The History of Argentine Trotskyism
This account, originating in the author's MA thesis at the University of Paris, and which
appeared in a duplicated form in Spanish in the first issue of the journal of the Centro
de Estudios Historicos y Sociales sobre America Latina, was first published in Paris in
September 1980. It was then republished in two parts in a printed form in Internacionalismo,
no 3 (August 1981) and in no 4 January-April 1982).
The author is a leading member of Politica Obrera, now the Partido Obrera, an Argentine Trotskyist grouping. (At the time of writing, June 1989, the leadership of the Partido Obrera has been arrested by the Argentine government and charged with organising food riots in the shanty towns.) The Partido Obrera is a large Trotskyist organisation by European standards, second only in size in its own country to the Movimento al Socialismo (MAS), once led by the late Nahuel Moreno. Politica Obrera took responsibility for publishing Internacionalismo in exile as the journal of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency. After the fall of the military dictatorship of Videla, Viola and Galtieri, the author added another part and published it in Argentina in two volumes under the title Historia del trotskismo Argentino (1929-60) in 1985, and El trotskismo en la Argentina (1960-1985) in 1986, both by the Centro del America Latina, Buenos Aires.
By their own account Politica Obrera developed from 'workerism' towards Trotskyism and were never involved in the urban guerilla adventures of some others during the period of the dictatorship. Having rejected proposals for fusion with the Morenoist group. Politica Obrera moved into alliance with the Revolutionary Workers Party of Bolivia led by Guillermo Lora, and along with it founded the OCRFI in 1972. An international organisation whose main section was the OCI led by Pierre Lambert in France. The two organisations were excluded from this movement in 1979, forming the Fourth Internationalist Tendency later in that year along with other, mainly Latin American groups.
The central figure of this essay, Liborio Justo (Quebracho), collected together his criticisms of the other Trotskyists in Estrategia Revolucionaria: Lucha por la Unidad y por la Liberacion Nacional y Social de la America Latina, Buenos Aires, 1956 and extended his attacks to Trotsky himself in Leon Trotsky y Wall Street: Como el Lider de la Cuarto Internacional se puso al Servicio del Imperialismo Yanqui en Mexico. Buenos Aires, 1959, which was republished by Peruvian Maoists 1975. Short extracts from it, translated into English. were published in The Communist Bulletin, no 2. February 1988, pp 37-60 and a more recent article published by him in January 1989, 'Argentina: From British "Domain" to USA's Backyard', is printed in the Communist Bulletin, no 4, February 1989 pp87-96. The former two works by Quebracho are given an extended review by john Sullivan in the present issue. The history of Argentine Trotskyism is otherwise dealt with by RJ Alexander in 'Trotskyism, Peronismo and the National Revolution in Argentina', which forms the third chapter of his book Trotskyism in Latin America, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, California. 1973.
As is our custom, all notes that simply give source references to Spanish material have been deleted on the grounds that readers for whom they would be accessible would also be able to deal with the original Spanish texts cited, though we have made an exception for citations from the two works by Quebracho mentioned above. We have included the original notes when these quoted actual texts and amplified certain points or cited English language sources, Unless otherwise stated, the notes are those of Coggiola, but we have added a series of notes to explain matters to readers who are unfamiliar with the complex and distinctive politics of Argentina.
Finally, we apologise in advance both to the author, the translator. Mike Jones, and to our readers for any shortcomings that have occurred in this edited text. They are entirely our responsibility.
Editors
The Argentine Trotskyist movement was born in the 1930s, and by the 1950s it had won some influence in the workers' and student movements, which had grown further by the 1960s and '70s. Nevertheless, the first 15 years of its history marked it in an extraordinary way and illuminates many of its later vicissitudes.
Its origin, as in other Latin American (and European) countries came from a split in the Communist Party (PCA), although an extremely small one. In any event, at that time, at the end of the 'twenties, the PCA was far from enjoying a great industrial or political influence in the workers' movement. To begin with, the Anarchist and Anarcho-Syndicalist currents continued to possess hegemony over a working class which was, under the influence of European immigrants, still marked by the 'anti-political' traditions of their homelands. We may note, even as a distorted measure of the political influence of the PCA, that in the 1928 elections, even if one takes into account that there was some electoral fraud and that a large percentage of the workers were foreign born and therefore disenfranchised, it obtained only 7600 votes against 66 000 for the Socialist Party (SP). Added to that was the crushing presence of the Radical Party, which won overwhelmingly in those elections with 838 000 votes. Though in its origins, as the Internationalist Socialist Party, the PCA had threatened to be an important competitor to the SP, it now saw itself further weakened by a haemorrhage of splits during the 1920s.
From the start the Trotskyists were a minority in a period of general political reaction: few in number, they were also persecuted by the Fascistic government of Uriburu. [l] The possibilities of developing an important faction within the PCA, as happened in Chile and Brazil, disappeared. Paradoxically, the first upsurge and the reemergence of the workers' movement in 1933-36 strengthened the PCA most of all which, from then on, would have a decisive influence on the destiny of the organised proletariat. From that moment the initial nucleus of the Opposition disappeared, literally without trace. Aid came in the form of much younger and inexperienced militants, although these did include an ex-Anarchist trade unionist expelled by the PCA. The weakness of the Trotskyists did not stop the PCA from enthusiastically joining the campaign against 'Hitler-Trotskyism' launched by the Communist International and the CPSU, a witch-hunt made worse by the already reactionary nature of the period, symbolised by the Fascist Minister of the Interior, Sanchez Sorondo. (He had proposed that the workers continue wearing their working clothes in their homes and on the streets to 'distinguish them'). [2]
Numerically weak, young, without experience and marginal to a workers' movement whose own organisation was getting weaker, the Trotskyists of the time provided an ideal arena for cliques and personal disputes. But they made a remarkable effort to overcome their original handicap by trying to clarify their programme of intervention. As will be seen, the polemic over the issue of national liberation that developed in their ranks constitutes a real novelty in the left wing movement of the period.
World-wide the 1930s were characterised by preparations for a second imperialist conflagration, above all after the rise to power of Nazism in Germany, which turned out to be the worst defeat of the workers' movement in the twentieth century. This world political issue tended to become the dominant one in every country. The revolutionary internationalists, with Leon Trotsky at their head, centred all their efforts on equipping the workers' vanguard with a programme and an organisation with which to intervene in the approaching catastrophe. The elaboration of the Transitional Programme and the proclamation of the Fourth International meant that the preservation of the Bolshevik tradition was maintained, in spite of the preparation for a new world war by the imperialist bourgeoisie and despite the Stalinist bureaucracy, which sought a status quo with world imperialism. A fundamental part of the revolutionary programme in the new situation was the attitude to be adopted towards the colonial and semi-colonial peoples in the face of the imperialist war; 'The rumbling of cannon in Europe heralds the approaching hour of their liberation', [3] stated the Manifesto of the Fourth International, one of Trotsky's last writings in the face of war.
It was this question which was debated -- unconsciously for 99 per cent of them -- among the Argentine Trotskyists during the 1930s, when the war started to dominate the political situation in Argentina as well. However, in this polemic it appears that the film of the ideological struggle of Russian Socialism before the October Revolution was run backwards.
In Tsarist Russia, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were in agreement on the character of the immediate tasks of the revolution, which corresponded to a bourgeois revolution. The divergence came when discussing which class would have to lead it: 'the liberal bourgeoisie' answered the Mensheviks, 'the workers and peasants, who would instal a democratic dictatorship', replied the Bolsheviks. Trotsky intervened and rejected the Menshevik position, which placed the working class behind the bourgeoisie, for the latter had fully demonstrated its incapacity to accomplish its own democratic revolution; and he corrected the Bolshevik position, pointing out that the democratic rebellion of the peasants would have to carry to power the only revolutionary class of the towns the proletariat. Once in power it would not be able to limit itself to carrying out democratic measures, but would immediately be forced to attack bourgeois private property, thus commencing the Socialist revolution. The famous formulation of the 'Permanent Revolution', a revolution which does not stop at democratic limits, was a powerful anticipation of the dynamic of the Russian Revolution and has, since then, been incorporated into the theoretical arsenal of Marxism. Its universal programmatic scope analyses the class mechanics of all revolutions, and poses at their start the resolution of all the democratic tasks left uncompleted by the bourgeoisie.
Among the Argentine Trotskyists formal agreement existed on the 'permanent' character of their future revolution, that is that it would mean the taking of power by the proletariat -- indeed without such agreement they would not have been Trotskyists. But this apparent unity did not solve the real question. This was a discussion about which the Russian Marxists had no disagreements: what was the character of the immediate tasks of the Revolution? Are there unsolved democratic tasks in Argentina? 'No! The tasks are purely Socialist', replied a sector who almost identified Argentina with the imperialist metropolis. 'Yes! The tasks are agrarian, democratic and anti-imperialist', the other sector unceasingly replied but without taking matters much further. As we shall see, this includes a whole series of hybrid and ambiguous positions which sought, by eclectic methods, to avoid a clear answer to this question.
This great political inversion was the more lamentable as, until 1945, nearly all the energy of the Trotskyists dissipated itself in this debate. In reality the political backwardness of the Trotskyists reflected a more general situation, for while the Russian Marxists constituted recognised currents and leaders of the workers' movement, the Argentine Trotskyists reflected the scant political differentiation within the proletariat. The currents that enjoyed a certain influence were either on their way to disappearance, such as Anarchism, or constituted fully formed counter-revolutionary variants, such as Social Democracy or Stalinism. The disastrous politics of these currents and the political confusion of the Trotskyists was a decisive factor in determining that the latter's lack of influence would continue during the rise of Peronism, and that this meant that the workers' movement was politically led by the bourgeoisie for three decades. It goes without saying that this had a fundamental polemical influence on the subsequent political evolution of Argentine Trotskyism.
Both the influence of the political backwardness of the workers' movement and the weight of the counterrevolutionary sectors within the 'left' can be seen on the Trotskyists in many ways. There would be those who opposed the 'national liberation' slogan because the Stalinists used it as part of the turn towards Popular Frontism, and thus made it into a previous and distinct stage from the proletarian revolution, in other words a permanent capitulation to the bourgeoisie. The political confusion of certain Trotskyists showed itself in a rejection of the form, or the slogan, of this policy, instead of rejecting its reactionary content.
