United Secretariat of the Fourth International has adopted the following statement in response to the August 20, 1974, statement of the Executive Committee of the PST: documents of June 29 and July 3, 1974, signatures the Argentine press had attributed to them. If the contrary impression was created, It was due in large part to the fact that Avanzada Socialista, the organ of the PST, hod itself confirmed the information in the bourgeois press in this regard and to the foct that there was an extraordinary delay in the correction made by the PST. Let us leave aside the argument that it was necessary to wait two months before publicly correcting the error made by Avanzoda Socialista in order to give that correction greater exposure through the television appearance of Comrade Coral. But what of the delay in the internal rectification? The comrades of the PST were invited to three successive meetings of the United Secretariat to explain their attitude toward the meeting and document of March 21, 1974. They did not attend any of these meetings. They could have immediately explained in writing that they had not signed the document in question. They refrained from doing so. The first written indication in this regard was recelved by the United Secretarfat at the beginning of June in a letter from the PST dated May 23. The first public interpretation of the new version of the facts come to the United Secretariat three months after the events, with the June 26 issue of Avanzade Socialista, which explained that the PST had not signed the document. To this day we have received no explanation of the reasons that led the PST to delay so long an interal rectification that could have been sent forty-eight hours after their receipt of the first letter From the United Secretariat. We also acknowledge to the comrades of the PST that in the published text of the United Secretariat resolution of July 12, 1974, the passage relative to the PST's conception of the defense of institutionalization was placed between quotation marks through an error in transcription of the manuscript. It is true that this was not a quotation from Avanzada Socialista but rather our own judgment of the meaning of the conceptions and action of the leaders of the PST, a judgment based not on is but one of many facing our organization in a period of tumultuous growth. The opportunities for recruitment and expansion have placed extreme demands on all our secsoned codres. New adherents are being integrated as fost as possible, but full integration requires time. Mearwhile errors are bound to crop up.
Our situation, we are sure, will be appreciated by those sectors of the world Trokyist movement that have undergone similar periods of swift growth, What we require above all from the
Fourth International at present is understanding of our opportunities and problems - and loyal collaboration in our effort to handle them in a principled way.
August 20,1974 an allegedly abusive quotation but rather on an analysis that we can only reiterate. All this is not the basis of the problem. What concerned the leadership of the Fourth International was not only the foct that according to the Argentine press, including Avanzada Socialisto, the PST was said to have signed a common declaration with seven other parties, several of them bourgeois parties, one of them the country's principal bourgeois opposition party. What wos also of concern was the argumentation through which the leadership of the PST had justified the meeting with representatives of the government and the bourgeois parties and through which Avanzoda Socialista had justified - "by mistake, "It now appears - signature of a common document of the eight parties. Avanzada Socialista continued to develop this argumentation for months. It thus exhibited a polfitical orientation that breaks with the programmatic continuity of the Fourth International and of revolutionary Marxiam on at least one Important question. That is the reason the leadership of the Fourth Internafional judged it necessory to make public it criticism of the PST in its declaration of July 12, 1974, and, at the request of the PST, continues to have this discussion publiclyThus, in the firt denial, published by the June 26 Avanzada Socialista, we read (we are quoting the English version published in the July 15,1974, Intercontinental Press): "In our country the democratic liberties we have at present are the result of tremendous workers' struggles that erupted with the Cordobazo. These liberties are being threatened by the rise of fascist groups that are supported by a wing of the government, by the union bureaucracy, and by the bourgeoisie. Faced with that threat, we consider it not only permissible but obligatory to make limited, tactical, temporary ogreements with any sector that comes out for the defense of democratic rights. "One of the eight parties proposed that a joint declaration be made, and it presented a draft. Our party proposed a series of changes that were partially accepted. At the time we went to press, the editorial staff thought that the document bore the signature of the Partido Socialisto de los Trabajadores. Ac-
21
tually, it was not signed because there was still disagreement with it." That can mean but one thing: In principle, the leadership of the PST continues to think that signing a common document with the Communist party and a certain number of bourgeois parties, among them the country's principal opposition bourgeois party, "for the defense of the process of institutionalization" was correct. If' the PST did not sign this particular common declaration, it is simply because an agreement on the exact content of the declaration had not (must we say, had not yet?) been reached. In its July 4,1974, issue Avanzada Socialista returned to the charge and wrote (again, we are quoting the English veision, published Th the July 22, 1974, Intercontinental Press): "Our party is the only militant party left in Argentina that has publicly stated that it supports the process of institutionalizotion..y. "In October 1972 representatives of our party went to meet the representative of the military dictatorship to tell him that we supported the process of institutionalization' and to demand the withdrawal of the military junta from the government.
