Argentina: 30 years of the MST. "Swear to continue fighting and building the party and the LIS"

We share, a 30 years of the birth of the MST, the words of Alejandro Bodart, General Secretary of our party, who gave the central speech at the event we held on Saturday 17 December in the auditorium of the Faculty of Cs. Social in the City of Buenos Aires, which was also broadcast live for the entire country and for LIS comrades from various countries around the world..

For us this birthday is a great joy.. We are celebrating a little late because it was actually in the middle of the year, but this year he came very loaded and we did not want to say goodbye without paying this tribute to everyone. Because, I want to congratulate all those who did their bit to help us get here. To those who are and those who are gone, but they are in the memory of all of us. Thirty years is a long time. Those of us who have been fighting, even for more than 30 years, In shorter periods we have seen organizations grow and disappear. Be, be strong and more alive than ever, For us it is a great joy and pride.. There are many colleagues who have made the construction of the party their life and thanks to that we have an important party. There are many colleagues who have collaborated by contributing to a financial campaign or following us in some campaigns.. Everyone, one way or another, They have collaborated so that we arrive and are here.

at the table, through the colleagues who are here, We want to pay tribute to all the colleagues from the different layers of the MST. Some of those who are here were little when we founded the MST. Celeste had 6 years, Mariano I think he had 9. Besides me who had 28, I think the oldest was Sergio, what had 18 and he started military right there, when we start taking the first steps. At the table that presides over this event there is a summary of the direction that we were building., which includes older and younger colleagues. Because building a party is building a leadership. It is building a work team that can meet the different needs. So, I ask for a round of applause for the colleagues who are here., because they are the vanguard of a team that has launched this project, has maintained it and will continue to do so.

The importance of the birth of the MST in a complex moment

Those were the times of the '90s, where there was a lot of confusion in the ranks of the left due to a series of events that had occurred. Fundamentally, by the crisis of "real socialism", the fall of the Soviet Union. In Germany the capitalist part ended up absorbing the socialist part. They were Thatcher times, who defeated the miners in England and together with Reagan launched capitalist globalization that became known worldwide as neoliberalism. At that time the MST was founded. The confusion that had opened up on the left due to the fall of "socialism", but since there is no alternative direction to overcome Stalinism, capitalist restoration was the solution that occurred in each of those countries. He entered almost all the ranks of the left, and also entered the organization that preceded the MST, which was the old MAS in Argentina and the old international organization that we had built, What was the International Workers League?. Two extraordinary works by Nahuel Moreno, but who were affected by this wave of global skepticism. and the truth, is that the disappearance of the current that had formed Moreno or, at most, that would be transformed into very small small groups, very sectarian. I believe that the founding of the MST was a fundamental battle. If we had not given it, today we would not be here. That's why I think it's very important for us to claim that fight that we fought and claim the founding of the MST., not just because of who we are today, but for the fact of having managed to give continuity to a current that fought for decades to remove Trotskyism from marginality., for bringing it to the working class.

Today Argentina is a place where a lot of attention is paid to the left and Trotskyism. Because Trotskyism is the main leftist force in our country. And if Trotskyism has this weight here, It has to do with the construction of our current, that was not born ago 30 years, was born almost 80, but that the MST in a very difficult moment fought so that this historical continuity continued to exist. And I think it's very important that we all be aware of this.. Many of the leaders who led a very skeptical debate within the old party today are practically not organized and almost nothing of that has remained.. While the MST is more alive than ever, because he knew how to defend the historical flags of our current and, at the same time, He also knew how to advance without dogmatism, without sectarianism, without opportunism and we continue building and reworking.

