On March 22, at their request, the Argentine president Juan Perón received representatives of eight political parties. The parties involved were the Unión Civica Radical [Radical Civic Union, the bourgeois liberal opposition party], the Partido Revolucionario Cristiano [Revolutionary Christian party], the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores [PST, Socialist Workers party], the Partido Socialista Popular [People's Socialist party], the Partido Intransigente, the UDELPA [Unión del Pueblo Adelante—People's Union for Progress], the Communist party, and the Progressive Democratic party. This meeting was not an isolated incident. It was part of a series of moves made by Perón with the aim of "normalizing" his relations with the officially recognized parties (another meeting took place on April 5). But the March 22 meeting was the most important one up to now because the eight organizations issued a joint statement at its conclusion:
"The participants," this statement said, "have confirmed their fundamental commitment to spare no effort to maintain and consolidate the process of institutionalization in our country within the context of the democratic system and through the practice of coexistence and constructive dialogue. . . . The republic has been experiencing difficult moments as a result of its confrontation with forces that have long subjected it to their pressure. But these problems will be easily surmounted by actions of solidarity conducted by sectors that respect the aspiration of the majority of the people and of the popular strata for freedom that was expressed in the elections, a freedom that guarantees their right to continue to express themselves in the future so that they can apply this liberty in practice to free themselves from the burden of imperialist domination and assure enjoyment by the workers of the benefits of the wealth created by their labor.
"As participants in this process, we have not taken an attitude of opposition to achieving these objectives. Because of the spectrum of opinion represented by those taking part and the development of the discussion, this meeting must be considered a concrete step forward, a combining of efforts that will assure the continuation of the ongoing process of institutionalization along the lines the people voted for. We understand all the risks involved in the endeavor the country is calling for, and, over and above any differences about how deep or how fast the process of change should go, we agree on the unavoidable need for it. As for those who want the constitutional system to fail or are waiting for circumstances that will permit a new reactionary adventure, those who are trying to use sectors of the regime to prejudice future options, and those who are adopting totalitarian or corporativist practices that fit in ideologically with fascist-type demands and the interests of the multinational companies that exert a constant pressure on our frontiers, all these people must realize that this country is united on the basis of a fundamental agreement and will respond to their actions."
This statement, which was published on March 22 by all the daily papers, was reprinted in the March 28 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the organ of the PST. But Avanzada Socialista did not confine itself to publishing the communiqué; it added two commentaries in the form of editorials.
After noting the escalating violence from the right, which reached its culmination in the coup by the police chief Navarro in Córdoba, the first editorial explained that "participation (by the PST) in the dialogue with the president of the republic" was a "concrete step in defense of the democratic rights gained in heroic struggle by the mobilizations of the workers and the people that have developed since the Cordobazo." It went on to explain that "defending constitutional stability" should not coincide with a political defense of the government and drew the following conclusion: "The fact that eight parties reached an agreement to call for a meeting to demand institutionalization is of extraordinary importance. But as always we will continue to maintain that mobilizations constitute the primary way to defend democratic gains. This has been shown, moreover, by the Acindar struggle and that of the bank workers. This is why we will continue to point to the need for an agreement to defend democratic rights in action, starting with a big public meeting of all the parties, the political youth organizations, and all the workers and student organizations." The same appeal for a joint meeting with the bourgeois parties was repeated at the end of the second editorial, which explained the need for "concrete, flexible responses to every conjuncture in the class struggle."
The PST leadership must have realized that all of this—its decision to participate in a meeting that served as a cover for Perón's "normalization" moves, its signing a common document with bourgeois parties (including the Unión Civica Radical, the traditional bourgeois party and even today the principal bourgeois force aside from Peronism), its proclaiming a "fundamental agreement" among all the signers on defending the process of "institutionalization," its accepting "objectives" approved by "the people" (which in reality are objectives elaborated by Cámpora and Perón), and its thesis that the fight against fascism can and must be conducted in common with the parties representing the class enemy—would provoke reactions among the party membership.
That is why the same issue of Avanzada Socialista published a letter signed by a "Comrade F." (a letter that reached the editors with astonishing rapidity) along with an answer that took up almost two pages.