today •.. once again, in the aftermath of General Perón's death, we have reiterated our support for the 'process of institutionalization' ogainst the attacks of the putschist right." We were and are in total opposition to this political orientation, whose fundamenfal logic, based on a distorted quotation From Lenin, Is expressed in the clearest manner in the following passage from the July 4,1974, Avanzada Socialisto: "In a nutshell, since the Cordobazo unleashed the struggle against the Onganta dictatorship, the word. "Institutionalization' has acquired a meaning in Argentine politics different from the one given in the dictionary. If has become a synonym of fighting to defend or win democratic rights. "This is why we have used the term in public statements. And we do not regret using it to condemn the military dictatorship, even though this could have the effect of defending the elections the Peronists won, or to condemn the Navarro coup, even though this could have the effect in proctice of defending Obregón Cano; or to condemn a coup d'etat now, even if it has the effect of defending the Peronist government... This is what Lenin was referring to when he said that every revolutionary had to distinguish between forms of government and defend the higher ones. "How must the process of institutionalization be defended? "The fact that in defending democratic rights our position coincides with can-working-class and nonsocialist currents and parties does not mean that we ogree with them on anything else or on the way to defend these democratic rights. "Our party will always agree with Balbin and the FAS lawyers in opposing by all means the suppression of the daily El Mundo. Balbin does this in the name of the bourgeois liberal. constitution he supports. We do so in the name of workers democracy and socialism. "These convergences with bourgeois sectors can be expressed in the form of limited agreements, documents, statements, etc. All these various types of public actions, from joint communiqués to rallies, are useful and help to create the kind of social consciousness and climate needed to defend civil liberties or condemn fascism. Moreover, they safeguard and reinforce the legal righis of the revolutionary party." 22
We can only repeat: We are in total disagreement with this conception of the struggle against fascism and the threat of rightist dictatorship. For the Trotskyist movement and the Fourth International, the struggle againsi fascism and the threat of rightist dictatorship is centered on the necessity for the workers united front, which is a class front and not on interclass front. We reject the Social Democratic policy of lesser ovilism occording to which the workers are supposed to defend "superior" or "better" bourgeois "forms of government" against "less good" or "inferior" forms of government. Lenin explained that it was perfectly possible to struggle against Kornilov without defendIng the "superior" form of government of Kerensky. Trotsky many times explained that the necessity of combating the fascist threat as the heaviest threat weighing on the working closs in no way involved defense of the "superior" government of BrUning, not to mention that of von Papen or von Schleicher, against Hitler. (Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1971, pp. 95, 108, 1357, 140, 152, etc.) The position of Avanzada Socialista was so excessive that the PST had to back off on the matter and sketch out an initial self-criticism in its statement of August 20, 1974. There we read: "Still another charge is made against the leaders of the PST by the authors of the United Secretariat resolution. They state: 'At the same time, they (the PST leaders) have forgotten the fundamental distinction that exists between the democratic right demanded by the workers movement and the structures of bourgeois democrocy. We acknowledge that some of the formulations we have used could have led to this impression. We might even have made the error in the current situation in Argentina of not carefully distinguishing between a given bourgeois 'structure' and the defense of democratic rights. " Unfortunately, this beginning of self-criticism, which we salute, stops short with on attempt to reduce everything to semantic confusion over the word "institutionalization." The word is supposedly not being used in the dictionary sense, but rather to mean "the institutional guarantee of democratic rights. " Without wanting to enter into this semantic debate, we draw the attention of the PST comrodes to the foct that they themselves have used this term in a clearly broader sense — one that does not diverge very much from the usual meaning the "dictionaries" commonly attribute to it. When Avanzada Socialista, apropos of the "process of institutionalization, " refers to the elections won by the Peronists (issue of July 4, 1974), when the PST insist on the necessity of obtaining constitutional guarantees of democratic