Debates within the Left Unity Front of Argentina: El PTS (FT) must abandon its divisive course

with all reason, the open debate in the Unity Left Front interests and worries not only the militancy of the four parties that make it up (MST, PO, PTS, IS), but also to the periphery of sympathizers, to a good part of the social activism of the most diverse fields throughout the country and even internationally. We analyze here the position of the PTS (FT), which we believe should change as soon as possible since it opens a dangerous path of division of the FIT Unit, what, despite being only an electoral front, It is the main national and unitary political reference of the left.

ByPablo Vasco

1. Divisive hegemonism or unity in diversity

As announced in a press release a few days ago, the PTS, reiterating his own Bregman-Del Caño presidential formula, His “agreement with IS is given in the framework of the unilateral decision by the PO accompanied by the MST to make its own list to participate in the PASO”1.

It is ironic that now he intends to criticize the PO and the MST for a "unilateral decision", since it's been a long year, since june 2022, it was precisely the PTS that unilaterally launched and promotes its own formula, composed solely of figures from his party and without ever even proposing it for consideration by the National Table of the FIT Unit.

The reality is just the other way around: If in August there will be PASO in the FIT Unit, it is because the PTS refused to discuss a presidential formula and candidacies that express the group of forces of the front, and closed on his self-proclamation. further, to resolve the differences does not accept a democratic methodology of debate such as the open plenary that we are proposing from the MST and the PO.

Although it is obvious that every party has the right to propose its own figures, the claim to monopolize the presidential formula and the most expectable candidacies does not speak of an integrating proposal, unity and to strengthen the FIT Unit as a front, but from a hegemonic desire alien to reality that in fact aims to displace the other forces. That is to say, instead of representing the real relationship of forces between the parties that make up the front and thus show its plurality of voices, the PTS maintains a monopolistic criterion, single thought, which not only weakens the FIT Unidad but also opens up a divisive risk that must be combated.

Any union fighter who acts on a joint list, any activist who is active in a unitary field of the student movement, picketer, environmentalist, human rights, feminist, of sexual diversity or wherever, knows perfectly well that the most appropriate methodology to care for the unity of any collective space is that of consensus and respect for the real representativeness of its components. While integration builds unity, hegemonism is disruptive. from now, the PTS is in time to change and participate in the 17 of the plenary in Plaza Congreso.

2. Opportunism against Kirchnerism or consistent left

In the FIT Unit, although we share an anti-capitalist and socialist fund program, there are divergences on how to apply it in daily political life. in our view, for some time the PTS has adopted an opportunistic moderation towards the national government, especially towards Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, surely in search of votes among those who sympathize with the vice president. Specific, before the causes for corruption that justice maintains against CFK, PTS figures focus unilaterally on criticizing "political persecution", which is a real face of the subject, but omitting to repudiate the other unconcealable face: the corruption of which there is plenty of multi-million dollar evidence in the successive governments of the PJ, the Frente de Todos and the macrismo. Instead, the PTS exonerated her: "It was not possible to prove a direct link between Cristina Kirchner and the facts"...2

The last and notorious example of this opportunistic lukewarmness of the PTS we had a few days ago, in front of Cristina's speech 25 of May. Before, during and after the 25 was undoubtedly the central political theme of all the media, bodies, diaries, radio stations and social networks in the country, big or small. In his act in Plaza de Mayo, Cristina, who speaks with a "progressive" tone and as if he does not govern but is co-responsible for the adjustment, blessed Massa and De Pedro, he was proud to pay "taca taca" 100.000 million dollars of external debt, proposed to continue with the IMF, defended precarious Asian capitalism and proposed a "democratic pact" with the right. Isn't a presidential ticket from the left supposed to act to unmask such double talk by one of the main bosses' political leaders in the country??

As well; Such a political event did not deserve a single tweet of criticism from the Bregman-Del Caño formula. As the old saying goes: who is silent, grants. With this type of political concessions to the leadership of the Kirchnerist wing of Peronism, the PTS mistakenly moves away from the program of the FIT Unit: «We support the political independence of the workers and workers against any employer variant, including the so-called progressives»3. It's not about sectarianism, but firm left.

