[The following editorial appeared in the September 17 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the weekly newspaper of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST — Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Since the Peronist government took office, workers have gradually and to varying degrees begun to understand that they must organize their own forces, that the response to each demand does not depend on how just it is but on the power, perseverance, and incisiveness that they can bring to bear.
The metalworkers at Villa Constitución1 showed, for example, that a unanimously agreed-upon, disciplined factory occupation was more effective than months of endless appeals to the leaders and functionaries of the government of "national unity." Even unions without a tradition of struggle, like those of the teachers, gave up petitions and meetings with officials, taking the high and mighty government of the seven million votes2 by surprise with their first national strike.
In short, the Peronist government — brought to power to slow down, paralyze, and demobilize the workers— was quickly compelled to come to grips with the first indicators of the coming upsurge, the initial expressions of the class struggle that they thought they had "eliminated" with the Social Pact. 3
Increasingly cheated by official measures, abandoned or even attacked by the union leadership, the workers were pushed more and more forcefully toward the arena of direct actions -leafleting, striking, occupying factories, working-to-the-book job actions. In each factory they began committing the "heresy" of demanding small wage increases in spite of the bureaucracy, which wanted to keep them in poverty in the name of achieving great-power status for Argentina by the year 2000.
With the plant assemblies squeezing small concessions out of each boss, the all-powerful bureaucrats were often left with no role to play, with nothing but the official seals and the buildings, the bank accounts and the bodyguards- their obsequiousness and corruption. They began to get a feeling of powerlessness even though they were nominally in command.
And the government began to feel the first fears that these still partial and spontaneous struggles could spread and end up overflowing all the barriers that the system possesses to hold back the advances of the working class.
Confronted with such a situation, the government could offer only false and artificial solutions, alternately trying trickery and violence. It was trapped in the contradiction between getting the votes of workers and pursuing its bourgeois goals, between its populist program and the plans it adopted at the dictation of the capitalists. And when the tactics of the official machine became clear and lost their effectiveness, all that remained was the prestige of General Perón, which he dramatically gambled June 12, when he had to play every card he had.4
Today the attention of the nation is again drawn more and more strongly to the appearance of the first signs of the coming upsurge, the still isolated but promising expressions of class struggle. Now that the effects of the June 12 remedy have been exhausted, now that the uncertainty following Perón's death has passed and the government's orientation in the new balance of forces has become clear, the workers are resuming their struggles with vigor.
After 108 days on strike, the 1,200 workers at Propulsora [an iron and steel plant] are celebrating a spectacular victory over the bourgeoisie and the union bureaucracy.
In Córdoba, the machinists have kept their organization5 intact. Their ranks firm, they are going ahead — despite the fact that the bureaucracy and the government have robbed them of their formal union rights — to carry out the direct actions they adopted in assemblies.
In Tucumán, the sugarcane workers have launched a struggle in the midst of the harvest despite the vacillations of their leadership, encountering a government take-over of their union in response.
In addition, national strikes by railroad workers and teachers, strikes that have won mass support throughout the country, are demonstrating eloquently the quickening pace of the workers struggles that are laying bare the bourgeois essence of the Peronist government.
The depth of the process we are describing, the exhaustion of one after another of the government's possibilities of providing even transitory reformist solutions to the problems of the workers and the masses, has also found expression in the social crisis that is beginning to take shape within the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The almost timid criticisms the bourgeois parties were making of some of the government's actions a short while ago have begun to take on a sharper tone in recent days.
For example, the Radicals and Oscar Alende6 are calling for the resignation of Minister Ivanissevich, 7 while the Peronists' partners in the FREJULI8 are being racked by internal crises and temptations to stage splits, both of which stem from the growing problems of official policy.
Moreover, even the union bureaucrats, those unconditional supporters of the bourgeoisie, were dragged along by the pressure of the ranks and forced by the workers' dissatisfaction and revolt to declare publicly that a wage increase was needed. Until very recently, they considered such a thing proof positive of treason to Perón and the fatherland. Maximiano Castillo9 announced upcoming demands of the CGT, and [Minister of Labor Ricardo] Otero reiterated the promise that there would be no limitations on collective bargaining next year.
