Dear Comrades:
The balance sheet on Latin
America is one of the central tasks in preparing for the
approaching Tenth World Congress. The IEC plenum will be the
first opportunity to make a tentative evaluation and to make
more precise the points of view of the International leadership
and the sections most directly involved, in the first place the
Argentine and Bolivian sections. We hope you will be able to
overcome all the technical difficulties and assure the active
participation of a representative delegation from your party.
We think it necessary, however,
to raise a few questions before the plenum takes place. It seems
to us that this should facilitate the necessary clarification.
In the first place, we want to
point out that whatever differences of judgment we may arrive
at, the struggle the PRT and ERP have carried forward since the
Fifth Congress represents an unquestionable gain for the
Trotskyist and revolutionary movement. The party has profoundly
changed the spirit and style of work of its members; it has
launched an armed struggle that rapidly acquired considerable
dimensions; it has won the status of being the largest
organization fighting in this field; it has won great sympathy
from proletarian and popular layers, making itself a real factor
in the political battle in the country. The party has
experimented with advanced forms of struggle, laying a basis for
solving the decisive problem of the relationship between armed
struggle and the mass movement.
It is absolutely lamentable
that this lesson has not been learned by a minority of the
International and that Trotskyist organizations have publicly
dissociated themselves from PRT-ERP actions at precisely the
moment when they should have shown the most complete solidarity
with, the Argentine comrades, the target of furious attacks from
the world bourgeoisie. Moreover, it is inadmissible that the La
Verdad group launched attacks on the Argentine section.
This group nevertheless obtained – with the agreement of the
PRT delegate – the status of sympathizing organization. This
group, which provoked the party split in 1968, has lost sight of
its most elementary obligations, devoting itself to factional
maneuvers, attacking Latin American sections in its press, as
well as the International leadership, and completely
disregarding the decisions of the Ninth Congress. It has
confirmed its profoundly opportunist and tail-endist orientation
and methodology by hurrying to give a “left” cover to tricky
maneuvers of the dictatorship and carrying out an unprincipled
fusion with a socialist party lacking any revolutionary
tradition and without the slightest real influence among the
masses.
Having said all this, what are
the questions facing the party, questions that have prompted us
to send this letter?
At the beginning of a
discussion that will necessarily be very full, we limit
ourselves to indicating them as succinctly as possible.
We repeat: the actions
developed by the party and the ERP since the Fifth Congress have
had an indisputable impact, they have helped to counteract the
dictatorship’s maneuvers, they have gotten a considerable
response among the popular strata, they have mobilized a sizable
vanguard in struggle. But has the political line developed up to
now really been able to establish a solid relationship between
armed struggle and the concrete dynamic of the mass movement?
This question is all the more
pertinent inasmuch as the armed struggle was not initiated
during a defensive or stagnant stage but during a period of
impetuous advance by the masses and, more particularly, by the
most advanced proletarian sectors in the epicenters of social
confrontation in the country. In such a context a linkup between
the guerrillas and the mass struggle was objectively possible.
In fact this was beginning to take place during the high point
of the Córdoba mobilization, in the early months of 1971. The
intervention in FIAT, the active participation of the ERP in the
Viborazo [second Córdoba uprising], and even the action against
Sylvester went precisely in this direction.
But these possibilities have
not been exploited adequately and the actions during the last
year have marked a regression from the standpoint of political
content. This is the conclusion we draw based on the information
at our disposal (above all, the party’s communiqués,
bulletins, and public press).
Perhaps this is owing to
conjunctural factors and has only a purely tactical meaning?
This is a question that deserves to be cleared up.
In our opinion there have been
errors of estimate in judging the level attained by the armed
struggle. The party has not made a clear distinction between an
embryonic stage of civil war in which urban guerrilla actions
are developing and a situation of revolutionary war in the
strict sense. Thus there is a tendency to project and carry out
actions suited to the second kind of situation but which involve
very grave material and political dangers in the first kind of
situation. This can be verified concretely from one angle that
cannot be considered secondary. The enemy has to a large degree
perfected his technique of repression, making a qualitative leap
in this regard. The armed organizations have not been able to
respond on the same level. As a result, while certain types of
action have not ceased, they have become much less frequent. For
others the price paid has been high (sacrifice or capture of
many members and leaders, etc.). The action against Sallustro
has clearly shown how objectives not commensurate with the
relationship of forces can only lead into an impasse.
