liborio, A key figure that enters the ’35, that occupies the entire scene, that founds its own current, What will be the lor. In which he militates for some time, very quickly, A young student named Hugo Bressano. That will take the name, promoted by Nahuel Moreno Liborio Justo.

Now that cycle closes and what opens from ’44 and ’45 is another stage of Trotskism. One if you can look in perspective you can find very clearly the cut. That is to say, From ’44 and ’45, The perspective of Trotskyism is referenced in two or three new groups. The group that will boost Nahuel Moreno, The posadas group and a very small group, that the story is brought by the story, to the door, The Revolutionary Workers Union of Posse. And well, I would say the group that later dispersed in the current of the national left, Abelardo Ramos and some others.

It is a different stage in the history of Trotskyism. The previous one is marked by this impulse of the opposition and a Trotskyism that I would say, With this I close this part, had a great programmatic debate that Trotskyism of the second half of the ’30. The debate was how to face the situation of the so -called national issue.

That is to say, Those who raised in Trotskyism, that the programmatic struggle had to incorporate the struggle for national liberation. The anti -imperialist struggle and the national liberation program articulated as part of the socialist revolution program, In that was heavily oriented liborio just. And the Gallo and Raurich group, that rather tended to deny or underestimate the flag of national liberation, stating that Argentina was a full capitalist country and the fight should be for the socialist revolution program, that is to say, A fairly false alternative between national liberation or socialist revolution.

That was a debate that signed a lot the first development of Trotskyism, And that in my article if it looks in some detail, One can warn that at the beginning of the ’30 elements appear. Because before Antonio Gallo states this idea of ​​denying national liberation, A young Rosario student of the FJC, who is expelled from the party, called David Siburu, had begun to raise these ideas.

I had questioned the idea that the national bourgeoisie could fulfill a role in the national liberation flag, that it was a relatively false flag, questioning the stroke of the PC. Then one finds that, in essas of the Issue, that then splices with those of Gallo and express a whole current of the first Trotskyism. Who confronted the interpretation of Liborio Justo.

I think what is coming after '44 to ’45, It is a Trotskyism that has settled that debate. Proposing that the fight against imperialism, The struggle for national liberation is a struggle that the working class must give. But it must give, Not in alliance with some progressive fraction of the bourgeoisie, You must give as a leader of the exploited masses and must give it under the program of the permanent revolution. Succinctly those are the issues that are raised there.

AB: I have two questions, But I don't know which one is going, I leave that to you. One is: How do you see the second Trotskyism and how does Trotskyism evolve from that moment? This is mixed with Peronism and the policy of the left towards Peronism, That's why I don't know which one is going because they have a lot of relationship with each other.

HC: They have a lot of relationship, We can talk about a general positioning of the left inside Peronism and there to get a little in Trotskyism.

The appearance of Peronism was a huge challenge for the left, obviously, It was a very complex challenge, Let's think that in one way or another the left came in its different variants, More reformists, more revolutionary, More acids, LESS ACRATAS, articulating party and class, Not articulating it, disarticulating the union struggle, The political struggle. That is to say, The left came from a very dense experience, very rich of 60, 70 years and Peronism in a sense implied a new stage.

It was very complex to position itself in front of the new phenomenon, We have several elements: It is very clear that the way in which the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were very aware of the emergence of Peronism was very clumsy, Very foolish. That is to say, to a large extent denying a fact of reality, The most serious thing that can happen when you get politics is to deny reality and confuse it. Perón's movement was very complex to interpret and position, In the movement of a military elite that from the State at the same time that he repressed to the left filled the prisons of communist and socialist union leaders and persecuted autonomous trade unionism, etc. With the other the bonus allowed, salary increases, Conventions, great conquests for which the labor movement had always fought. Perón wanted to do it obviously with the integration and co -optation strategy and also anti -communist, As he said so many times. Perón's famous speech in the trade stock market: Said “Please do not criticize me, They don't attack me, What I want to do is save Argentine capitalism ”, that is, it is convenient to give improvements to prevent the working class from taking the class struggle position.