The question of the slogans to pose in Argentina in face of the imperialist war was closely connected with this debate. It should be noted that the Argentine workers' movement did not lack revolutionary traditions on this issue. The opposition to the leadership of the SP, who posed Argentine participation in the First World War, was the origin of the split which gave birth to the PCA. In these pages we will see the difficulties which Trotskyism had in saving, and then superseding, the traditions of the Argentine International Socialists. These had been abandoned by the PCA, which first put forward a pro-Nazi policy of neutrality while the Hitler-Stalin Pact lasted, but later transformed itself into an agent of Allied belligerence.
The Trotskyist movement -- the Left Opposition, the Fourth International -- is above all an international movement. The programmatic debates of Argentine Trotskyism concern the role of the whole International: the FI leadership had a decisive role in the discussion and on the evolution of the Argentine groups.
In Argentina on 4 June 1943, [4] the Trotskyists reached a political turning point, though in a different way from the bureaucratised PCA and the paralysed SP, and this event foreshadowed the other great turning point of October 1945 -- the birth of Peronism. By letting the actors speak we shall see how, even if we are aware that we have overdone the use of; quotations, for we know that studies of Latin American Trotskyism are almost non-existent and therefore it is necessary to take nothing for granted.
The following comment by Guillermo Lora is wholly correct for Argentina:
'One of the weaknesses of Latin American Trotskyism consists in its having lost its own traditions. It does not know its own history, which frequently obliges it to repeat its own errors.'
Only in a limited sense can one speak of a history of the Argentine Trotskyist movement, since the political current represented by Trotskyism is international by its very nature and must be judged in that way as regards its programme, its analysis and its activity. But this is not an abstract internationalism opposed to national peculiarities which determine the form of a national movement. Rather, as Trotsky himself puts it:
'The most important and the most difficult thing in politics, in my opinion, is to define on the one hand the general laws which determine the life-and-death struggle of all countries of the modern world; on the other hand to discover the special combination of these laws for each single country. [5]
The history of the first years of Argentine Trotskyism, and in some ways its whole history, was marked by a struggle to establish that relationship mentioned by Trotsky and to translate it into a precise policy. Our history then, is about the struggle for ideas -- all the more so because, in the period concerned, the groups and people involved were very far from exercising an important influence on the mass movement. Clarity in the formulation of ideas must constitute a precondition for implanting a revolutionary vanguard among the masses, particularly if it starts as a tiny minority as did the Fourth International. And this is even more so if the implantation is to be preserved. The history of the struggle for ideas -- the programme -- is perhaps not important for those who are only interested in political movements insofar as they have been 'consecrated' by historical success. On the contrary, it is from this other viewpoint that the first years of the Argentine Trotskyist movement present much interest, demonstrated by the influence which it had on other organisations of the Fourth International in Latin America.
It was thus that the organ of the North American Left Opposition entitled the first oppositionist group established in Argentina. [6] This group was composed of three workers, all foreigners, Roberto Guinney and M Guinney, who were English, and Camilo Lopez, who was probably Spanish. They had had a considerable experience of revolutionary groups and of the broad workers' movement. [7] The group did not come from the official CP, but from the last split in the PCA before its total bureaucratisation, and this breakaway, led by Jose Penelon, was known as The Communist Party of the Argentine Region, later The Communist Party of the Argentine Republic and finally Concentracion Obrera. It seems to have been the lack of clarity of Penelon in the face of the rise of the Left Opposition and his attempt to preserve the purely 'national' character of the split that motivated the Guinneys and Lopez, who had been defenders of Trotsky's positions since 1928, to leave in order to found the Opposition Communist Committee. They had had key posts in the PCRA, and Roberto Guinney had been the Editor of Adelante, the PCRA's weekly paper.
Since 1927 Roberto Guinney had corresponded with James P Cannon, delegate of the Yankee CP to the Congress of the CI, from where Cannon succeeded in secretly getting Trotsky's Critique of the Draft Programme when LDT was exiled in Alma Ata.[8]
This, then, was the first South American group to make its public appearance, but it was not much more than that. It is enough to compare its meagre membership with the Chilean Communist Left -- a split by the majority of the Chilean Communist Party led by Manuel Hidalgo -- or with the split from the Brazilian Communist youth, which during the 'thirties had equal forces with the official CP, to understand that the title of 'first' has a relative value. The Argentine CP itself was marked by its comparative weakness as compared with the CPs in neighbouring states, which did not hinder it, and perhaps later helped it, to become the centre of the Stalinist apparatus in Latin America. In 1929 the South American conference of the CPs used Buenos Aires as its HQ, and the Ghioldis and Codovillas [9] would be the main agents of the 'Bolshevisation', or rather Stalinisation, of the South American parties. As a symptom of its weakness the PCA suffered four splits during the 1920s, and in at least three of them we find names later connected with Argentine Trotskyism. Faced with a leadership which was intent on prematurely consolidating its own position, Mateo Fossa, Hector Raurich and Angelica Mendoza took part in the 'left' fraction of the Sparkists, named after their paper La Chispa (The Spark), which gave birth in 1925 to the short-lived Communist Workers' Party. This later split of the 'frontists' -- as those who proposed a United Front with, or dissolution into the SP were called -- had Luis Koiffman as leader together with Alberto Palcos and Silvano Santander. Koiffman had been the founder and leader of the International Socialists and then of the PCA, subsequently becoming a Trotskyist in the 1930s.[10] Finally, the 'Penelonist' split, which was when 'the cycle of internal differences ended', according to the official history of the PCA, counted in its ranks the first left oppositionists, who nevertheless would not succeed in regrouping all those mentioned above.
A difficult birth, then, became even more traumatic as a result of the political conditions which soon dominated the country. Throughout the 1930s only some of those opposed to the official line of the PCA and the CI would join the Trotskyist movement in ones and twos. The Trotskyist movement would find itself almost permanently divided in any case.
But we are anticipating. In March 1930 the small initial nucleus published the first issue of the paper La Verdad, of which only two issues appeared. Here the famous Testament of Lenin figures. Soon 'a little group, mainly of the Israelite tongue became known to us...after this group had put out a paper in Yiddish called Communist Tribune, it dissolved itself. Then there occurred the Uriburist dictatorship. Some of our few members were imprisoned, while our social and financial situation got worse by the day.'
In spite of that and with very reduced activity, the group succeeded in maintaining itself during the reactionary Uriburist period and there were eight members who, in 1932, rebaptised themselves the Argentine Communist Left (ICA) and at the same time opened a small office. Like the rest of the International Left Opposition they called for the reform of the CP and the CI. They in turn were denounced as 'police agents' in the columns of the latter's organ La Internacional, while the party voted unanimously for resolutions condemning 'Trotskyism'. The ICA published a Boletin de Oposicion, where the positions of the opposition were clearly expounded, such as a critique of Socialism in one country, and condemnations of the Angle-Russian Committee, the bloc of four classes in China and the theory of Social-Fascism, together with the demand for democratic-centralism against Stalinist bureaucratism, and so on. It was also able to develop some criticism of local Communist activity, including both the splitting of the trade unions through a Class Unity Committee, which was outside the existing unions and trade union centres, the two such being the CGT and PORA, and ignoring the agrarian question, shown by the lack of theses and programme on that question. The critique of the PCA went no further, thus accepting the reactionary and sectarian position it had taken up towards the military coup against the government of Irigoyen -- characterised by them as 'Radical-Fascist' and 'more dangerous than Uriburu because of the ramifications -- of the UCR -- in the mass movement.'[11]
So the group entered the period known as the 'infamous decade',[12] with a meagre political and organisational baggage. Prior to the gaining of a significant number of members for the movement, which was led by Trotsky at an international level, these were ideal conditions for the flowering of quarrelling persons and cliques, just at a time when it was faced with the task of the construction of a new International after Stalin's '4 August', [13] which the coming to power of Hitler signified.
During 1932 two young Argentinians returned from Spain after completing their studies there; Hector Raurich, who has already been mentioned, and an ex-member of the SP, Antonio Gallo. Won over to the opposition, they wrote to the ICA announcing their arrival. Nevertheless, upon arriving in the Argentine they put themselves in contact with some isolated individual dissidents of the PCA, and with a group of intellectuals, among them Elias Castelnuovo, they proposed to put out a magazine. The project got modified in the course of carrying it out and the magazine eventually produced, entitled Actualididad, ended up as the official voice of the PCA. It was after the failure of their participation in this project that the already constituted 'Gallo-Raurich group' got in touch with the ICA through the deported militant J Ramos Lopez:
'In view of the meagre forces to which we of the ICA amounted, we attempted to find out about the thoughts and ideas of these two comrades who had come from Spain and who did not seem to be "converted" by the offers of the official party. For them we had committed the grave sin of having surfaced and gone public with just a little group of workers and small forces and -- according to them -- insufficient preparation. To cleanse ourselves of this sin they proposed to baptise us in the Jordan before entering the synagogue, this being acceptance of a great theoretical magazine that they sought to publish. After that we would be able to found the "real" opposition in Argentina. To this we answered that we had organised the Left Communist Opposition for four years now. Convinced of the pedantry and opportunism of most of the Gallo-Raurich group, we could not accept such stupid conditions, and we had to separate.'
The ICA thus explained the first split in the Argentine Trotskyist movement. The precocious Gallo (he was then but 20 years old) published at the beginning of 1933 a small pamphlet entitled On the September Movement -- A Marxist Interpretation. His group organised itself the same year and started from August to publish the paper Nueva Etapa, the organ of the Communist League. Raurich had already withdrawn as an active member and was now apparently just playing the role of 'ideological inspirer'.
On the other hand the ICA succeeded in fusing with a group expelled from the PCA, led by the well-known militant Pedro Milesi, who at the time was using the pseudonyms Pedro Maciel or Eduardo Islas. Milesi was then General Secretary of the Municipal Workers' Union, and his expulsion from the PCA, together with a dozen militants who followed him, was for the crime of Trotskyism -- a charge he at first denied.
