Permanent Revolution No. 11: The Argentine left faced with an extraordinary opportunity
We share below the editorial of Alejandro Bodart, coordinator of the International Socialist League and leader of the MST in the Unity Left Front, published in Permanent Revolution No. 11, the political theoretical magazine of the LIS, about the current situation of the revolutionary left in Argentina. You can purchase the complete edition digitally here.
In a world where the extreme right managed to advance and came to power in many countries, including United States, It is important to stop and analyze the Argentine case. Because the rise to power of the ultra-reactionary Milei, Trump's darling, Far from being consolidated, it is in full decline and caused a social polarization of such magnitude that it ended up weakening the bourgeois opposition that has been its accomplice and strengthening the revolutionary left in an unprecedented way..
Today in Argentina a very important chapter is beginning to be written in the long march to achieve a country and a world democratically governed by the workers., where fully enjoying life and nature is not a privilege for a few but rather a
everyone's right. It's possible? How do we make it happen? What tasks are urgent? Answering these and other questions is crucial at this moment and the debate has to challenge not only the Argentine left., but also to the internationalist revolutionary forces.
The arrival of the far-right government in Argentina at the end of the 2023 It was part of an international phenomenon, although with local particularities. The Creole libertarian experiment gave impetus to violent rhetoric and brutal adjustment, accompanied by a submission and delivery of the country's resources to North American imperialism like never before seen, superior even to “carnal relations” with the US. that promoted the PJ1 in the decade of 90. Today this project has a rejection greater than 65% population, but it would be a mistake to consider him dead. The extreme right is here to stay. They are an expression of the capitalist crisis and feed on disappointment with populist and reformist variants.. In Argentina, while the electoral alternative to the libertarians is Peronism, There are chances that Milei will be re-elected in 2027. To defeat it, a major national mobilization must be achieved and the revolutionary left must continue to be strengthened..
Another important fact about the Argentine situation is the enormous crisis of those who have been the political and union leadership of the labor movement during recent years. 80 years, peronism. This bourgeois movement, which has been a real popular front in the form of a party and instilled class conciliation for decades, It is fragmented into several pieces and without an alternative program to Milei. Its governors and part of its senators and deputies have accompanied the most reactionary measures of the government. They want him to do the dirty work that the IMF asks of them so they don't have to do it if they return to power.. The Peronist union leaders have been complicit and have let the adjustment pass, the delivery of resources and sovereignty and a slave labor reform. All this, added to the disaster of the Peronist government of Alberto Fernández that opened the door to Milei, It has caused the breakup of entire swaths of workers and popular sectors and a sector to turn to the left. From here to the elections, the PJ will try to present a single candidacy, although it is not certain that they will achieve it, and appeal to“useful vote to remove Milei”, presenting themselves as if they were the only ones who can do it and thus stop the advance of the left. It will depend on the pace that the class struggle takes in the coming months and on the actions of the revolutionaries whether they are successful or not., but the structural crisis with its social base will not stop.
A VERY PARTICULAR LEFT TURN
The deterioration of Milei and the political radicalization it generates in huge swaths of society, the deep crisis that Peronism is going through and the existence for several years of theLeft Front and Workers Unity (IN AND)2, which has been the only real opposition to the government, This is what explains the dizzying rise of the left that we are witnessing. With never-before-seen levels of sympathy and mass sectors that are beginning to see it as a government option.
Internationally we are seeing other processes of left turn: in New York the triumph ofZohran Mamdani, in Germany the recomposition ofThe left or the possibility that was raised in England withYour Party, frustrated by its leaders. What is unprecedented about Argentina is that the left that is strengthening, unlike the reformist directions that we have just named, claims revolutionary socialist, It has origins in Trotskyism and a program aimed at seizing power and establishing a workers' government..
None of this is coincidental. Argentina is one of the countries with the longest tradition of Trotskyism and where decades ago it was possible to politically and organizationally overcome the different variants of the reformist left., including the Stalinists. That's why it's not the first time, facing acute crises of Peronism, The revolutionary left is presented with the opportunity to try to gain organic mass influence and run as a government option.. In the decade of 80 was strengthenedMovement to Socialism (BUT), that became hegemonic in the worker and student vanguard, organized some 15 thousand militants and became the largest Trotskyist party in the world. The death of its founder, Nahuel Moreno, in January 1987 and the fratricidal fragmentation of the leadership that succeeded him along with a series of theoretical errors, political and methodological in the midst of enormous changes in the world situation led to this organization imploding in 1992. A few years later, at the end of 2001, The revolutionary outbreak known as Argentinazo made Luis Zamora emerge as a prominent figure, former exMAS deputy converted to horizontalism and under the influence of the ideas of John Holloway, who came to have the sympathy of enormous swaths of the mass movement. Another huge opportunity wasted by a group that refused to organize the thousands that followed it, who had a deeply personalist and sectarian policy towards the organic left that offered to accompany him and who consciously refused to run for president despite being the politician with the most sympathy among the masses at that time. The void he left by abstaining from the dispute that was raised made it easier for Kirchnerism to emerge and for Peronism to recover..