Marxism is not a dogma

Marxism is not a recipe that is already written and one can read and find a solution to all problems.. Marxism is a living science, intervention in the class struggle and a critical spirit to elaborate from reality are constantly needed.. You don't just learn from successes, but above all of the errors. And we have committed many, but we also had the self-critical spirit of learning from mistakes, to try to improve ourselves, of constantly trying to move forward. I believe that Morenoism was the current that most enriched Marxism., that most enriched the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky after World War II. And it was a tremendous crime that that tradition was lost., because it would imply an enormous setback for the working class and the workers, that would take decades to recover. We have to defend our tradition, our morenista tradition. Know that even to this day, as happened to Lenin and Trotsky, There are many currents that attack Morenoism with falsehoods, with slander, how Trotskyism was permanently attacked, leninism, Marxism. We have to defend it and, at the same time, understand that Moreno died before seeing many of the great changes that occurred in humanity. He could not see the fall of the Soviet Union, which had a very contradictory character and which, while the majority only saw the negative part, We try very hard to see the contradiction of that period. Period that also had as one of the fundamental phenomena, the fall of the most monstrous apparatus that had emerged within the working class: Stalinism. And that, Thus, A black stage was not opening where socialism ceased to be the perspective for humanity, but it would quickly become clear, how it happened, that what is rotting is the capitalist system and that more than ever the only alternative that humanity has is to advance to socialism.

If we don't make it, capitalism may end up destroying humanity. Look what happens today, Once again, the threat is raised that some Russian oligarch, some yankee capitalist, press the button and humanity disappears. Arms growing, fratricidal wars grow, permanent aggression on the only planet we have grows. And they are not interested in anything that may happen to future generations.. Having maintained firm conviction and confidence in the working class, confidence in the experience of two centuries of workers' struggle, trust in a tradition that showed us the way, I think it was very important to keep us going., so that we would not give up when everyone told us that the Revolutionary Party was no longer going, to continue fighting hard, many times against the current, or with the wind against. But a few years into that period, the sun started to rise again. The validity of socialism as the only alternative to end the catastrophe that, if we don't stop, is approaching us. And it was important in that fight that we had at that time, when everyone told us we were crazy, have stood firm. Thanks to that firmness I believe that we are here today, more alive than ever. The left is growing in our country, the PJ begins to sink, radicalism is no longer an alternative, and all of us who are here, We are protagonists of a change that we are convinced that, sooner rather than later, It is going to raise the possibility of a dispute for power. The possibility of changing things, as Celeste says, to turn everything around and that the workers, once and for all, let's take the reins of our country, Let's take the reins of the world and start changing history.

 The crisis of the old MAS and the founding of the MST

The MST was founded on May 1, 1992 with an event in Plaza de Mayo in support of the railway workers who at that time were facing the privatization of Menem. A heroic fight, that practically paralyzed the country for months and had us as protagonists. It was a seal of what our party is, because from then on, in practically all the struggles that have taken place, the MST has been contributing a grain of sand..

From the old MAS we were able to rescue a small group of cadres and militants, but with a lot of political firmness and desire to rebuild what the crisis, in that complex moment, had pushed back. From the old leaders we started with a very small group, hard hit by the crisis, for the mistakes that had been made after Moreno's death. Gross errors even though, as had been said at a ceremony to say goodbye to him, Moreno had left solid foundations. But unfortunately the management that was left in charge of the old MAS when Moreno died, far from resting on those foundations, through many mistakes, was demolishing them, to the point that the crisis only allowed us to rescue a handful of old leaders. Here we have one of them, Mario Doglio, for which I ask for a loud applause, because he is one of the leaders of the old current that is with us. We had to assume the vanguard of the construction of the old party and a couple of regional leaders who came from the construction of the old MAS.. And shortly after founding the new party there began to be many debates among those of us who had left the old party together.. In a sense, fear had united us with a liquidating current that emerged within the party.. But when we had to start building, for the positive, We realized that in reality we did not all have drawn the same conclusions. Many of the old leaders never assimilated the tremendous mistakes that had been made after the death of Moreno and, about all things, Since they did not assimilate the errors, they did not have the conviction that a new leadership had to be formed because the previous one had exploded.. Many discussions and debates began to take place..

The MST in the first years was chaotic, of conferences that many times it was not known if they would end. Because a debate began to arise: The new party had to be logically based on the tradition of our current, but: Why is the MAS the main party of the left in Argentina and in the world?, in a few years of having entered a crisis, in a tremendous division of the leadership he was on the verge of almost disappearing? The new cadres were convinced that many mistakes had been made and that it was essential, first, discuss mistakes so as not to make them again; Y, in second place, to learn from those mistakes and gain experience that will help us continue moving forward. While many of the old leaders actually refused to accept that they had been part of that, and they refused to put what had to be put, to form a new direction, a new team with the cadres who had fought to rescue the majority of the militancy at the head of that team.

