The Challenges facing the Radical Left in Argentina

September 27, 2024

Jonathan Frühling / Martin Suchanek

Argentina is currently being wracked by a severe economic crisis. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, gross domestic product shrank by 5%; inflation is running at an unimaginably high level of 271.5% (June 2024), creating a social catastrophe in which 60% of the population are living below the poverty line, 15% do not have money to buy enough food – and the trend is rising.

The ruling class has a loyal servant in the right-wing President Javier Milei who, since he took office in December 2023, has sought to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working class. Even though his government has come into conflict with sections of the ruling class and the traditional political élites, the adoption of the law of the „Foundations and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines“, known for short as the Basic Law, in June, nevertheless represents an important, if partial, victory for Milei over his critics.

His government is concerned with nothing less than a fundamental neoliberal „reordering“ of the country by destroying all the essential achievements of workers and the unemployed, as well as the various social movements. It is not just about extreme cuts in spending and the deterioration of services caused by inflation and unemployment, but about inflicting a strategic defeat on the working class.

As a country with powerful social movements, this would have an impact on the entire region. In addition, Milei’s policies could serve as a blueprint for similar regimes worldwide. So the working class and the socially oppressed definitely need to unite all their forces to succeed in the fight against Milei. Everything is at stake.

The electoral alliance FIT-U

In previous issues of Neue Internationale, we have dealt in detail with Milei’s programme. In this article, we want to turn our attention to the response of the radical left. More than any other country in the world, for many years, Argentina has been influenced by sizeable groups coming from the Trotskyist tradition. Their organisations have thousands of members. The largest of these groups have been united in an electoral alliance, the Front of the Left and Workers – Unity (Frente de la Izquierda y de Trabajadores – Unidad or FIT-U) After the 2023 elections it now has five deputies in parliament.

FIT-U was founded back in 2011. Its founding organisations were the Partido Obrero (Workers‘ Party; PO), the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (Socialist Workers‘ Party; PTS) and the Izquierda del Trabajador por el Socialismo (Workers‘ Left for Socialism; IS). In 2019, the FIT-U was strengthened by the entry of the Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (Workers‘ Socialist Movement; MST).

The stated goal was not only to raise awareness of a policy to the left of Peronism, the historic bourgeois populist movement, but to „prepare workers for the task of fighting for their own government“. (1)

In 2011, the FIT-U was relatively successful, winning 590,000 votes, even though it failed to enter parliament. In 2013, it was able to send two deputies to Congress. Since then, the FIT-U has been represented there without interruption, currently with 5 deputies. Initially, four of them were from the PTS and one from the PO. However, there will be rotations throughout the election period, so that the other two organisations will also be represented in parliament according to their strength. The fact that they currently have 5 MPs is thanks to their good performance in 2021, when they achieved their strongest result to date with just under 1.3 million votes.

In 2023, when half of the seats in Congress were redistributed, it managed just under 800,000 votes. The electoral results of the FIT-U have therefore fluctuated greatly and it has not seen a continuous growth in voters, despite the massive economic crisis and the crisis of Peronism. At the same time, however, it is clear that it is rooted in parts of the workers‘ vanguard and among the most politically progressive parts of the social movements. Since its founding, therefore, the question has been how the FIT-U can become a force that organises the vanguard of the working class, organising militant trade unionists, social movements, activists moving to the Left from Peronism, and unifying them into a force visible on all fronts of the class struggle, not just at the ballot box.

The 2011 programme

The original programme of the FIT-U from 2011 (2), which was expanded in 2019, still forms its basis today. It contains a number of immediate and transitional demands, such as those for the expropriation of the banks and large companies under workers‘ control. It culminates in the demand for a „government of workers and the people, achieved through the mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed“. (2)

It remains unclear, however, how this government is to be created – whether during the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus or through „massive pressure“ on the existing political system. Neither workers‘ councils nor militias appear anywhere in the programme. Even if this was the maximum consensus achievable between the groups involved at the time, this absence is a decisive weakness since it means that the programme does not indicate at all how a revolutionary break with the bourgeois system and its state can come about. At the time, we characterised it as a centrist programme, based on a compromise between the founding organisations. (3)

These and other weaknesses reflect the programme’s compromise character, offering a range of common positions, but at the same time revealing programmatic differences. These concerned not only the question of government, but also the policy in the trade unions, the stance towards Peronism and tactics for the unemployment movement, to name but a few important points. In addition, the organisations of the FIT-U took different – or even diametrically opposed – positions on central questions of the international class struggle. But, instead of organising a discussion between the participating groups and their supporters, it has so far limited itself to an electoral alliance.

