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A workers party must be built

Argentina’s president, Eduardo Duhalde, last month postponed the presidential election scheduled for 30 March next year due to the deepening struggle for control of the Peronist party, PJ. Elections are now planned for April.

Duhalde fears that ex-President Carlos Menem might win the Peronist nomination. Duhalde himself lacks a candidate he could anoint as his successor.

Meanwhile, trade union bureaucrats of the CGT federations are manoeuvring to promote a PJ (Peronist) candidate that they feel would be amenable to them.

The fact that the ruling class is considering the use of elections to gain a mandate for more hunger and repression shows up one of the biggest weaknesses of the Argentine working class: the absence of its own, independent class party.

The field of policy and the elections must not be left to the ruling class and to the educated middle class. Revolutionaries should say to the CGT members; do not let your leaders pledge your support behind one Peronist crook or another! Make Moyano, Daer and Barrionuevo break with the PJ!

Convene mass assemblies to discuss the standing of an independent workers’ candidate and what platform s/he should stand on. This process needs to be open to all workers’ organisations be they political or trade union. It should be addressed to those in occupation of their workplaces, all the militant piqueteros’ organisations, the public sector workers, teachers, shipyard workers. It is a struggle for class independence.

It conveys a simple message – you need your own party if you want “to get rid of all of them”. Either in the election process or even during new jornadas revolucionarias (revolutionary days) – if the government and the IMF try to impose yet more savage austerity on the country – the workers of Argentina are facing this question: what is the weapon we need to get rid of the old gang of corrupt politicians?

The false answer, which many are giving, is a rebirth of populism, a new version of 1940s Peronism in all but name, or a new popular front such as the leaders of the CTA trade union federation prefer.

We call on the unions (including their leaders) to break from the bosses and struggle for a workers’ party. This tactic would not “create” illusions, because the illusions already exist – they are and unfortunately remain a mass phenomenon. Of course on the streets the fighting layers of the people curse the bureaucrats’ names. But if there were no illusions in the leaders among union members and in the blue-collar workplaces, they would not be able to keep the masses out of the struggle.

On the contrary, the failure to call on the leaders to break with Duhalde and convene a workers’ party plays into their hands. It is absolutely necessary to fight for such a workers’ party to be a revolutionary one from the very start. A sharp struggle over the shape and content of such a party is inevitable between reformists and revolutionaries.

But this should not prevent all those inside the trade unions and the socialist left from turning their back resolutely on the endless, corrupt manoeuvres of the bosses’ parties and striking out to build a combative workers’ party that can co-ordinate and relaunch the mass struggles and strikes needed to get rid of this government.

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