rights (Intercontinental Press, September 9, 1974); When Comrode Coral affirms at the "multisectoral" meeting of October 8, 1974: "EI PST seguirá luchando contra todos esos. foctores que crean el clima golpisto, y lucharó por la continuidod de este gobiero, porque fué elegido por la mayoría de los trabajadores argentinos, - sa" (The PST will continue struggling against all those factors that create the putschist climate and will struggle for the continuity of this government, because it was elected by the majority of Argentine workers; Avanzada Socialista, October 17, 1974), it is obvious that it is not simply a question of the "guarantee of democratic rights" but also of the functioning of the institutions of the so-called democratic parliamentary bourgeois state as a whole. Obviously, this includes parliamentary elections, the parliament, the bourgeois state apparatus, the government that comes out of these elections, etc. And Marxist-Leninists know that these institutions also involve defending bourgeois property, capitalist exploitoFion, and the apparatus of repression devoted to this defense. The insufficiency of the self-criticism and the confusion that it maintairs derive from the fact that the comrades of the PST identify the question of "institutionalization, " that is, the con-
tinuity of the democratic parliamentary institutions of the bourgeois state with the question of the defense of democratic rights. It is true that the PST's August 20, 1974, declaration pronounces Inelf agoiret any political support to a bourgeois regime or coalition. That is really the least one con demand from on organization that claims allegiance to Trotskyism. But the rejection of "support to the policy of a bourgeois regime" combined with "support to the process of institufionalization, "that is, the consolidation and strengthening of the institutions of bourgeois-parliamentary democracy, leaves the question of the PST's attitude toward the bourgeois state completely open. And it is that question that lies af the center of the controversyThe PST's self-criticism has not at all clarified the party's attitude in this regard, We hope that it will be extended to elimInate any equivocation on this crucial problem. The origins of the confusion appear rather clearly when the question of agreements with the parties or representatives of the bourgeoisle is examined. Revolutionary Marxish are advocates of the defense of democratic rights. They have even always allowed for the possibility of temporary technical agreements with bourgeois liberals on proctical objectives of struggle for a given and precise democratic right, all the while rejecting any political bloc with the liberal bourgeoisie. Trotsky cited in this regard the fact that some bourgeois Jews gave money to the Social Democratic worker groups in Russia in order to allow them to buy arms to fight against the Black Hundreds, who were organizing pogroms. Only inveterate sectarians who are scarcely interested In the real struggle could reject such an agreement as "opportunist." Likewise, no revolutionary having a minimum of good sense would reject the support of a bourgeois politicion in a campaign to defend or regain legality for a workers journal or for the exercise of the right to strike, so long as that support is not contingent on subordinating the general orienfation, including in the defense of democratic rights, to the exigencies of the search for the support, that is, to a policy of compromise with the "liberal" bourgeoisie. The August 20, 1974, document of the Executive Committee of the PST appears to say the same thing. But in sliding from the question of an occasional fechnical agreement for the defense of a particular democratic right to the search for an agreement with the "liberal" bourgeoisie for the defense of democratic rights in general, the statement passes imperceptibly to the search for political accords for the defense of the institutions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy: This emerges clearly from the quotations already cited from the July 4, 1974, Avanzada Socialisto, in which this journal speaks of "convergences with bourgeois sectors (that) can be expressed in the form of limited ogreements, documents, declarations, etc. All these various types of public octions(1), from joint communiqués to rallies, are useful and help to create the kind of social consciousness and climate(!) needed to defend civil liberties or condemn(i) fascism. " It is precisely to avoid such confusion that Tronky clarifies the objectives of the workers united front in the struggle against the rise of fascism by making a distinction between the defense of the "germs, elements, of proletarian democracy within bourgeois democracy" and the defense of the bourgeois-democratic Institutions of the bourgeois state: "What will the Communist Party 'defend'? The Weimar Constitution? No, we will leave that task to Brandler. The Communist Party