An electoral alliance

It really is only an electoral alliance and not even an alliance that plans and carries out joint actions or even campaigns. At large demonstrations, such as the two one-day general strikes against Milei’s ‘reforms’ in 2024, or the memorial marches for the victims of the military dictatorship, the groups agree only on who will march or where their stands will be set up. Beyond this, there is no collaboration outside of the elections, which take place every two years.

In the meantime, the FIT-U is only perceptible as a logo on the flags and posters of the individual organisations and, above all, through the high-profile work of its deputies. Accordingly, there is no common and constantly working political leadership.

There is also no way for voters to become active in the FIT-U themselves. It itself has only four members, which are the individual organisations. There are no local groups in which hitherto unorganised voters could become active. They have to join one of the member organisations if they want to organise politically. This is a major obstacle for people who have a rough knowledge of the politics of the FIT-U but have not yet dealt more intensively with the policies and programmatic differences of the individual member organisations, or all those who do not want to join any of these groups.

This is one of the reasons why the electoral alliance itself is stagnating and not attracting more people into activity. In situations like this, however, it is essential to continue to grow in the class struggle into a force that can develop a perspective to defeat Milei and represent a real alternative for millions. In recent years, unfortunately, the character of the FIT-U as only an electoral front has solidified. At the purely electoral level – and this is the least important thing – there is stagnation.

The 2023 Programme

In addition, there is no progress at the programmatic level. On the contrary, the 2023 electoral programme „Diez puntos des Frente de Isquerada“ (10 points of the Left Front) (4) represents a political step backwards compared to the founding programme. The ten points do address the central needs of the masses and raise demands that include an important part of an immediate programme of the working class, such as the unification and centralisation of the health care system, an end to all privatisation, immediate wage and pension increases, the expropriation without compensation of companies that are closed or planning mass layoffs, the struggle for workers‘ control, massive reductions in working hours, and a jobs programme against unemployment. Other demands are directed against the exploitation of natural resources by agribusiness, oil and mining companies and the IMF.

But, unlike in the founding programme of the FIT-U, there is not a word about the government question. There is no demand for the constitution of workers’ and popular councils, let alone the organisation of self-defence against attacks by the police or overcoming the power of the state and the establishment of a socialist republic of councils. Nor is there any mention of a united front against the threats of the Milei government, let alone any demands which could be the basis for one.

Quite rightly, the four groups in the FIT-U did not limit themselves to the common electoral platform in the elections but also raised demands that go beyond this. All of them repeatedly advocated the perspective of a workers‘ government (or a workers‘ and people’s government); all propagated the necessity of large-scale mass struggles, up to and including a general strike. But this was not reflected in the FIT-U programme – unlike in 2011.

At the same time, the FIT-U is being touted as a „revolutionary front“ in the election campaigns, even though it clearly does not have a revolutionary programme as its basis and knows no common activity other than running for election. In our opinion, there is a deep contradiction here. On the one hand, the FIT-U attracts hundreds of thousands of people who are looking for an answer to the deep crisis in Argentina and an alternative to Peronism. But it does not offer these people political leadership beyond the election. Nothing remains of its promise at its founding to „prepare workers for the task of fighting for their own government”. The four member organisations (and other competing groups) are left to do this themselves.

This means that the FIT-U falls short both of its potential and of the current tasks of the class struggle. In Argentina today we are witnessing a class confrontation that can only end through a fundamental alteration in the balance of forces, either with a deep, counter-revolutionary defeat or with revolutionary victory. Although this struggle may drag on for a longer period of time, it will not last indefinitely and, in particular, the corrosive forces of inflation and impoverishment threaten to wear down the masses sooner or later, even if the government is slow to implement reactionary legislation.

At this point, we do not want to ignore the difficulties on this path. The fact that the FIT-U still exists only as an electoral alliance is of course not only due to the fact that everyone benefits financially from the electoral successes, but also to deep differences between the four groups.