So it was very complex, Also for the trajectory that Perón brought, A guy linked to the worst of politics, Axis sympathizer, a guy who had no positions in his curriculum vitae in favor of the defense of the working class. Had participated in the repression of the tragic week of ‘19, had participated in the coup of ‘30, He had been a delegate of the German embassy in Italy, He had known Mussolini's experience and had sympathized with the idea of ​​social-Europe, In other words, it was a very indefensible guy for a labor picture, I saw Perón in the ’43 and per-six felt any attraction for his past. Nevertheless, Perón appeared as redeeming that past and that present, because initially repression of communism and on the left was very strong, But he was covering it with very clear concessions, Then he was forging an unthinkable alliance or perhaps not so unthinkable, Because the idea of ​​the State linking with the labor movement was not new, I had done it Irigoyen, The radicals had done it and found in the labor movement who accepted that convite. Had been revolutionary trade unionism, that he had great unions like the maritime or the railroads, They had gone to the agreement with Irigoyen.

That is to say, Perón was not the first that from the State he launched to interact and link with sectors of the union apparatus. Perón will do it, A sector is going to get closer to the whole PC and outside the dynamics of the Socialist Party, Many were unionists affiliated with PS, But in practice they did not give much relevance to the directives of the PS. I always say that the tragedy of the Socialist Party in Argentina, I comment before, It was that the union struggle of the political struggle had split and in practice the political struggle understood as parliamentary struggle and had abandoned the union struggle. So what did the PS union paintings had? They had a party that served them for the time of parliamentary action, But then the game abandoned them in the union struggle, They behaved as autonomous unionists, In other words, in practice, the PS unionists are, Pure trade unionists.

Logically when Perón questioning the labor movement they were, They accepted, Because they began to conquer very clear advantages, Then an alliance was formed in which these union paintings as a sociologist and historian Juan Carlos Torres says, "The old union guard" began to realize that she took advantage of that link with the colonel who was in front of the Secretary of Labor and Welfare and we already know the outcome. Perón was expelled from the Government in ’45, Defenered and unexpectedly for all, That old guard, These union paintings of traditions so different that they had obtained concrete advantages of their agreement with Perón, They launched the call of 17 October and starred a very impressive workers mobilization that turned political reality. It allowed him to rescue Perón from ostracism and catapult him to the political scene and launch it to the electoral campaign of the 45-46, in which it was initially thought that Perón could not win because he had no political apparatus.

Because what were the games in? And there enters the left, The foolishness and awkwardness of the Communist Party, of the Socialist Party was to read it to Perón as a military demagogue, fascist, that wanted to co -opt and buy the union cadres and therefore had to completely fight it behind a broad democratic agreement line, popular. The PC was raising the Popular Front line, anti -fascist democratic that an enemy will find in Perón and will find an ally in the Radical Civic Union, In the conservative liberal right and in the American embassy itself, who coupled with his reference Braden to the line of the democratic front.

For example, In December of 45 The Argentine PC made a huge act at Lun, from Roosevelt and Churchill. That was the Argentine PC, Your Popular Front Line, According to democratic wings, liberals, Republican of the bourgeoisie, They trusted that they were going to win, that Perón was an accident in history, A military demagogue, authoritarian, Fascistizer who had tried a low stew maneuver, to buy from the union cadres, But I wasn't going to succeed. For example, They said the 17 October was not a relevant labor mobilization, but it had been rather a group of bought workers or proletariat and Perón was going to be defeated in the February election of the 46.

