PERONISM
Socialists, on the other hand, have every reason to encourage the idea, which would gain legitimacy from Nixon's dismissal, that presidents do not have the right to operate in secrecy, evade the rules of democracy, spy on opposition political groups, etc. But while revolutionists thus have reason to favor Nixon's removal, for them what the ruling class decides to do with Nixon is not the most important question. Their task is to seize the opportunity offered by Watergate to explain to newly receptive audiences the real nature of capitalist government in the United States. A good example of how this educational fosk can be carried out is provided by the Socialist Worken party (SWP), the U.5. Trotskyist organization. In addition to explaining the meaning of Watergate in its press, the SWP has reached out to layers who may never have read a revolutionary newspaper but who are now willing to listen to a socialist explanation of what Wafergate reveals. This has been done through the medium of a lawsuit against Nixon and eighteen of his subordinates. Socialists have always been confronted with the need to defend their organizations and members against frame-ups and have long realized that the best defense is a political one that takes the issues to the public and mobilizes the broadest possible support for the rights of the intended victims. In its suit against the Nixon gang, the SWP has gone beyond the usually rather narrow limits of such a defense campaign. The suit artacks the "right" of Nixon and his successors to wiretap, burglarize, infiltrate, and harass political groups, and it seeks to outlaw such specific witch-hunt tools as the attorney general's "subversive list." ARGENTINA by S. LOPEZ. The Argentine bourgeoisie is scared. More than thirty years ago it launched a process of class collaboration between Capital and Labor. Five years ago it reaped the result of that process: the Cordobazo, one of the highest peaks of mass struggle in Argentine history. (1) The Cordobazo marked the beginning oF a series of semi-insurrectional moss struggles that blocked the military dictatorship's plans for rationalizing it system. But the Cordobazo shook not only the army-party, which had taken over administering the affairs of state in order to do a job that no bourgeois political party had been able to handle. The Cordobazo also shook the entire ruling class, which saw the specter of socialism, of workers power, arising out of the ruins of its ill-fated attempts at class collaboration.
More Important, however, is the fact that the suit serves as a vehicle for corrying the revolutionary-socialist explanation of Watergate throughout the country. The Political Rights Defense Fund (PRDF) has been established to support the suif and to help mobilize public opinion against all ospects of government "dirty tricks.: Speakers for PRDF and the SWP make national tours explaining the issues at stake. The suit has already won wide support from a variety of organizations and individuals all over the countryThe suit has provided a platform from which socialists are able to explain that Watergating is an inseparable part of capitalist government and can be ended only by a working-class government. Whether the ruling class removes Nixon or allows him to finish out his term under a cloud of scandal, the crisis symbolized by Watergate will continue to be a major foctor in U.S. politics. The conflict between the needs of imperialism and the myth of bourgeois democracy was not created by Nixon, and it will not be resolived by either his removal or In the longer run, then, Watergate has added a new element of instability to U.S. politics. It is easy to foresee, for example, that widespread demands for impeachment are a likely response to any unpopular action by future presidents. And it is to be hoped and expected that disillusionment with the realities of copitalist government will win a widening audience in the United States for the socialist alternative. IN CRISIS The Emergence of a New Vanguard For the first time in Argentine history, the class struggle for socialism broke out of narrow vanguard circles and took on a dynamic of mass struggle. Since the fall of Perón in 1955, Argentina has seen successive attempts at setting up dictotorial and "democratic" regimes; but all attempts to set up a stable regime have failed. The experiences of years of struggle, the repercussions of the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions, and the exacerbation of social contradictions under the Ongania regime (1966-69) were to foster the emergence of thousands of new militants and of sectors radicalized through mobilization and class struggic. For these thousands of mili-
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ARGENTINA tants and new mass leaders, it was not enough simply to push the dictatorship to meet their immediate demands. They wanted to bring down the regime of capitalist exploitation and dependence and build a new society, a socialist society. The slogan "patria socialista" (socialist fatherland), which symbolized this aspiration, was taken up by whole sections of the masses. The militory dictatorship lacked the means to deal with the new threat through a mossive and bloody repression. To do that the armed forces would have had to take on a mass movement much more powerful than the one that existed in Brazil in 1964. And the bourgeoisie itself was not sufficiently united to opt for a coup as in Chile in September 1973. So the class confrontation would have to be different. The bourgeois solution to the crisis of the dictatorship was to return to a regime of parliamentary democracy, reintroducing into political life the movement that had been banned for eighteen years: Peronism. The absence of a revolutionaryMarxist alternative -- an alternative that none of the parties of the revolutionary left was able to offer -- led to the mass movement being channeled into an electoralist road. The majority of the thousands of new militants and leaders of radicalized sectors of the masses -- the people we call the broad vanguard -- identified themselves with the left wing of the Peronist movement, both with the armed Paronist organizations and with the now youth organizations. But the development of the mass movement and the broad vanguard was not mechanically counterposed to the whole experience of previous struggle. On the contrary, elements of the general radicalization going on in the country were corried into the Peronist