[The following article appeared in the September 27 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the weekly organ of the Partido Socialista Argentino (Argentine Socialist party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Agustín Tosco, a figure in the workers' movement whose name is associated with the Córdoba uprising and who is known as one of the most prominent victims of the repression of the dictatorship, has been released from prison as the result of a chain of circumstances. Chief of these was the pressure of the workers' and people's movement, and, by extension, the government's need to "pacify" the country during the preelectoral period.
Avanzada Socialista was the first political paper to interview Tosco on his release. Our correspondent spoke to him in Trelew a few hours after he left the prison. Our readers will understand that, as revolutionary politicians, our first concern in speaking to Tosco, along with expressing our happiness at his release, was to question him about his political position in the present situation.
From his answers - which were later confirmed in Buenos Aires in his press conference Monday, September 25 — it appears that Tosco is calling on the working-class, popular, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist forces to unite to confront the dictatorship and, thereby necessarily, the capitulationist and treacherous leaderships of the workers' movement. However, he asked for some time to think it over before trying to answer the specific question of what political form this broad unity should take and especially whether it should be headed up by workers' candidates with working-class programmatic demands.
While one of our correspondents was talking to Tosco in Trelew, another of our reporters in Buenos Aires was interviewing Julio Guillán, the leader of the "militant sector" of the Peronist trade-unionists. Guillán also proposed a united front similar to the one projected by Tosco. His answer to our question about working-class candidates was "maybe."
Despite the cautious tone adopted by these two leaders, we think that their answers show that there is a climate in the country clearly favoring united action of proletarian and popular forces under the leadership of working-class leaders and representatives. Tosco and Guillán come from different currents within the trade unions but they are beginning to converge on a political solution.
The favorable attitude we find in these two leaders only reflects - even lags behind-the impression we get every day at the factory gates. There the workers agree-and they tell us so frankly - that they are sick of voting for the candidates of the bosses and the despised trade-union bureaucracy, that they want something new and different, something like the regroupment pole or workers' front that we are calling on them to form. We are also getting a positive response from many of the activists, shop stewards, and leaders of the small unions in the interior of the country with whom we are discussing the same problem.
Socialists, however, must issue a strong warning against the danger that this extraordinarily favorable climate for forming a political movement of the workers will be wasted and that the militancy of the workers will be diverted into supporting sections of the capitalist class and the petty bourgeoisie.
Any compañero can read in the daily papers that there are politicians who are also calling for "the unity of the working-class, popular, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist forces." They call this by various names - a popular front, an anti-imperialist front, or a front of national liberation.
Concretely, politicians like Sueldo, Alende, and the spokesmen of the Communist party-to judge from some recent statements of the ENA [Encuentro Nacional de los Argentinos- National Forum for Argentinians] and from its political tradition - are calling for the formation of such a bloc.
The objective of these fronts - which have nothing to do with our Workers' and Socialist Pole of Regroupment-is to get the workers to come around to accepting a program that mixes up their interests with those of the bosses, and to support some "distinguished" personality, or capitalist or petty-bourgeois politician.
For example, on its front page Monday the daily La Razón claimed that the Argentine left is looking for its own Liber Seregni. Since our party was mentioned as part of the left, we want to make it clear that we are absolutely opposed to the workers putting up any Argentine Liber Seregni as their representative.
Liber Seregni was the candidate of the Uruguayan Frente Amplio (Broad Front], behind which the left of our sister country united. He was a retired general inclined to democratic and populist poses. To be clear about it, we think that it was a crime for the left in Uruguay, where the Communist party controls the trade-union federation, to run a bourgeois candidate and call on the workers to put their trust in him.
It should be clearly understood that we socialists are also for uniting all the working-class and popular forces and that we are happy to see the Sueldos, Alendes, or any other "distinguished" figure moving closer to the workers. But what we oppose is their leading the front, heading the ticket, or setting the tone of the program.
Let the Argentine Liber Seregnis, if they will, support our Agustin Toscos, our anonymous and heroic fighters, the self-sacrificing worker activists fighting exploitation and capitalist repression, and not the other way around!
The vacillations shown by Tosco and Guillán, as well as the Communist party's traditional "popular front" policy, and the lack of time the workers have for choosing tickets and discussing their program constitute a real threat to the developing workers' front.
We oppose this "popular front" snare so strongly because something very grave is at stake. Those who want to set up a "popular front" and get the workers to support bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sectors are wrecking the chance we have today for taking a great step forward toward winning the political independence of the workers. That is, a step toward the workers having their own party and not letting the capitalist politicians dictate what they should do.
At the same time, these people want to sabotage another great opportunity. They want to keep us from using the elections to organize the class-struggle vanguard in the unions so that it will not only move toward independent political action but will be united and reinforced in order to carry on its struggle against the bosses and against the labor bureaucrats more effectively.
For this reason, we say that the only answer to the danger of a "popular front" is to build the workers' united front, which we have called the Workers' and Socialist Pole. This is also a standard behind which the other noncapitalist forces can and must rally.
The workers' movement itself must develop a program and demand 70 or 80 percent of the nominees. In order to accomplish this, we must build assemblies and meetings in all places of work and proceed with the task of developing a program and electing our representatives. Besides the fundamental anti-imperialist planks, the program must also include specific anti-capitalist workers' demands. And our representatives must be the best and most respected figures in the movement.
This is why it is so important for recognized leaders like Tosco, Guillán, and Romano or Fote in Tucumán, as well as those who have led the great strikes and mobilizations in recent years, to call publicly for drawing up a ticket and a program around which the rank and file can rapidly unite.
Basing itself on a working-class program and working-class candidates, the front must call for full participation of all the popular currents and all the anti-imperialist sectors. The next thing is to discuss the tactical and secondary problem of what party label to use to give its ticket official status. Already the Partido Socialista has offered its place on the ballot in eleven provincial districts and the federal capital unconditionally to candidates of a workers' front. "Unconditionally" means that it has publicly rejected the proposal to participate in a foul, opportunistic bloc, because it thinks that the workers should run independent candidates.
We call on all class-struggle trade-union leaders, and above all those who have been cautious in taking a position, to declare themselves clearly for the political independence of the workers' movement and to join in a workers' front that will present its own candidates in the elections.
We call on the workers to come together in the factories and in our party offices to discuss program and the election of representatives at all levels.
In this way we can utilize the fraudulent elections the dictatorship plans to stage. In this way we can deal with the trap the regime has set. In this way we can come out of the elections with a united and reinforced revolutionary class-struggle vanguard.
Standing on this principled ground, we will take up the concrete task of drawing up a ticket and forming alliances to intervene in the elections. We will go to all the meetings; we will discuss with all sections of the workers and the populace, whether Peronists, socialists, Communists, liberals, or Christians. But our objective is to defend the political independence of the workers' movement, which today requires putting together a working-class ticket for the elections.