The current intensification of the class struggle, however, demands that the forces within FIT-U should develop a plan for going forward to the building of a revolutionary party that organises tens of thousands and can fight for the leadership of millions. The individual groups of the FIT-U will hardly be able to do this on their own. Therefore, the question arises as to how it (or parts of it) can become that party. The prerequisite for this is to face up to this problem in the first place, to understand that creating a revolutionary leadership is a task of the here and now.

The organisations of the FIT-U

Let us now look at the three largest organisations in the FIT-U, which have roughly equal weight in the Argentine left. We will see that they differ considerably in their assessment of the situation in Argentina, their development tactics and in their policies within the FIT-U.

Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas – PTS

The PTS is probably the third largest organisation of the FIT-U in terms of numbers. It was formed in 1988 as a split from the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) founded by Nahuel Moreno (1924-1987). It is the Argentine section of the Fracción Trotskista (FT) and is also by far its largest individual section. We already analysed its theoretical basis in 2016 (5).

The PTS sees its policy as a break from Morenoism and a restoration of a revolutionary Trotskyist tradition. In fact, this year it has developed an action programme (6) which sets out ten demands for Argentina. First of all, it is very commendable that, in contrast to many who consider themselves Trotskyists, it has published an up-to-date programmatic document and this goes far beyond the election programme of the FIT-U. However, it must still be described as a centrist, not a revolutionary, programme, although it does make this claim for itself. It calls for the nationalisation of industry under workers‘ control, a foreign trade monopoly, and a whole series of important democratic and social measures. But, on the question of government, it remains vague. At the end, it says:

„In the face of the pacts behind the people and against the IMF regime, we defend the struggle for a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly as a democratic body to challenge all the institutions that have governed us. A more generous democracy would facilitate the struggle for a government of workers based on their own democratic organisations within the framework of the international struggle for socialism from below.“

In our opinion, the slogan of the Constituent Assembly is not a central slogan for Argentina, and certainly not one to prepare the struggle for a workers‘ government through its „broader democracy“. On the contrary. Even though we support demands for democratic rights and, for example, the abolition of the bicameral system, Argentina has been an established bourgeois democracy for decades. The slogan of the Constituent Assembly does not have any decisive political explosive power here, and we consider it to be more of a distraction from the essentials in view of the tasks ahead.

Why?

Like the PTS and all other groups of the FIT-U, we consider an indefinite general strike to be essential to stop Milei’s attacks. However, unlike temporary, one-day „demonstration strikes“, such a strike raises the question of power. Milei’s government will try to break it, the union leaderships will try to choke it off, if they can’t prevent it. Therefore, mass assemblies, the election of strike leaders, a nationwide leadership and coordination of the movement as well as self-defence organs against police or military repression are needed plus agitation among the soldiers not to participate in the repression of the movement, indeed, to go over to the workers.

Councils of workers’ delegates can emerge from the action and strike committees, and workers‘ militias from the self-defence organisations, i.e. a dual power that can only be dissolved progressively by a revolutionary workers‘ government and the establishment of the rule of the working class.

However, the necessity of the smashing of the bourgeois state, the building of workers‘ or soldiers‘ councils or the establishment of self-defence committees do not appear in the PTS’s „transitional programme“.

Another problem concerns the assessment of the situation by their last congress and the perspectives derived from it. The PTS understands the current situation as a defensive situation, in which there are favourable conditions in the coming months to strengthen itself by participating in struggles in the factories, at the universities and in the neighbourhood committees. While they are aware that the government’s attacks will continue, they do not expect there to be a decisive defeat for the working class in the near future. However, it also does not assume that it is possible to build a party that can organise the vanguard of the class and fight for leadership of it. The level of class struggle, they say is too low for that.

We consider this assessment to be wrong in two respects. On the one hand, the capitalist side is waging the struggle with extreme intensity. The level of class struggle is actually extremely high – but the side of the workers and oppressed remains far behind the requirements of the hour, for which Peronism and the trade union leaderships in particular bear political responsibility. In this situation, in our opinion, a revolutionary force, for all the importance of partial struggles for propaganda and agitation, must stand for a generalisation of class resistance. At the individual company or sectoral level, the balance of power is more unfavourable than at the level of society as a whole, especially in a deep economic crisis, and central problems of the class such as inflation cannot be solved purely on a sectoral basis.