must call for the defense of those material and moral positions which the working class has monoged to win in the German state. This most directly concerns the fate of the worken" political organizations, trade unions, newspapers, printing plants, clubs, libraries, etc. Communist workers must say to their Social Democratic counterparts: The policies of our parties are irreconcilably opposed; but if the fascists come tonight to wreck your organization's hall, we will come running, orin , in hand, to help you, Will you promise us that if our organizafion is threatened you will rush to our aid?' This is the quintessence of our policy in the coming period. All ogitation must be pitched in this key." (The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Pathfinder Press, 1971, p.72.) And still more clearly in an article entitled "Fascism and Democratic Slogans" dated July 14, 1933: "It is true that the upsurge of discontent of the middle classes and the resistance of the workers will provoke o division in the bloc of the owning classes and will impel o 'left wing' to seek ties with the petty bourgeoisie. But the task of the party of the proletariat in regard to the "libera wing of the owning classes will not consist in integrating them into a bloc of all classes against fascism but on the contrary in immediately engaging in a determined struggle against it for influence over the lower layers of the petty bourgeoisie." (Trotsky, Schriften uber Deutschland, Volume 2, p.600, our emphasis.) Now, the meetings in which the PST has been participating in no way had as their objective engaging in practical actions for the defense of a given democratic right, o given conquest of the working class. It was a matter of meetings to affirm -in the presence of the government — the defense of the "process of institutionalization. " Moreover, regular meetings with the bourgeois opposition parties and the CP are in turn becoming institutionalized meetings. In political terms, that is called an interc loss political bloe agairst all those who "resort to violence" in Argentina and who thereby threaten the "process of institutionalization. This political orientation is inadmissible from the standpoint of principle. From the standpoint of the desired effects in the struggle against the foscist threat and against the terror of the for right it is totally ineffective. In its March 28, 1974, issue Avanzada Socialista makes much of a quotation from Trotsky affirming that in the struggle against fascism one con even make an alliance with the devil and his grandmother. But the organ of the PST neglects to add that this quotation was aimed ot explaining to Communist workers the necessity of a united front with the Social Democratic party. that is, a reformist workers party, whose leaders are undoubtedly representatives of the bourgeoisie within the workers movement but who are no less part of the organized workers movement. Trotsky in no way proposed such an agreement with bourgeois parties like those that are participating in the regular meetings between the PST and the seven other parties. In drawing this quotation out of context Avanzada Socialista above all does not point out that the very article from which this phrase, is drown, "What Next, " tums completely on the idea of the class united front, of a "class against class" opposition to combat the rise of fascism: "The contentions regarding the policies of the united front take their origin from such fundamental and inexorable exigencies of the struggle of closs against class. ...* (The Struggle Against Foscism in Germany, P.179.) "'Class against class!" This means all organizations of the proletariot must take their ploce in the united front ogairst the bourgeoisie. "The proctical program of the united front is determined by agreements with organizations made in full view of the masses. Every organization remains under its own banner and its own
23
leodership. Every organization obeys in action the discipline of the united front. "''Class against class!" Indefatigable agitation must be conducted in order that the Social Democratic organizations and the reformist trade unions shall break with the perfidious bourgeois allies in the Iron Front" and that they join in common with the Communists and all other organizations of the proletariat.