Declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International on the pst's joint support with bourgeois parties institutionalization' tothe "process of On March 22 Argentine president Perón received, at their request, representatives of eight political parties: Unión Civica Radical, Partido Revolucionario Cristiano, Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores, Partido Socialista Popular, Partido Intransigente, UDELPA, Partido Comunista, Democracia Progressista. This meeting was not an isolated event. It was part of a series of initiatives that Perón had taken with the aim of "normalizing" his relations with the officially recognized parties (another meeting took place on April 5). But the March 22 meeting was the most important one so far, for at its conclusion the eight parties published a common declaration. "Those who are here, " said the declaration in part, "have confirmed their fundamental commitment not to spare initiatives or efforts to maintain and consolidate the process of institutionalization of the country in the framework of the democratic system and in the practice of coexistence and constructive dialogue... The difficult moments that the Republic is now passing through as a consequence of its confrontation with powers that have been weighing on it for a long time will be successfully surmounted by solidarity action of the sectors that respect the majority and popular desire for freedom that was expressed in the elections and that together guarantee their right to continue to express themselves in the future, for applying it in reality to free itself from the burden of dependence, and to assure the workers the benefits of the wealth created by their efforts. As participants in this process we do not take an attitude of opposition to the realization of these projects. ... The interview, thanks to the representativeness of its participants and to the development of its content, should be considered as a concrete step toward realizing the conjunction of the efforts that assure the course of institutionalization along the lines voted on by the people. All of us understand the risks of the undertaking demanded by the country and are agreed beyond the differences of viewpoint on the depth and rhythm of the process of change -- on the inexorable necessity of its realization. ... Those who desire the failure of the constitutional regime or who are waiting for circumstances that would make a new reactionary adventure possible; those who are trying to utilize sectors of the regime to influence future alternatives; those who adopt total¡tarian or corporatist practices in a subterranean ideological convergence with fascist-like demands and the interests of the multinational corporations that are exerting uninterrupted pressure on our borders; all those people should know that this is a country which is united on the basis of a fundamental agreement and will give them a response. " 42
The declaration, which was published by all the daily newspapers on March 22, was reprinted in the March 28-April 5 issue of Avanzada Socialista, organ of the PST. But Avanzada Socialista did not limit itself to publishing the communiqué; it added two commentaries in the form of editorials. The first editorial, after recalling the escalation of rightwing violence which culminated in the coup carried out in Córdoba by the police chief Navarro, explained that the "participation (of the PST) in the dialogue with the president of the republic" was "a concrete act in defense of the democratic rights heroically won by the workers and popular mobilizations that have gone on since the Cordobazo. " It went on to explain that "defense of constitutional stability" should not coincide with political defense of the government and drew the following conclusion: "The fact that the eight parties came to an agreement to request the meeting in order to pose the problem of institutionalization is of extraordinary importance. But, as always, we will not cease to affirm that democratic gains will be defended above all by the mobilization of the masses as the struggles of Acindar and of the bank workers indicate to us. That is why we will not cease to affirm the necessity of the agreement to defend democratic rights being expressed in action, beginning with a big public meeting of all the parties and all the political organizations of the youth and all the workers and student organizations. " The same call for a common meeting with the bourgeois parties was taken up at the end of the second editorial, which preached the need for "concrete and flexible responses at each conjuncture of the class struggle." The leadership of the PST had to take account of the fact that its decision to participate in a meeting that gave a cover to Perón's "normalizing" actions, its signature of a document in common with bourgeois parties (among them the Unión Civica Radical, the traditional bourgeois party and, even today, the main political force of the bourgeoisie apart from Peronism), its proclamation of a "fundamental coincidence" of all the signatories in defense of the process of "institutionalization" and the acceptance of the "projects" approved by the "people" (which are in practice projects drawn up by Cámpora and Perón), and its thesis that the struggle against fascism can and should be waged along with parties representing the enemy class all could provoke reactions among party militants. This is why the same issue of Avanzada Socialista published a letter signed by "Comrade F. " (a letter that was received