In general, the strategy of
armed struggle has not been defined in a rounded way, and it is
in this area, above all, that a discussion is necessary. At its
Fourth Congress, the PRT correctly considered that the class
struggle in Argentina had reached a stage where armed struggle
was on the agenda. At its Fifth Congress it created the
instrument to begin this struggle, the ERP. But its orientation
underwent oscillations and rectifications. The Fourth Congress
had given priority to rural guerrilla war based not only on
“technical,” but also social and political considerations.
Taking into account the new situation created by the upsurge of
1969, the Fifth Congress proposed, although in insufficiently
clear terms, combining rural guerrilla warfare and urban
guerrilla warfare. In practice there is no doubt that the
actions actually carried out were of an urban guerrilla type.
But these rectifications were made in a fundamentally empirical
way without undertaking a new overall definition. And, what is
worse, we repeat, the urban guerrilla actions marked a
regression from the standpoint of political content, despite an
objective situation marked by repeated mass mobilizations.
Let’s avoid any
misunderstandings. We are not unaware of the fact that the
PRT-ERP has never stopped initiating actions and that at times
these actions have had very great impact in Argentina and
elsewhere, proving to all that it had in no way been paralyzed
by the repression. But in most cases these actions have been
dictated much more by the need to defend or rescue cadres and
activists and by logistic needs, than by a determined political
end, by a long-range plan.
We have already mentioned the
question of a strategic orientation for the armed struggle. But
what is decisive in the end is the relationship between armed
struggle and the dynamic of the mass movement. The objective
conditions in the country (a profound crisis of the system, a
high level of combativity on the part of the masses, the
maturing of a broad social vanguard on different levels) make
possible a direct linkup between the mass struggle and the armed
struggle of the specialized detachments. This task remains
unaccomplished.
We know that the PRT is not
unaware of the problem. The attempt to create rank-and-file
committees was aimed precisely at providing the party with the
instruments for establishing a presence – legal or illegal –
among themass-es. But up to now mass struggle and armed struggle
have simply been juxtaposed. The lack of a clear, overall
strategic line, and the choice of armed actions of a certain
type – a choice which in turn has largely followed from a
certain estimation of the situation – has prevented the PRT,
despite the prestige it has won, from winning any real political
or organizational influence among the masses, in the trade
unions, etc., as well as from building a real network of
rank-and-file committees that would be able to go beyond
sporadic actions.
Inasmuch as various articles
and statements in the PRT publications have put forward some
rough generalizations aimed at clarifying perspectives, we
believe we see two essential ideas. The first idea – linked to
the perspective of rural guerrilla war – is derived from the
experience of China and Vietnam; this is the perspective of
creating red zones, that is, zones which can escape control by
the central power and represent the base of the people’s army.
Although we do not exclude this varient for Latin American
countries, including Argentina, it would, nevertheless, be a
mistake to fail to recognize that the conditions of the
revolutionary dynamic in China, namely (1) the socio-economic
composition of the country, i.e., highly agricultural; (2) the
existence of a party – prior to the launching of the peasant
war – that had a very broad mass influence and was linked to
the world Communist movement and through this to the tradition
of the October Revolution; (3) the paralysis of the native
ruling classes because of domestic as well as international
reasons. Similar considerations hold for Vietnam, with
qualification that since the conflict took on international
scope Vietnam could count on the indispensable logistic support
of the workers states. In all of this there is no analogy with
the current situation in Argentina.
The second idea, which is more
relevant to the perspective of urban guerrilla war and which
corresponds more closely to the country’s structure, involves
a conception of areas of a certain measure of dual power in the
poor neighborhoods – like the Algerian Casbah before the great
roundups – a sea in which the combatants would be able to swim
like fish. Leaving aside their propaganda value, the food
distribution actions in the last analysis fit into this
perspective. But it is one thing to carry out actions that take
the enemy by surprise and win sympathy from a certain milieu and
another to be able to really consolidate red bases in the urban
areas. This could only come about if there were a very advanced
crisis of the central power and the party already had a broad
and solid base. These conditions clearly do not obtain, and it
is impossible to see how they could be created in the immediate
future.
