Argentina: The Tasks of Trotskyists in the Struggle Against Milei

Since the purpose of Marxists is to intervene into current struggles to advance the interests of working people, I will focus this brief presentation about the struggle for workers’ power in the post-Soviet era on what is currently happening in Argentina.

The strategic question in Argentina is the struggle against the imperialist subjugation of the country. The situation is typical of what workers are facing in many countries. US imperialism has been on the offensive for the past 30 years, while the workers movement has suffered from many years of passivity under a leadership that has overseen one defeat after another. Protest movements against the depredations of imperialism have been led by forces which are not revolutionary and which systematically impede the possibility of a successful struggle. What is the task of Trotskyists faced with this problem?

At the international level, the left is disoriented, divided and unable to influence the course of events. In Argentina, this is expressed in the following way. In the last year, Milei has succeeded in implementing his austerity plan, and the working class and other oppressed layers are in a qualitatively worse situation. Argentina has the largest Trotskyist forces in the world, but in spite of this there has been no serious response from the workers movement and the Trotskyists are not seen by the working class as a viable alternative to their current leaderships. How do we explain this?

As we all know, the organised working class is firmly under the grip of the bourgeois nationalist Peronistas, who have clearly demonstrated that they have no intention of organising the necessary struggle. How does the left deal with this problem? On the one hand, there are the opportunists who liquidate their own banner in the name of unity against imperialism and President Javier Milei. This includes, for example, the groups that voted for Sergio Massa, the Peronista presidential candidate, a year ago and who argue that now is not the time to criticise the Peronistas because the enemy is Milei.

On the other hand, most Trotskyist groups are pursuing a sectarian course. In the name of class independence, they denounce the Peronistas as traitors or as bourgeois, which they certainly are, but instead of fighting this leadership head-on in the unions they go around the problem. They call to organise separately from the bulk of the working class in “self-convened” assemblies, neighbourhood assemblies, “combative” or “anti-bureaucratic” unions, etc., thus dividing the workers. What the opportunist and sectarian responses have in common is that they abandon the struggle for leadership of the unions and leave the workers under the leadership of the Peronistas, thus guaranteeing that the working class will not move against Milei.

This is typical of the problem of the left in the post-Soviet period, in Argentina and elsewhere. Confronted with nationalist or liberal leaders, the communists either liquidate or organise themselves separately from the workers movement. Both are a rejection of Leninism. Lenin fought for a revolutionary split with the social-chauvinists and centrists. This cannot be done if the Trotskyists capitulate directly to the Peronistas. But neither can it be done if the Trotskyists refuse to stand with the Peronista workers, in their unions, and put forward a communist plan of struggle counterposed to the perspective of the Peronista leaders.

From what I have seen during my time in Argentina this year, the response of the Trotskyists—for example, in the current struggles of teachers, university support staff and students—is simply to declare full support for existing struggles and call for more militancy. They have some criticisms of the Peronistas, but they do not advance a strategy to win the struggle. Everyone calls for a “plan of struggle”. But what does this plan consist of? More assemblies to talk about a “plan”? Perhaps another 24-hour national strike, which we know will not fundamentally change the situation? It is clear that the current strategy of a massive mobilisation every three months and isolated strikes in various sectors cannot defeat Milei. Calling abstractly for a “plan of struggle” means leaving the initiative to the Peronistas and waiting for them to put forward a “plan”. This means the Trotskyists are no alternative to the Peronistas.

Both the opportunists and the sectarians think that pressuring the Peronistas to be a little more militant, without challenging their thoroughly defeatist program, can turn the tide. But the Peronistas’ problem is not that they don’t know how to be more militant. In fact, we are already seeing that a section of the Peronistas, under pressure from their base, is starting to adopt a more combative tone. Unless the left urgently reorients itself, these Peronistas will channel the anger into another dead end. The problem with the Peronistas is their programme, which is based on maintaining unity with a wing of the bourgeoisie and thus always ends up conciliating imperialism. That is why even militant-talking Peronistas always end up sabotaging the struggle.

What is needed is a perspective to mobilise the rank and file of the Peronista unions to defend workers’ basic living conditions in counterposition to their treacherous leaders. The Peronistas have a contradiction. They are responsible for the economic crisis in Argentina, and this explains why many voted for Milei. But at the same time, many of the gains that Peronism brought the population in the past are on the chopping block under Milei, and the Peronista rank and file have many reasons to fight. Revolutionaries need to exploit this situation, putting workers’ illusions in their leaders to the test and showing that the latter are not capable of realising their own demand that “the country is not for sale” to the imperialists.

That is why, a few months ago, we called on the Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores Unidad [FIT-U, or Workers and Left Front-Unity, an electoral coalition of the four largest Trotskyist organisations] and the CGT/CTA union federations to form a united front against the plunder of the country, with clear and simple demands tied to the perspective of a government of the FIT-U and the unions. The objective? To put forward an alternative to the vicious circle of Peronista and neoliberal governments, neither of which can solve the country’s economic problems, and to expose the Peronista leaders in front of the masses. But most of the Trotskyist groups we have spoken to reject this. They point out that the Peronista leaders are traitors (which is true). But the task is precisely to fight to replace them with a socialist leadership in the unions.

The situation facing the Argentine left is not very different from the problem in other countries: For decades, the left has been subordinating workers’ interests to alliances with liberal or nationalist forces. In imperialist countries, the left has liquidated into one liberal movement after another. In countries like the US and France, the left’s response to the rise of right-wing populists has been to cling to the very liberal forces that have been responsible for driving down living standards for years, like the Democratic Party and the New Popular Front. This is a total rejection of Lenin’s fight to consolidate a communist vanguard, fighting for a break with the current leadership.

If we make these criticisms of the left, it is not because we think that only our small organisation, the International Communist League, is capable of leading workers’ struggles, but because we ourselves experienced for many years the same problems we see in the rest of the left. We went back and forth between opportunism and sectarianism. Sometimes we tailed liberal protest movements, then we would correct ourselves. And to keep our banner pure and clean, we would offer orthodox Marxist formulas from the sidelines, without offering any concrete way forward.

In 2023 we undertook a major reorientation, which is explained in Spartacist [English edition] No. 68, and we believe the issues we’ve been discussing are posed today for every left group. Anyone who is serious about the struggle for socialism has to answer the question: What is the purpose of a Marxist organisation in this epoch? Our article “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power” attempts to answer this question by looking at what has been holding back the workers’ movement in the post-Soviet period and providing a program for what needs to be done now.