3. Contempt for the unemployed or key social movement

For us, the social subject of the socialist revolution continues to be the working class, salaried, especially big companies. There must be built yes or yes revolutionary party. But that does not deny that the unemployed are part of that class and at the same time, in a country like ours, with high unemployment and a tradition of struggle, social movements have played a leading role in the popular struggles of the last three decades. That is why they are another indispensable front for intervention and construction for any revolutionary socialist strategy that boasts of such.

Since 1996, after the massive dismissals of Menem, in Cutral Có and Plaza Huincul the first piquetero groups arose. In the Argentinazo of 2001 They were an active part of the popular rebellion and later conquered thousands and thousands of social plans that, in the essential, last until today. By the way, public subsidies to help unemployment and poverty exist throughout the world. But here the qualitative difference, precisely for having been uprooted and defended with the struggle, is that a large part of this aid is managed by the piquetero organizations and social movements themselves, independently of the capitalist state. This great conquest and political and organizational independence is what the different bourgeois governments have attacked but have not been able to defeat for years. 20 years.

As well; the PTS has an objective attitude of contempt towards the piquetero organizations, even towards those linked to FIT-U parties: Teresa Vive to our MST and the Polo Obrero to the PO. Of course, It is not that when they repress some piquetero struggle, the PTS does not show solidarity., that's elementary. What we say is that, apart from that in his 35 years of existence did not want, did not know or could not build among the unemployed, his stance is deeply contemptuous, reactionary. For example, there is an offensive tweet from Raúl Godoy, PTS leader, that is embarrassing, saying that the PTS assemblies are CONSCIOUS AND VOLUNTARY, so capitalized, or to the screams, alluding to the fact that social movements have no conscience and participate in a forced manner, clientele.

Another PTS leader, Guillo Pistonesi, criticizes us: «a unilateral construction in the administration of plans and in the creation of social movements such as Polo Obrero and Teresa Vive, it is a political practice that neither the PTS nor the IS share, it is neither good nor bad, is different". He says that the piquetero struggle is "losing its edge" and that "a genuine work program is being raised less and less, reduction of the working day to six hours... The political criticism is that they have put aside the proposal of a transition program that takes those basic demands towards a confrontation with the bosses and the State»4. But what does the pig know about candy if he never had confectionery? With what petty-bourgeois pedantry does he talk about what he is completely unaware of?? Neither the government itself nor the bourgeoisie would dare to say that the piqueteros "lose edge" or do not "bring their demands to a confrontation.". Upside down: they rightly consider them a favorite target of adjustment and repression.

So wrong is this contempt, that in a recent plenary session of the PTS in La Matanza, they attacked left-aligned piquetero movements so much that a fellow base member, with a mixture of astonishment and anger, asked them: "But what then?, they prefer to be directed by the PJ?»

Does the PTS forget that Lenin, when updating the Program of the Social Democratic Party of Russia in May-April 1917, as part of it, he proposed to demand a "comprehensive social security for workers... also for unemployment" (point 8.b) and create "job bags" of the class itself "to conveniently organize the job search for the unemployed" (point 13)5? And do they also forget that Trotsky, at the same time that he also raised the "reduction of the working day", proposed a “broader and more effective protection for the unemployed”6?

Above, It is not that the PTS despises the picketers because it has a large militant presence in the working class.. nothing to see. He does not lead a single union in the entire country and his performance in many workers' struggles, for sectarianism, self-proclamation and political use, was functional to the bosses' attack and thus ended in defeats and with the activism dismissed: federal soap, Lear, Kraft, Pepsico… In Zanón they lost their driving three years ago. And also unfortunately they attack the democratic unions and combative internal commissions, as they do in health and other sectors.

4. STEP of the bourgeois regime or worker method of assemblies

Salvo IS, who until recently said that the PASO divided in front but now goes without a murmur behind the unique formula of the PTS, In the FIT-U nobody is afraid of the inmates to decide the lists. Even less the MST, that already in the previous legislative election we went to the inmates of the FIT-Unidad alone. The current controversy is that, having the front a large militancy and also the participation of sympathizers; of independent fighters of the left of the trade union movement, of unemployed, student, of genre, human rights, environmental; from other friendly left-wing organizations and personalities, why does the PTS prefer a mechanism of bourgeois democracy, limited and clearly multi-class character, instead of a workers' assembly, youthful and popular, open, where each compa and group has a leading role, voice and vote, consciously and voluntarily?