Grave, one can be wrong in a characterization, The serious thing is the program, The strategy, the lines that the socialists and the communists had, of union with a fraction of the bourgeoisie. That is the tragedy of the left in Argentina, dilapidating years and years of construction, That is the tragedy. Workers who suffered torture, the chasing, that had been tortured several times. José Peter's case who was an extraordinary worker, worker leader of the meat, They had tortured him until he was tired several times, Member of the Central Committee of the PC, leader of meat workers who ended up for example by promoting the lifting of the meat strike, Because we had to supply the Soviet Union, A line of combative union leader but behind a political line from Popular Front. Then the PC squanded all those advances, Socialism the same, It had already become a center -left match, With a very moderate line, that could not interact with the demands of the workers and the behavior of that left was very complex, They bet on the triumph of the democratic union but the democratic union was defeated.

With the assumption of Perón since June ‘46 another stage begins, Another stage in which we already know how juice one and the other. The Socialist Party to a large extent never exceeds that, lost the entire workers base, He became a middle class game with very little presence in the working class. The Communist Party lost much of the working base, but he kept his militants workers and then remained an important current, Of course absolutely minority, The working class became mostly Peronists, We already know that. But one can say that perhaps the second identity within the working class that one could find was the communist, The PC maintained positions.

In that field one begins to consider, contemplate, What was the current of Trotskyism, New actors appear there. That founding stage had been closed, That decade, decade and a half of the Raurich, of the roosters, of the Milesi. There were new actors. Very complicated for an issue for which for example Nahuel Moreno reflected a lot, which was a development in which it was made, what, He said it was a barbarian Trotskyism, To a large extent because the decoupling with the international IV was very important. The IV had founded in ‘38, had had his congress, It will only have a congress in the ‘48 which Moreno will try to attend the same as inns and the truth is that this development was from groups, Not only were they fragmented, divided, but they did not have a solid support or a reference point in the International IV. They really found themselves quite, Not disoriented, but quite devoid of a theoretical and political arsenal. Above all, very complex to characterize a phenomenon as difficult to characterize as it was for example Peronism. Peronism and nationalist movements, National Popular, Bourgeois nationalists with anti -imperialist masses, what was in Latin America, that there were more and more in the ‘30 and the ‘40 years.

I would say that the group founded by Moreno initially in the ‘43 with the name Marxist Obrero Group, The gom, that a few years later identifies it with the name of by, Revolutionary Workers Party, It will have there I think that two strengths, that seem important to me.

The first is the characterization that Moreno makes to distinguish that this first stage, That first decade of the leftist opposition of Trotskyism had been a heroic stage, of great heroicity, But he had had a fundamental defect, had faced his debates, His discussions, its conformations as groups, subordinating insertion and fighting in the working class. It was a characterization, Today one could say: Well perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on this definition that was later said that it was a coffee Trotskyism, that is a Trotskyism that towards its debates in the Café Tortoni. Some of this was effectively, It was a Trotskyism that had an important tiny imprint and some of those debates explains that. I had also had value union cadres, Among them do not mention them yet, It was for example Matthew fossa, What was a PC picture, A guy who had been in sparkism, then on the PC, It was thrown, had made entrismo in the PS, A great wood leader. The first years of the left opposition were several workers, But it is true that the weight of the intellectual sector was too important and the approach then that Moreno is going to make in the document "The Party" of the ’43 that has so much Hegel appointment and has an still very philosophical imprint, Abstract medium, However, it marks a line that is that the way Argentine Trotskyism could be saved, It is if meat and nail were made of the working class, Of the struggles of the working class. So that the structuring process in the working class became fundamental, otherwise, We had to proletarianize Argentine Trotskyism.

I think it was a fundamental strategic line, And I think it is one of the strongest elements that signed the group and the current, The idea of ​​interacting, to get into the workers' fight. Go to the factory, Listen to the demands of the workers and build the political organization without deviating a millimeter from the general needs of the working class, I think that is a central point. The other element was that the group, The GOM-POR, It had a characterization of Peronism different from that of the PC and that of the PS, Of course they repudiated the formation of the democratic union, It was a small group, They did not call to vote for the Democratic Union, They considered it a catastrophic line, of subject to Yankee imperialism, To the liberal bourgeoisie, They challenged the Popular Front line, They stated that that new movement that arose from Peronism had to be interpreted with the background of IV International herself, of the line in the permanent revolution and interpret local reality from those elements, But initially they made a reading that I think it was meritorious, very meritorious in a sense, although a little sectarian with respect to Peronism.

