August 2013

ARGENTINA

Reform vs. Revolution, Social democracy vs. Trotskyism...
a sensible balance of the election outcome
On purpose of "parliamentary cretinism" and the mystification of the bourgeois universal suffrage by reformism in Marxism

For years, perhaps decades, there didn’t arise among the former Trotskyists or self claiming Socialists, people who so openly in the name of Trotskyism prostrated before the institutions of bourgeois democracy as today the leadership of the Partido Obrero does, followed by its PTS partners in the FIT. An absolutely “democratizing” left has taken body, as Altamira liked to say of the Morenoism for years.

For us Marxists, bourgeois democracy is the sweetened and sugary way with which the most ferocious dictatorship of capital wraps itself. Furthermore, this proscriptive democracy based on the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853 / 1994 is nothing more than a pseudo-democratically-shaped Bonapartism. It is moreover clear how much democracy the left enjoys in the elections, but the workers in the factories have only the most ferocious dictatorships. When they go out to fight, they receive telegrams of dismissal, and are pointed by the guns of the police and gendarmerie and judges who put them prisoners.

Even from the point of view of formal democracy, the President, according to the sacred Constitution of the oligarchy, has the power of veto of the acts of Parliament; the Supreme Court can veto and declare unconstitutional these same laws; as well as politicians can promise a lot of things, not to meet them and follow in their posts without representing anyone... As we see, from universal suffrage and the "citizen vote" nothing remains at the time of the decisions.

Then, as Lenin said, "look at any parliamentary country, from USA to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway, etc.: the real work of State is done behind the scenes and the ministries, offices, General Staffs run it. In the parliaments they do nothing more than chat, with the special purpose of cajoling the "vulgar people". (State and Revolution, Lenin, 1917)

Moreover, if the Socialists win elections and think to touch the interests of capitalists, or the labor movement threatens these interests with their fight, generals come as in Egypt or as yesterday Videla or Pinochet, to put things in place.
What does this bourgeois 'democracy' conceal then? The fiercest of the dictatorships in the capital.
What do we Marxists intervene in bourgeois elections for? For demonstrating this to the workers in the facts, in life. To confront the class enemy parties so no confused worker ever could support them, vote them. To organize the fighting of the exploited so they are prepared before, during and after the electoral process; and to be a political alternative so no worker supports the bourgeoisie in its grounds, which the elections are.

Such as Lenin said, "... Engels, with the greatest precision, calls universal suffrage the weapon of domination of the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage, said Engels, obviously taking the teachings of the long experience of the German Social Democracy, is ‘the index used to measure the maturity of the working class. It can only be and nor will be ever more, in the current state’."
"The petty bourgeois democrats (...) all the social-chauvinists and opportunistic elements in Western Europe expect, indeed, "more" of universal suffrage.
"They share themselves and instill into the people the false idea that universal suffrage is "at present", a medium capable of really expressing the will of the majority of workers and ensure its practical effectiveness". (State and Revolution, Lenin, 1917)

