[The following open letter appeared in the December 30 year-end summary issue of Avanzada Socialista, weekly newspaper of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST— Socialist Workers party, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Argentina). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
It is rather symbolic that these lines, our year-end good wishes, should be gin here, between a drawing by Ho and a note from Cayetano Bollini. 1 Symbolic, in effect, because we want to extend a cheerful greeting and leave you with a smile on your face. That is, we want to talk to you about the final subject, the one we left for last, and we want to do it with the optimism that the theme deserves.
As this year ends- the third for us at Avanzada Socialista- a relationship has already been established between you and us, an unspoken understanding. We know each other. We know that you - activist, member, or friend of the PST- are disturbed, that fears prey on your mind. Maybe you spent the holidays taking special precautions. With a vivid recollection that more than 100 persons have been murdered by the fascists, and the anguish of knowing that several of these were party comrades, revolutionary activists this Christmas have been getting used to the idea that embracing their families can be a dangerous luxury, one for which you may have to pay with your life.
These are the same precautions you take and the same fears you feel when you ask to meet us in discreet places, when you carry our newspaper folded over four times, when you think and rethink, weigh and reweigh, how much is worth risking for the party.
So we want to talk to you and share with you the optimism we feel about where we stand today and how far we have come in building this marvelous tool, the revolutionary party, so that together we can gauge whether this objective justifies all the risks, sacrifices, hard work, and blood it has cost and will cost to achieve.
If you read page 2, you know that we don't think the PST is a candidate for the "political force of the year."2 We start by recognizing that the revolutionary party is still small, does not exert a major influence over national events, and that it is not looked to for leadership by any broad sectors of the masses in our country.
However, a number of accomplished facts and a still greater number of indicatory signs confirm unmistakably that we are moving toward consolidating a mass revolutionary party, and that at this very moment our party reaches into all parts of the country, uniting a large section of the revolutionary vanguard.
Let us look at the facts. The PST can boast of having developed an analysis and line for the whole recent period that have been proved correct in practice.
Fact Number One: Our party said that the Cordobazos opened a stage of big mass struggles (a "prerevolutionary" situation, we said; and that the bourgeoisie would notrespond with more repression but, on the contrary, with a turn toward constitutional institutions, rule by law, granting some democratic rights, including the right to choose the country's rulers by vote. From that analysis we took a line. We said that besides participating in mass struggles, the party must win legal political status in order to oppose the system in the arena of legal political activity as well.
Conclusion: Our party was the only one on the revolutionary-socialist left that won legal status, opened public headquarters throughout the country (more than sixty), and participated in the elections, exposing all the parties that support the system, especially the Peronists.
Fact Number Two: We said that Campora's victory closed the prerevolutionary stage, but that the workers and people's struggles over the cost of living would not end. There would be no Cordobazos but there would be strikes. It was inevitable that the Pe ronist government would soon go into crisis, since its plan was to cut back and circumscribe democratic rights. From this analysis, we took a line: We would accompany the workers movement in these struggles, putting forward a firm position of workingclass opposition to the government.
Conclusion: Our party participated in almost all the workers' conflicts, in several cases played a leading role. The companeros at Matarazzo, Saason, Frigorífico Minguillón, Corni, Del Carlo, Propulsora, Ingenio Ledesma, FOTIA, the teachers union, Villa Constitución, Santa Rosa, and many others remember well the socialists who from the front lines of the struggle polemicized fiercely against isolated acts of guerrilla warfare and the opportunism of the left Peronists of the JP4 and of the CP.
When these groups acted as agents for the government, the socialists raised the banner of working-class independence. This polemic assumed still greater forcefulness in the universities, where these currents proved incapable of organizing a mass defense against the clearly impending blow. 5
Fact Number Three: At the same time as we denounced the right turn that developed as we had anticipated, we noted the approach of a major social and political crisis. We explained that as the instrument for carrying out this turn, a sector was shap ing up within the government and the ruling apparatus that had a fascist plan going further than the reactionary course the government itself had charted.
We pointed out that alongside this development, the crisis of the Social Pact produced by the workers' struggles had also opened up a possibility for the growth of pro-oligarchical, proimperialist currents intent on promot ing a military coup d'etat. From this, we took our line. Without ceasing to expose the government's direct responsibility for the reactionary turn, we had to warn of the greater danger represented by a fascist coup and the activity of the fascist gangs. At the same time, it was necessary to condemn the guerrillas sharply since objectively they were only giving aid and comfort to the fascists.
Conclusions: Our party was one of the promoters of the specific, limited agreements by the group of the "Nine," for opposing this development. At the same time, we continually criticized and exposed the procapitalist parties included in this bloc. When the Pacheco massacre took place, our party built the only mass antifascist action that has been built so far. For this we used the tactic of the united front, a tactic that we have used consistently to confront the wave of criminal fascist attacks that followed Pacheco and inflicted losses on all the left organizations.
However, there are also certain signs that indicate clearly the growth of our party. On page 7 we gave a picture of the results of the university elections in the interior of the country. 7 That picture is quite important in assessing the growth of the revolutionary-socialist movement throughout the country. In all areas there is a minority of 2 to 15 percent that voted for socialism and our party.
