death in our article "Peronism in Crisis, " published in INPRECOR No. 1 (June 6). But we did not let it go at a mere incidental speculation. We pointed out that the bourgeoisie was not prepared for Perón's disappearance from the political scene, a disappearance that was becoming ever more likely given Perón's illness. After the collapse of the military dictatorship (which nad lasted from 1966 to 1973) and the consequent erosion of the armed forces, and after the weaknesses and loss of control that had appeared in the Cámpora government, Perón was seen by the Argentine bourgeoisie as the best possible chance for overcoming the economic crisis and avoiding political chaos. Even though the events of the two past months showed that Perón was meeting difficulties in carrying out his political program -- the May 1 and June 12 events and the breaks with the Social Pact being the highlights of this -- it was quite clear that for the time being the bourgeoisie had no realistic alternative to Perón.
The May 1 demonstration in front of the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace), which the working class was called upon to attend but generally stayed away from, offered an implicit balance-sheet on the first year of the Peronist government. The initial hopes of the people had given way to skepticism, discontent, and a process of break with Peronism by young and militant layers. When Perón began to insult the youth in his speech from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, columns of young people turned their backs and left the Plaza de Mayo -- a largely spontaneous gesture. As they left, they chanted "The gorillas are all united, we will continue the fight!" Their departure left the plaza half empty. On June 12 Perón gave a television speech in which he claimed that imperialism and the oligarchy were obstructing his government and threatened to resign. The CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo -- General Confederation of Labor) called a strike and mobilized for a meeting at the Plaza de Mayo to support the general. But this time, in spite of his upping the ante by threatening to resign, Perón attracted no more than half as large a crowd as had attended the May 1 rally. Perón's evocation of the traditional enemies of the Argentine people was not accompanied by any concrete measure or proposal for struggle capable of mobilizing the masses. On the contrary, once again he pleaded for the Social Pact and expressed his support of the trade-union bureaucracy that has been so repudiated by the working class. Some days later, he advanced by half a year the wage increases that had been scheduled to go into effect at the end of the year. This will amount to an 8 percent raise for the second half of 1974, which is nothing but a bit of charity thrown out in the face of wage demands running as high as 60 percent. And in any case, this bit of charity was accompanied by new measures of intimidation; all work stoppages and strikes for wage demands were declared illegal. The difficulties in provisioning provoked by the landed bourgeoisie and the monopolistic sectors of industry and commerce were not aspects of preparation for a military coup to overthrow Perón, contrary to what Argentine centrists and reformists hastened to proclaim. In the context of the collapse of the Social Pact, which was being challenged by workers struggles, various sectors of the ruling classes were moving to the
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often indord or nein to ta to read in., the critical situation of Argentine capitalism had reduced in a drastic manner on the whole. But in spite of these skirmishes, in spite of the pressures and tensions among the various factions of the ruling classes, nobody seriously imagined that there could be a better solution for the bourgeoisie as a whole than the presence of Perón at the head of the government. And Perón knew it too. That is why he sought to win a greater room for maneuver in his June 12 speech by basing himself on the sectors that were most devoted to him: the General Economic Confederation (led by Gelbard, Perón's minister of the economy) and the trade-union bureaucracy. But these tensions had incontestably contributed to intensifying the country's political instability. The leadership crisis of the Argentine bourgeoisie has been aggravated by the disappearance of Perón, the only bourgeois political leader who had a capacity for maneuvering among the dominant sectors and commanded a certain authority among sections of the mass movement. In reality, this crisis of leadership has existed for twenty years. At present, the ruling classes have no real alternative to Peronism for maintaining the capitalist system of exploitation and dependence. The armed forces have not yet politically overcome the effects of the disasters they suffered in the Cordobazo (the insurrectionary general strike in the city of Córdoba in 1969) and the war against the guerrillas. There is no other bourgeois party or movement sufficiently rooted among the masses to be able to deal with a situation in which the measures taken by the bourgeoisie to overcome the structural crisis of Argentine capitalism will inevitably lead to an intensification of social contradictions and an explosive polarization of antagonistic classes. Perón's disappearance will not simply aggravate the bourgeoisie's political crisis. It will also open a decisive new stage in the crisis of the Peronist movement. In scarcely more than a year Peronism's return to power had already triggered a crisis within the bourgeois nationalist movement, which had not lost its mass base during the first Peronist governments (1945-1955). The conjuncture in which Peronism