[The following article appeared in the January 23 issue of Avanzada Socialista, weekly organ of the Argentine Trotskyist organization PST (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores- Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Last weekend [January 19] an armed group attacked the Azul military garrison, causing the death of several officers and enlisted men and the regiment commander's wife. The act had a profound impact throughout Argentina. General Perón addressed himself to the attack in a speech in which, in addition to alluding to the guerrilla action, he took the opportunity to attack the governor of Buenos Aires Province harshly.
As of this writing, the identity of the group that carried out the attack has not been confirmed. But there is little doubt that it was a guerrilla organization.
In the last issue of Avanzada Socialista we noted: "At this time guerrilla actions more than ever operate in a vacuum. Their only result has been to hand the Peronist government a ready-made excuse to try to reinstitute its repressive legislation."
The Azul events confirm and emphasize what we said seven days ago. For this reason, compañero, it is very easy to draw the lessons here.
• First, this adventurous action will be a big boost to the passage of the new Penal Code [approved on January 25). The action occurred at a time when opposition to the reforms had seriously divided the ruling bloc, mobilizations were being organized sequences. And here it must be pointed out that if the right wing had wanted to stage a provocation to win the passage of the Penal Code, to strengthen the bureaucracy, to give the green light to right-wing thugs, or to persecute the left wing and the class-conscious workers leaders, that provocation would not have been very different from what happened at Azul.
The guerrillas say they want socialism. We, too, want socialism. But socialism will not be established by either the ERP | Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo-People's Revolutionary Army], the CP, the PST, or the JP [Juventud Peronista - Peronist Youth]. The entire working class will achieve socialism when it is firmly convinced of the need to take power.
In 1917, almost on the eve of taking power, when the Bolsheviks were beginning to be a force with 20-30 percent of the workers supporting them, and in the heart of a revolutionary situation, Lenin stated that the party's essential task was "to patiently explain" to the remaining masses the character of the bourgeois provisional government and to win them over to the need for a workers government. For Lenin, no matter how strong the party was, it couldn't begin to overturn the provisional government without having won the majority of the workers, who still supported Kerensky.
In 1974, with a government that is backed by the vast majority of the working class, and in the absence of a revolutionary situation in Argentina, a tiny armed group launches forth on its own to try to overthrow Perón. There could be no greater contrast between the revolutionary policy of our teachers, Lenin and Trotsky, and the adventurist policy of those groups that attempt to achieve socialism without bothering to convince the masses, underrating their level of consciousness, their opinions, and their spirit.
Currently, 90 percent of the working class politically supports General Perón, whom they voted for in the September elections. The only thing a group accomplishes when it declares armed warfare under the pretext of fighting for socialism, is to isolate itself from the masses and move the masses —who are still Peronist - away from socialism.
At this time, without breaking en masse with Perón, the workers are beginning to put Peronism to the test, especially around the problem of the Pacto Social. The duty of real revolutionary socialists is to lead this mass experiment, utilize and impel the struggles that are opening up against the Pacto Social "to patiently explain" to the Peronist workers the class character of this government. It is they who elected the government, and they who will have to decide how and when and with what it should be replaced. Intervening in the struggles against the Pacto Social and maintaining this dialogue is the only way to influence growing sectors of workers in favor of socialism and to build a big workers party able to win power.
It is a political crime to cut off or sow confusion in this dialogue. And this is what the guerrilla grouplets are doing. The fact is that the Peronist worker is ready to mobilize against the freezing of wages and against the Pacto Social, but by no means will he condone, or let elements that are outside the working class devote themselves to, making armed attacks on the government that it elected.
We're not surprised that the guerrilla groups are constitutionally unable to understand this concept, which is the ABC of Marxism. These groups from their inception have lacked the power to link up with the workers. They have never led even one of the thousands of workers struggles that have been waged since the Cordobazo. Under the [Lanusse dictatorship their shortcoming was concealed by the hate all the workers felt toward the government. Now they clearly can be seen as an isolated, desperate, petty-bourgeois group, whose tantrums benefit only the class enemy. And they benefit with considerable cunning. So, thanks to these adventures, it will be more difficult for truerevolutionary socialists, for all class-conscious activists, and for workers in general to prevent the reinstitution of the repressive laws, confront right-wing thuggery, and struggle against the Pacto. But it's for exactly this reason that wemustdouble our efforts.