So at the beginning of 1933 the Milesi grouping had fused with the ICA and was in a numerical majority. This is important, because in the first general meeting of the group Milesi was elected General Secretary and then placed his followers, who were the majority, in the leading organs. The old members of the ICA violently protested. They maintained that the Maciel group had not published the reasons for its conversion to the Opposition in La Verdad, and that it had taken advantage of its numerical superiority to approve ICA participation in an Anti-War Congress organised by the Stalinists in Uruguay -- for which Milesi himself was a delegate. But the 'old' ICA found itself further weakened. On 24 February 1933, at the age of 64, its leader, Roberto Guinney, died, the victim of an epidemic. Two other members withdrew to the interior of the country to save their lives and Camilo Lopez, elected to the CC of the 'new' ICA, fell gravely ill. According to them, the protests of the few who remained resulted in the expulsion of M Guinney and 'Juana' and the suspension of the treasurer, Ostrovosky. They were burnt out and in a last document in December 1933 they bitterly told of their failure and then dropped out of politics. At the same time the ICA under the Milesi leadership took the new name International Communist League (Bolshevik-Leninist), Argentine Section in conformity with the decisions of the International Plenum of the Left Opposition, and started to publish a paper Tribuna Leninista.
Two groups then, each with less than a dozen members, bitterly disputed the right to the title of the new 'World Party of the Socialist Revolution' which had not yet been built.
Tribuna Leninista, which appeared fairly regularly in 1933 and '34, seems to have been more active in the unions than its predecessor, and maintained that 90 per cent of its members were workers. In its first issue it recognised that 'in our country the level of political training of the oppositional Communists is not very great'. Its essential preoccupation was the creation of a programme of action for the trade union movement, within which the influence of the publications of the international opposition was noted, and above all, the struggle in Spain which was then experiencing the start of the situation which, Tribuna Leninista predicted, would lead to civil war. 'The Workers' Alliance against Fascism is an unavoidable necessity, and the creation of workers' militias is a question of life and death for all workers' organisations.' On another occasion, when the CGT published a manifesto supporting the government of General Justo, Tribuna Leninista called upon trade unionists to stop paying their dues while the leadership still remained. The only indication as to whether this effort of theoretical and political elaboration was empirical, or merely copying the slogans created for other countries and other situations, came from Milesi's hands, who in a picturesque column entitled 'De punta y hacha', commented on the news in the national and in-, ternational press.
On the other hand, Nueva Etapa, whose group was mainly composed of students or 'intellectuals', sought to present its ideas in the form of in-depth articles or theses. Its axis was the slogan of a 'Common Front of the Workers and the Proletarian Parties and Organisations against Fascism'. But at the same time it analysed the reasons for the failure of the Fascist attempt of Uriburu, because he had been replaced by General Justo's government, which ruled with the pseudo-democratic methods of 'patriotic fraud':[14]
'A characteristic feature of Argentine society is its backwardness in all fields. Least of all is Fascism excluded from this universal law...in this semi-colonial country, retarded, without industries, there is no historical cultural or social tradition. There is nothing but the liberal tradition of the May revolution, or the so-called generation of '90, which is inconvenient for the Fascist aims. All of this does not mean that the present political conflict in the country is not between the proletarian revolution and the bourgeoisie in any immediate way. The threat from the proletariat has not got a sharp character. The main contradiction in this country is between bourgeois democracy and Fascism. Those who do not see this do not see anything, and if they want to see something else, it must be categorically rejected...The weight of the Justo government itself is little else than nil. It is maintained by the pull of opposed political forces...this equilibrium between Fascists and radicals cannot last. It is the prelude to a real dictatorship or the transition period of a civil war and Fascist dictatorship.
But they went on:
'Fascism is not a mass movement. Radicalism here can count on the immense majority of the population, and the immediate future depends on which of the two offers the best perspective of stability in the eyes of imperialism and the agricultural bourgeoisie. A democratic result or perspective is not out of the question, but is very unlikely.'[15]
The article quoted above is by one of the most capable militants of the period, the Rosario student David A Siburu, who was a PCA student leader and who later broke with the PCA and then, with some of its student members, went over to Trotskyism (Nueva Etapa was edited in Rosario). In this analysis of the political contradictions in Argentina he copies those prevalent at the time in the European imperialist metropolis, such as the stark choice between bourgeois democracy or Fascism. He did not take into account that the metropoles that held Argentina in their orbit, the USA and England, belonged to so-called 'democratic imperialism'. In general, the characterisation of Argentina as a semi-colony explained the Argentine bourgeoisie as a mere appendage of imperialism, which had no real role of its own. 'It (imperialism) does not concede to the Argentine state even minimal control over its affairs. In general, a government here that is not the instrument of finance capital is impossible.' Thus Argentine politics would simply be a repetition ex post facto, of those existing in the imperialist countries.
The mistake made is to see Fascism as the result of opposition to bourgeois democracy and not fear of proletarian revolution. If the working class is no threat, Fascism is no alternative to bourgeois democratic methods. The absence of programme is noticeable here, and the article is guilty of impressionism as it believed that the skirmishes between tiny gangs of oligarchic nationalists and radicals were a clash between the political superstructures of Fascism and democracy. In fact they were an aspect of the police state that accompanied the restoration of the cattle barons concentrated in the winter palace of 'Chilled Beef' .
Both groups placed themselves totally on the principles of the international movement for the Fourth International. A large polemical space was given to mutual personal invective. Nueva Etapa accused the leaders of Tribuna Leninista of 'thinking undialectically'. Milesi replied, calling 'Citizen Ontiveros' (A Gallo) and his followers 'intellectualoids'. The interpretation of democratic centralism was also the subject of some dispute. Some discussion took place, though of a secondary nature, on the role of the Radicals in Argentine politics, but unfortunately we do not have this material available. At the end of 1934 E Islas (Milesi),'General Secretary of the LCI-BL', signed an Open Letter proposing unity:
'It has been argued on the other hand that unity is not possible or desirable without agreement on national issues. In the first place such issues do not exist in isolation from international ones, and in the second place, even if such secondary questions do exist, their resolution will not occur as a result of philosophical or doctrinaire speculations, but must be the result of collective effort and the result of everyday struggle.
The LCI-BL managed to collect 17 members and to publish a trade union paper, Resurgir Bolchevique, and a youth paper, Luchas Juveniles. The LCI (NE) was rather more numerous, having established groups in La Plata, Cordoba and Rosario, where it had recruited Siburu (see above). Unity was achieved after the LCI-BL had expelled Milesi in an episode that remains obscure. Later, and as a leader elsewhere, Milesi continued his links with Trotskyism.
The two groups fused at the beginning of 1935. Nueva Etapa and Tribune Leninista disappeared, to be replaced by Cuarta International. It was probably the only occasion when a single Trotskyist group existed in Argentina.
During this period the real organisational and political weaknesses of the Trotskyists were shown by their division into factions, including both those of a personal nature and others from regional and geographical dispersion. As a rule all groups and persons considered themselves part of the same movement and they called it such, even though its boundaries were often unclear. Since its foundation the movement had always had that characteristic. The statement of JA Ramos about 'the prolonged anti-Trotskyist campaign carried out by the leaders of the PCA for more than thirty years, all the more worthy and useful inasmuch as for many years the Trotskyist groups or tendencies did not exist in this country,' does not seem to have been shared by the CPA itself, as Ramos himself indicates. An internal bulletin of 1935 stated that:
'Trotskyism is an Infiltration of Provocateurs...as regards the links with Trotskyist elements, those such as Miles, Pine, Spector and Pereyra seek to establish the largest possible number of bonds and contacts with the comrades of the party. Why? In order to use our most inexperienced comrades as sources so as to inform themselves of the internal affairs of the Party and to try to get their counter-revolutionary poison into it via those channels. To maintain links with these people so avowedly counterrevolutionary and enemies of the Party is to lend oneself to their manoeuvres, and it is inconceivable that comrades would consciously do so.'
Without keeping an organisational existence, the Trotskyists would not have been able to offer a refuge to the various small splits from the PCA in the 1930s and '40s. Ramos, who consciously attempted to cover-up his Trotskyist past, deliberately falsified reality, such as where he contemptuously stated that during the 1930s, 'its [Trotskyism's] adherents did not exceed more than 20 or 30 people in the whole republic and its means of propaganda barely consisted of an irregularly produced journal which replaced equally irregular papers of a modest type, with long gaps between issues.' This contradicts previously stated facts in the same book.
The unification into the LCI meant a momentary increase in the activity of the Trotskyists, as it not only united the members of the two groups, but included others who had been outside both. In addition to Cuarta International, whose first issue appeared in Cordoba in April 1935, the militant Aquiles Garmendia, who was to die a few years later, and the Bolivian Tristan Maroff, [16] who had participated in the founding of the Bolivian POR in that city, started to publish America Libre, a journal of which five issues appeared between June and December of that year. At the beginning of 1936 Luis Koiffman was the editor of the Trotskyist-influenced journal called Vision, and at the end of that year the same comrade tried unsuccessfully to create a 'broad' grouping aimed at intellectuals called Agrupacion de Propaganda Marxista. Finally Antonio Gallo, the leader of the group, published a pamphlet in 1935 entitled Whither Argentina?, and subtitled 'People's Front or the Struggle for Socialism', a polemic aimed at the left wing of the SP, which latter would soon split and form the Partido Socialista Obrero.
It is interesting to observe in the pamphlet how, though in a muddled way, the central ideas, which were to distinguish the majority current inside Argentine Trotskyism until 1943, and whose influence was to extend itself much further, took shape:
'Marianetti [leader of the Socialist left, later of the PSO and the PCA] admits that the only way to free the country from the domination of monopoly capital is through the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Then what does the struggle for national liberation mean? Maybe the proletariat as such does not represent the historic interests of the nation, in the sense that it tends to liberate all social classes by its actions and to supersede them by its disappearance? But precisely for that reason it must not confuse itself with "national" interests, which are those of the bourgeoisie, which is the ruling class, and which, on the interior and exterior level sharply contradict each other. So such a slogan is plainly false...confirming our view that only the Socialist revolution can be the stage which corresponds to the needs of the colonial and semicolonial countries -- if one may speak in those unpleasant card-index terms that prevent workers from understanding what it is all about.
