[The following article appeared in the May 15 issue of Bandiera Rossa, the organ of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups), Italian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In May 1969 a radical turn occurred in the political struggle in Argentina. In Rosario, Córdoba, and Tucumán, the masses mobilized in the most extensive movements the coun try had ever seen. The Córdoba rebellion (Cordobazo), in particular, was a fundamental test of strength between the workers and students on one side and the military dictatorship on the other. In this way a new phase of impetuous rise opened up, sweeping away all the checks and balances imposed in the preceding years. This took the form of a series of explosive mobilizations both in the traditional epicenters of the workers movement and in less radicalized areas; in very hard-fought workers struggles, in general strikes and semi-insurrectional movements (for example, in November 1970, in the spring and in September 1971). At the same time, the class struggle went over into armed struggle, and Lanusse himself had to declare: "We are facing a different kind of enemy; the enemy we face now comes out of the population of the country itself... I think that we are at war."
The ruling class-whose political 698
expression was the military dictatorship-was forced to reexamine its orientations and seek new solutions. In the abstract, it could look to three ways out. The first was a Peruviantype solution, that is, a populistreformist experiment including a limited nationalistic attack on the positions of American imperialism. The second alternative was a much tougher dictatorship than the one initiated in 1966, one that would be capable of carrying out systematic repression of the type imposed by the Brazilian "gorillas." The third was to return the running of the government-at least partially-to civilian politicians by establishing a sort of controlled bourgeois democracy. The first promised to prove much more difficult to achieve than in Peru -for structural as well as for more specific political reasons. In a context of huge mass mobilizations, the Brazilian alternative would have involved the risk of civil war with an uncertain outcome. The bulk of the bourgeoisie and the dominant nucleus of the armed forces chose the third variant, which took the form concretely of the so-called GAN [Gran Acuerdo Nacional - Great National Agreement].
As its central point, this orientation presupposed a deal between the military and the Peronist movement, which was still able to exert control over the majority of the masses in the country. This compromise obviously involved serious problems, inasmuch as it could not produce positive reconcluded between Lanusse and Perón, and it was on this basis that the March elections took place. Lanusse and his supporters, however, envisaged a situation in which the Peronists would be a strong nower Peronists would be a strong power, to be sure, but would still be compelled to enter into accords with other traditional forces and in which, in the last analysis, they would have to agree not only to let the military occupy certain key positions but maintain a general supervision.
The size of the Peronist victory cast serious shadow over such a a possibility for Lanusse, if not eliminating it altogether. Cámpora, a standin for Perón, has been able virtually to demand full power, asserting the principle of the subordination of the military to the civilian authority. The military find themselves in an extremely difficult position. On the one hand, no traditional party is able to seriously challenge the present dominance of the Peronists. On the other hand, they realize that any attempt now to wipe out the process set in motion with the elections would quite probably evoke a very broad and very determined mass response, raising the perspective of a large-scale civil war.
The hue and cry from official sources over the wave of armed actions in the last weeks has managed to hide or overshadow the fundamental fact of the situation, that is, that the masses interpreted the success of the Peronist candidates as their own success, as strengthening their positions, and they are more than ever ready to mobilize and fight (in fact, significant and impetuous struggles have already taken place since the elections). The trade-union bureaucrats are calling for a pause (let's wait for May 25, the inauguration of President Cámpora), and in the coming months they will call for extending this still further (the argument will be that daund fo
LANUSSE: Retires to the wings.
Cámpora cannot perform miracles, that you have to give him time, ete.). But the masses cannot wait; they must struggle to defend themselves against the constant erosion of their buying power, to demand their elementary rights, to force through the radical changes suggested by the Peronist electoral demagogy itself. The danger -from the bourgeoisie's standpointthat the new Peronist experiment will be marked from its first moments by great and impetuous mass movements of a type difficult to control is more concrete than ever. This worries the military and those whose views they reflect quite a bit more than the socalled spread of "terrorist" actions.
There is scarcely any need to add
Perón and his general staff that basically share these fears, although they differ from the military and certain more conservative political circles on the methods of dealing with the problem. Historically and in its June 11, 1973
present form, Peronism is a bourgeois movement. It has traditionally expressed the interests of very well-defined sectors of the ruling class and appears today as the extreme solution for the defense of the system in an extremely critical situation. However, it has a mass base that remains overwhelmingly proletarian and petty bourgeois, and it is therefore torn by acute contradictions on all levels. (These were shown recently, for example, by the ouster of Galimberti, the leader of the Peronist youth and the recognized exponent of the Peronist left.)
Despite the maneuvers, the pressures, and the outcry of recent weeks, the most probable variant is still that Cámpora will take office, although it is difficult to say in what conditions. The period that will follow, however, will be one of powerful mass mobilizations and dramatic political confrontations. For the Peronists a more difficult phase will begin, in which it will become increasingly difficult to face in two directions at the same time. Moreover, if the bourgeoisie is to extricate itself from its prolonged crisis, it needs deepgoing structural changes that will involve, in the last analysis, stepping up the rate of exploitation of the working class and imposing further severe sacrifices on the working population as a whole.
If this analysis is valid, two conclusions flow from it. The first is that the objectives of the mass movement in this phase must be defined, and it has to be organized in a way that can bring out its full potential and make it possible to deal hard blows to the bureaucratic trade-union apparatus. The second is that revolutionists must not let the workers movement be disarmed in face of the repressive forces and in face of attempts to restore a reactionary dictatorship.
In this sense, the task of coupling mass mobilization with the instruments of armed struggle is more than ever the central task. The history of Latin America has demonstrated only too eloquently how tragic an error it would be to hold any illusions about an indefinitely prolonged democratic interlude in which the mass movement could grow continuously in a more or less linear fashion. Such a mistake would mean running the risk of facing a showdown, for example, in the conditions in which the Bolivian masses found themselves in August 1971 (that is, condemned inevitably to defeat and bloody repression). On the other hand, separating the dynamic of armed struggle from the dynamic of the mass movement would have the result of making it easier to isolate and crush the vanguard, and, conversely, impeding the political maturation and organization of the social vanguard that is destined to emerge more and more widely in a period of prolonged crisis and inevitable disillusionment with Peronism.