In the STEP, at the same time, only one vote is put in an envelope to decide candidacies and period. Nothing to do in comparison with a massive and militant assembly, that in addition to being a political fact in itself allows to debate and exchange ideas about the perspectives of the country, how we prepare from the left, various themes in commissions and of course the electoral campaign, the political axes, the profile, the presidential formula and the integration of the lists. Why doesn't the PTS want to participate in such an event?, arguing head on? Could it be because he feels more comfortable in the field of the mechanisms of the bourgeois regime than in the combative and popular climate of a great assembly?, in the best tradition of the working class to debate and resolve?

Of course, As a response, there is no room for the excuse of the PTS that "we have already held many assemblies"... of the PTS only! Infantilisms are out of place. From the MST and the PO we are proposing the opposite: a joint event of the entire FIT Unit and open to fighters and other sectors of the left; a unitary and participatory day, where all the variants can be raised and then resolved together.

5. Electoral adaptation or revolutionary alternative

When the PTS concludes that theirs "are the best candidates" to represent the FIT Unit, it does so based on surveys… that is to say, appeals to the same unilateral and limited method with which Larreta has just nominated Jorge Macri as a candidate for head of the Buenos Aires government. But let's get to the bottom line.

If the PTS seeks the false hegemony of its party at the front, knowing that it is divisive, if politically he yields to Kirchnerism in an opportunistic way, if he acts in a derogatory manner towards the organizations of the unemployed and if, in addition, to resolve the differences of candidacies, he prefers internal elections instead of an open and democratic plenary session of the entire FIT-U, the guiding thread of his line is an electoralism that adapts more and more to the bourgeois-democratic regime and, but still, moves away from a revolutionary left perspective, combative, anti system.

We call on the national leadership of the PTS and all its cadres and militants to reflect in depth on the matter., to change and join a collective debate, that it is the best way to strengthen the FIT Unit and that it advance as a political alternative of struggle, transformative and revolutionary, including at the electoral level.

Socialist left, a wrong follow-up to the PTS

With the IS comrades we come from the same political current: Morenist Trotskyism. For this trajectory of many years in common, our call to review your position that we consider wrong has a special importance.

According to the statement of his referent Juan Carlos Giordano: «Despite the fight that we gave from the Socialist Left so that the FITU does not divide the PASO proposing the unitary formula Bregman-Solano, the PO and the MST made the decision to divide by launching their Solano-Ripoll formula, ignoring in this way the previous agreements and closing all possibility of going together. They convene a plenary 17 of June saying that it is an 'event to discuss everything' when the truth is that it is a unilateral call to ratify its formula"7.

There are many fallacies in a few lines. As we said above, "The decision to divide" was made by the PTS, which for a year was closed in an exclusive formula. And the MST and the PO are not "closing all possibility of going together", since we invite the PTS and IS to resolve everything in the open plenary of the 17 in Congress.

Until very recently, IS proposed a shared Bregman-Solano presidential formula because it understood that it should be inclusive and, at the same time, they said that the PASO meant a division of the front. But it turns out that now they are going STEP and seconding a formula of a single party of the PTS.

The contradiction is yours, IS comrades. They could have resolved it positively, but they chose to go after the electoralism of the PTS. We invite its leaders and militants to reverse that mistaken decision.

1 https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/El-PTS-acuerda-con-IS-una-lista-comun-para-las-PASO-con-la formula-Bregman-Del-Cano?utm_source=lid&utm_medium=tw&utm_campaign=article-social-actions
2 https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/En-un-juicio-cuestionado-el-fiscal-pidio-12-anos-de-prision-e-inhabilitar-a-Cristina-Kirchner
3 https://mst.org.ar/2019/06/19/frente-de-izquierda-de-trabajadores-unidad-acta-programatica/
4 https://www.pagina12.com.ar/552159-el-frente-de-izquierda-va-camino-a-dirimir-sus-diferencias-i
5 https://www.marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/1917/mayo/0001.htm
6 World unemployment and the five-year plan of the Soviet Union, 1930.
7 https://www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar/2020/index.php/blog/comunicados-de-prensa/item/21882-pts-e-izquierda-socialista-acordaron-una-lista-comun-en-defensa-del-frente-de-izquierda