The reading that Moreno will develop and a militant who enters the GOM ranks in the ‘46 together with a large group of students called Milcíades Peña, that he will become a narrow collaborator of Moreno in the first years, The characterization that they are going to do is that Perón will appear at the forefront of a bourgeois nationalist movement that resisted the penetration of Yankee imperialism but was lying on the most traditional structure of the country and especially of British imperialism. From there he derived almost in a definition of Perón as a British agent. Clear, There were elements of Perón's own actions in the early years, For example, the entire nationalization line of railroads and companies, that were for Peronism presented as great anti -imperialist epic, We know, And in that some texts and characterizations of Moreno and Peña are impressive by clarity demonstrating that this was not any expropriation or any kind of anti -imperialist combat, Unlike, Rather, they were ways to agree with negotiations with British interests, giving off of old scrap metal, of companies that were already about to overcome their contracts and were really very convenient businesses for British capital, For British imperialism.

Then I think there was a series of characterizations that were very lucid analysis of the country's economic-social structure, incredibly lucid. I have an article in the Magazine Archs about this, The figure of Milcíades Peña, A little standing out in front of certain visions that make Peña a kind of critical intellectual as if it had been a lucid mind that went further, Breaking the constriction of the party and especially Moreno and that the most great rock is the rock that breaks with Moreno and Trotskyism, raising that in reality the most valuable of Peña's interpretation is forged in the heat of the debates and their militancy in the gom and the one by. Then one sees Peña's first writings are very blunt, works with Moreno, for example, performing the country's economic-social structure, The sophisticated idea of ​​the bourgeoisie, Against the national left populism and against what the PC and so many said, Most of the left, They said: There is no opposition interest between the industrial bourgeoisie and the agrarian bourgeoisie, It is actually the same class almost with diversified interests, Then let's not look for an ally in the industrial bourgeoisie, as the Abelardo Ramos and others said, Let's not look for an ally in the national industrial bourgeoisie because it is actually a class that is directly linked to agrarian interests.

Then for example that study that Peña and Moreno do of showing the great bourgeois consortiums, The Tornquist family and others, Notice, has interests in agriculture, In the industry, In finance, In commerce, They are the same class, Then it doesn't go around, So there is no possibility of a stages revolution, I clarify that any transformation program, of democratization, of national liberation, of agrarian reform of any progressive line that modifies the social economic structure of the country, You have to have the leader of the exploited masses in the working class, But no confidence to the bourgeoisie. Those approaches were very important, But in the first years there was a behavior that I think was quite sectarian regarding Peronism, of interpretation of Peronism that above all I think is modified in the years 50 And from that modification a different line will arise. That different line has a point I think very strong, We get here on a topic that is enormously controversial and interesting to analyze, A very clear line that places very correctly by in the coup of ’55, coup.

That chapter by denouncing the character of the coup of ’55. An anti -worker, clerical, imperialist and we had to fight the coup. I think it is a fundamental strategic success.

From there derives one more step that will give the current, obviously, from which it has been discussed and continues to be discussed, What is the entry line. That is to say, overthrown Perón and initiated the process of Peronist resistance, in which the working class is reperonized as never before, against the desire of the Liberator and Gorillas, that is to say, It's not just that no less Peronist, but becomes more Peronist. The almost exclusive mode, Unique of military power in the working class was to formally adopt the Peronist identity, To be able to obtain some type of dialogue with the workers in their struggles. Hence the idea of ​​making the entrismo, The organic entrustism in the ranks of Peronism.