movement, sharpening Peronism's internal controdictions, which immediately exploded into grave confrontations. The democratic parliamentary regime, along with the granting of all traditional democratic rights, very quickly proved incapable of controlling the mass movement. In fact, although it expected to get something out of Peronism, the mass movement -- and especially radicalized sectors within it -- intended to go much further than the bourgeois leadership and the Peronist bureaucracy had planned on. After Campora was inaugurated president on May 25, 1973, there were factory occupations and big mobilizations one after the other. The new government proved to be weak: Even before May 25 it had to give in to mass pressure and free the political prisoner, without even waiting to go through any formalities. Nevertheless, for the bourgeoisie it was not so much its new governmental representatives os the very system of rule through the classical mechanisms of parliamentary democracy that proved to be too weak to deal effectively with the radicalization of the masses. Compora did not even last 100 days. After just a month and a half, the bourgeoisie conducted a sort of coup against itself and readjusted its plans. The political instability of the new period emerged very clearly. The maneuvering room of the ruling class was quite narrow. Forced March to the Strong State The bourgeoisic was soon to begin a forced march toward transforming its methods of rule, toward establishing a strong state in Argentina. The problem was to transform the state apparatus and make if capable of dealing with the explosive character of the class struggle without having to directly call on the politically discredited armed forces, The problem was to create an all-powerful and omnipresent executive able to intervene quickly in any conflict, manipulating the demo-
20 cratic rights that troditionally go along with bourgeois democracy according to the needs and desires of the moment, transforming the parliament into a simple auxiliary of the executive in which the pressures on groups representing varying sectors would exhaust themselves in endless wrangling in corridors and committees. The only man capable of leading this forced march toward a strong state was Juan Perón, because the forced march required a series of political battles and skirmishes that only someone commanding a certain amount of prestige within the mass movement could have waged without provoking generalized violent reactions right from the start. Peron entered the government as the man of the right wing, as the leader of the bourgeoisie, and not as the representative of the workers who were supporting him. In order to defend the interests of the ruling class and its allies, the Peronist union bureaucracy pressed for a series of laws: the "Ley de Prescindibilidad" for civil servants, (2) the law on foreign investments, the law on professional associations of the bureaucracy, the compulsory arbitration law limiting the right to strike, the university law aimed at adapting national education to the interests of dependent Argentine capitalism, and so on. And, to defend these same interests, the bureaucracy pushed for a ban on the revolutionary press, the subjugation of freedom of the press, a ban on public demonstrations, a ban on political activities in centers of national education (colleges and universities), and the reintroduction of censorship. And all this produced its usual result: repression and torture of revolutionary and popular militants. Perón himself gave his personal approval to the appointment of Villar and Margaride, ex-henchmen of the dictatorship who are now in charge of the repressive apparatus. And this just of the fime when a brood public response was developing against the fortures being inflicted on the imprisoned Peronist militants Camps, Galli, and Maestre. The march to the strong state requires the elimination of the weakest sectors of the state apparatus, those that are most sensitive to mass pressure. The process of centralization of political power in the hands of the executive in order to press ahead with the bourgeoisie's plans ran up against some obstacles in the artitude of some provincial governments, Perón commands a sufficient parliamentary majority in Congress to get around certain problems and to be able to afford the luxury of allowing a few voices of protest to be raised (as happened when the opposition asked to question the minister of the interior about torture). But the Federal system and the relative autonomy of the provincial governments represented a limitation on the project of setting up the strong state. Under the plan the provincial governments were supposed to simply administrate public life along lines already laid down by the national executive. The consequent crisis broke out first in the two most important provinces: Buenos Aires and Córdoba. In the case of Buenos Aires, Provincial Governor Bidegain simply gave in to Perón's pressure. In Cordoba, things did not go so smoothly. Chief of Police Colonel Navarro became the faithful interpreter of the desires of the national executive power. It was there in Cordoba that we were treated to the rather unusual procedure that exposed the farce that lurks behind all bourgeois-democratic systems, especially in dependent countries: The chief of police kicked out the provincial governor while the national government looked on complacently. "Navarro's coup" could not have been pulled off successfully if Navarro had not been able to count on support from the national government and from Perón himself. Contrary to what has been insinuated by certain sectors of the Peronist youth, Perón is nobody's prisoner, and he will
always be "in the grip" of those he considers most adept at carrying out his political plans. Perón is a prisoner of his position as a bourgeois leader consistently defending the interests of his class: the owners of factories and companies, the exploiters of the working class.
In the social and economic sphere, the bourgeoisie's plans are clearly expressed in the Three Year Plan and the Social
Pact signed by the employers and the union bureaucracy under
Perón's auspices.
All the efforts demanded of the working class to increase production will be repaid with crumbs parsimoniously handed out according to what will boost profits. A proliferation of attacks and assaults led by the bureaucracy's goon squads and parapolice gangs will be necessary to enforce the social truce.