* (Ibid. p. 256.) Trotsky considered the breakup of the alliance between the Social Democrats and the "antifascist" bourgeois "liberals" of the Stoatspartel as a concomitant condition for the constifution of a workers united front against fascism. He called for the exclusion of the bourgeois liberals of the Eiserne Front (Iron Front) at the same time os he demanded the conclusion of agreements between the Social Democratic party and the CP. Does the PST counterpose the conception of a bloc with liberal bourgeois parties for the defense of the "process of institutionalization" to Tranky's conception of the workers united front? This conception of Trotsky's was not a concession to the ultraleftist atmosphere prevailing in the Communist Intemational in the beginning of the 1930s. Its roots lie in the Marxist comprehension of the origins and nature of fascism, The source of the rise of fascism lies in the structural crisis of decadent copitalism and the crisis of the bourgeois-parliamentary system, which is its corollary. The more serious these two crises become without the revolutionary vanguard being capable of leading the working class to the overthrow of capitalism, the more the culture medium of the fascist germs ferments. Under these conditions, to counterpose defense of increasingly paralyzed bourgeois-parliamentary irstitutions in decomposition to the rise of fascism is to court certain defeat. Trotsky explained in this regard: "Isn't the conclusion self-evident that, foced with difficulties and tasks too great for it, the democratic regime is losing control?.. The internal and external difficulties of the German nation have healed up the class struggle to the point where no one can or wants to subordinate it to parliamentary conventions. Some may regret this, bitterly reproach the extremist parties for their inclination toward violence, hope for a better future. But facts are foets. The wires of democracy cannot take too high a social voltage. Such are, however, the voltages of our time." (Ibid. pp. 267-68.) For this reason, the workers united front ogainst fascism turns entirely on the extraparliamentary action of the workers. The defense of the workers organizations against the fascist gangs Is an indispensable precondition for strengthening the self-confidence, striking force, and combativity of the working class. That is why wanting to pass to "the offensive" so long as fascism is not driven back represent irresponsible chatter. But this defense must unleash a dynamic of anticapitalist offensive to render the antifascist struggle victorious: "The task of demolishing fascism retains all its acuteness. The decisive battle of the proletariat against foscism will signal the simultaneous collision with the Bonapartist state apparatus. This makes the general strike an indispensable fighting weapon. It must be prepared. A special general strike plan must be worked out, that is, a plan for the mobilization of the forces to carry if out. Proceeding from this plan, a mass campaign must be unfolded, on the basis of which an agreement for carrying out the general strike under well-defined political condifions may be proposed to the Social Democracy. Repeated and made concrete of every new stage, this proposal will lead in the process of its development to the creation of the soviets os the highest organs of the united front. " (ibid. p. 32T.) 24
And even more clearly:
"The logic of events is such that the struggle for "parliament" and for democracy" becomes for every Social Democratic worker a question of power. Therein lies the main content of the whole conflict from the standpoint of the revolution. The question of power is the question of the revolutionary unity of the proletariat in action. A united front policy with respect to the Social Democracy must be pursued in the very near future to render possible, on the basis of proletarian democratic representation, the creation of class organs of struggle, t.e. of workers soviets." Of course, Argentina in 1974 is not Germany in 1932. There are important differences in the social structure of the two countries, in the relative weight of the different social closses, and above all in the forms of organization, political tradition, and lavel of political class consciousness of the workers. But no "national particularity" con transform the Rodical party of Mr. Balbin into a serious candidate for the organization of a general strike — not to mention workers councils - at the side of the workers organizations. Is it not obvious that Trolsky is defending a different political orientation in these propositions of struggle against the fascist threat through the workers united front leading to the united closs action of the proletariat culminating in a general strike - different from the orientation that sees regular meetings with bourgeois parties, signing common declarations and communiqués with these parties, and organizing common meetings with these parties as the useful condition for "creating the kind of social consciousness and climate needed to defend civil liberties or condemn fascism" (Avanzada Socialisto, July 4, 1974)? Moreover, the comrades of the PST are caught in an additional contradiction. They heavily insist on the fact that they were and remain irremediably opposed to coalitions of the "popular front" type. Excellent resolvel But they seem to forget that the popular fronts were constituted in the 1930s exactly with the aim of "defending democratic rights" against the fascist threat. If not only technical agreements but also political agreements with liberal