About that there are already many years of discussion, of debates. I have a very nuanced balance. I think that experience of the entrismo had some strengths, Especially since he turned that current, that by then he took the name of the Word Obrera by his newspaper. He made it a vanguard reference of those combative workers sectors, who fought against the liberator, Against Frondizism, Against the employer, Against the bureaucracy. Allowed him to have the current that insertion, But that had important concessions, that is to say, The adoption of Peronist identity had important concessions from the programmatic point of view, even practical. What was a business, even appearing very brutally, A political business, business in the direction of calculations. Equally, What was sought to strengthen was a revolutionary organization.

Finally it was a rather poor result, Because Word Obrera could influence the plenary of the 62 organizations, The union structure, But he failed to capitalize politically. So, He left the experience of politically very weak resistance. Even in a period, In the year ’63 for example, where almost working word is dissolved in Peronist youth. The entrismo is finally raised in the ’64, What had remained in the ’64, After almost 10 years of entrismo, of reamer, of militancy within the Peronist working class was little. And then the fusion line with the Santucho group came, To give life to what the PRT would be.

THE BALANCE OF THE ENTrism, I think it has to be a balance that demonstrates these dark lights, These strengths and these weakest points. That included some concessions that today one sees and sees them ... well, I always don't give that place of relevance, identified issues. For example, The subtitle that had a working word, In a period initially in the ’55 and more in front of: "Under the Superior Command of the Peronist Council". Issues that, said in him 2020, Seeing that Peronism ended, One can say that they are unacceptable concessions, They seem unacceptable, But in the historical context they had another character.

So, It is a very interesting topic of the entrismo, that has to do with how to place, I say again, With the Peronism of that time. That is the mania that historians have a bit, that we always seek debates, The analysis and their historical contexts, that is to say, We for processes. It is not the same a discussion of something that happened in the Del’30 decade, of ’40, of ‘50 with today's categories. You have to make an effort to historically contextualize, See what alternatives existed at that time, that is to say, try to rebuild and that is a historical exercise. You cannot do a slogan, saying such a current did this, such a current did the other. Well you have to restore the historicity of the processes, That is why I think it is an important contribution it has in history, In the fight of the formation of parties and currents.

The story, Not that I am making an apology of my profession, But it seems to me that it provides elements that are quite useful for political struggle.

AB: You already entered some aspects in relation to Trotskyism and within that to Morenismo. Can you tell me what opinion you have globally of morenism as current?

HC: And well, That balance of the current founded by Moreno there in the years in the ‘40. I think a little as I pointed out before, It has to be meticulously rebuilt in its different historical contexts. Ended up being a current, that in turn later it was fragmenting. Today is a tree with a branch, from which many currents emerged. Very extensive, They are more than almost 80 years. So the effort to historize each stage seems to me that it is very important. The role he fulfilled in each historical period is different.

I pointed before, There are aspects of that tradition that were fundamental, I think they are the ones that definitely structured Trotskyism in Argentina. That is to say, globally analyzed Trotskyism, We are talking about a current that already has close to 90 years. I have no doubt about it. Yes to me, quickly, Without repeating and without blowing, They ask me what was the most relevant historical picture of Trotskyism in Argentina. I don't doubt that it was Nahuel Moreno. That undoubted, doubtless.

Despite, It arrives almost 15 years, diez, fifteen years later to the movement. Does not star in its first moments, It is the painting that manages to root Trotskyism in Argentine reality. And, He places it in the socavones of the working class, There are decisions that are very strong. The idea of ​​that idea of ​​moving to Avellaneda, to put a small group in Villa Pobladora, refrigerate, mention it in the factor struggle, It is a strategic decision that continues with the passage of time, One sees that coherence, no. That idea of, There can be no construction of a working class revolutionary party, that does not get in the working class.

Then there is a number of, I think that, of a certain characterization, A vocation that I think was more or less consistent, but that had different modulations of studying reality, study it, Analyze changes in the economic and social structure, The changes in the working class or on the left, or in class enemy itself, the state. An idea of ​​studying the reality that was reflected in a series of works that one can today, long after, Read and understand that there was an effort to never stop doing what is more basic for a political current that is to understand where it is stopped.