In accordance with its party building concept and its analysis of the situation in Argentina, the PTS sees no need to turn the FIT-U into a political regroupment project. The latter hardly appears in its publications overall. If it is mentioned, it is only as an election front and with the aim of broadening the visibility and acceptance of general left-wing politics. This is probably also due to the fact that it currently has four members of parliament and thus has great weight within the FIT-U. Opening up the FIT-U to the unorganised could jeopardise its position of power, and a concretisation of its programme could scare off parts of the more moderate voter base. This, in turn, could jeopardise the further successful development of the PTS, which is why it prefers to leave everything as it is.

Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores – MST

The largest force within the FIT-U, together with the PO, is the MST. It was also formed in 1992 as a split from the Morenoite MAS. The international organisation associated with it is the Liga Internacional Socialista (LIS) / International Socialist League (ISL)

The MST is particularly strong in the private health sector and in the unemployment movement. A peculiarity of Argentina is that unemployed people, if they want to receive their state support, have to go to unemployed organisations and as such also participate in demonstrations. This is intended to give weight to the social movements in Argentina, also because many people are unemployed. The MST has its own unemployed organisation, Unidad Piquetera, which allows it to mobilise many thousands of people for its demonstrations. The aim is to be able to carry out agitation among the unemployed through these organisations and thus to gain contact with the most precarious strata of the class. It also tries to intervene with these organisations in the neighbourhood committees that have formed since the crisis in Buenos Aires, often grouped around public kitchens.

The MST sees the present situation as very critical. According to it, the attacks of the Milei government are aimed at fundamentally changing the country. This leads to polarisation within the population. Therefore, it does recognise the possibility that the social forces that have been fighting against the government in recent months have the opportunity to grow and develop into even greater confrontations with the government. In addition, the MST recognises the opportunity that the social movements can not only fight the government, but also overthrow it.

However, it is aware that its own weight is not enough to lead these battles successfully. That is why it wants to turn the FIT-U from a pure electoral front into a collective organisation of all fighting sectors. The MST sees the need for these activists to go beyond the separate struggles and organise politically. The Peronist parties themselves formed the governments for a long time and ultimately also brought corruption, inflation and cooperation with the IMF, thus preparing the ground for Milei’s election. That is why the masses are disappointed with this leadership and want to reorient themselves. Due to the already existing popularity of the FIT-U, it can become a rallying point for leftists and give rise to a new and united movement. In a letter to the other organisations of the FIT-U (7), the MST writes:

„The country is facing a new stage, a stage with more social confrontations and more political disputes. The FIT-U must face this situation, not only alongside the daily struggles and in direct opposition to the government, the state governors and employers‘ associations, but also as a political alternative. More rebellious, more democratic, and more open to those who share our ideas of change to work together toward workers‘ government and socialism.“

To achieve this, the MST advocates that there should be an open congress of the FIT-U in which all activists from the universities, the district committees, environmental activists, women’s rights activists, left-wing intellectuals and trade unionists can participate. At such an open congress, in which thousands of people would participate, it would like to discuss the future form of the FIT-U democratically. It would like to argue at such a congress that the FIT-U opens up to a membership of individual activists, that it creates local groups and a democratically elected leadership. In this way, it is to become more rebellious and democratic and transform itself into a party in which the individual organisations are organised as currents. It proposes that the different currents agree on a draft programme and, where they cannot reach agreement, put it up for debate and voting among a wider membership. We consider this approach to be sensible in principle – but it remains to be seen precisely what programme the MST itself would propose.

Partido Obrero – PO

The Partido Obrero was founded in 1964, around the Journal Politica Obrera and its historic leader Jorge Altamira and is, thus, the only one of the four groups of the FIT-U not to be a split from Moreno’s MAS. It assesses the situation in Argentina in such a way that the current government will either end in a decisive defeat for the working class or it will manage to overthrow the government and open a path to solving the crisis in their interest.

Like the MST, the PO also has a piquetero organisation under its leadership. It bears the name „Polo Obrero“. It believes that the piqueteros, which emerged from the popular uprisings of 2001, have played a pioneering role in the struggles of this millennium. Polo Obrero is one of the largest piquetero organisations in Argentina and is therefore also affected by strong repression by the government, which the PO describes as the most violent attack against its party in its history. This refers to over 120 state raids on soup kitchens across the country and the political persecution of piquetero activists.