Politically the alternative continued to be 'Democracy or Fascism':
'To carry out now a policy against Radicalism would be as erroneous as to ally oneself with it...In the present defensive circumstances in which the working class finds itself, to make them (the Progressive Democratic Party) [17] an immediate enemy would be an error. A tacit alliance must be maintained to support them inasmuch as it is vital that we should push them forward against outright reaction in these difficult conditions.
Thus opposed to the call for an alliance with the bourgeoisie and the theory of revolution by stages which was put forward by the partisans of the Popular Front, the LCI proposed, not class independence in the struggle for national liberation, but the suppression pure and simple of national liberation from the programme of the proletariat. In the event, and faced with the problem of democracy, this led to abstentionism and left the initiative to the parties of the democratic bourgeoisie as far as this was concerned. They sought to radicalise these parties just at the moment when these parties demonstrated their total incapacity to confront such problems because of their growing integration into the political system of the 'infamous decade'.
In a programmatic article entitled 'What do the partisans of the Fourth International want?' in Cuarta International No 3 (May 1936), other consequences are drawn from this theory. There it calls for:
'...recognition of, and therefore the permanent character of, the proletarian revolution and a rejection of the theory of "Socialism in One Country", as well as the policy which accompanies it -- that of national liberation; against social patriotism and national defence. For revolutionary defeatism in the face of war and its preparations.'
Here the comparison of Argentina with an imperialist metropolis is complete. A 'National Communism', camouflaged by the slogan 'national liberation' and condemned by Bolshevism, had existed in Germany during the Revolution of 1923, but in that case it concerned an imperialist country. To declare oneself in principle against the 'national defence' of Argentina, which was nevertheless recognised as a semicolony, placed the Trotskyists in a position of pro-imperialist neutrality in the event of political or military conflict between Argentina and imperialism. Since that was precisely the case in the subsequent political period, the Trotskyists' political perspectives were shown to be false from the start.
At the start of 1936 the LCI changed its name to Partido Obrero. It operated for six months with that name. It is not clear whether this change was simply a different label, or indicated a real increase in activity. In whatever case, the swift abandonment of the name seems to indicate the huge difficulties of integrating a growing number of members into a solid Marxist organisation capable of standing firm in the face of inevitable difficulties. Subsequent events confirm this analysis. In June the Partido Obrero turned itself back into the LCI. Its activity started to experience systematic decline, with signs of disintegration. Liacho, at that time a journalist on La Razon, had differences and had left the LCI and had then accused Gallo of plagiarising the above mentioned pamphlet. According to Liborio Justo, Liacho was among the 'disciples' of Raurich. At the end of 1936 Liacho joined the SP to work in its left wing, which soon after became the PSO. Thus began 'entrism'. All research into this period has to take into account this entrist experience, about which there is no lack of material. The LCI had no success in building a 'workers' party', and it had found itself both isolated from the workers' movement and marginalised during the important strikes of 1933-36. Mateo Fosso, who led the Woodworkers' strike in 1934, had had an important role in the construction workers' strike in 1936 and had been Chairman of a CGT congress in 1936, was not yet a Trotskyist militant, though he had some sympathy with their positions. The LCl's isolation was reinforced by isolation from the international movement, with which there were only feeble links. 'Entrism' was undoubtedly inspired by the 'French Turn' that led successively to the French and US Trotskyists entering their socialist parties with the aim of intervening in the evolution of the left wing and increasing recruitment. It must be noted that the Spanish majority refused to carry out this policy. In the cases mentioned it was the object of specific resolutions of the ICL -- the international organisation of Trotsky's followers -- and this led to serious polemics and even splits with some of those who opposed entrism, such as the Oehler faction in America. This was not the case in Argentina.
The discussion on entrism and its advantages split the ranks of the Argentine LCI. A Gallo led the opposition, but while carrying out the policy it resulted in the break-up of the group. After Liacho's entry and the formation of the PSO, the student sections of the LCI in La Plata, led by 'Jorge Lagos' or Reinaldo Frigerio, and that in Cordoba, headed by 'Costa', the party name of Esteban Rey, joined it. The anti-entrists of the LCI began to disintegrate, and their last bulletin appeared in December 1937. Finally, they too tried to enter the PSO, though Gallo himself was unsuccessful.
There is little written on the PSO. The most common version presents it merely as an appendage of Stalinism. Indeed, it did demand a People's Front with the Socialists and Communists, while some of its leaders such as Benito Marianetti and Ernesto Giudici ended up later in the PCA. But at the end of the 1930s many of its members rejoined the SP, and some, like Joaquin Coca, moved towards nationalism with the call for an 'anti-Concordancia' [18]front between Radicals and Socialists. Coca was active in the Labour Party, which supported the candidacy of Peron. The preachings of the Trotskyists achieved a certain effect. It seems over-hasty to describe the PSO as a crystallised Stalinist faction.
The Trotskyists organised themselves in a faction, or factions, within the PSO. The one led by Liacho published a duplicated paper Frento Proletario -- Boletin del Marxismo Revolucionario of which five issues appeared between August and December 1937. At the beginning of 1938 they held a national conference in Cordoba with members from that city and from Buenos Aires and La Plata. In August that year, a little before the end of entrism, they published a journal called Marximo, Organo de la fracion Marxista Revolucionaria del Partido Socialista Obrero.
Subsequently the entrists ended up controlling the PSO centre in Liniers, a town in Buenos Aires Province, and they published three issues of lzquierda: Organo de afiliados para afiliados, from February to August 1938. To some extent membership of the PSO enabled the Trotskyists to end their isolation. They were able to put themselves in greater contact with the working class movement. At this point Mateo Fossa became a member. Fossa himself and some others succeeded in being selected as SP candidates for the legislative elections, and among these was Homero Cristalli, later better known as Juan Posadas, who had helped to organise the Shoemakers' Union in Cordoba, and who took advantage of his fame as a footballer in the La Plata Students' team to push his candidacy. The Trotskyist policy towards the PCA was to denounce the Popular Front line, which was a strategic alliance with sections of the bourgeoisie. Through the pen of Orestes Ghioldi the PCA wrote:
'Among the sworn enemies of the democratic alliance are the Trotskyists. Their importance does not originate in their insignificant number. Their importance lies in their sabotage activity, as they supply counter-arguments to the People's Front. They try to speak at meetings and they join other workers' parties to further their strongly anti-Communist activity. Hidden behind their slogan of the proletarian revolution they try, in the present situation and conditions, to isolate the PCA, to split the working class movement, and to sabotage any attempt at unity...One must struggle with the greatest intensity against the ideological influence of Trotskyism.
Let us look at the programmatic fundamentals of the Trotskyists' critique of the People's Front. The faction led by Liacho stated in the first issue of Frente Proletaria in an article called 'Our Proposals' that:
'The demand for a Socialist, (that is to say democratic-Socialist) and permanent character of the proletarian revolution in this country, the demand for proletarian internationalism and the anti-imperialist struggle are, in the end, a struggle against the national bourgeoisie.'
The theoretical confusion is total. A revolution is proclaimed that would be democratic and Socialist at the same time, or maybe it would possess two class characters, united and opposed at the same time. In reality it concerns an attempt to overcome the problem of the character of the tasks of the revolution by an eclectic formula. Furthermore, the words lose their meaning, for if the anti-imperialist struggle is only against the national bourgeoisie, it is not clear why it should deserve the name.
A little later in Frente Proletaria no 4 it says:
'The Russian revolution demonstrates that those who assert the possibility of solving the democratic problems -- such as national liberation and the peasant and petty bourgeois questions -- within the bourgeois regime, are traitors to the proletariat. They are dangerous confusionists who sever the struggle for national liberation and democratic liberties from Socialist revolution.
In the only issue of Marxismo it is stated that:
'In the struggle against imperialism the party should support the following slogan: "In the Argentine Republic, in agreement with objective economic and political conditions, there is no struggle against imperialism which is distinct from the struggle against the whole national bourgeoisie. National liberation will be achieved by the proletariat alone struggling and taking power, as the leader of the other oppressed sectors. The danger of imperialist intervention will end when capitalism is overthrown by the international proletarian revolution".'
Here the concession to the national liberation position is merely verbal. The formula of the permanent revolution is posed in reverse. In its original formulation, the permanent revolution explains the dynamic that allows the proletariat, supporting itself on the features of the democratic revolution such as national liberation and agrarian reform, to gain political power and to start the Socialist revolution. This cannot halt within the national framework and will transform itself into an international revolution. The Trotskyists went down the opposite path: they started from the conclusion (the taking of power) in order to explain the point of departure (the tasks and class dynamics of the revolution). The formula was necessarily false. Once again the struggle against imperialism and the struggle against the national bourgeoisie were put on the same level. They did not establish the links between the struggle against imperialism and against the bourgeoisie, because the national struggle can only be consistent by means of the class struggle. The antagonism between the national bourgeoisie is strengthened and not weakened in the struggle against imperialism. They become identical. The disastrous role of this schema consists in hiding the political tasks of the revolutionaries, which are to free the masses from the political influence of the bourgeoisie and its parties by demonstrating the latter's incapacity to struggle against imperialism, thus impelling the masses to mobilise. Instead of that, Socialism and Stalinism developed policies which tied the working class to the bourgeoisie for an indefinite period. We do not know what happened to Liacho. A little later entrism ended with the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the PSO, and he left politics.
The other entrist sector fell to an even greater extent into the same error. A Gallo wrote in Izquierda no 1 that:
'...basing ourselves on them and on a realistic analysis of the capitalist evolution of the nation, which is even accepted by Justo and del Valle Iberlucca, and which some upstarts now deny, we will totally support the following statement that, in consequence, the revolution in our country will have a Socialist character.'
We might add as an aside that Gallo achieved a certain notoriety at that time, thanks to a radio programme which discussed the history of the tango in the context of a competition, organised by the magazine EI Suplemento, entitled 'Which is the best Tango?'