The FIT has not respected any of these fundamental principles with which any revolutionary Marxist would have presented to the elections. It could be said that its electoral campaign, from this point of view, is at the level of the campaigns of Lula in Brazil or the same Izquierda Unida (United Left) of the ' 90s of the MAS and the Argentinean CP... or perhaps even more to the right. It is enough to see the program of Izquierda Unida of the ' 90s to understand what we say.
As the elections approached, the FIT or “Frente de Izquierda y los Trabajadores” ("front of the left and the workers'') became more of the lefts and less of the workers. The slogan "of the workers" in fact appeared increasingly smaller in the posters and flyers to be made almost disappear.
The FIT aimed to get votes out of the middle class, from the left of the Cristinismo (that is, the closest aides of CFK, the president, and their clients, NT) and the Campora (this is a nationwide group founded by CFK’s son that claims to be the renovation of Kirchnerism by the younger generation of Peronists, NT)... reality showed otherwise. While more and more the FIT abandoned a campaign of class independence, it became clear that the most advanced successes of the FIT were got among the working class and where its labor candidates weighed (most of FIT’s labor candidates were independent worker representatives, anti-bureaucratic fighters, members of factory committees, etc. NT).
If, in the words of Lenin, parliamentary seat is nothing more than a trench in the midst of the enemy’s terrain to help the workers and the people revolt against the bourgeois institutions and for the Socialist Revolution, the entire FIT policy has been "My life for a parliamentary seat", since for FIT leadership there all the problems of the workers are resolved, by means of the laws.
It doesn't surprise us. Yesterday they said that the bourgeois judges, who today have procecuted thousands of workers, had solved the problem of genocide in Argentina with their "historical sentences". Enough to see the electoral campaign of the FIT and its criticism of the appointment of the repressor Milani (a general that is the hcief of the armed Forces, recently named in the post by CFK, NT), where it didn’t advance in calling to dissolve and defeat the caste of officers of the Argentine army, which is a servile troop for the UN missions of imperialism. Not to mention that the Armed Forces are full of Milanis who it is necessary to judge and punish... And pope Bergoglio? Or were they silent because he is the "poor" Pope who comes to secure "reconciliation" while the bourgeoisie with the murderous police and gendarmerie is brandishing daily the whip against the workers and the youth? In politics whoever shuts up, grants; half truth is a lie. Making the problem only Milani and Project X (an eavesdropping scheme by the gendarmerie, the State Political Police and other state institutions, NT), means that you can democratize the armed forces and let the police and gendarmerie continue killing workers everyday.
The leadership of the FIT should not get angry when we say that it is a social democratic front coming to reform the capitalist system and not to defeat it. It is clear however it comes to achieve reforms just as capitalism is rotting and throws the entire weight of the crisis to the masses (it seems that these people have not heard of Wall Street).
From time to time in their TV spots, they showed a video of how people fought in Bolivia or Brazil, but why did they not call to fight like in Bolivia and in Brazil, in the streets, with the general strike, breaking with the union bureaucracy?
But the Frente de Izquierda (Left Front) most imposes against the consciousness of the workers who voted them breaking with the bourgeoisie and their parties -a huge leap forward-, when it holds that the working-class changes its existence with the vote; when it says that voting in a booth is the mother of the battles of the combat of the proletariat. This is a blatant hoax against the workers.
For the Partido Obrero 'we had a Jujenazo in the North'... 9.39% of votes in Jujuy seem to them like El Cordobazo, which pulled military dictatorships and Governments! "Political shocks in Mendoza"?... To tell the truth nobody has seen the bourgeoisie very scared by the votes to the FIT anywhere in the country, either suffering any kind of “disorder” or commenting the “danger” in any of the bourgeois newspapers... What's more, the FIT participation legitimized these bourgeois elections. Moreover, the bourgeoisie salutes this “triumph” for the left... while it does not treats in the same way the 6,500 workers it is presently prosecuting and pursuing, or the oil workers from Las Heras, which are on the scaffold, the teachers and truckers of Tierra del Fuego, the workers of Kraft and Materfer, etc.
But where the electoral drunkenness already reaches unprecedented limits is when PO is speaking of a "great revolution" in Formosa. But if they didn’t even took a majority as Allende in Chile or yesterday Hollande in France, to speak a bit proudly about the "peaceful way to socialism".
That's poison poured in the consciousness of the workers. No revolution, no Jujenazo can be done with votes, and much less with a 5.2% in… Formosa! (One of the least populated provinces in Argentina, NT)

The MAS, not less drunken that the leadership of the FIT, has titled "hard vote punishment to the bourgeoisie" and the MST says the same... And what about the vote to Massa? What is it? A prize to a bourgeois party? And the votes to Ms Carrió, how is it called? A punishment to the PRO? So, the bourgeoisie is punished through the vote?
All the bourgeois opposition also speaks of it punished the Government; they are all in the same party. But that is what bourgeois democracy is all about, after a punished Government a renewed Government comes to whip again the working class more and more. As Lenin stated, "the omnipotence of "wealth" is safer in the democratic republics, because it does not depend on a bad political sheath of capitalism. The Democratic Republic is the best political sheath that capitalism can be covered with and therefore capital, dominating (...) this sheath, which is the best of all, builds its Power in a way so sure, so strong that no change of people, institutions, or of parties, within the bourgeois Democratic Republic, makes this power shiver " (State and Revolution, Lenin, 1917).

It’s high time this left understands that the only way for punishing the bourgeoisie is when you touch its wallet. Punishment for the bourgeoisie was 2001 when neither bosses’ politicians nor bureaucrats could take to the streets for risk of a beating or a shower of eggs or spitting. Punishment was when we expropriated them in Cuba, the USSR, or when we defeated them in Viet Nam and the last US marine came out on the last helicopter from Saigon. And the tragedy of the proletariat was not that we don't win elections, but Stalinism gave in the victorious socialist revolutions, to then new batches of Social Democrats come to talk about a "peaceful road to socialism" so that never more the working class fights for power.
The PTS, slightly less drunk, has sanctified: 'Defeat of the Government, great election of the left and the workers'... but the bourgeoisie took out 95% of the votes! The Chief of the bankers – Massa - won the elections in the province of Buenos Aires (the most populated district of the country, NT)! The anti-workers specialists of the UCR are back to be a political force in Argentina!

For a Social democrat the vote has revolutionary powers and this is not true. For Engels, the vote served to make a globular count of the socialists and revolutionary forces. So big is their electoral binge and so bourgeois the vision they have of the vote, that the socialists want to hide that the globular count of forces that gives a million votes for the left means that the FIT was voted by the workers and the working class in general. The bourgeois parties were voted by the bourgeoisie, Argentina’s large petty bourgeoisie, and a huge strip of workers. But the million votes of the FIT in a working class with 6 million industrial workers and construction, means that a 20 or 25% of the working class voted them among broad segments of the most advanced workers. That is the triumph. And, from the point of view of the bureaucracy, this election means the bureaucracy is sunk. That means that there are more than enough conditions to cause a huge process of re-grouping of the working class to defeat the hated union bureaucracy and from that position to cause new political defeats to the bosses’ parties.
There is nothing that prevents the FIT from convening a Grand Congress of Labor Organizations with representatives from the rank and file workers, from Formosa to Tierra del Fuego, from Jujuy to Neuquen, for organizing a great fight, disavowing the present trade union bureaucracy, calling to stand up again the piquetero movement with the "21 points of the North of Salta" program and re-group the best of the workers vanguard with the program of worker democracy, with a program that is continuity of the combat of the Sitrac-Sitram, ElCordobazo, the coordinators of the 1970s and the revolutionary uprising of 2001.