Programmatically, the PO outlines some demands in its political declaration, which it published on July 3, 2024. Among other things, it calls for a halt to cooperation with the IMF and debt payments. The banking system and foreign trade should be nationalised and the entire economy be placed under the control of the workers. This is to be accompanied by an increase in wages and pensions and their indexation to inflation. The establishment of a workers‘ government and the expropriation of factories without compensation are also mentioned. To achieve this, a general strike needs to be organised.

However, the programmatic part of the text is extremely short and does not mention the same crucial questions that we have already mentioned above with regard to the PTS. In its action programme of 23.07.2023, it briefly formulated its understanding of a workers‘ state. It is to be a state of a new type and consist of representatives of the class who can be elected and recalled, who form the government. In the new state, the bourgeois organs of repression are to be replaced by workers‘ militias. Judges and public prosecutors are also to be elected. These are all important points, but they are more of a maximum demand than a battle plan for how to become active for such a government in the here and now.

In order to organise a general strike, the various organisations of the PO, and the PO itself, should regroup activists, agitate among them and fight with them for the most important demands of the day. The aim is to show the workers the treacherous role of Peronism. Local meetings of trade union activists, neighbourhood assemblies and youth meetings are intended to help recruit new activists for the party and increase its influence in these sectors.

However, there is no call in the recent PO congress documents (8) to join forces with the other organisations within the FIT-U for these demands. It is striking that the FIT-U is actually not even mentioned in the Declaration, nor in its action programme or its „Tasks and Conclusions of the 29th Congress of the PO“! Nor is there any mention of the united front tactics to be directed against the bureaucracies of the CGT and the CTA. The PO therefore has no tactics at all for breaking the working class away from Peronism and uniting it. But this would be absolutely essential if the PO really wants to overthrow the government within Milei’s term of office, unless it thinks it can do so entirely on its own.

Perspectives for the struggle in Argentina

Like the MST, we believe that the FIT-U should be opened up to class-struggle trade unionists, social activists and anti-capitalist youth. Local groups and a permanent leadership must be formed to plan and execute the activities of FIT-U. In addition, the debate on a new programme should be started immediately. A large public congress, as demanded by the MST, can be the start of such a development. In this way, the FIT-U can transform itself from a pure electoral front into a new workers‘ party that can actually offer a perspective to the impoverished masses. Such a political force could also actually challenge the Peronist trade union leaders and force them into a united front by appealing to their membership. Only in this way can the entire class be drawn into the struggle and left forces become the leadership of the working class.

The economic crisis and coming attacks will certainly set even more people in motion in the coming months. So the possibility for such a development is currently there. But, if the defeats become too heavy, then the hope and thus the fighting power of the working class will be broken. So there is no time to lose.

All leftists and revolutionaries must be aware that it is not enough to keep fending off Mileils individual attacks. His government is waging an undisguised class war from above. If he can continue to implement his programme, his model threatens to destroy not only the lives of the Argentine working class, but also those in other countries. That’s why it must be the task not only to fend off the attacks, but to get themselves out of a defensive posture. In other words, the demands for the nationalisation of certain sectors under workers‘ control, as well as the expropriation without compensation of companies that are closed or are planning mass redundancies, which the FIT-U is raising, are correct. However, they can only be successfully implemented if the groups involved decide to launch joint campaigns with the aim of getting the unions moving and ultimately overthrowing the Milei government.

Ultimately, only an indefinite general strike can stop the government’s attacks. At the same time, however, that would also pose the question of power in society as a whole – whether a bourgeois government should continue to exercise power or a workers‘ government based on the fighting organs of the general strike, arming the workers and smashing the repressive apparatus, relying in the army on soldiers‘ councils that oppose the officer corps. Such a workers‘ government would not only have to revoke Milei’s bills, but also implement an emergency programme against inflation, poverty and to reorganise the economy in the interests of the masses.

Such a programme of socialist revolution also needs a political force, a revolutionary workers‘ party. The FIT-U faces the challenge of becoming one in the here and now, otherwise the victory of the extreme counterrevolution threatens. But this also means that it must cease to exist as a mere electoral front. Rather, it must become a party based on a revolutionary programme of action, in which all trade unionists, piqueteros, and all other activists of social movements who want to fight for such a programme can become members.