Furthermore, all these
questions should be raised in the context of a continually
updated analysis of the situation in the country. Let us start
from the analysis developed in one of the most recent issues of Combatiente
that we have received (July 30, 1972). The article speaks of
“three forms that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie could
theoretically take in the coming months ... A Brazilian type
dictatorship, a populist coup of the Peruvian type, an acuerdist
[from Gran Acuerdo Nacional – Great National Accord]
coup or changes in the present government favoring acuerdismo,”
and it adds that the third variant is the most likely.
In its general lines this
analysis seems to ‘us to be well founded. But if the third
variant is really the most probable, what conclusion follows
from this? It follows that the government will have to maneuver
with the mass movement, seek to gain time through economic as
well as political concessions, let the masses enjoy a relative
freedom of action.
Such a situation can be
exploited for the benefit of the revolutionary movement on
condition of avoiding any confusion in the area of analysis and
perspectives. It will be necessary, above all, to combat any
tendency to interpret the period of partial
“democratization” ahead, if our hypothesis proves correct,
as implying a perspective of “democratization” for an entire
stage permitting full development of the mass movement, of the
unions, and of the working-class organizations, with steadily
widening gains. It must never be forgotten that there are no
objective possibilities for the installation of a populist
democratic regime in Argentina and that an experience like that
of Peronism in 1945 can never be repeated. In the last analysis,
the regime cannot achieve a stage of even relative
stabilization, of economic growth, without super-exploiting the
working class and breaking its strength on the trade-union as
well as the political level. That is why, aside from a
“democratic” interlude, the bourgeoisie cannot aim at any
alternative save the Brazilian type. For this reason, from the
working-class point of view, it is necessary to reject
emphatically any orientation that involves disarming the
armed-struggle organizations as well as any concession to
spontaneist insurrectionalist views that lead in practice to
allowing large-scale clashes to occur between an all-powerful
repressive apparatus and empty-handed masses.
On the other hand, an opposite
danger would be to fail to grasp all the potentialities of the
stage looming up, to believe that the action of small armed
groups could block such a variant from taking place (which means
relying on the logic that the worse things are the better the
chances for revolution, which revolutionists concerned about the
interests and feelings of the masses cannot do), and failing to
make the indispensable tactical adjustments. Such an attitude
would lead to adventurism and would rapidly have very negative
results.
Let us make it clearer. Above
all, what has to be understood is that over and above the “acuerdist”
bloc’s proposals, and all the diversionist maneuvers, the
“democratic” interlude will in any case be marked by great
mass struggles, by a deepgoing process of clarification and
de-mystification. (The Peronist movement will be the first to
find itself facing agonizing choices.) A very rapid maturation
of a very broad social vanguard will take place. In the
framework of this perspective, developing direct ties with
the masses in the union and political area assumes an absolute
and immediate priority and all initiatives in the armed struggle
must be subordinated to this task. The PRT and ERP should
be prepared to assign their best cadres to the mass movement,
cadres equipped with a rounded political education. And at the
same time the defense of the mass mobilizations and actions from
the attacks of the enemy should be assured. Only to the degree
that they effectively exploit the possible “democratic”
interval will the revolutionists be able to go over from an
armed struggle, which consists essentially of urban guerrilla
warfare carried on by specialized detachments, to an armed
struggle in which sectors of the masses will be directly
involved and where cadres coming directly from the working class
and the most exploited layers of the population will play a role
of primary importance.
It is necessary to prepare for
this perspective with the greatest energy.
The Uruguayan example shows the
difficulties and dangers that the PRT must confront. In spite of
their strength and popularity – which were unquestionably
greater than those of the ERP – the Tupamaros, far from
exploiting the electoral interlude for their own benefit, have
been placed in a very difficult situation.
There are, essentially, two
reasons for this. In the first place, the Tupamaros did not
succeed in building instruments that could maintain close links
between the armed struggle and the masses. As a result, the
traditional left organizations, mainly the CP and the CNT
[Confederacion Nacional de Trabajadores], retained substantial
dominance over the working-class and petty-bourgeois layers, and
were thus able to lead and canalize the great mass
mobilizations. In the second place, the Tupamaros endorsed the
Broad Front in which workers parties allied themselves with
bourgeois currents in backing a bourgeois personality for
president. Such an operation did nothing but obscure the
perspective for a revolutionary struggle which would not have an
abstract anti-imperialist and democratic content, but a concrete
anticapitalist dynamic, excluding any alliances with the
bourgeoisie, or even sections of it. Support to the Broad Front
could only promote all kinds of petty-bourgeois deformations,
even among the combatants themselves.