In the first place, this shows a minority extending throughout the re publie. But the importance of the fact increases if you consider that in most areas where our youth fielded a slate, they were only able to campaign for a few days before the vote. This shows that a current had already formed that was sympathetic to the revolutionary party.
Another sign, which we need not dwell on, is the systematic attacks and harsh persecution to which we have been subjected. The fascists and repressive elements attacked all currents, but within the socialist camp our party has been the hardest hit.
Finally, there is the open and frank dialogue that we have established with broad sectors of the masses: Peronists, Communists, Radicals, and independents; workers, students, housewives, white-collar workers, professionals, and intellectuals have all come to re spect the PST as an organization worth discussing with and to which they bring many of their ideas and opinions. The broadest and most general of our slogans, the most important of our appeals is simply our explanation of the need to build a new, mass revolutionary-socialist workers party. This appeal is being given serious consideration by thousands of companeros, some of whom are already participating in one way or another in our organization.
7. The Juventud Socialista (Socialist Youth, youth group of the PST) came in ninth in the elections with 2,011 votes. The left Peronists received 20,832 votes; the youth group of the Partido Socialista Popular (Popular Socialist party), 11,283; the youth of the Union Civica Radical (Radical Civic Union), 9,942.
This is why the two party campaigns carried out during the yearthe subscription campaign for the newspaper and the fund drive at the end of the year-have been so successful. Between June and November we gained 20,000 subscribers and between December and mid-January we will collect 150 million old pesos. The response, your response is what has made this success possible. You have to take into account also that because of the peculiarly difficult conditions of persecution that we have worked under since the middle of 1974 and the espe cially hard blow we suffered at the end of the year, these figures, while very substantial, are a pale reflection of what they could have been if we had been able to talk to all our friends and sympathizers.
What do these facts and signs show? That we are already the mass revolutionary party of the Argentine workers? No. This is still not the case. But, on the other hand, they indicate that the PST is the most advanced attempt to build such a party, the one that is politically best endowed and that has the basic human material for achieving this goal. To sum up, the present PST is the nucleus of the future mass revolutionary party.
What does the leap to becoming a mass party depend on? Not only on your aid and efforts, although they are essential, but on something beyond our control-the speed, pace, opportunities, and experiences of the class struggle. There will not be a mass party until social mobilizations reach a high level. Meanwhile, this essential basis has been laid. It represents victory all along the line. The comrades who have been imprisoned, the women comrades who have been brutally treated, the comrades who had to go into hiding, the comrades who were shot in the back, kidnapped, or threatened, and those comrades who are re-laying the bricks of our dynamited headquarters-have won up and down the line. That handful of persecuted individuals and you, our readers, friends, and supporters of the PST, are building the revolutionary party for a socialist Argentina, and you are succeeding. Why not smile! Why not be optimistic!
A little before her death, our be. loved Rita Moreno® said that if she could live again, she would be more Marxist and Trotskyist than ever. That is, that she would fight for the party with still more dedication. We did not get a chance to hear the last words of the comrades murdered by the fascists, but we are sure that they had the same idea and the same dedication. In the names of these comrades in particular— Indio, Tano, Hijitus, Tony, Juan Carlos, Rubén, and Cé sar - we thank you, companeras and compañeros, for all your efforts and support, and we urge you to remain more steadfast than ever.
Trotsky in Welsh
A series of television biographies in Welsh of the great rebels of history will include a portrayal of the life of the Russian revolutionist Leon Trotsky, the Cardiff weekly Welsh Nation reported January 16.
"'Y Gwrthwynebwr [The Oppositionists],' which started from HTV Wales last Tuesday, is a series of eight 45-minute plays, the brainchild of North Wales writer Emyr Humphreys, who is editor and co-producer of the series. The series concerns heroism — and the frequent need for heroes to fight alone. Each play is about a historical figure who opposed the 'establishment' of his time. The subject of the first drama was the German anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
"In addition to Bonhoeffer, characters portrayed in the series include Trotsky; the Spanish Civil War poet Lorca; Welsh 16th century religious rebel John Penry; Colonel John Jones of Maesgarnedd, who signed the death warrant of Charles I; Bertolt Brecht; Irish republicans Padraig Pearse and James Connolly; and the 19th century nonconformist militant Emrys Ap Iwan."
Notes
1. Ho and Cayetano Bollini are Avanzada Socialista's cartoonist and humorist. February 10, 1975
2. The PST named the Peronist right turn as "political force of the year," since the right turn was the most pervasive political presence in the country.
3. The 1969 semi-insurrection.
4. Juventud Peronista-Peronist Youth.
5. The regime has carried out a systematic campaign of repression in the universities during the past year. Schools were closed down. Administrators and professors were fired and replaced with notorious reactionaries. Student organizations were harassed and admissions restricted.
6. The antilabor wage-freeze policy of the Peronists.
8. A twenty-nine-year veteran of the revolutionary movement in Argentina, who died August 24, 1974, of cancer, at the age of forty-three.