Thus we are seeing the curious phenomenon of a bourgeois constitutional "democracy" making itself the organizer of right-wing terrorism directed from the very pinnacle of the government. When this extralegal repression is no longer sufficient, the traditional forces of repression will move into action. And they won't hesitate to shoot to kill, as they already did when they killed the Peronist militant Chejolan during a demonsfration just 150 feet from the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace). All the bourgeois, reformist, and centrist leaders who went to the Casa Rosada to ask Perón to defend democratic rights looked completely ridiculous! Those who claim to have the greatest admiration for Peron act as if he were an idiot who does not even know who he's working with. These politicians asked Perón to fire his minister of the interior, his private secretary and minister of social welfare, his minister of labor, his chief of police, and so on. Can't they see that the man most responsible for the current policies of the government is
General Perón himself? Peron chose his side a long time ago, the side of the bourgeoisie. And he says so quite openly to anyone willing to listen. On. May Day he repeated it ance again from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. In answering the radical sector of the Peronist movement that claimed to be having a dialogue with him by asking "What's going on, General?" Perón called these people idiots, mercenaries, and traitors. Evolution of Peronism The "socialist fatherland" will be constructed not with Perón but ogainst him. The government of Perón is the government of the bourgeoisie, the exploiters, and the bureaucrats who are traitors to their class. It is not by defending this government that the class struggle will be pushed forward, but on the contrary by fighting for a workers government, a revolufionary workers and peoples government in which there will be no place for the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, or the military. Up to now the leaders of the radicalized Peronist youth -the largest sector of the brood vanguard -- have been following a vacillating and conciliatory policy toward the bourgeois and bureaucratic leadership of the Peronist movement. Predictably, they have gotten nothing in retum but kicks and defeats. On May 1, the rank and file of the rodicalized Peronist youth showed that they are not prepared to passively accept any affront. In a generally spontaneous manner, these militants turned their backs on Perón and walked away when the general starteri spouting his insults. This mass of 60, 000 youth furning t'er backs on Perón is indicative of the depth of the process a5 rupture going on between bourgeois and bureaucratic Peronism and broad sectors of the masses. When one sees a break of the sort that took place on May 1, one understands that the reason the working class did not pour out to demonstrate massively on May Day this year the way it did lost year is that a certain skepticism and lack of perspective has developed. What a striking difference there was between the May Day celebrations during the first Peronist government -- when hundreds of thousands of workers packed the July 9 Avenue in Buenos Aires -- and this year's miserable farce, when the union bureaucracy hardly managed to assemble a few thousand curiosity-seekers! During this farce, this "Festival of Labor and National Unity" arranged by the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, when Perón delivered his hysterical tirade, he proved himself incapable of holding on to and controlling even the Peronist sectors of the militant youth. The rank and file of the rodicalized sectors of the Peronist movement has had enough. The current leaders of these sectors are going to start losing significant parts of their base, who may leave the left because of the leoders' vacillating attitude and the role they play as a brake on the struggle. The radicalization cannot be held in the stroitjacket of the conciliationist two-stage tactic of making alliances with the bourgeoisie. Opportunism will necessorily be very costly in this situation; it will throw these organizations info crisis and will result in the loss of considerable energies and forces that are nonetheless needed for revolutionary struggle. Sectors of the working class are now showing the way forward. The workers struggling in Acindar, Marathon and Metcon, at Villa Constitución have showed in exemplary fashion how to fight the bureaucracy. They have developed unity in action without sectarianism, defended trade-union democracy, built the broodest possible solidarity among the whole population, utilized militant methods of struggle like occupying factories and organizing self-defense. Their struggle has been the strongest possible working-class response to the fake elections to the Metallurgical Workers Union that were organized by the Miguel, Otero, and Calabro gang. The Ley de Prescindibilidad has been used against the militant workers at the national bank to counter their trade-union activities. The publishing workers in Rosario, the workers in the military factories, and the teachers throughouf the country have broken with the Social Pact in order to fight for higher wages, thereby showing what they thought of the increases granted by the Great National Parity Commission, a body controlled by the employers and the union bureaucrats. Advance Without Stopping The struggles of the working class have to be pushed forward, extended, and deepened around unifying themes that are most strongly felt by all the workers. The workers have to respond to the growing centralization of the bourgeoisie's offensive against them with their own centralization and organization. -- Against the Social Pact, for higher wages. -- Against the bureaucracy, for workers democracy and control of the unions by the workers themselves. - Against repression, for the release of the political prisoners, for an inquiry into torture and the trial of those responsible for it. -- Against the assassinations and terrorism of the right, for the organization of self-defense in all mass struggles. -- Against negotiated dependence on imperialism, for nationalization without compensation of imperialist companies and monopolies, for nonrecognition of the foreign debt, and for the breaking of all agreements that have been reached with imperialism.
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