Even if all appeared dead calm the Argentine political situation evolved in accordance with that of the world as the Second World War approached. For the presidential elections of 1937 Radicalism abandoned revolutionary abstention as a slogan and pushed the candidacy of Alvear, a representative of the conciliatory sector of the UCR. [19] He was defeated -- in the normally fraudulent way -- by the candidate of the Concordance, who was neither a military man nor a conservative, but the anti-personalist radical Ortiz, who had good links with the UCR. Like the PCA, the PSO supported Alvear's candidacy. The Trotskyists in the PSO, and a few outside it too, supported the candidature of the SP instead, refusing to back the candidate of a bourgeois party. The idea of organising a 'Socialist Left' in the party began to disappear. Many members of the PSO went back into the SP, and others later joined the PCA, though the latter had undoubtedly been the moving force behind support for Alvear. The PSO would continue a more and more inactive existence until the middle 1940s when political changes would wipe it from the political map.
The expulsions of the Trotskyists started in 1938. Mateo Fossa, who had been in Mexico representing various trade unions at a congress of Latin American trade unionists organised by Stalinists and their allies, was informed of his expulsion on his return. In Mexico Fossa had three interviews with Trotsky, the text of which quickly appeared in a pamphlet, and Trotsky had personally asked him to join the Fourth International. This account, as well as the oral testimony of Fossa, had considerable repercussions, not only amongst those who thought of themselves as belonging to the 'movement' but also among sections of workers on its periphery. One can see the importance of the personal authority of Trotsky, even if it was exercised in an indirect and merely advisory manner. Anyway, with their expulsion from the PSO the Trotskyists began a new period of confusion.
Meanwhile the movement had recruited a new member on whose characteristics it is worth spending some time. Liborio Justo was the son of General Augustin P Justo, President of the Argentine Republic from 1932 to 1937. His notoriety was not only because of that. As a student he had played a leading role in the movement for University Reform [20] and had been an active member of the cultural groups which influenced it, such as New Generation and New Sensibility. A book on Patagonia, which was republished several times, had made him a literary figure. A restless traveller, he had journeyed through Europe, the USA and much of Latin America, when in 1933: 'talking with Jose Gabriel, who knew and had discovered my circumstances as a Communist and a Trotskyist, I said to him "If the Stalinists admit me, I am thinking of entering their ranks and carrying out a trajectory which I have sketched out, before appearing publicly as a Trotskyist".'
So in 1934 he travelled to the USA and put himself in touch with Trotskyists in that country and also with the recently expelled ultra-left faction of Oehler. In 1935 he joined the CP or, as is rather more probable, simply turned himself into a 'fellow traveller' as Alexander seems to believe. For a short while in 1936 a spectacular deed, of which he was rather fond, made him a folk hero: at a reception for Roosevelt he got himself thrown out of the Chamber of Deputies after shouting 'Down with North American imperialism!' in front of the Yankee President. At an investigation on the means of defending culture against the advance of Fascism in the same year, he dryly recommended 'the use of a machine-gun'. There was a wave of criticism of him, which included some from the Stalinists. Justo took advantage of this to break with them, publishing an Open Letter to the Communist Comrades -- Breaking with the Third International, in which he criticised the national and international policies of Stalinism, the Moscow trials against the old Bolsheviks and proclaimed his solidarity with Trotsky and the necessity of a new International. Although his break with them was of an individual nature it did not prevent it from having certain repercussions. The Open Letter was published by the well-known journal Claridad and even reproduced by the Chilean Trotskyists for propagandist reasons. Immediately he became active on the question of the Civil War in Spain, which at that time preoccupied the whole country, especially the intellectual middle classes. He published a paper, Espana Obrera, in which, as well as news, the politics of the People's Front were criticised, the repression against the POUM of Nin and Maurin denounced and the positions of the Fourth International defended. Liborio Justo was not afraid to confront both his class and his previous friends, but probably his personality corresponded more than anyone else in Argentina at that time with that type of member of the Fourth International described by Trotsky:
'There are courageous elements who do not like to swim with the current -- it is their character. Then there are intelligent elements of bad character, who were never disciplined, who always looked for a more radical or more independent tendency, but all of them are more or less outsiders from the general current of the workers' movement. Their value inevitably has its negative side. He who swims against the current is not connected with the masses.'[21]
His personality, his background, his political sophistication, even the financial resources of which he disposed and his personal social position, led him to play from the start a leading rale in the Argentine Trotskyist movement. On 7 November 1937, after the receipt of a letter from Diego Rivera (the famous painter, friend of Trotsky and Fourth International member) concerning the American Pre-Conference of the Fourth International, Justo arranged a meeting at his own house to which representatives of all the 'tendencies' took part. Justo, known as Bernal, put forward the necessity of united action, including first publishing a journal, 'which fell through', he says, 'because of the attitude of the comrades who had entered the PSO with the group led by Liacho, who spoke for the group, which was unacceptable to us as we believed we were but individuals', a phrase which shows his caudilloismo.[22]
'We', that is Justo and 'anti-entrists'. were initially led by Justo, Gallo, 'JP' and Milesi, but soon the latter withdrew. The entrists had made the mistake of not publishing an independent Fourth International organ. In July 1936 the only issue of Nuevo Curso appeared, essentially reproducing articles from the international Trotskyist press. A little later Milesi, 'JP' and a group of followers started to publish Inicial, which continued to appear until 1941, and which did an important job of regroupment.
Eventually Justo and Gallo also would part for 'personal reasons'. At this time of disintegration, the group inside the PSO was about to be expelled, and furthermore found itself disoriented by the desertion of its leader Carlos Liacho, who abandoned activity. Justo decided to start a crusade against the evils of Argentine Trotskyism, publishing a printed pamphlet, How to get out of the Swamp. It was not without personal invective: 'Juana Palma is, according to Gallo, the Argentine Rosa Luxemburg. We agree. She has a certain physical likeness...Mr de Peniale, a great revolutionary physically...Milesi will be up to his tricks making himself leader of the Radical party...Gallo's strong point is his studies of the Tango', etc, as well as political critiques, critiques of opinions expressed in cafe conversations, critiques of philosophical conceptions and even the artistic tastes of the 'leaders'. Last of all he dealt with the problem stated in the title. Immediately afterwards those attacked tended to group themselves outside the movement and against Justo, even Narvaja, the only one about whom he was at all complimentary,'a capable and intelligent comrade from the littoral'. But much of his criticism was aimed at the obvious voices of his country's Trotskyists. In his interview with Trotsky Fossa had complained that a good part of the BolshevikLeninists of Argentina were 'coffee-bar wankers'. Justo genuinely wished to struggle, which gained him the support of certain sectors such as the La Plata students group of Jorge Lagos, a group of Anarchist students headed by Jorge Abelardo Ramos or 'Sevignac', and 'Irlan' or Mateo Fossa, with whom he began, in April 1939, to publish La Internacional, later La Nueva Internacional, which was the basis on which the GOR (Revolutionary Workers Group) was built.
In spite of having only 15 members, the GOR was very active, with a print run of 5000, and this even went up to 10 000 on the occasion of the assassination of Trotsky.
The organisation did not hide its impatient desire to build an important political group without going through the state of patient work, and the majority of its papers were given away at factory gates and in city squares.
Orza -- a Yugoslav transport worker -- who was in the GOR, remembered that:
'Quebracho [Justo's new pseudonym] displayed an extraordinary activity in the movement, which he was able to do because of his wealth, his drive in running an organisation and his ideological abilities. In addition he was much safer doing illegal work than anybody else.
But he could not prevent Lagos, 'Frigerio', leaving the GOR at the end of 1939 in order to form his own group, over a disagreement with the slogan of 'national liberation', an aspect of which will be developed further in this article. Then Ramos, in a much more obscure dispute, in which he tried to expel Justo, quit together with his followers, six students according to the above quoted worker, and formed the Bolshevik-Leninists. To this we must add Gallo, who had restarted the publication of Nueva Etapa, and who had refounded the LCI. The Inicial group made some attempt at unity at the end of 1939 which failed, but they did attract some isolated individuals. A little later they came across a group of 'independents', probably a new split from the PCA, [23] and attempted to form a Unity Commission, which though it did not succeed in uniting all the groups, did bring them closer together. These were Inicial, Nueva Etapa and the La Plata group, 'Rosario', and even that of 'Cordoba' which last was led by Posadas and which soon split again. It is to this process that Orza refers when, at that time, he split from the GOR, saying:
'Upon its creation the Inicial immediately started to define themselves on two positions, one which was the anti-Stalinist struggle but this ended by expressing itself as an anti-Marxist current...This ideological difference made us form another group, the Liga Obrera Socialista, composed of Ontiveros, Miguel, Mercha, Marga, Angelica, Fernandez, and a group of tram workers from the Liniers railway workshops and from Rosario -- Narvaja.'[24]
In actual fact, this was 'the only Trotskyist group which had some working class base. The role of the theoretical brains of the outfit was carried out by Ontiveros, Narvaja and Lagos...' This was in March 1940, and in July Ramos and his group joined the LOS. Apparently, the vast majority of Argentine supporters of the Fourth International had now united, but splitting was a disease of the time. Shortly afterwards Lagos and Posadas 'were exposed' and returned to 'regional independence'. The national conference of the LOS, planned for the end of 1940, did not take place. The LOS, which had written to the Executive Committee of the Fourth International -- the latter had now moved to New York from Paris because of the war -- asking for recognition as the section, had to lower its sights.
Meanwhile the GOR, in which Mateo Fossa had remained, redoubled its effort, thanks to the activity of Quebracho. It continued to publish its press and it grew, gaining some groups of workers in Resistancia and Mendoza. In May 1941 it felt that its growth was sufficient to rename itself the Liga Obrera Revolucionara, or LOR.
If we have dwelt on the figure of Quebracho, it is because his presence in the Argentine movement operated as a real catalyst on the political positions of the time. Although he was no exception to the climate of personal disputes and rancour, he also laboured at developing a political position to his differences.