The Party and the leadership

The construction of a revolutionary party involves collective construction, but that is synthesized in the construction of a direction that combines experience and tradition, but at the same time, young blood that bets on the future, don't fall in love with yourself, that permanently bets that new colleagues can rejuvenate it, can help her keep moving forward. This led us, practically since we were formed as a party until almost the end of the '90s, to tremendous debates until after several crises we managed to stabilize. In those years he joined our ranks, for example, a fashion campaign also launched from the factories of imperialism, What was horizontalism?. The maximum figure that we had managed to build in the MAS and that started with us in the MST, Luis Zamora, He began to fight within our party so that we could change the essence of the Leninist party.. I had bought that Leninism was part of the past, that we had to go to another type of operation, He began to adore Holloway and all the fashionable theorists of the time. Nevertheless, The foundations that we had begun to build allowed us to carry this debate forward and to, practically, the party came out one hundred percent firm that we had to continue building the party.

Why, definitely, the great debate from the '90s to now, through one fashion or another, It has had to do with skepticism and from there it has been questioned whether it is worth continuing to build a Leninist party, fighting, revolutionary or not. It has manifested itself in different ways, but always in the end the question is the same. There are those who say, for example"Why are we going to dedicate our time to building the revolutionary party?", If power is not raised, at least in the next 50 O 100 years".And they propose that we dedicate ourselves to something else, to build broad parties as a strategy together with reformist sectors, that we fight to radicalize democracy a little more, to make some kind of reform. We have had many debates of this type also within our ranks. Because the Party is a living organism, that he cannot have a shell so that all the debates that exist in reality do not get inside him. What is important is to have enough antibodies to be able to repel all these types of false ideologies. Ideologies that are created by the enemy, created by capital to destroy the only possibility that humanity has to, ever, things change: build a national and international revolutionary alternative that fights the bureaucracy every day, to the capitalists, to imperialism. I think that the MST in these years demonstrated that it had that strength, and that's why we are here, and that is why we do not succumb to any of the fashions, like others who were succumbing.

This debate is tragic. For example, Last weekend the French NPA was destroyed, that had arisen from an initiative of the Mandelist current, of the French Revolutionary Communist League. It has just been destroyed because many years ago the leaders of the Unified Secretariat, of mandelism, They bought this new fashion that the revolutionary party is not planned for a long period of time and that is why the realistic thing was to dedicate themselves to building broad parties., without boundaries, dissolving the revolutionary party if necessary, like they did in France. And so, a very important initiative that brought together 9.000 militants like the NPA, in one of the most important capitalist countries, just ended up exploding as a result of having bought this false ideology, which ended up leading them to despise the revolutionary construction in favor of joining a populist front construction like the NUPES.. That is a practical conclusion of where these new trends that they try to throw overboard lead. 200 years of construction of the working class. We are part of those in France who are fighting against all this and who have managed to win over half of the NPA to continue building a revolutionary party., independent of the bourgeoisie and the pro-imperialist center-left.

Building the MST in the struggles and the working class

We were building our national party, because when we started we were not a national party, essentially we were grouped a little bit in Capital, in Province of Buenos Aires, and we had some companions in the provinces. But we were building a national party based on the struggles that took place in our town.. Because Menemism, that achieved a certain stability for a period, shortly after forming the MST, began to enter into crisis and extraordinary struggles began to take place, mainly in the provinces. They have to know that the MST, in his early years, He actively participated in the first great struggles of the unemployed, that arose in those towns devastated by Menem's privatizations. And so we grew stronger in the south, where we played an important role in the first uprisings, later in Jujuy and other provinces. We actively participated in the Santiagueñazo and the different provincial attacks that were unleashed. We became involved in important workers' struggles, like that of Las Heras for example that allowed us, alongside old colleagues who had kept the flame burning (and here is our colleague Lucía Sandoval for whom I also ask for a big hug) build the party in another province.