That is to say, Beyond trying to apply a historical program. The first challenge, In addition to rescuing that historical program and doing all the reworkings of that program that must be done, That must be done at the same time, With a study of reality and modifications of reality. I think that was like the abecé of the Moreno Construction Method, What do you think they are very important. As well, The idea regarding the party model, like so many, There are perhaps different throughout history, I can recognize as different party models in Moreno, But there is always an obsession, It seems quite important to me, For as part that phenomenon of understanding reality, And what can reality offer, Find points according to groups that emerge, that appear in the class struggle.

That bet is a very risky bet, It was, we see that there were different confluence processes, Some were very good, They were permanent, others were very bad. One could say that the agreement with Santucho in ‘65 was a very risky agreement, I think it was done on a bit weak programmatic bases and it is what explains the outbreak of that party, Three years later. A burst that was quite destructive to the organization, Because very clear that when one sees the reasons that led to the moment before the confluence and what left that, Finally, Santucho managed to win, Even a sector that came from the Morenista tradition took it to positions, The disastrous positions of the combatant.

Oh well, again the historian says, We must see the historical context and the historical context marks us very important pressures that should be seen, How to resist one at that time, At that time in history, The pressures were tremendous. That is to say, The current driven by Moreno, had to, first, subsist, make it subsist, It could have disappeared. With the Peronist wave, Trotskyism could have disappeared, Let's say it. The working class became rabidly Peronist. And the other alternative was to get a gorilla, contreras. We had to resist and interpret what Peronism was, at the sea, The Peronist wave and the peronization of the working class.

The other was, Of course, The challenge raised by the Cuban Revolution, which was also very complex to position itself in the face of that phenomenon. With what the Cuban revolution brought, especially with the enormous prestige that Castro and Guevarista direction had. And well, again, The current The alternative it had was or reject it as a phenomenon that was not adapted to the programmatic approaches of the fourth, or understand in its most progressive dynamics and be able to influence the movement to advance in the most correct line.

I think there the balance, It is also a lightning balance of Moreno's possession that are very interesting, But today read at the distance, There are some documents that one reads and sees them very, how can you say, Very impressionist. That is to say, Very tied at the time of the situation. Characterizations of, for example, regarding Castro or regarding what the armed struggle could be. Oh well, You have to see the historical context again, what implied the phenomenon of armed struggle in those years and especially the first years of the 60, The pressure exerted on the avant -garde sector. That is to say, How to make an experience with the avant -garde, that will raffle the danger of guerrillate temptation, that had them and was an important pressure and that led to the organization of the organization to destroy it or threaten it to destroy it several times.

Recall that the experience with the Basque Bengochea was tremendous in the sense of the Basque. Probably in one of the most important management paintings that Morenism had. It was part of that historical direction of the working word.

And the facts of the supplication of the Posada department was the blasting of a good part of the best direction that Moreno had formed. This is so. And then also the intervention in Peru, in ‘62. And then the agreement in Santucho and the discussion too, Regarding a definition regarding the armed struggle, that at times it seemed not to make such a clear and strategic difference with the proposals that will later derive in the Santuchista disaster.

So, bueno, It is a very long balance, It is a current that had a very rich story. First, It was a current that won authority, for having existed, for having lifted the flag to the permanent revolution, The Trotskyist program, of militancy in the working class and in the places of struggle. That had sectarian drifts, He had programmatic clumsiness at times.

But today that appears and even so raised the problem, for example, of drift of entrismo. I always say good, The experience of the entrismo if one does not see in global terms and is finally a very limited period of development, If it had been a strategic line, bueno, would have meant the dissolution in the Peronist movement. And of course it was a tactic, in my opinion, excessively long, that at times it seemed that it meant a strategy. Oh well, Finally it is a chapter, In a long history that shows the will to build a revolutionary party.

