[The following article appeared in the July 4 Avanzada Socialista, weekly newspaper of the Argentine Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers party, a sympathizing organization of the
Fourth International). The Spanish text is reprinted elsewhere in this issue. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Peronism was born in the midst of the June 4, 1943, crisis of the military government. The 1943 coup, led by the Colonels' Military Lodge [the GOU-Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, a secret military organization], was the response of the old economic and social structure of the country, which was under English control, to the pressure exerted by North America.
Yankee imperialism was moving into Latin America, attempting to bring us under its domination. The various sectors of the Argentine ruling class were giving in more and more to that increasingly powerful pressure. For that reason the military government found itself forced to look to other social forces for the necessary support to resist the U.S. assault. The old British imperialism, weakened by the war and in debt to the Yankees as well, could do little but begin its retreat.
From the Labor and Social Security Bureau, Colonel Perón looked to the labor movement for support in resisting the Yankee colonialist pressure. The policy of the Communist and Socialist parties facilitated his task, their leaders preferring to betray the workers rather than break an agreement with the "democratic imperialists."
Perón won support with economic and social concessions that substantially changed the conditions suffered by the working class under the conservative governments. He institutionalized bonuses for the workers and the bill of rights for agricultural labor, initiated collective bargaining, plant committees, and shop stewards' committees. Parallel to these conces- 984
sions, he organized another instrument to guarantee that the working class would not go beyond the framework of gains and demands he had set for it. That instrument was the trade-union bureaucracy.
The clearest and most precise understanding of the objectives and methods of that strategy can be obtained from Perón's speech at the stock exchange on August 25, 1944. There he posed the question directly: On the one hand, the Argentine ruling class had to learn to compromise on some things in order not to lose everything; on the other hand, it had to realize that the greatest "danger" threatening it was not that the workers might be organized under government supervision, but that, unorganized, they might succumb to the attractions of anticapitalistideas: "Defense of the interests of businessmen, industrialists, and tradesmen is the very defense of the state." Here is the essence of Peronist policy as applied in all its phases.
Not without difficulties and contradictions did Perón begin implementing this plan. The concessions to the workers were possible thanks to ideal the war:.
economic conditions existing during the war. Parallel to those concessions, the government promoted the rise of a powerful bureaucracy that controlled the unions with an iron grip. On the one hand, then, the labor movement was built up; on the other, it was placed under rigid state control. And when that was not enough, labor was also repressed, as evidenced in the strikes in printing, the railroads, metals, textiles, the telephone company, banking, the sugar industry, and others.
With a base of labor support, at first Perón could confront Yankee pressure and neutralize the bourgeoisie. The favorable economic situation, which allowed him to make concessions to the working class, also opened the possibility for the capitalists to make magnificent business deals. This resistance to Yankee penetration was the progressive side of the first Peronist administration.
But the favorable economic conditions changed, and from 1949 on, the first symptoms of crisis began to appear. By 1952, these symptoms became more evident. More and more sections of the national bourgeoisie began to need ties with imperialism to modernize their plants and to incorporate new techniques. Imperialist pressure redoubled. The attempt to reduce the workers' income in order to increase the earnings of the bourgeoisie met with firm resistance from labor, and the bureaucratic apparatus began to show cracks.
Yankee imperialism, never slow to
RICARDO BALBIN
move into action, took advantage of the situation and exerted all possible pressure, developing a closer and closer alliance with the majority of the ruling class. Perón's response was to retreat, while continuing to try to make deals. And this led to his overthrow.
The attitude taken by Perón in 1955 and in the events preceding his overthrow shows the fundamental character of his political outlook. He left the fate of his policies in the hands of the historic enemies of the working class. In his abdication, he entrusted to the armed forces the "heritage" of his government. He refused to resort to the only force that could confront the putschists and liquidate them: the workers. In his own words, "To arm the people would mean to doubt the integrity of the army."
Naturally, this would havebeen very dangerous for the ruling class. As a conscious representative of its interests, Perón was not willing to run those risks. He always reaffirmed the correctness of his position, never admitting to any "error" whatsoever. On the contrary, once in exile, he continued to defend his role in having averted civil war. Even twenty years later, once again in Argentina, he confirmed that judgment anew.
The effort of the Peronist left to make one believe the opposite is part of the plan to give left cover to the figure of the "'lider" and make him more palatable to the radicalized petty bourgeoisie. This plan revealed all its inadequacies during the past year, bringing the spinners of ideological fables face-to-face with reality.
To put it in a nutshell, the blood that working-class and revolutionary fighters shed after 1955 was not what "saved" Perón. History has demonstrated that.