bourgeois parties are admissible for the defense not only of a specific democratic right but democratic rights in general, what remains of the basis of the revolutionary Marx ist opposition to the "antifascist" policy of the popular front? Is it solely the fact that the popular front also confains a govemmental program? Would it then become acceptable without such a program? If agreement with bourgeois parties to defend democratic rights in general is admissible, is it not even more admissible for regaining them where they have been suppressed? What then remains of the validity of the revolutionary Marxist opposition to the policy of "antitascist front" with the "liberal" bourgeoisie and its political parties, as followed by the Spanish CP, the Chilean CP, and the Uruguayan CP, to cite only three examples? cocument The question is not simply rhetorical. Already the PRT-U (Partido Revo lucionario de los Trabajadores-Uruguay), a close political ally of the PST, has pronounced Thelf squarely in favor of such a front for the "reconquest of free elections": "In view of this situation and the way the consciousness of the working class has advanced as a result of the colossal general strike it fought in defense of the last vestiges of its democratic righs, which were wrenched away by the putschists, we think that the struggle begun in June (1973) must continue. If must go forward to overthrow the dictatorship by raising a program that sume up the most urgent demands of the workers and draws behind it the entire people's movement, including sectors of the bourgeoisie itself that are opposed to the dictatorship. We think this program... is summed up in the demand for free elections in which all parties can participate. " (Prensa Obrera, March 11,1974, quoted in Intercontinental Press, April 22, 1974, our emphasis.)
We are entitled to ask the comrades of the PST: Do you agree with this "bloc" with the liberal bourgeoisie for the "defense" or "conquest" of "Free elections"? Is that the line that Trotsky defended as the orientation for the struggle against fascism and the threats of far-rightist dictatorship? Is that the orientafion of the workers united front? Is not an urgent and complete self-criticism required in face of such dangerous confusion?
Nevertheless, the seriousness of the error committed by the PST acquires an additional dimension when it is placed in the context of the concrete political situation that exists in Argentina today. Revolutionary Marxists are unanimous in regarding the replacement of the military dictatorship of Lanusse by the return to power of the Peronists as being the result of the rise of an explosive mass movement that began with the insurrectional general strike in Córdoba in 1969. We will odd that the development of multiple forms of armed confrontation between the military bourgeois forces on the one hand and sectors of the masses as well as some groups of the vanguard on the other created for the bourgeoisie the clear danger of a civil war in which entire sections of the toiling masses would successively become engaged, a danger that precipitated its opting for a retum to power of the Peronists. By promoting the "process of institutionalization" through the great national accord, *the Argentine big bourgeoisie, supported by imperialism, pursued the essential aims of averting the risk of an overall confrontation between its army and the masses (which involved, moreover, a challenge to the internal cohesion of the army), of reestablishing control over the workers movement through the Peronist trade-union bureaucracy, of arresting the impetuous rise of workers struggles, and of relunching the process of accumulation of capital thanks to the combination of reestablished "social peace" at home and precise operations abroad (search for investments from European and Japanese imperialism, search for new outlets in the bureaucratized workers states, development of an "Andes bloc" as a privileged market for Argentine industry vis-d-vis it Brazilian competitor, etc.). But the sine qua non for the success of this Peronist project was the acceptance of "social peace" by the whole working class in exchange for "free election" and some improvements in real wages in comparison with the worst periods of the military dictatorship. And the situation in the workers movement after the experience of the military dictatorship and after the Cordobazos was no longer one of integral control by the Peronist bureaucracy over all the workers. A growing number of workers -although still largely a minority on a national scale - were beginning to act independently both in certain regions (Tucuman and Córdoba, for example) and in certain sectors (the workers of the drafting industry, for example). Under these conditions, the reestablishment of the Peronist regime inevitably involved a growing violent and terrorist repression not only against the Peronist far left and the groups engaged in