So you have to read the experience of entrismo. Because we are talking about a current that continued to exist, even recovering from drift and rehearsing other alternatives.

I think that, as in so many things, Trotskyism in Argentina would require a good story. Of history built with a lot of patience, With a long time you do a job that should be collective and should be not sectarian and should be balanced. We have experiences that do not work. We already know, In that sense, balances, that sleep totally unbalanced, not serve. You have to build a balance that contemplates all these situations, The contexts, This is fundamental.

It makes no sense with your finger and say good "but see what she said, Look what he wrote, Look what he did without seeing the context ». Y, especially, It should be a story that at the same time is not concessive, It has to be a story that has a critical perspective, that is to say, A critical perspective implies the revaluation to be done and at the same time mark the elements that one in the distance continues to see as problematic. As things that could help to avoid repeating mistakes.

So, It seems to me that this is a strategic task, A task that should ... It is very difficult to do that task from party organizations. Yo, that's true, That is quite obvious, because there is what is called party patriotism, It stands to reason. And it seems to me that it must be a task in which companions who are part of these same convictions, that they have not resigned, because there has been a process of dissolution of many intellectuals that are part of the revolutionary ranks, that they behaved as renegades or changed their identity.  

To try a historical balance process, not sectarian, That is deep, that is not comforting, But at the same time it is not destructive. Not destructive, Because that type of balance is, ¡ojo! destructive too. Inside and outside Trotskyism, one has to settle, In the intellectual world, academic, cultural, There is balance that they propose that no, that the struggle of Trotskyism is useless, that there is nothing to rescue from that experience.

I consider in a confrontation position with these positions, And I think it is a contribution to the fighting struggle. That always the same, The idea of ​​a revolutionary movement that with programmatic clarity promotes the fight, drives and directs the fight of the working class and the exploited sectors in a clear direction.

The struggle of the exploited alone for pure spontaneity, Not anywhere. I always had it clear and I still have them clear. If there is no articulation in that struggle of the exploited in the plane that is, union, of the territorial struggle, etc, in articulation, In a political movement. Which in turn has to have instances of centralization and must recognize what they are, What is the idea of ​​the avant -garde, a concept too important to underestimate it and the idea of ​​an avant -garde ... well, If that does not exist, There is no transformation, That was clear.

All autonomist drifts, anti -political, bueno, Let's not talk about the best known that usually occur, The trade unionists, Purely union exits, They don't have. They have no perspective.

AB: Finally Hernan, You could develop what CEHTI is, The Center for Historical Studies of Workers and Lefts, and the magazine projects?

HC: CEHTI experience and the Archive magazine has been a few years ago. Files magazine is founded on the 2011, 2012. It is a thought magazine, It is an academic magazine, made by intellectuals we have, Let's say, Insertion in the academic world. They are UBA teachers, fundamentally, o Conicet researchers, etc. That we propose to contribute to a reconstruction of the history of the working class, of the labor and left movement.

Not in a purely national context, but in this continental and world context. That is to say, make an international history, precisely for these actors that were always.

And well, and contribute to a social history, politics, Cultural class and left. Plurally, That is something that I feel very proud to have armed around the magazine. First to the Magazine Files, who took his first issue the 2012. Then we gave life to a second project that was a collection of deep research books on different problems in the history of the working class, from the left or Marxist theory, of social theory.

We have already published 12 volumes, 12 books. And in him 2016 We took another step, that was to found a center. A study center, A reflection center called Cehti (Center for Historical Studies of Workers and Lefts), that we make it a place of discussions, debates. Good, This year, Obviously because of the question of pandemic and quarantine, activities had to be suspended, physical meetings, But until last year, From the foundation in the 2016, We got to do near 50 activities, conference, challa, Table debate, Book presentations. Where these issues of history are discussed, from the left, of anarchism, Socialism and communism, Trotskyism, of the guerrillas, of feminism. In the heat of the publications of the magazine or books, or other colleagues who present.