Peronism out of Office
When the Peronist government fell, there was a brief interlude with Lonardi [Perón's successor as president], in which he and the union bureaucracy tried to reach a mutual understanding. But very soon the gorillas in power launched a brutal offensive against the workers' movement, with the aim of destroying the unions. This was met by a huge response from the labor movement. Even sectors of the bureaucracy, with their backs to the wall, were forced to fight.
Resistance had begun: On one side, thousands of new, heroic activists were to emerge; on the other, especially under Frondizi, a new labor bureaucracy with aspirations of its own was to take shape-the Vandorist bureaucracy. The defeat of the workers' movement in the big strikes of 1958 and 1959 opened a period of downturn, which would be reversed only with the Cordobazo.
The policy of General Perón during this entire period, a policy that space limitations prevent us from describing in detail, can be summarized very simply: to try to hold the capitalist regimes in check with the threat of the labor movement so that the ruling class would again recognize Perón as the great statesman of the Argentine bourgeoisie- the only one July 22, 1974
capable of preventing a revolution by the workers and masses, the only one capable of balancing the opposing forces and arbitrating their differences.
That is what the "threat" really meant. That is the policy the Peronist youth confused with a revolutionary questioning of the system, whereas Perón's only aim was to be accepted once again as one of the regime's politicians.
Perón's "balancing act" is thus revealed: urge on the left one day and the right the next; today, encourage strike activists; tomorrow, call for them to vote for Frondizi or to "dismount until the dust settles" under the Onganía regime.
The Return to Power
We need only recall the election campaign of March 1973, which is fresh in everyone's mind. The public rallies of the Frejuli [Frente Justicialista de Liberación Nacional- Liberation Front for Social Justice, the Peronist electoral front] were studded with Montonero lone of the main Peronist guerrilla groups] posters. The slogans that were chanted courted the guerrilla groups and attacked the union bureaucracy. Having won the elections, thanks in large part to those posters and slogans, the union bureaucrats were converted into pampered children, and the left wing of the movement was confronted with harsh reality.
But it was certainly not the "balancing" policy that hastened the triumphal hour of General Perón. That arrived when the Cordobazos and the Rosariazos [semi-insurrections in Córdoba and Rosario in 1969 and 1971] raised before the eyes of the bourgeoisie the fearful specter of workers' insurrection. No one but Perón could slow down that ground swell.
And so it was. The bourgeoisie, forgetting twenty years of differences and insults, opened the doors for his return to power. This page of our political history is highly instructive for all workers. The GAN (Gran Acuerdo Nacional - Great National Agreement, a class-collaborationist plan developed by the dictatorship to return Argentina to constitutional rule], La Hora del Pueblo [the People's Hour-the Peronist-led plan to form a broad class-collaborationist bloc against the dictatorship], and the elections are the instruments of this "reconciliation."
One year of Peronist rule showed that the continuity was not only institutional but was fundamentally political. Peronism in power was the consolidation of that Gran Acuerdo Nacional, concocted in face of the danger of the labor upsurge. All the differences between Perón, Balbin [head of the Unión Civica Radical- Radical Civic Union], and Lanusse [final president under the dictatorship that preceded the Peronist return to power tended to evaporate when the survival of the capitalist system was at issue.
However, the plans of the GAN, for General Perón to act as a brake on the workers' struggles, proved more difficult to carry out than had been calculated. To be accurate, it was impossible to carry them out. The differences between sections of the bourgeoisie soon reappeared. The crisis reasserted itself, and the cracks between the different wings of the union bureaucracy opened up again.
Peronism in power was not enough. Not even the presence of Perón in the country was adequate to slow down the workers' and people's struggles. It was necessary for General Perón personally to assume the presidency. And he did. But with each step he took, each time he put his prestige on the line-to prop up [Finance Minister] Gelbard, the Social Pact, the union bureaucracy, Villar and Margaride [police commissioners who had earned a reputation for brutality under the Lanusse regime] - with each new embrace of the military, each unpunished fascist attack, the confidence of the working class in him deteriorated more. Slowly but relentlessly began the decay of his personal prestige and the fracturing of the movement that was united around him.
Thirty years ago, Colonel Perón, by means of economic and social concessions, controlled the thrust of the working class. Now, on returning to power, he had to control the working class in order to avoid having to make concessions to it—a task that could not have any consequence other than to exhaust his prestige as "lider" of that class. In any case, now as then, his objective was always the same - to achieve an impossible class conciliation between the exploited and the exploiters.