guerrilla struggle, but also against all independent sectors of the workers movement and the working class. From the attacks agairat the Peronist youth on the very day of Perón's return to Argentina (the massacre at Ezeiza airport) to the raiding operations againet union headquarters in October 1974, inclusive of the innumerable intervening bombing attacks and assassinations of leftist militants, this repression has in no way been a "riposte" to the "violence of the for left, " as the open apologists and other mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie claim. Rather, it is inscribed in the very logic of the project of the Great National Accord: reestablish "social peace" af any price and isolate - in order to crush them — the radicalized sectors of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie that are not submitting to the "social peoce." The resolution on Argentina adopted by the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International (Fourth Congress since Reunification) affirmed in this regard: "It is this very explosion of the internal conflicts of Peronism that has rapidly brought to light the unstable character of the new period of bourgeois democracy. But beyond the internecine struggle within the Peronist movement, the escalation of actions by the parapolice gangs and the bureaucracy is aimed at dealing selective but effective blows against sectors of the social vanguard that refuse to accept the Imperatives of capitalist "national reconstruction. ' The murder of militants, kidnappings, and the rightist attacks of various kinds are occurring at a rhythm never seen before, even under the military dictatorship. A curious 'democracy' that develops the white terror starting from the highest governmental circles | The selective repression, under the cover of the activity of the porallel gangs, is going to be completed by new repressive legislation on various levels." That is exactly what has happened. This "institutionalized" and systematized repression, under the direct control of Lopez Rega, the "'strongman" of the Peronist regime, reveals the hypocritical and fraudulent character of the declarations of the leading Peronists — yesterday General Perón and today Maria Estella Peron - according to which "the process of institutionalization" justifies no form of violence. Those who have made these declarations are tolerating, covering for, and justifying a systematic terror against the vanguard sectors of the working class and youth. The first duty of a revolutionary party in Argentina is to denounce this abject hypocrisy. The PST's participation in the institutionalized meetings between the government and the so-called centerleft. opposition on the contrary provides left cover for a political operation whereby the Peronist regime is seeking to camguflage its responsibility for the organization of an antiworker and antire volutionary repression behind the shield of verbal declarations ogainst "terrorism wherever it comes from. " By publishing headlines in its newspaper like "Neither Guerrillas Nor Social Peace, " by multiplying condemnations of "terrorism of the left and the right, "by affirming that the "guerrillas create the pretext" for the unleashing of the rightist terror, the PST provides grist for the mill of the bourgeois propaganda to the effect that the foscist terror is the "product" of the "violence of the left" instead of denouncing the terrorist repression against the far left and the vanguard sectors of the working class as the logical and inevitable product of the Peronist project of reestablishing "social peace" at any price and of fostering class collaboration in a climate of exacerbation of the class struggle. The PST's participation in the hypocritical comedy of "national harmonization" around support to the process of institutionalizafion organized by the Peronist regime is all the more frought with consequences in that it allows the bourgeois press to distribute in millions of copies reports about the PST's approval of the government propaganda abouf the "union of all Argentines around democratic institutions and the unanimous condemnation of violence. " And the statement made by Juan Carlos Coral at the "multisectoral meeting" of October 8, 1974, was not made to deny this propaganda. In the text of that stafement, we road, notably: "Asumiendo plenamente la cuota de responsabilidad que nos corresponde en el actuel proceso político con la sinceridad con que siempre hemos expresado nuestros puntos de vista, y con la sinceridad que la misma señora presidente nos reclamaba en su discurso inicial, hemos venido esta mañana a repudiar categoriamente todos las formas de terrorismo, todas las manifestaciones de violencia individual de grupos que se ejercan al margen de la voluntod y las necesidades de las masas, y a repudiar también esa otra forma de violencia mas general y casi institucionalizada en nuestro pals, que es el golpe de estado.