We do it with a very open spirit, Very plural. Where an element that I always like to point out, is that people who come for the first time to CEHTI say «what a good weather there is here, What a good climate of debate ». Because it is not concessive, He goes to knot, to the bone of the discussions, But a very fraternal climate is made, And that is something that I want to highlight a lot. It is the climate that is present in the CEHTI.

I think that, It is the best of socialist culture, What is the fraternal atmosphere, where one can have differences or may be differences that after a discussion, A study, The other convinces it to modify a position. And also with colleagues who come from, bueno, My story is well known and I never feel proud of that story, no, There is nothing to hide, I am a guy I studied all my life, that I dedicated myself to the history of the working class, The labor movement, to the left, during 30 years.

That I have a place in the Historiography field as a titular teacher of Argentine history, I know all the challenge that implies that, Being responsible for the chair that forms future historians in the field of Argentine history and I am a Conicet researcher.

I did that academic career as, Much my life was a militant life, If that knows everyone and I have no problem raising it. I was a militant near 20 years, so, It was decisive for my training as an intellectual. Unthinkable my training as an intellectual and as a social historian, political, from the left, Without that militancy. And my consubstantiation with the tradition of Trotskyism. That is so. My impulse, I set me, My vision of the world is permeated by that tradition, that links with the tradition of Marxism or with the tradition of the labor movement.

And well, this way somehow, After so many years of militancy and study and publications, I felt that I had to take that step, What was a contribution, that could be a modest contribution, Very modest, to the formation of some knowledge.

I feel very happy that, In the cehti, for example, They have come to pass in our hundreds and hundreds activities. Many students, Many intellectuals, and many former militants and militants. And militants from different organizations, what, again, They feel very comfortable listening and intervening. In some cases intervening as well. We look very clearly in our activities, Do not identify, We also don't have it, We do not do it with any punctual organization, We precisely take another place not higher or better, distinct. That is to say, We intervene in the intellectual and cultural field. And we contribute from that place, Building the best knowledge we can or know how to do. That is to say, research articles, With solid empirical survey. Our statements are based on very meticulous studies that we capture in the magazine, In the books, In the activities we carry out, We do workshops, WE DO STUDY GROUP. We try to innovate in new themes.

Last year we did a totally beautiful course on social reproduction theory and we discussed the most recent advances on feminist struggles and the articulation between the class struggle and the gender struggle. Of course, There will be themes in which we are perhaps more delayed, But together we try to accompany the progress that social theory is having, Marxist theory and we also make the days, What is a great event.

The days that are now international movement history on the left. On the last day there were hundreds of participants. The next one we are going to do next year too. We already have 29 armed tables, There will be close to 350, 400 presentations. It is a very relevant event. And well, That is the positioning, Half weird, particular. That we also cultivate the form of operation a lot. The form of operation, That is open, which is very careful and tries to be very respectful of the point of view of different, But at the same time it has a clear horizon, That is immovable. Immovable in the sense of there are things that we do not call into question. It is, The idea of ​​the ineluctability of the class struggle, that we defend our interests of the working class, of the exploited, that socialism is the horizon, that capitalism is irreformable. Today we would also say that the struggle for the emancipation of women is inscindible to the struggle for socialism, bueno, They are general convictions.

And well, In that we are. It is a process, It is a project that costs us a lot, because he is also sustained. That is to say, We limit the financing of some university or the State or a party, of the church or anything. Then an self -financed project and we are proud. Everything is sustained by its own inertia, by his own conquest.

The magazine, for example, We take it on paper and from the first number we self -finance it on its own sale or material that was evidently relevant for the one who wanted to buy it. And so the books and then also the cehti. And we have a modest office in the center and is sustained with that mode, With voluntary contributions. We were riding a library that is open to public consultation, all with donations and so we are keeping us. As a space designed for long term. It is not of conjuncture, It is a long perspective, long lasting. Good, that.