The polarisation around the two groups (LOR and GOR) helped to politicise the differences. But the evolution of the political situation helped much more. Faced with the need for precise political definitions in a changing situation, the abstractionism and personalism of the positions confused everybody. The worsening of the inter-imperialist dispute, which soon led to war, upset all interrelationships within the Argentine bourgeoisie and its relationships with the different imperialisms. To divide the Argentine bourgeoisie between the pro-Allied and pro-German would be an oversimplified schema. There was also the conflict which broke out, though with less publicity, between the traditionally pro-English and pro-Yankee elements in the pro-Allied camp. Finally, no classification of this type would be able to exhaust the explanation that it was not a matter of a mere dispute between agents of rival imperialisms, but of a bourgeoisie which discussed its realignment in the face of a weakened imperialist system in crisis, and which threatened to transform itself radically as a result of the world conflict. History spoke so that, in a remarkable way, this crisis refracted itself through the state institution par excellence the army. This produced an unexpected result for all sectors in the struggle, as a result of successive crises and the intervention of the masses. For the moment the situation was reflected in the deterioration of the political situation during the 'infamous decade' and, to the novelty of an ex-Radical president, one had to add, further contradiction was added in that the latter took over the province of Buenos Aires, then in the hands of the conservative and philo-Fascist Fresco, who was a symbol of the 'patriotic fraud'. The old political oppositions (Conservatives v Radicals, Radicals v Socialists, Socialists v Communists) tended to give way to other newer ones. A taste of the People's Front was given to Buenos Aires when the tribune of 1 May 1945 played host to a formidable anticipation of the Democratic Union -- UCR, PDP, CP and SP.[25]
Within the Trotskyist movement, Quebracho occupied, because of his family background and experience, a ringside view from which he could analyse the conflicts amongst the Argentine bourgeoisie. He did it sharply in a series of articles and pamphlets, where he also tried to set out the necessary political behaviour for Trotskyists. It was these positions which clearly exacerbated the widening splits. We will quote some of them as concisely as possible.
'Argentina is a semi-colonial country tied to imperialism. This is caused first by its role as an agrarian livestock-based economy, which puts it in a dependent situation relative to the large industrial countries and in an analagous situation to the countryside exploited by the town. For a long time Argentina has been an economic appendage of Europe, particularly of Britain, which absorbs a large part of its produce. This situation has completely deformed the harmonious development of the productive forces of the country, paralysing its industrial evolution and the concomitant creation of an internal market, at the same time allowing the Argentine cattle raising oligarchy, which has parallel interests to British imperialism, to perpetuate itself in power until it constitutes the main brake on the development of the republic... Hipolito Irigoyen was a small reaction against this state of affairs, though not in the form which the real interests of the country demanded. Therefore he kept Argentina neutral during the First World War, therefore he tried to nationalise the oil and therefore the oligarchy and imperialism overthrew him...The Radical Party was not ejected from power because it was really anti-oligarchic and antiimperialist, but because it was bad servant of the oligarchy and imperialism.
To summarise, we simply give the titles and subtitles of some of his other articles which will give an idea of their content:
'The Socialists of the Casa del Pueblo -- Bellicose Vanguard of Anglo-French Imperialism; The Stalinists Maintain Neutrality in the Service of Ribbentrop -- The Argentine People Do Not Want to be Led to the Slaughter; The Voice of Neutrality Spreads Throughout the Country -- We Demand Neutrality not in the Name of Hipolito Irigoyen but in the Name of Workers' Internationalism; While Hitler "Protects" Europe from Britain -- The USA Prepares to "Protect" Latin America from the Nazi Threat; The Country Moves Towards the Establishment of an Authoritarian Government -- Resulting from the Open Struggles between the Oligarchic Sectors Connected to the Rival Imperialist Gangs; Should we Submit and Die in the Service of Imperialism or Struggle for National Liberation?'
To round out the thoughts of Justo we will see his answer to the last question:
'Is the Yankee tutelage preferable to poverty? -- today this has become the slogan of the cattle-raising bourgeoisie... We must use the clear decline and possible final fall of British imperialism, which has shackled the country and paralysed its progress, to achieve economic liberation. It is impossible to stay passive in the face of changing ownership of those British companies in public services, industrial enterprises, agricultural companies and banks which will fall into US hands, which seems likely as a result of the war. The same can be said of territories which legitimately belong to Argentina, like the Malvinas. The Argentine people should demand and take measures to get restitution of all that belongs to it...The people have before them a choice of roads on which this dual perspective will open up, to struggle for national liberation or to submit in order to die in the service of the imperialism which oppresses and exploits them. Its vanguard, the revolutionary proletariat, must make them choose the right route.'[26]
Here there was an obvious preoccupation with getting recognition as the Argentine representative from the Fourth International. Quebracho branched out into the themes and terminology which until then had been the patrimony of the nationalist sectors and some reformist groups such as the PORJA. [27] and to a lesser extent of Stalinism. But the polemical reply from the 'old' Trotskyists was not simply a matter of words. Antonio Gallo, published in Inicial an article entitled 'The Position of the Fourth International -- National Liberation or Socialism' in which one might read:
'A definite theoretical advance. Thirty years ago, what the reformist leader Juan B Justo stated constituted an renounceable theoretical gain for the whole of the Argentina proletariat, which was confirmed by the centrists of the Del Valle Iberlucea type, which was enriched and completed by the present Marxist movements in the country and which was defended above all by the leaders of the Fourth International in Argentina. This was the statement of the capitalist character of the country's evolution and the Socialist character of the revolution. This principle is the bedrock of the struggle of the Argentine proletariat, its best gain on the theoretical level...He who denies this is a common traitor to the proletariat.
'The Argentine bourgeoisie, differing from that of the other Indo-American states, is based on an economy which is to some degree its own. It has considerable experience and counts on a well-organised state and a formidable repressive apparatus. It has already had its revolution and now wants to enjoy its fruits. It has not the slightest intention of launching an "anti-imperialist" revolution...Jose Carlos Mariategui, the great American Marxist, wisely noted this difference between Argentina and other American states. "Radicalism and the oligarchy are equally accomplices of international finance capital which economically dominates Argentina...There will be no more democratic revolutions, only Socialist ones". The Fourth International will not accept any slogan of "National Liberation" that tends to subordinate the proletariat to the ruling classes and, on the contrary, assures the proletariat that the first step of national liberation is the fight against precisely those classes.
'Recently Mr Marianetti republished this Stalinist slogan and lately a Mr Quebracho and the Fascists of the Alliance of Nationalist Youth have made it theirs. But in the ranks of the Fourth International no such confusion will be introduced. In a recent article in La Nueva Internacional (January 1940) comrade Lagos characterises the "national liberation" slogan as a "variant of the People's Front', a position exactly identical to that of the Fascists...National Liberation has nothing to do with our movement. For the Class Struggle! For a Socialist Revolution!'
Seldom was it said as clearly, and it touched a sore point. Lagos had in fact defended similar positions within the GOR before leaving and then swelling the numbers of the LOS. He wrote a pamphlet for the latter in October 1940, which played an important role at that time where one can read:
'As much as we value the importance of the combative role of the rural and urban middle class, we categorically refuse to submit the character, intensity and the form of the social movement of the working class to the fickleness, the inconsistency and weakness of the petty bourgeoisie which the panegyrists of anti-imperialism try to do. One must have the audacity of the ignoramus and the chatter of the charlatan to refer to oneself as does the author of the pamphlet (Quebracho) to the paralysation of the industrial evolution, as if it did not have industries, and equally to the internal market, as if it did not exist. The characteristics of our country are not those of some deformation of the capitalist economy -- on the contrary, its form is natural to the existence of capitalism in semi-colonies in the epoch of the death agonies of capitalism...The Argentine proletariat, two and a half million strictly industrial workers alone, so shamefully and violently exploited... will have to get ready to declare a strike and eventually take over control of foreign factories, while respecting the national ones...The working class of our countries must accomplish the struggle that the bourgeoisie is incapable of, but far from seeking out its future national masters, it must think, work and struggle for its own power, for the proletarian revolution. In conclusion, among the Apristas, [28] Stalinists, petty bourgeois nationalist and Fascist theorists, the tendency exists to mask the exploitation of the national bourgeoisie with that carried out by imperialism in combination with it...in separating them, it makes out that there are non-existent semi-colonial bourgeois groups who are interested in taking on imperialism .
He ends with a paragraph in a prophetic tone:
'Within this great social movement in which the industrial cities will have a leading role, the national movement will take second place. The important thing will be the Social Revolution which, without doubt, will have continental consequences. Our revolution will be a Proletarian Socialist and not a Bourgeois National Liberation.'[29]
The discussion based itself upon national characteristics, even accepting the existence of 'two and a half million industrial workers' in the Argentina of 1940, which is a rash remark or an exaggeration. But the discussion has a worldwide programmatic range, as what was being debated is the nature of the imperialist system itself. No-one formally denies the semi-colonial character of Argentina, but the problem is what one understands by that, and what conclusion is necessary about the position of the local proletariat vis-a-vis imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.
The debate, therefore, concerned the whole Fourth International. The LOS tried to give programmatic form to its ideas in that respect in the theses which preceded the already mentioned and abortive 'First National Conference' at the end of 1940, on the theme 'Socialist Revolution or National Liberation?' We quote as follows:
'The independence movement in Argentina was a bourgeois revolution, different from the other countries on the continent, Peru for example, where it did not have such clear characteristics. In the Argentine Republic there is a proletariat and capitalism, profit and surplus value and therefore class struggle, and thus the strategy of the proletariat must be that of Socialist revolution...The formalist pedants and opportunists replace the class dynamic by purely national ideas. In consequence, if Argentina is a semicolonial country, in spite of enjoying more than a century of political independence, they convert themselves into standard bearers of "national liberation". In every case Marxist theory and strategy categorically rejects the stupid idea that the proletariat should convert itself into a standard bearer of bourgeois ideas and movements of "national liberation"...as a party we always defend and in the vanguard, the Socialist revolution, in order to launch ourselves into agitation for the slogan which, apart from being alien to us, is the main motif of the demagogic agitation of Fascists and Stalinists, and which therefore we all resist.