The working class finds itself in a situation favorable to its advance. Its enemies are divided to a certain extent and its own forces are united and in high spirits, looking forward to a fight. The doubts it suffers are political in nature. They lie in the reservoir of confidence and hope the workers who voted for the government en masse and with such enthusiasm a few months ago deposited in it, a confidence and hope that the regime is still able to play on. But the hard facts that strike at the workers' standard of living and shock their intelligence are taking precedence over other considerations. "We must defend ourselves," "We must fight," are beginning to be the dominant cry.
However, here another problem arises:
With what leadership? Who are our trade-union leaders to be? What is our political banner to be? What organization can unify our struggles?
We feel that these are the questions we must today give top priority. Because no matter how strong the arm of the working class, if it does not hold in its fist an instrument - an adequate tool- and in its head a correct program and goals, all its efforts will dissipate in a new defeat.
This question assumes a transcendent importance at this moment, when the Montoneros10 have issued their call for armed struggle and have begun it on their own. This is not a workers organization. It does not belong to the workers movement. Its leaders come from bourgeois currents and parties. But it includes hundreds of activists who work in the labor movement.
These activists, who are members of the JTP,11 find themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. If they follow the instructions of their Montonero leaders, they will have to abandon the labor movement to take up guerrillaist armed struggle and go underground -precisely at the time when the workers movement is discussing how to organize and how to mobilize in the coming struggle.
The majority of the working class does not accept the need for armed struggle, and raising the question itself divides their ranks. Furthermore, the call for such an armed struggle has been launched in connection with extremely confused political goals. For example, those who have launched this appeal suggested, and have not denied, that they are relying on one section of bourgeois politicians to fight the others.
Some worker activists of the JTP, caught in a vice between an irresponsible, divisive political line that does not correspond to the needs of the labor movement and the coming mobilizations, may begin slowly to move toward class-struggle, revolutionary positions.
The case of the Peronist workers and youth at Propulsora is an example worth considering. There, fortunately, the companeros did not abandon the mass struggle. Now they are joining in the call of the victorious labor leadership for forming a national coordinating committee of the militant leaderships and currents that are ready to fight—with the mandate of the rank and file — against the government, the bourgeoisie, and the union bureaucrats.
This is an essential step toward filling the vacuum of trade-union and political leadership in the workers movement-a trade-union coordinating committee beginning to pose itself as an alternative to the bureaucracy and to unify the struggles that are already starting to appear. A similar coordinating committee was proposed several months ago at Villa Constitución when more than 100 factory committees met in a large meeting.
Now the compañeros of Propulsora, including some members of the JTP who differentiate themselves from the official line of their leaders, recognize the necessity for such a coordinating committee.
A committee of this sort will certainly be the first product of this stage of struggle and of the coming militant upsurge. With it the labor movement will be able to unite and fight for union democracy, against the Social Pact, for the restoration of collective bargaining, for the repeal of the reactionary legislation designed to smash the labor movement. With such an instrument, the labor movement will be able to break the pattern of superexploitation that has been maintained constant despite the changes of regime.
But this stage will also witness the rapid development of the other necessary instrument, the tool represented by the best worker and revolutionary cadres. It is this tool that can give the mass organizations —the coordinating committee, the CGT, the unions, the factory committees, or other organizations that may be built-a socialist leadership that will not capitulate or put its trust in any sector of the bourgeoisie. This instrument, this tool, is the new workers and revolutionary party, of which the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores is the initial nucleus.
Notes
1. Site of an important recent strike victory.
2. The Peronists received seven million votes in the elections of March 1973.
3. The antilabor agreement between the bosses, the union bureaucrats, and the government.
4. On June 12, Peron threatened to resign if the working class did not unite behind his programs.
5. SMATA (Sindicato de Mecanicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor - Union of Automotive Machinists and Allied Trades).
6. Leader of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria — People's Revolutionary Alliance, a centrist formation.
7. Oscar Ivanissevich, an old-guard Peronist who is minister of culture and education.
8. Frente Justicialista de Liberacion Nacional- National Liberation Front for Social Justice, the Peronist electoral front.
9. General secretary of the CGT (Confederacion General del Trabajo- General Confederation of Labor).
10. One of the main left-wing Peronist groups.
11. Juventud Trabajadora Peronista — Peronist Worker Youth.