The current one is the third opportunity that has arisen since the fall of the dictatorship. Comrade Myriam Bregman, FIT-U presidential candidate in 2023 where was reached 2,69% of votes, appears today, 3 years later, among the three leaders with the best positive image in the country and in surveys that measure voting intentions, he has up to a 14%. Percentages much higher than the other moments of rise of the revolutionary left. But as we have seen in the past, Opportunities do not last forever and depend on the correct political orientation so that they are not diluted.
THE DISPUTE OVER GOVERNMENT AND POWER
If the left responds to the level of responsibility it begins to have, we cannot rule out that it could continue to grow.. Today it is already an alternative government for a segment of the masses.. If sympathy could be transformed into an organized force of tens or hundreds of thousands, could become an alternative to power and help begin to build a new institutionality, winning the leadership of unions, internal committees, coordinating them and strengthening the emergence of new democratic organizations of the working class. This is the challenge that is posed and the strategic importance of the debate that crosses the revolutionary left of the country.
The turn to the left that we are witnessing occurs without there yet being a massive irruption of the mass movement, although the anger grows and some processes that develop are a preview of what is to come. Today we cannot predict when the possibility of a revolutionary outbreak like the one that just occurred in Bolivia will arise.. Can it happen before the next presidential elections in October 2027? Will it happen later or is there little chance of it happening in the medium term? Would it be possible that the trigger for this could be the next elections if the left makes an excellent choice?? We do not know. But it is clear that the advances in consciousness that we are witnessing, to continue developing, sooner or later they will move to the streets. This situation has to find the left prepared to intervene and dispute the government and power, starting to organize right now with that objective.
There are important but isolated struggles. A task that the MST and the PTS are developing together is to try to coordinate them in the different regions of the country., with a first ambitious objective of achieving a multitudinousMarch of the Anger3 in Plaza de Mayo and all the squares in the country in September, to which we hope that the rest of the left and all the workers' and popular organizations that are willing to seriously confront the government will join..
But along with this, the underlying debate is how we build a new movement or party that allows us to organize not only the current militants of the FIT-U parties., but to a significant part of the millions who want the left to govern. Without an organization of this type it is impossible to dispute power. Today no FIT-U party is hegemonic in the vanguard and can alone organize the tens of thousands that need to be organized before the opportunity disappears.. That is why it is a mistake to proclaim oneself and not have an orientation to face in common with those who are willing to leave their comfort zone., the transformation of the FIT-U from a purely electoral front to an organization that centrally disputes in all areas.
The debate on how to take advantage of the open opportunity and the differences that are manifesting have put the Front under tension. This is being combined with another crucial debate: How revolutionaries should intervene in the labor movement and the ongoing struggles. PO's disastrous orientation in the important FATE fight4, where it applied its historical sectarianism and endorsed crooked and bureaucratic methods foreign to the tradition of the revolutionary left, the crisis has deepened5.
From the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), Argentine section of the LIS, We defend the continuity of the FIT-U, But reality is showing that the way it has been working is not enough to face the new challenges that lie ahead of us.. To continue playing a positive role, you must evolve and overcome your most obvious weaknesses.. In this new issue of Revolución Permanente we develop several proposals to achieve this.
We invite all those who share our points of view to join the MST and our union groups, social, ecosocialists, of human or youth rights like La Zurda, to give more strength to our proposals and prevent the historic opportunity that is proposed from being wasted.
- The Justicialist Party (PJ) It is the legal name of the Peronist movement.
- Made up of our party the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), the Socialist Workers Party (PTS), the Partido Obrero (PO) and Socialist Left (IS).
- Conceived as a great political and social demonstration, with the main figures of the left and the most important struggles at the forefront, that serves to postulate a solution from the left to the crisis that the country is experiencing.
- Main Argentine tire factory.
- This situation has manifested itself in the municipal elections called for November in Bariloche, a tourist city in the south of the country, where the FIT-U will be presented in two lists: one from the PTS-MST front and another from PO-IS