When Luis Zamora left, We found ourselves in the need to build a new spokesperson, It was easy to decide on Vilma, who was transformed in those years into a very important leader recognized by the working class, as a deputy, as a nurse, as a colleague who returned to work after having been a deputy.

We were a vanguard in the fight for Human Rights. When the MST emerged, The laws of due obedience and full stop that Alfonsín had signed with the support of the PJ and the pardon of Menem were in force.. In the opening video you saw an image, and there are many images of the MST in its first years accompanying the mothers' struggle, accompanying the escraches, the first escraches of H.I.J.O.S. But they also have to know that, from the MST, and Izquierda Unida a few years later, We were the ones who presented in Parliament the law that overturned the impunity laws, which Kirchnerism tries to appropriate, when in the Chamber of Deputies our colleagues fought against the K, that what they wanted was a law that would allow laws to be repealed without opening new lawsuits. And thanks to the fight that we gave, together with the mobilized people, We managed to get those laws overturned and to this day they are judged and the soldiers end up in prison.. That's why we are proud of all our history, that we will not find it in C5N or in TN, We are not going to find it in any of the media that try to change it and make human rights references to guys who went to make money at the worst times, and that, being lawyers, they never presented a habeas corpus. We are proud to have been part of that vanguard, part of all those struggles since the origin of the old MAS and that we continue with the MST.

We have been a vanguard in the fight for the unity of the left, in the service of building the strongest possible tools to challenge the mass movement and the working class against the PJ and the center-left. Building the United Left, doing an experience with Proyecto Sur, which allowed us to enrich our program and now be the FITU among many other unitary initiatives.

We have also been one of the currents that made the most progress in the debates and understanding of the importance of gender fights as engines of the revolutionary struggle and as engines of the construction of the revolutionary party.. It is a debate that even crosses many revolutionary organizations that continue, despite everything that has been seen and can be seen, denying the importance of the gender struggle, denying patriarchy, denying feminism. And I'm not talking about Stalinist or bourgeois currents., I'm talking about currents that call themselves Trotskyist., but that minimize that fundamental battle. And the MST has elaboration, has proof, and has been a fundamental part of the mobilizations that managed to turn the direction of this patriarchal and clerical regime., and that they achieved the abortion. All the images and all our companions are there to testify that they have been at the forefront in each of the struggles., and continue to be so throughout this period.

We are proud to have been the revolutionary socialist current, that made the most progress in understanding the unity of the struggle of the working class for its emancipation with the need to integrate the socio-environmental struggle. Because the planet is at risk, and it is not enough to just fight for wages or for workers' control, We must destroy all those industries that end up destroying the environment, go to another type of productive model. And you have to have what you have to have, to get rid of dogmas, to get rid of old recipes, that are shown to be of no use.

For all this we have to be proud of what we have built. Because we have built, but we are also leaving historical traces that will serve for future generations., so as not to start from scratch in many fights, in many preparations.

We have already been present in the most important struggles of our class, the working class. We have great pride, for example, so as not to go back to history, but simply to the last few years, to have the most dynamic current among the famous front line that supported one of the biggest disasters of capitalism, which was the pandemic. And to have leaders and nurse unions, of doctors, in Capital, in Province of Buenos Aires, in Córdoba and in the interior. We have fought to install a new union model, because the model that must be destroyed in unionism is not only that of the rotten bureaucracy of the CGT's crooks or the CTA's verseros. Unfortunately the left reproduces bureaucratic methods within the labor movement, and many times delays the possibility of the formation of a new direction so necessary for our class. And we have had the courage to fight that fight. Because we don't fight to have one more label. We fight to educate the working class in the need for self-determination, that she is the one who solves the problems. It is a strategic battle to be fought with our partners within the Left Front, with which we have not yet been able to build more than a limited electoral front. It is very difficult for us to intervene as a unit in the class struggle or to wage truly revolutionary fights in the unions.. You have to be attentive, because Stalinism still leaves its mark on many organizations that call themselves anti-Stalinist and it is a battle that we have to continue fighting..