25
"Termino, señora, diciendo que nuestro portido considero util esta forma de dialogo, que no tiene precedentes on el pais. No pretendemos modificar con un discurso la polffica del gobiero, paro, seguramente, la señoro presidente y los señores ministros habrón recogido algunas de las observaciones que hemos formulado. "Sobemos que las limitaciones burguesas del gobierno le impidiran adoptar las medidas mínimas que nosotros reclamamos. Ni puede hacer la Reforma Agraria, ni puede expropriar los monopolios, ni puede modificar sustancialmente la relación de precios y salarios, ni podró, seguramente, sancionar drasticamente los desbordes de la violencia fascista. "El Partido Socialisto de los Trabajadores seguiró luchando contra todos esos factores que crean el clima golpisto, y luchará por la continuidad de este gobiero, porque fué elegido por la mayoria de los frabajodores argentinos y porque permito el ejercicio de algunas libertades democráticos que son, a su vez, una conquista de las movilizaciones obreras y populares que conmavieron al pais a partir del cordobazo." (Avanzada Socialista, October 17, 1974.) (*We fully assume the responsibility that devolves on us in the present political process with the sincerity with which we have always expressed our points of view and with the sincerity that Señora Presidente herself demanded of us in her opening speech; we have come this morning to categorically repudiate all forms of terrorism, all the manifestations of individual violence of groups that act apart from the desires and necessities of the masses, and to repudiate also that other, more general, almost institutionalized, form of violence in our country represented by coups d'etat. ("Finally, Señora, let us say that our party considers this form of dialogue, which is unprecedented in the country, to be useful. We do not hope to alter the government's policy with a : speech; but surely Señora Presidente and the ministers have noted some of the observations we have formulated. (We know that the bourgeois limitations of the government will prevent it from adopting the minimal measures that we are demanding. If cannot carry ouf the Agrarian Reform, cannot expropriate the monopolies, cannot substantially change the relations of prices and wages, nor, surely, will if be able to drastically restrict the incidents of fascist violence. ("The Parrido Socialista de los Trabajodores will continue struggling against all those factors that create the putschist climate and will struggle for the continuity of this government, because it wos elecled by the majority of Argentine workers and because it permits the exercise of some democratic rights that, 26 in turn, are conquests of the workers and peoples mobilizations that have shaken the country since the cordobazo.") It is true that Coral's speech as reported in Avanzada Socialista also contained a condemnation of the government's "passivity" in face of the murder of worker militants like those of the PST (a condemnation that was not reported in the bourgeois press). But the passages we have just quoted — like the accounts published in Avanzada Socielista according to which the president approached the PST delegates to express condolences for the losses in human life suffered by the PST and like the big headlines about the condemnation of the white terror by the oppositonal delegates ossembled at the multisectoral meeting - facilitate the Peronist government's camouflage and cover-up operation insteod of exposing it. Coming on the eve of the proclamation of the state of siege, affer the vote on antistrike laws, and after the greater and greater occentuation of terror against the PST Itself, this manifestly serves the bourgeoisie and the Peronist regime more than it contributes to defending the PST against the violence of the far right or the aftempt to outlaw the PST. It is thus high time for the PST to reexamine and correct Its policy of "support to the process of institutionalization. " To take all the initiatives necessary to effectively defend its own legal status, the freedom of action of all the workers organizetions, the total exercise of the right to strike and of trade-union democracy, and to defend effectively its own leaders and militants, who are more and more threatened by the terror of the far right, the PST must resolutely orient itself toward the line of the workers united front and the propagation and carrying out in practice of self-defense by the workers organizations themselves ogainst the fascist terror. It is high time to put the main stress on the Peronist government's responsibility for the repression against the left and to avoid any false maneuver that serves in reality to hide this responsibility from the masses. The Fourth International has a duty of political clarification to fulfill. We are convinced that this duty constitutes an aid for the comrades of the PST and not an attack on this sympothizing organization. But the principal task of the sections of the Fourth International at the present moment, given the sitation that is developing in Argentina, is to arouse the workers movement and the toiling masses of all countries against the farror in Argentina, to the deferse of the workers and revolutionary organizations that are victims of violent repression, both legal and extralegal, to the defense of the PST and the other sympathizing organizations of the Fourth Infemationa! in Argentino. We are certain that our sections will not foil in this fosk.