'What is national liberation? The payment of the expropriations, or is it the best business deal of its radical and conservative agents? In our country national liberation is not, nor can be, anything but the monopolist co-ordination of transport, or the purchase of railways as proposed by Pinedo.[30] The "anti-imperialism" which involves the "national liberation" of Fascists, Stalinists and Quebrachists is a reactionary trick. The world must conduct itself either according to international finance capital or according to international Socialism... The only anti-imperialism of good coin is Socialism. Upstarts and adventurers like Quebracho should found the Fifth International. The characteristics of an advanced semi-colonial country, the relative industrial development, the high percentage of workers, the characteristics of agrarian exploitation, the theoretical, political and organisational traditions of the working class and, above all, the conditions of the present imperialist epoch, of the possibility for a world Socialist economy, determine the strategy of the proletarian vanguard, the Argentine section of the Fourth International which is being built. That is the strategy of the class struggle and Socialist Revolution. The revolution cannot stop itself at democratic measures, nor within national boundaries. It will spread to all other American countries and it will seek the solidarity of the US workers. The problem posed thus eliminates all opportunist and demagogic considerations of "national liberation".[31]
The position is formulated with clarity, though not with security. First, the national characteristics are affirmed in order to establish the strategy of a purely Socialist revolution, that is, it does not include national and democratic tasks in its programme, in order further to state that although the former did not exist, it would be the international conditions that would be decisive. Regarding the fundamental political question of the time, which was the attitude to be taken towards the Second World War, this group will tend towards the classic slogan of revolutionary defeatism, as can be recognised in the passage above. In 1942 Inicial stated: 'In Argentina the imperialist war must be turned into a civil war', without noticing that Argentina had not actually entered the war. Nevertheless, this was the main point at issue between the Argentine bourgeoisie and the Yankees, who in 1942 were prepared to prohibit the export of a number of basic items to Argentina, because of the refusal of the Argentine government at the Rio de Janeiro conference of 1942 to rally unconditionally behind US belligerence.
The reader must excuse the transcription in extense of the previous quotes, which aim at an exact explanation of the various positions in this extremely important debate. We share the evaluation of Guillermo Lora:
'Starting from 1939 the discussion held in Argentina always had the problem of unity as its core, and it did not take long to home in on the national question, which then and today had a profound importance for the Fourth International both in America, in Bolivia and in the whole world. It posed the crucial points of the revolution in the backward countries in our epoch. It is shameful that the existing histories of the Fourth International do not refer at all to this significant occurrence.'
However, that is not to say that it was only this discussion which influenced the life of the Trotskyist groups of the time. We know that the Moscow Trials, with their vile accusations, together with the executions of the old leaders of Bolshevism, had a very demoralising effect on many cadres of the revolutionary and workers' movement, including Trotskyist militants. Similarly, the assassination of Trotsky in August 1940 not only robbed the Fourth International of an irreplaceable leader, but removed one of its emblems as a movement: that of having at its head one of the leaders of the October revolution, an expression and embodiment of its organic continuity with Bolshevism. They hoped for the rapid conversion of the Fourth International -- with Trotsky at its head -- into a leading force when the Second World War ended and a revolutionary period opened up. In Argentina, it is possible that the desertion of Antonio Gallo from the movement -- in August 1941 -- is connected to these episodes, as are those of some other hesitant cadres, who were tired of their isolation. Often, though, this was hidden by using 'personal problems' to justify such resignations. The abandonment of Trotskyism by other leading cadres, like Pedro Milesi, at the beginning of the 1940s, was a result of the first international crisis of the Fourth International since its proclamation. This was the discussion on the nature of the Soviet state, which the Shachtman-Burnham faction of the SWP denied was a 'degenerated workers' state'. They saw it as a new form of class oppression. These 'anti-defencist' positions, which were called this due to their denial of the principle of unconditional defence of the USSR in the face of a capitalist aggression, had some influence in Argentina -- at any rate, as a result of them, Milesi was expelled from the LOS in March 1941. The only member of the Executive Committee elected by the foundation conference of the Fourth International who supported them was the Brazilian Lebrun (a pseudonym of Mario Pedrosa) who went to the Southern Cone [32] to win supporters, though without great success in Argentina. Liborio Justo claims that he met with a special envoy of the 'anti-defencist minority' of the SWP in 1940, who did not convince him, without saying if it was Lebrun. They had more success in Uruguay, where the future section of the Fourth International emerged as an 'anti-defencist' group tied to the international current headed by Shachtman. Later it modified this position and affiliated to the Fourth International.[33]
These events, however, only seem to have influenced the immediate destiny of a few individual militants. The discussion on the national question, on the other hand, decisively influenced the formation, the regroupment or even the disappearance of whole organisations. This was because it decisively displaced the main debate in the International on theoretical issues such as Stalinism, the nature of the USSR, the Spanish Civil War, or on organisational questions or even personal differences, in favour of the immediate strategic problems faced by the Fourth Internationalist movement in Argentina and Latin America. From that point of view, it could not but have healthy results. Already Trotsky had shown Mateo Fossa that the press of the Fourth International in Argentina referred much too exclusively to doctrinal problems. ('They are in Argentina. They have a series of revolutionary problems. One must deal with these problems, and resolve them in the best possible way, and not talk of Trotsky. Resolve the problems of the country -- the revolutionary problems' -- thus, 34 years later, Mateo Fossa recalled the words of Trotsky on that occasion.)[34]
In 1941, the Executive Committee of the Fourth International had moved from Europe to the USA because the war and the Nazi occupation prevented its functioning. Its leadership was the most experienced militants of the SWP, Cannon, Dunne and Curtiss, and some European leaders exiled to North America so as to get some continuity of activity at the international centre. These were Marc Loris, one-time secretary to Trotsky, and Fischer.[35] The IEC had equipped itself with a Latin American department which sent letters to the groups which supported the Fourth International on that continent, and made reports on them for the international leadership. During 1941 the IEC intervened openly in the polemic between the Argentine groups. This polemic had by now spread to the majority of Latin American groups adhering to the Fourth International. Quebracho, who at the time already saw himself as the head of an international tendency against the 'centrism' of his opponents, wrote:
'Opposed to (the LOR and the "national liberation" concept) were the socalled "Trotskyists" of Uruguay, together with the Liga Bolchevique Leninista, the Partido Obrero Revolucionario of Bolivia (though the Centro Revolucionario of Bolivia wrote...that it shared the positions in our pamphlets) with the Partido Obrero Internacionalista of Chile. Supporting us...in defence of "national liberation" was... the Partido Obrero Revolucionario of Chile...and also accompanying us was the Partido Obrero Revolucionario of Cuba.' [36]
In fact Justo had been active in spreading his positions throughout the continent. Diego Enriquez, [37] the main leader of the Chilean POR, would end up representing his struggle against the POI as a battle against the LOS, even taking up the criticisms of the 'ambivalent' policy towards it followed by the IEC and Latin American Department, criticisms which Quebracho was by now making public.[38]
As for the Bolivian POR, Guillermo Lora admitted that its leadership then defended the conception of a purely Socialist revolution which ignored the national question, and this reflected the lack of clarity on the issue in the POR programme adopted in 1938.
The only pronouncement of an official nature by the IEC about the polemic was a brief set of theses written in May 1941, which largely concerned the question of the slogan of 'neutrality' raised by the LOR. We will reproduce the essence of it, pointing out that in its introduction it characterised the discussion as 'very serious', as it concerned all the colonial and semi-colonial countries:
'In almost all the countries of the world, just as in the semi-colonial countries, the bourgeoisie is divided into three sectors concerning the question of their participation in the imperialist war: (1) a sector of the bourgeoisie favouring Angle-American imperialism; (2) a sector favouring German imperialism; (3) a sector wishing to be neutral in the struggle between these imperialisms. It is only under very special circumstances that the bourgeoisie of a small, or semicolonial country, can effectively be neutral...
'If the proletariat or some section of it supported the idea of neutrality and presented it as a slogan, it would only succeed if it tied itself to that section of the bourgeoisie hoping and praying that the world war would leave it alone. In spite of whatever attempt one makes to give the idea of neutrality some content which distinguishes its use by the proletariat from that which some sector of the bourgeoisie gives it, it leads inevitably to the blunting of the distinction between the revolutionary party of the proletariat and that sector of the bourgeoisie defending neutrality...The concept of neutrality tends to evolve in a purely legalistic direction. The idea adopted is that a neutral nation can be impartial in a fight between two imperialist powers. Impartial means that whatever one allows one power, will also be allowed the other. This totally lacks the spirit of struggle against the two imperialist camps. In its apparent attitude of indifference to the victory of either camp, one cannot find the proletarian attitude that both camps are in reality one and the same and must be destroyed.
'Needless to say, of course, the forces of the Fourth International cannot ever be neutral in a fight between a colonial or semicolonial people against an imperialist power. We understand perfectly that the comrades who utilise the neutrality slogan do not wish to give the impression that they would be neutral in such a case...The slogan of neutrality in most cases leads to a passive role which does not promote the struggle against imperialism. A slogan of this nature, in consequence, cannot be adopted by the Fourth International.
'The revolutionary parties of the South American countries, South American sections of the Fourth International, must use slogans which mobilise the workers and peasants of those countries against all imperialisms...Attacking imperialism in general, not through neutrality, but through an active anti-imperialist struggle, must be directed towards the main imperialist danger at the time. In this case Yankee imperialism is lining up all Latin America behind its own aims. We must attack above all Yankee imperialism. The proletariat must clearly distinguish itself from its own bourgeoisie, which only plays at neutrality in order to win a place where it can negotiate a greater share of the loot of imperialist exploitation, or in order to sell itself for a higher price to one of the powers. Today it is American imperialism which is being assisted by the Latin American bourgeoisie. This assistance, under the mask of the defence of democracy against Fascism, must be exposed and attacked by our forces. It must be clear that only through the alliance of the Latin American masses with the American proletariat can American imperialism be defeated, together with the native bourgeoisies in their common machinations in order to preserve the Latin American peoples under their yoke.
'As substitutes for the slogan of neutrality we propose: Down with the imperialist war! Down with Yankee imperialism! Against all the imperialist exploiters! For the Socialist unity of Latin America! '[39]
The declaration is far from being the slogan of 'revolutionary defeatism', which position, however, it does not criticise. The slogan of neutrality is correctly criticised, as belonging to a sector of the native bourgeoisie. Indeed, in Argentina it was defended by the oligarchic sectors most linked with British imperialism, for whom the entry of our country into the war accelerated its passage into the orbit of Yankee imperialism. Though remaining neutral, Argentina was still the main supplier of meat to Britain during the period of the war.