We are few, due to age problems, Those of us who were lucky enough to participate in the great revolution that occurred here and ended in the fall of the Dictatorship. We were very young at that time, I'm talking about '82. But we are proud as MST to have been able to participate in the second great revolution in Argentina, what was the famous Argentinazo, and having drawn conclusions. Because that revolutionary process, It made us draw tremendous conclusions that were very useful for the subsequent continuity of the MST.. And above all to draw a conclusion: Marxism, I already said it before, It is not a dogma. Moreno gave an extraordinary contribution to the theory of the Permanent Revolution, to the theory of revolution, but he died before new phenomena occurred that changed the stage. With the tools he had given us, had to be reworked, had to be rediscussed, had to think. After the Argentinazo we had another crisis, with a group of colleagues who thought this, like me, They considered us practically heretics, because they believed that everything was written. Some of these colleagues are in the FIT Unidad, in another organization. They believed and continue to believe that there was nothing to rethink, that there was nothing to elaborate, and that's how it goes. The MST had the audacity to break the molds when the molds had to be broken. And you have to know how to break the molds, you have to know how to be critical of yourself. He who is not critical of himself, never moves forward, because he falls in love with himself and he falls in love with the mistakes he makes. The only way forward, is having the courage when a mistake occurs, know how to assimilate it. And when something doesn't work, have the courage to change it and elaborate, because Marxism is a living science. We could say that, for example, Lenin was a heretic who practically violated everything Marx had thought., because Marx said that revolution could only be made in the most advanced countries. In that sense the Mensheviks were right., who argued that there was no need to make a revolution in Russia. But if it wasn't for Lenin and Trotsky, who were encouraged to question what was obviously no good and make a revolution in the most backward country in Europe, revolutionary Marxism today would not be what it is. Moreno had the courage to question some aspects of the theory of the Permanent Revolution, because there are no untouchable saints in Marxism. And we also had the courage to touch on many aspects of what Moreno had proposed to us., because obviously the situation had changed. A world with Stalinism and with the entire Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc was not the same., that a world where everything had collapsed, where capitalist restoration had begun to spread, where you had to think, question forecasts that had not been given, elaborate and elaborate. And that, companions, It is very important for the fight we are fighting with the International Socialist League, because the International Socialist League, it could not be built with old molds from the past. It could be built because we had the audacity to question and rethink many things.

Our seal of origin: internationalism.

I believe that Argentine Trotskyism, formed by Moreno, has created the most internationalist militant group that currently exists in the world. It's my turn to travel, go to different countries, I see it and I think that is something very important to be very clear about.. The MST is a faithful heir of that, because we have decided many times to weaken our construction in order to strengthen the construction of another country, to be able to go support a fight that was taking place in very distant places. Have the courage to know that without international we are nothing, that power cannot be disputed, that there is no Trotskyism without an international. Because Trotskyism is internationalism, The socialist revolution is global or it will never be. And in order to do it, we need to make every effort, even temporarily weaken national construction. And I think that the MST has had that courage, and that's why since the LIT burst, We founded first the CIR and then the ITU. When the latter defected, We try to regroup revolutionaries internationally through multiple initiatives and today we are pillars in the LIS.

We became fans of the Venezuelan Revolution at the beginning of the century and from there we began to meet colleagues from different parts of the world with a common understanding, neither sectarian nor opportunistic, while other currents fell into one deviation or another since one of the great defects on the part of the left is to permanently confuse the processes that occur, with your address. Sectarianism in the ranks of Trotskyism, part of an anti-Marxist reasoning. How at the head of a process is a bad direction, reformist or reactionary the process is useless. Many of these reasonings are present in some allies in the Front that we integrate., and that is why they refused to participate and dispute in the Bolivarian Revolution. They always find the hair in the egg in front of each mobilization, facing each revolutionary process, and they are more careful about getting stained, not to get into the mud, than in participating and responding to the needs of the working class. Which often has bad addresses, but who makes tremendous efforts to overcome them, to build alternatives to these processes. We are seeing something similar now in relation to the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion., that a part of the left refuses to support because a pro-imperialist like Zelensky is at the head of the country.

Opportunism starts from a similar reasoning, but vice versa. When there is a revolutionary process they draw the conclusion that the leadership must be revolutionary and they give in..