returned to the government in 1973 exposed the deep contradictions between the aspirations of the Peronist movement's working class and youth rank and file, whose combativity and experience had increased in the struggle against the dictatorship, and the programs of the movement's bourgeois and bureaucratic leadership, the "Argentine power" of the Social Pact. During each of his governments Perón played a Bonapartist role, swinging back and forth between leading his movement and heading the state. The Bonapartist role of the leader is irreplaceable in movements like Peronism. His disappearance therefore inevitably opens a crisis of succession within the leadership of his own political movement. Perón and the bourgeoisie were perfectly aware that this would be the case. In his last period, Perón tried to purge his movement of its radicalized left wing and to institutionalize the movement as a political party so that it would be able to survive his death. But he did not succeed in carrying out this task. Peronism was not transformed into a real bourgeois political party with enough homogeneity in objectives, criteria, methods, and so on to be able to act as a real party. Important tensions and contradictions are continuing to assert themselves between sectors of the Peronist movement whose only bases of alliance had been submission to General Perón and the advantages of keeping a grip on a piece of power. The death of Perón means the disappearance of the element of unity and cohesion between sectors struggling for their own, often heterogeneous, interests. And these sectors abound with careerists and profiteers no better than the worst sort of 4 common criminals. In spite of the opportunism of the majority of the leadership and in spite of the fact that they will continue to claim allegiance to Peronist ideology, the process of the breakaway of young and militant sectors of the Peronist movement will inevitably be accelerated. The political vacuum with which the bourgeoisie has been dramatically afflicted is illustrated by the accession to the presidency of Isabel Perón, who is entirely submissive to General Perón's closest collaborators. For the moment, this is a means of guaranteeing the continuity of Peronism at the head of the state and ensuring that the present governmental team will continue to function. The armed forces, which remain a decisive factor in power and guarantee the survival of the system when all is said and done, were the first to support the "constitutional road of succession. " All the political parties followed suit. But this unanimity of support for Isabel Perón cannot conceal the profound weakening of the projects of the ruling classes that was provoked by the death of Perón. Within a half hour after the announcement of his death, long lines formed in front of the stores in the capital, an expression of the people's uncertainty about the immediate future. In the space of a little more than a year, Argentina has had five presidents: General Lanusse, Cámpora, Lastiri, General Perón, and Isabel Perón. Far from guaranteeing a new normalization, the replacement of the military dictatorship opened a period of growing instability and of bourgeois political crisis, as the documents preparatory to the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International had predicted. Perón was undoubtedly one of the most lucid and adept bourgeois leaders of the countries of the so-called Third World, a leader of the cut of a Nehru or a Nasser. But the specific conditions under which his Bonapartist policy was able to be applied with a certain effectiveness in the postwar period had profoundly changed. Returning to power after eighteen years of exclusion from political life, present-day Peronism appears as a caricature of its own past. After less than a year of managing the state, its repressive features, its clash with the aspirations of the masses, and its own internal contradictions had come to the full light of day. The sickness of the regime is the sickness of a bourgeoisie that since the Cordobazo has seen all its plans challenged by a working class that wants to win new gains and is beginning a struggle to put an end to exploitation and dependence. The contradictions of the system cannot be overcome by the bourgeoisie in the framework of a capitalist system racked by distortion due to its insertion into the world imperialist chain as a dependent sector. These contradictions can be resolved only by the working class seizing power, breaking with imperialism, and initiating a process of permanent revolution. The repressive features of the regime will probably become intensified after the death of Perón because of the slackening of control over the right-wing sectors, the parallel police gangs, and the trade-union bureaucracy. Under such circumstances, the workers must fight not only for breaking the antiworking-class Social Pact and for defending their own interests, but also for defending their organizations and their democratic rights, which have been manifestly compromised (right to strike, right to form organizations, right to demonstrate, freedom of the press, etc.). But this battle will not be able to be cogently led on the basis of opportunist maneuvers and alliances. We will defend democratic rights not with the bourgeoisie but by forging unity in action of all workers and popular sectors in mobilizations, struggles, and the organization of self-defense. More than ever, class confrontation is inevitable in Argentina. Its timing and outcome will depend on the progress of workers and popular struggles and on the attitude taken by the workers and popular vanguard, on the progress made in the building of a revolutionary proletarian party.