The letter seemed to accept class collaboration with the bourgeois parties. Indeed, it said (falsifying a quotation from Trotsky referring to the need for a united front with the Social Democrats in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s) that "it is permissible to form a united front with the class enemy and even with the devil's grandmother." But the author criticized signing the eight-party document because he said, in this way the PST had aided Perón and given its support to a bourgeois government on the brink of collapse. The editors' answer clarified the central question. It maintained that the starting point had to be "a basic fact—there has been a semifascist coup that has toppled a regional government. This coup was not an isolated incident but represented a leap in the escalation of violence by the right that is moving onto the offensive and has no intention of stopping." The conclusion was that in the given context one should not conduct a struggle to overthrow the government or the existing institutions but, to the contrary, it was necessary to defend "democratic institutionalization and that, to this end, it is correct to establish an accord with bourgeois parties by signing joint declarations and calling for joint demonstrations."
In the past, the leaders of the PST have criticized the Stalinists' popular-front conceptions and they formally reaffirmed these criticisms in the issue of Avanzada Socialista in question. But just as they previously supported the Uruguayan Frente Amplio, which was led by a representative of the bourgeoisie, SEREGNI, today thay have signed a joint statement with bourgeois parties and called for common actions with these parties. In order to justify this ultraopportunist attitude, they utilize precisely the argument the Stalinists advanced in the mid-1930s to justify their adopting the popular-front line, that is, that it is legitimate to make alliances with the bourgeoisie or its so-called democratic sectors in order to oppose a fascist danger. By this action, the PST is entering a new stage in its evolution, openly breaking with the revolutionary Marxist conception of the workers united front based on the Leninist conception of the Third International and revived by Trotsky.
At the same time they have forgotten the fundamental distinction that exists between the democratic rights demanded by the workers movement and the structures of bourgeois democracy. In signing a document that calls for institutionalization in the country and in taking a stand alongside bourgeois parties as a "participant in the process of institutionalization," they are helping to maintain Perón's principal obfuscation, the pseudodemocratic farce that the Argentine bourgeoisie has been playing for three years, and they are falling for the maneuver designed to present Perón as the guarantor of a "democracy" that includes everybody except the extreme right and extreme left organizations (Perón has expressed this line in an explicit way). The term used several times by Avanzada Socialista, dialogue with the president, is quite revealing of the opportunist conceptions of the PST leaders.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International, which has always rejected every form of class collaboration with the "democratic parties" of the bourgeoisie, thinks that while they should take advantage of whatever openings for legal or semilegal activity there are, the duty of revolutionists in Latin America is to expose the fraudulent operation inaugurated by the Gran Acuerdo Nacional (GAN—Great National Agreement) and carried forward by Perón, that their duty is to fight without compromise or truce against the government in office and the bourgeois state.
June 1974
In its issue of June 26, 1974, Avanzada Socialista states that the PST did not sign the declaration of March 22, 1974, "because there was still disagreement" with the other parties. Supposedly the editor in chief published the report about the signature by error. But the article in the paper that offered this correction still contained an explicit reaffirmation of the legitimacy in Argentina today of concluding tactical accords with bourgeois parties for the defense of democratic freedoms and of bourgeois democratic institutions.
The fundamental option of the PST is further confirmed by the fact that on June 29, 1974, three days after the publication of this issue of Avanzada Socialista, the PST together with seven other parties called "center-left" by the Argentine papers signed a statement supporting "the process of institutionalization in the country" and "the operation of the legal mechanisms of constitutional succession." (La Opinión, June 30, 1974.) On July 3, in the aftermath of Perón's death, it signed a new statement in the city of Santa Fe at the request of the president of the provincial chamber of deputies favoring "the maintenance of constitutional stability as the only adequate means for attaining social justice in freedom, breaking the grip of the imperialist interests, and achieving lasting independence." (El Cronista Comercial, July 4, 1974.)
This proves that despite the article in the June 26, 1974, Avanzada Socialista the PST has fully maintained its fundamental difference with the programmatic line of the Fourth International on the method of defending the workers' freedoms.
This tidying up of a programmatic deviation for which the Fourth International cannot take any responsibility must in no way stand in the way of developing a vigorous campaign of solidarity with the PST and a defense of this party against the blows of the repression and the terror of the extreme right.
July 12, 1974