We draw a very critical balance of post-war Trotskyism, very critical. Because unfortunately post-war Trotskyism based on Pabloist revisionism led to a tremendous atomization of the revolutionary movement.. With mini internationals that began to emerge everywhere, around a game. He fell on a detour, that of"mother party", believing that from a match you can make an international, looking for people who think the same as the mother party, and expelling anyone who does not think like that. We draw the conclusion that this model, which may have served to maintain the flame, so that the teachings of Trotsky and Lenin would not be lost in the rubbish heap of Stalinism, had come to an end with the death of Stalinism, and we had to find another. A model that would allow us revolutionaries to meet again, each one contribute their tradition. Understand that there are other traditions in the revolutionary movement and that what it is about, It's about returning to the origins, return to the teachings of the old internationals, that were not made from a party imposing on the rest, but through the union, the Solidarity, of frank debate, coexistence with different currents, with nuances. This allowed us to find colleagues from other traditions and begin to build the LIS together..

The old model would never have allowed us to join forces with our Pakistani counterparts., that come from another tradition and are a great revolutionary current in Asia, and learn from them, to know that we are not the only ones who have tried to solve the problems of the working class in this long struggle. Or connect with your colleagues from Africa, that come from having an experience with Stalinism, because Trotskyism did not exist, but they advanced, At a very young age they broke with Stalinism, they made a ball and started looking, and they looked for us as an alternative. And we don't ask for blood tests, as other organizations ask, to see if they are fit to be participants in the sect. Or with the currents of revolutionary unionism in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan or Russia. Or with our colleagues from Lebanon. Or interact with colleagues from Australia who, in a conservative country, They just made an extraordinary election. Tonight we are going to participate in a conference that starts at 21 hs, because there is 14 hours difference, but they are very enthusiastic, and that they have made material that is very important for you to know. In this material they present the long history in the desert that they have had to go through., when everyone told them that they had to abandon, that it wasn't worth it, that a conservative country, imperialist, that the working class was never going to change, she was all aristocratic, but to stand firm, They have just caused an electoral boom and are growing, and they are part of a phenomenon that shows the possibilities that exist in the world today. Or have fraternal relations with the companions of The Tempest, from the United States. That is to say, we couldn't have done any of this without internationalism, without the clarity that we must be encouraged to change, without the clarity that the dogma no longer exists, that we do not have the truth revealed, but we have the will to change things.

Let's continue fighting and building the party and the LIS

Companions, Let us not be fooled by the verse that socialism is utopian.. The only utopian thing in humanity is to continue banking this system, that will lead us to destruction. The only light of hope for humanity is the only alternative system that exists: socialism. But to achieve socialism it is necessary to build a Revolutionary Party. That is why they have to be proud of collaborating with the only tool that can prevent the world from falling apart and that future generations can live with dignity., what is building a party, in this case the MST and at the international level the International Socialist League. Without militancy, without self-denial, parties cannot be built. Many colleagues said it in the initial videos, building a party requires sacrifices, leave a lot of personal things aside. Many times capitalist society pressures us to essentially think about ourselves, so that we stop thinking about the collective and tell us«dedicate yourself to yours, you are already big, "Your red moment as a student has already passed.".

Companions; military worth. Because it is the only truly rewarding activity. Because it is the only activity that allows us collectively to fight so that our children, our grandchildren, ourselves, we can enjoy this planet and this life, that it is beautiful but there is a system that does not allow us to enjoy it. But in our own way we enjoy it, fighting to destroy this system and build another beautiful one. Because, I believe that the best tribute to 30 years, is to swear that we are going to continue fighting, militating, building national and international party. Discussing everything that needs to be discussed, sin dogmas, without any preconception, but firm in the conviction that socialism is possible, that the working class is not defeated. And if not, Look at the tremendous effort that the working class of Iran is making with brutal repression, that arose from the murder of a woman, but it has become one of the most important revolutions on the planet. Or of the Peruvian people who, no direction, betrayed twenty times, keep fighting, continues to corner power. And we saw it in Sri Lanka in that demonstration that devastated everything. Or in each of the rebellions that shake the country month after month. Every day the working class shows us that it does not stop fighting. Let's not stop fighting. Let's fight more than ever. Because if we continue doing what we have done these 30 years, and we redouble the effort, the future has to be ours.