[The following article was published in the July 18-25 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the weekly newspaper of the Argentine Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST — Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The show that the country has just witnessed with surprise and confusion was nothing less than a striptease by General Perón.
Now that the drums that celebrated the return [of Perón] and the electoral triumph have died down; now that the August 6, 1973
guns of the guards at Ezeiza airport are silenced, and the pilgrimages are over that converged in a kind of multitudinous procession from which only the honored saint was absent; and, finally, now that the thousand different expressions of the Peronist liturgy have been exhausted, Perón unavoidably has had to face up to reality, which, as he himself has observed, is the only truth. And now, stripped of the trappings of symbolism and abstract slogans, and his secrets laid bare, he has revealed himself- together with Ricardo Balbin-as the leader of a pact put forward by the bosses, of an agreement between all capitalist sectors that part of whom the Radicals speak - to the so-called "national bourgeoisie," which is definitively integrated into imperialism as a supplier of stocks, materials, and executives.
This is the way the political strategy of imperialism for our semicolonial countries is carried out. This strategy consists of insuring political stability through alliances between classes that guarantee that their economic plans will be carried out without anything unexpected disrupting them. Or, put another way, these are alliances that maintain, and even increase, the rate of exploitation of the workers. Such an alliance could take the political form of authoritarianism and dictatorship, as in Brazil, or participationism and populism, as in Mexico.
The Perón-Balbin agreement, built up on a base of the reformist and bourgeois parties, the union bureaucracy, and the armed forces, will move forward by oscillating between these two alternatives. As long as Perón and the Ruccis (José Rucci is the country's top Peronist labor bureaucrat] agree to bring their influence to bear in order to keep the masses in a state of demobilization, the bourgeoisie will grant itself the luxury of exercising its class dictatorship under democratic and parliamentary forms. But when the masses again break out of their bureaucratic and conciliatory bounds, the repressive elements of the "social pact" - hitherto held in reserve-will appear in the form of General Carcagno, the commanders in chief, and the armed forces; they are participating in the agreement as guarantors of capitalist investments, as custodians of the dividends of the monopolies.
Since it was carried out in order to put the clinch on this perspective, the overthrow of Cámpora can be said to be the result of a typical rightwing coup. That this is an apt characterization can also be seen in the removal of cabinet ministers, replacing Righi and Puig-who in some sense represented the Peronist Youth - with Otero, López Rega or Gelbard. It is a right-wing coup because it tends to jell together a ruling team with a view to carrying out, without any interference, the economic plans of imperialism; because, with regard to the internal life of the Peronist movement, its aim is to liquidate the influence of the youth and the combative sectors that had seriously believed in the slogan "Socialist Fatherland"; and because the general aim consists of placing concrete responsibility for the government in the hands of Perón so that he can be as effective as possible in executing his role of demobilizing and holding back the working class, as well as in fulfilling his function of arbiter and moderator for the bosses' sectors in this, the broadest alliance of classes that we have ever known in this country.
In the election, by which an effort will be made to ratify the coup, no one will be able to claim that a Perón- Balbin ticket is a workers ticket. Those who were engaging in speculation about the brilliant maneuvers of the "Old Man," those who were assuming that once in the government the "Old Man" would turn the tables on the military, are ending up witnesses to an unbelievable striptease at the hand of Balbin, the turning over of respon- 968
PERON
sibility for economic policy to the president of the bosses' organization, and entrusting the maintenance of "social peace" to General Carcagno, perhaps because of his qualities as military chief during the Cordobazo.
We have defended, and continue to defend, Perón's right to freely take part in politics and to put forward his candidacy without any kind of restrictions; we likewise defend the right of the working class to freely elect its candidate, and the right of all political forces to participate in the elections on an equal basis - including the right of our own party to participate in order to confront and denounce the alternatives presented by the bosses.
In face of the clear unity attained by all the boss forces, the same kind of unity becomes imperative for the working class and the exploited sectors of the population. It is necessary to put forward the alternative of a workers, class-struggle, and socialist ticket that can rally the most conscious and combative compañeros of the stuggles that defeated the first stage of the so-called Argentine Revolution- a ticket that will be able to provide political continuity to the rise in struggles heroically initiated from the union ranks and from the cities and people of the interior. We want to fully exercise the democratic right that until just a short while ago we were demanding for Perón himself. And in this task of putting together the Workers Front, an important role must be played by the m
Juventud Peronista Peronist Youth], the combative and antibureaucratic sectors of the unions, and the class-struggle and socialist groups that make up the vanguard of the revolution that is approaching.