by the editors with startling rapidity and an answer to the letter that took up nearly two pages. The letter seemed to accept class collaboration with the bourgeois parties. In fact, it asserted (falsifying a quotation from Trotsky referring to the necessity for a united front with the Social Democracy in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s) that the "united front is permissible with the class enemy and even with the devil's grandmother. " But the author criticized the signing of the document of the eight parties because, according to him, the PST would have thus aided Perón and given support to a bourgeois government that was on the point of falling. The response of the editors clarified the central question involved. It affirmed that it was necessary to begin with a "fundamental fact: there has been a semi-fascist coup that overthrew a provincial government. This coup was not an isolated event, but represented a leap in the escalation of the violence of the right, which is on the offensive and has not the slightest intention of stopping. " The conclusion is that in the given context there must not be a struggle to overthrow the government or the existing institutions, but that, on the contrary, it is necessary to defend "democratic institutionalization and that toward this end it is correct to establish an agreement with bourgeois parties by signing common declarations and by calling for common demonstraIn the past the leaders of the PST have criticized the Stalinist conceptions of popular front, and they formally reiterated their criticisms in the issue of Avanzada in question. But just as they had previously supported the Uruguayan Frente Amplio, which was headed by the bourgeois representative Seregni, today they sign a common declaration with bourgeois parties and call for common action with them. To justify such an ultra-opportunist attitude, they utilize exactly the argument advanced by the Stalinists in the middle of the 1930s to justify their adoption of the line of Popular Front, namely that it is legitimate to line up with the bourgeoisie or with so-called democratic sectors of it to oppose a fascist danger. With this the leadership of the PST marks a stage in its evolution and openly breaks with the revolutionary-Marxist conception of the proletarian united front which is based on the Leninist conception of the Third International and was revived At the same time, it is forgetting the fundamental distinction between democratic rights demanded by the workers movement and the structure of bourgeois democracy. In signing a document that calls for the process of institutionalization of the country and in presenting itself along with bourgeois parties as a "participant in the process of institutionalization, " it is contributing to Perón's main mystification, to the pseudodemocratic farce the Argentine bourgeoisie has been playing for the past three years, and is falling for the maneuver aimed at presenting Perón as a guarantor of "democracy" who embraces everyone, with the exception of the organizations of the far right and the far left (Perón has explicitly expressed himself along that line). The expression utilized on several occasions by Avanzada Socialista -- dialogue with the president -- says a lot about the opportunist conceptions of the PST leaders. The United Secretariat of the Fourth International, which has always rejected any form of class collaboration and has constantly counterposed the revolutionary conception of the workers (or workers and peasants) united front to the reformist and Stalinist conception of class collaboration with the "democratic" parties of the bourgeoisie, believes that the duty of revolutionaries in Argentina is to struggle uncompromisingly and without truce against the existing government and the bourgeois state, while exploiting the legal and semi-legal maneuvering room that may exist to denounce the fraudulent operation initiated with the GAN and developed by Peron. It declares that it bears no responsibility for the opportunist and rightist attitude of the PST, that it considers the PST's attitude in contradiction with the conceptions and traditions of Trotskyism, and that it condemns this attitude in the clearest fashion. May 29, 1974 In the June 26, 1974, issue of Avanzada Socialista it is affirmed that the PST did not sign the declaration of March 22, 1974, "because there were still differences" with the other parties. The editor-in-chief is said to have published the information about the PST's signature by mistake. But the same article in Avanzada Socialista that reports these adjustments simultaneously and explicitly reaffirms the legitimacy of reaching tactical accords with bourgeois parties in Argentina today to defend democratic rights and the institutions of bourgeois democracy. The fundamental choice that has been made by the PST was once again confirmed by the fact that on June 29, 1974 -just three days after the appearance of that issue of Avanzada Socialista -- the PST and the seven other parties, which are called "center-left" by the daily newspapers, signed a common declaration supporting "the process of institutionalization of the country" and "the functioning of the legal mechanisms of constitutional continuity. " (La Opinión, June 30, 1974) On July 3, the day after the death of Perón, the PST in the city of Santa Fe signed, at the invitation of the president of the Chamber of Deputies, a new declaration in favor "of the maintenance of constitutional stability as the only adequate means to achieve social justice in liberty, to break the grip of imperialist interests, and to concretize independence for all time. " (El Cronista Comercial, July 4, 1974.) This proves that the PST's fundamental divergence from the programmatic line of the Fourth International on the method of defending the democratic rights of the workers is fully maintained, despite the article in the June 26, 1974, Avanzada Socialista. This pointing out of a programmatic deviation for which the Fourth International can take no responsibility must in no way inhibit the development of a vigorous campaign of solidarity with the PST and of defense of this party against the blows of repression and the terror of the far right. July 12, 1974
43
THE BULL DING OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY DARTY