Clarity on these key questions
is absolutely necessary in Argentina also. We have already
pointed out that the inability of the PRT until now to translate
the prestige gained by its actions and the heroic sacrifice of
its members into concrete gams in the working class, the unions,
etc., represents a serious negative entry in the ledger. Judging
from some resolutions and bulletins, we must say that this
situation has been made worse by a very dangerous kind of
political confusion. It is significant, moreover, that the PRT
has not felt the need to express a criticism of the Tupamaros’
attitude toward the Broad Front.
Obviously there may also be
bourgeois sectors that oppose a fascist and military
dictatorship and the revolutionary party should, naturally,
exploit the contradictions of its adversary. But this does not
in any way justify a political line of a united front with the
bourgeoisie or with any part of it. It never justifies using
formulations like those introduced in one Executive Committee
resolution, which characterized the ENA, petty-bourgeois
formation, and even bourgeois sectors, as “strategic
allies.” (See Bulletin 23.)
Above all, an alliance –
which is necessary – with social layers cannot be confused
with an alliance with political formations that have influence
at certain periods in these layers (the Bolsheviks struggled
hard against the Social Revolutionaries precisely to take away
their peasant base). Furthermore, when you talk about a
strategic alliance with the ENA, you are either using the term
“strategic” incorrectly or falling into a centrist,
opportunist amalgam. In reality our strategic perspective can
have absolutely nothing to do with that of the ENA or any other
petty-bourgeois formation: it is diametrically opposed. Their
objective is to build a democratic regime, to bring about a
bourgeois-democratic stage, as distinct from the socialist
stage, which they relegate to the distant future. Our objective
is to stimulate a dynamic of permanent revolution.
The PRT must explain without
any ambiguity that taking advantage of legal or semilegal
opportunities, exploiting a possible “democratic” interlude,
in no way implies the slightest compromise, the slightest
alliance with the bourgeoisie or with petty-bourgeois formations
in its tow. The party must explain that while it might make
tactical agreements with the Argentine CP, and even participate
in a campaign around a common candidate of the workers
organizations that call for socialism, it will not make the
slightest concession to the CP’s strategy and general
methodology or those of other similar formations.
Any lack of clarity in this
regard would be catastrophic for accomplishing the key political
task, demystifying Peronism, which continued to be the main
obstacle blocking the Argentine working class from achieving its
political independence as a class. The Peronist movement is
condemned to be more and more violently shaken by its
contradictions. But these contradictions can only be taken
advantage of to advance the consciousness of the proletariat and
to build a mass revolutionary party if the vanguard expresses an
absolutely clear conception and orientation.
Clarity, even terminological
clarity, is very necessary, since confused and openly mistaken
orientations have been shown by even the sector of the
international workers movement that has contributed the most in
the past fifteen years to advancing the revolution in Latin
America. Since the comrades of the PRT themselves have asked us
questions in this respect, we will therefore make clear our
opinion of the current political line of the Cuban leaders.
The Fourth International is the
communist organization that has most energetically and
enthusiastically defended the Cuban revolutionaries, whom the
supporters of Moscow as well as Peking have frequently
characterized in the past as ultraleftists or petty-bourgeois
adventurers. We have stated that there is a qualitative
difference between Cuba and the other workers states in that
Cuba has not undergone bureaucratic degeneration. We have never
indulged in facile criticisms and denunciations raising the cry
of “betrayal” as have, however, some “friends” of Cuba,
including even some armed-struggle organizations of Castroist
origin.
This does not keep us from
saying that bureaucratic tendencies have developed and that, to
the degree that Cuba remains isolated and severely restricted by
its need for aid from the Soviet bureaucracy, these will
inevitably increase. Proletarian democracy based on organs of a
soviet type, councils elected by the workers and peasants with
members subject to immediate recall and structured in such a way
as to form the real backbone of the workers state, do not exist
in Cuba. This fundamental lack cannot be compensated for by the
existence of other organs that play only a partial role, nor by
the prestige of Fidel and the direct ties he and other leaders
strive to maintain with the masses. Neither can it be claimed
that the party bases itself in practice on democratic
centralism as Lenin conceived it. It is enough to record that
not a single congress has been held up until now – thirteen
years after the fall of Batista and more than ten years after
the official proclamation of the new Communist Party – and
that the differences expressed in the leadership bodies are kept
from the masses.