For the FIT, the votes for the left opened a "political crisis". Unfortunately they refuse to make a count of globular forces and reassemble them for the combat of the proletariat; they prefer to tell the latter that votes make revolutions.

One has to be telling the truth. When the worker came out of the booth and ended up voting, the next day at the factory he had the same foreman, with the same timer making him to get the same production or more... or perhaps a telegram of dismissal in his house. And what about his vote? Where is the strength of the vote? The worker vote has strength at the Assembly, in committees of factory, in the picket, when workers unite their struggles. In the ballot box it is one more of millions, and it’s like a nun’s or a bourgeois’. In a bourgeois election the class that produces the wealth of the nation is worth the same as a bunch of lumpen, a clique of petty bourgeois that do not produce any wealth or a gathering of bosses. Therefore, this is a democracy for the rich that the workers should throw away with the revolution, with our struggle to conquer bread. Everything else is babble. It is getting near a seat in the Parliament but at the price of not regrouping the working class and instead submitting it to the bourgeois democracy.

Any comrade can understand this. Because if the votes have so much power that they can transform reality and cause losses to the bourgeoisie, let’s go with a trailer full of votes to a factory and see if these ballots are used to achieve something!
It is bad Marxism not telling the truth to the workers: that they should only rely on their own forces, in their own organization and in their own struggle.

A worker confronts his employers in the strike and the Assembly, not in an urn. There, to prepare and educate the working class so it does not fall into that trap, we must advance on its conscience voting for worker and Socialist candidates. But telling them that there it can overcome is a hoax. The task is nothing more than to prepare the destruction of the governmental machine of dominance of the bourgeoisie and destroy it, including the parliament. Precisely for that Marxists go to the Parliament, to facilitate its destruction. The revolutionary Marxists, in every parliamentary election, against the direction of the FIT, stated that the necessary method of struggle for propagandizing and organizing the masses is the mass action and declare, so there are no doubts, that THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS SHOULD BE DIRECTED NOT TO OBTAINING THE GREATEST AMOUNT POSSIBLE OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION BUT TO THE MOBILIZATION OF THE MASSES AROUND THE SLOGANS OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION.
In this regard, Trotsky said referring to China in 1927: "you have to conquer the right to renounce the parliamentarianism gathering the masses around the party and leading them to openly fight for the conquest of power. It is naive to believe that this work can be replaced by the renunciation to the use of the methods and the contradictory and oppressive forms of parliamentarianism". (Trotsky, “The Third International After Lenin”, 1929).
The bourgeoisie reconstitutes its political regime. It has bleached its parties to organize an orderly transition from the “Kirchnerato”. Its institutions such as the armed forces, the police, the Church and the caste of judges paid by bankers and transnationals, that command the gendarmerie, and the SIDE (State Secret Police) have not been questioned or diminished by anyone, not even by the “left of the regime” in these elections. A renovator "Kirchnerismo" and a "new Alliance" are outlined for 2015. But before that judges, gendarmes, labor ministers, a bureaucracy and a Government that hit hard the workers are needed.
That is why the bourgeoisie is not afraid of the FIT. What they fear is that those workers who voted it organize, fight, defeat the union bureaucracy in their factories and fight as in El Cordobazo, revive the zonal coordinating bodies of the ´70 and fight to death as in 2001, the same as now in Brazil, in Bolivia or in the Maghreb and Middle East, but this time doing justice, getting prisoner the bosses and their politicians and minions and expropriating without compensation the Wall Street parasites and their branches in Argentina, expropriating the expropriators of the people. For this reason, our calling is to put up a united front of workers to fight.

There is no doubt that the flags of classism of the ' 70s and the revolution of 2001 have been abandoned by this left, which is a “left of the regime”. The former have gone to the hands of those who strive to found anew the Argentinean Trotskyism and the Fourth International. Inebriated into a mountain of votes, promising laws everywhere in the Parliament, the leadership of the FIT collects in some sense the demagoguery of former president Alfonsin, a genuine Argentine bourgeois politician, who said in ' 83: "with democracy and law people eat, heal and educate".

It’s imperative to tell the truth. Without the victory of the Socialist Revolution there will be no solution for the exploited. Internationally and in Argentina, the option remains: socialism or more capitalist barbarism. Here is the crux of the matter. And in every process of international socialist revolution, reform and revolution also face each other.
This "democratizing" left is which rose as a breakthrough for the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East... the call for "constituent assemblies" for now and the socialist revolution for a later stage… so to say for Donkey Years. This left is part of the left of Obama which, under the pretext of confronting fascist Bush, ended up supporting "Democratic" Obama. Nothing new is invented in Argentina, it is the old and well-known recipe of reformism.

Rodolfo Sánchez