But it is some of the Cuban
leaders’ attitudes on the international level that we find
most alarming. We by no means minimize the serious difficulties
Cuba has to overcome. We understand the full meaning of what
Fidel said last July 26:
“When the hour of
revolution comes for Latin America we have to integrate
ourselves with the workers, with the workers and peasants,
with the revolutionists. But this is being delayed. We cannot
plan on an event that may be postponed for ten, fifteen,
twenty or twenty-five years – as the most pessimistic say.
Meanwhile, what shall we do? A small country, surrounded by
capitalists, blockaded by Yankee imperialists. We will
integrate ourselves economically into the socialist camp!”
We do not in any way question
the right – and the duty – of the Cuban leaders to establish
economic and military agreements with the Soviet Union. But the
problem is whether or not this involves subordination to the
conceptions of the bureaucracy, whether or not the interests of
the revolutionary struggle are sacrificed to the interests of a
certain international policy. When, on his return from Moscow,
Fidel praised the USSR unqualifiedly as a country where
Marxism-Leninism reigned in the spirit of the October
Revolution; when he unreservedly eulogized bureaucrats like
Brezhnev and company; he sacrificed the needs of the fundamental
struggle of the worker and peasant masses against this
bureaucracy, which he himself has criticized in the past, to the
needs of diplomacy. Likewise, he certainly doesn’t help the
struggle of the revolutionists when he goes even further than
the leaders of many Communist parties in exalting the
super-bureaucratic Husak regime that organized trials in the
purest Stalinist tradition against revolutionists and Communist
Party and union members, whose crime was to oppose a
bureaucratic regime that is no more than a blood-stained
caricature of socialism.
But this has more direct
consequences. The Cuban leaders have put a damper on the
criticisms they made in the past of the Latin American CPs –
criticisms that were correct and indispensable – thus refusing
to carry forward the struggle against opportunist and centrist
deviations and, objectively, helping to maintain illusions about
these parties. And, still worse, they have taken completely
wrong positions toward certain bourgeois regimes in Latin
America. We repeat once again that we are not trying to put in
question the right of a workers state to take advantage of the
room for maneuver offered by interbourgeois struggles. But when
the Cubans characterize the Peruvian army and the Velasco
Alvarado regime as revolutionary, when they keep quiet about the
repression against the Peruvian workers and revolutionists, they
are adopting an opportunist attitude that we must criticize for
the important reason that it involves confusion about the role
to be played by bourgeois sectors in the Latin American
revolution.
Precisely because the Cuban
leaders are not bureaucrats, what we have just pointed out
indicates the degree to which the Soviet bureaucracy still
exercises its international influence, including in Latin
America. Behind the Communist parties and their strategy, which
remains profoundly opportunistic, behind the conceptions of
revolution by stages and alliances with the “national
bourgeoisie” – alliances that are more or less realized –
lies the strategy and pressure of the Moscow bureaucracy. On the
other hand, the events in Ceylon and Pakistan, the triumphant
receptions of people like the queen of Iran in Peking confirm
that the Chinese leaders play an analogous role. The inescapable
conclusion is that Stalinism is not dead, is not a phantom, but
a powerful reality, the reality of those bureaucratized parties
and regimes. For this reason a struggle against Stalinism
continues to be an elementary need, including in Argentina,
whatever positions may be adopted conjuncturally by other
revolutionary currents and in the first place, the current
represented by the Cuban leaders who have to their credit the
historic achievement of having established the first workers
state on the American continent.
We consider that a discussion
is necessary around all these questions and that it can develop
positively in the coming months within the framework of
preparation for the Tenth World Congress. The entire
International looks forward to your contribution with the
greatest interest.
October 31, 1972
Ernest, Livio, Pierre, Sandor,
Tariq, Delphin [1]
Note
1.
Ernest is Ernest Mandel, Livio is Livio Maitan, Pierre is Pierre
Frank, Sandor is Hubert Krivine, Tariq is Tariq Ali and Delphin
is Alain Krivine.
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