Precisely because of its nature, 'neutrality' is not a slogan able to mobilise the masses against the war and imperialism. Purely legalist, it is a bourgeois slogan that can only translate into an attitude of pressure on the government; that is, it places the proletariat behind the national bourgeoisie. The LOR accepted the withdrawal of the slogan. It is significant that Quebracho, who was soon to launch himself into a violent battle against the IEC of the Fourth International, never made any further references in the many texts he devoted to the issue to this set of theses of the IEC, its only official ones on the problem.
In this situation what was the orientation needed to prepare an independent mobilisation of the masses? The IEC limited itself to the level of generalities, such as 'Down with the War, Imperialism, and the Exploiters'. On the other hand, though within an opportunist perspective of pressure on the bourgeoisie ('neutrality'), the LOR suggested that the workers should take advantage of the war to raise the issue of the expropriation of imperialist enterprises and banks, in other words, 'National Liberation'. The perspective of a mass anti-imperialist movement, within which the Trotskyists should fight to provide it with an independent working class leadership, was one of the basic strategies in the analysis of the Fourth International concerning the war. In the 'Emergency Manifesto' on the war -- one of Trotsky's last writing -- one can read:
'By its very creation of enormous difficulties and dangers for the imperialist metropolitan centres, the war opens up wide possibilities for the oppressed peoples. The rumbling of the cannon in Europe heralds the approaching hour of their liberation.'[40]
The political confusion of the IEC on that aspect was evident in a fragment of the report of its delegate, Sherry Mangan, who travelled in Argentina at the time:
'...the total rejection of "neutrality" by the LOS, not only as a slogan but as a talking point, strikes this observer as containing much sectarianism and ultraleftism...The desire for neutrality on the part of the Argentine proletariat, the rural workers, and broad sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, is passionate and profound... that popular sentiment can be used as a point of departure for an effective explanation to the industrial workers and rural workers of: (a) why the national bourgeoisie cannot, because of its very nature, be permanently neutral and keep Argentina out of the imperialist war; (b) why a passive or merely neutral attitude on the part of the workers implies that they are tied to the national bourgeoisie, so it is not only ineffective, but contrary to their interests and those of the workers of the belligerant countries -- that their natural wish not to have to end up in the imperialist slaughter can be better expressed and served by taking an active position against both imperialist camps.'[41]
How did they take up an 'active' position? It was a problem that the IEC declaration did not resolve. Its confusion expressed itself also in the mildness of its criticism of the LOS, in contrast to its sharpness with the LOR. If the position of the latter was wrong, and the criticism of the IEC partially correct, the 'revolutionary defeatism' of the LOS was directly disastrous since it did not take into account that Argentina did not take part in the war, neither did it struggle against the pressures of imperialism to involve Argentina in the conflict.
In any case, since it did not wish to participate, the Argentine government had difficulties with the Yanks about that. This was the other omission of the IEC, which was the possibility of friction between imperialism and the native bourgeoisie, as the declaration only speaks of the 'common machinations' of both of them. After the Pan-American Conference of Rio de Janeiro this question arose in a very practical manner in 1942 in both Argentina and Chile, both neutral countries. The importance of this crisis in the relations between the oppressed country and imperialism was enormous, as it created the possibility of a mass anti-imperialist movement, that is to say of which a sector of the bourgeoisie would inevitably attempt to take control. Only three years later -- in 1945 -- the development of that crisis led to the birth of Peronism in Argentina. The crisis was already apparent at the time of the IEC declaration. After the 1942 conference imperialism threatened to blockade Chile including the use of military means -- if it did not enter the war. Faced with the unwilling capitulation of the Chilean bourgeoisie, the POR -- the section of the Fourth International in that country said:
'This right to national self-determination is essentially bourgeois democratic and not Socialist. But the break in the world imperialist front is not conceivable without opening up a wide door to all the subject peoples of the earth to decide their own destiny. The Atlantic Charter itself, which neither Britain nor the USA respect, establishes as one of its points this fundamental right. In Chile, the dependent and cowardly bourgeoisie is incapable of raising this democratic banner...The internal and external politics of Chile must be decided in Chile and not in the United States...in Chile the only class capable of advancing a policy of this type is the proletariat and not the governing bourgeoisie.
Here one can see the influence of the positions of the LOR. But the possibility that a debate inside the Fourth International that might clarify these questions was frustrated, because at that precise moment Quebracho was already resolutely leading the LOR towards a break with the Fourth International.
In the same International Bulletin where the IEC theses, 'On the Slogan of Neutrality', were published, a member of the IEC, Marc Loris, published a 'Letter to the Argentine Comrades' aimed at criticising two pamphlets which we have already quoted from: La Argentina frente a la guerra mundial of the GOR, and La IV Internacional y la lucha contra el imperialismo by Jorge Lagos of the LOS. Although in a personal capacity, Loris clearly developed the confused aspects of the IEC position. In fact, this led him to defend the positions of the LOS against the GOR.
In reply to this paragraph of the GOR's: 'We agitate in favour of Argentina itself, so that all the great public service companies, industrial enterprises, agricultural societies and foreign banks that at present impoverish and dominate us pass into the hands of our people', Loris could find nothing better to say than simply:'And the national bourgeoisie? What does one wish to say with the formula "pass into the hands of our people"? This is part of the arsenal of past epochs, left behind by all the petty bourgeois demagogues'.
A bit further on he said:
'The pamphlet (he GOR) speaks likewise of the Argentine economy as "deformed" by imperialist oppression. Will it be a question of "restoring" the Argentine economy, of making it "normal"? Within the framework of imperialist capitalism, is it possible to expect that it will follow a course of harmonious development?'
And later he compared 'the author of the pamphlet' with...Sismondi, [42] describing his perspective as 'reformist'. Faced with this total misunderstanding of the rale of imperialism in the backward countries, and of the different situation occupied by oppressor and oppressed countries in the imperialist system, Quebracho, far from polemicising to put it into relief, limited himself to replying dryly: 'We were not writing so as to be read by imbeciles'.
After counting the times the word 'Socialism' appeared in the GOR pamphlet, Loris was scandalised by seeing 'the proletarian revolution is presented as the instrument and the means of national emancipation!!' Finally, Loris sprinkled his 'demolition' of the GOR with observations like 'No! All this is far, very far, from Marxism...No! Here there is no revolutionary language' (sic). Then he goes on to criticise 'Comrade Lagos' praising him beforehand for having 'corrected' the errors of the GOR, 'although, at times, falling into errors of a sectarian nature'. Faced with Lagos' assertion that Argentina lacked feudal remnants, which for him was the keystone of his strategy of the purely Socialist revolution, Loris replied that such remnants eldsted in countries like the USA or Britain -- in order then to comment:
'It is not a question of transplanting the proletarian revolution onto the bourgeois revolution. But the proletarian revolution itself completes the bourgeois democratic tasks which the most advanced bourgeoisies have not been, and are not, capable of resolving.
Loris adhered, then, to the thesis of the similarity of the revolution in the advanced countries (those which had achieved their bourgeois revolution), and the backward ones (those not having gone beyond such a revolution). No revolution -- in the imperialist epoch -- can end in triumph except as a proletarian revolution. So one denies every difference between the programme of the revolution in a metropolitan country and in an oppressed country. Furthermore, the only moment when national oppression appears for Loris is when he sees himself obliged to criticise the following position of Lagos: 'A war between one of our countries and one of the imperialist sectors will be an imperialist war'. In reality, the whole polemic between the Argentine groups was contained here: if the war between a semi-colonial country and an imperialist country is an imperialist war on both sides, what the devil does imperialism represent?
Loris reminds Lagos that a war between a colony and an imperialist country 'can be' a war of anti-imperialist defence. And nothing more. [43]
To the extent that Loris was a member of the IEC of the Fourth International, what was evident was the confusion in that leadership about the oppressed countries. He distinguished -- formally -- between oppressor and oppressed countries, but ended up amalgamating them. The need for the proletariat of the backward countries to fight for national liberation was denied.
This position has a precedent within the revolutionary movement, for it was held at one time by Rosa Luxemburg and Piatakov, and was criticised by Lenin in A Caricature of Marxism, for it denied the struggle for 'national self-determination', with the hypothesis that it was impossible under imperialism, and that the Socialist revolution meant the destruction of national borders and so the dissolution of nations. Lenin replied that such 'unrealisability' did not exist, but that 'not only the right of nations to selfdetermination, but all the fundamental demands of political democracy are only partially "practicable" under imperialism, and then in a distorted form and by way of exception'. Elsewhere he pointed out that:
'...it would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the Socialist revolution, or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious Socialism that does not practise full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-round, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.'[44]
This question was particularly important in that it refers to the colonial and semicolonial proletariat. For Lenin:
'...it is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles in the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the population of the globe, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more revolutionary part than we expect.'[45]
If it is correct to say that the bourgeoisie of the backward countries -- in the present epoch of imperialism -- cannot liberate their countries nor consumate the democratic revolution, this does not mean to say that the proletariat ought not to set itself those tasks. Rather, the latter becomes part of the programme of social emancipation of the working class.
'With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.' [46]
We can see that Trotsky's position is the opposite of Loris'.
Only the proletarian revolution can consumate national liberation in a 'complete and genuine' sense, but this does not mean that other classes cannot call for this task, or set themselves its realisation in a 'partial, distorted form'. It happens thus when the national bourgeoisie (or petty bourgeoisie or even military sectors) attempt -- and succeed to a greater or lesser degree -- in attracting the working and exploited masses behind their nationalist demagogy. As we can see, the only way whereby the revolutionary working class can struggle with the bourgeoisie for the leadership of the exploited, is not by denying national liberation for, as Lenin indicated, 'such a rejection would only play into the hands of the bourgeoisie and reaction', [47] but by consistently and in a revolutionary way, raising democratic and national questions. The confusion which the position of the IEC introduced among the Argentine Trotskyists can be measured by the fact which we will see later -- that its principal supporters, such as Ramos and Posadas, would later adopt pro-Peronist positions when that nationalist movement emerged a few years later.
Quebracho immediately took advantage of the obvious weaknesses in the text by Loris in order to open fire on him. In the 'Answer to Marc Loris' of the LOR, gibes and insults push the real political reply into the background. After treating him as a 'disciple of Stalin' and giving free rein to polemical verbiage, he finished with an 'earful':
'I have lived long enough in Union Square (the seat of the SWP -- author's note) for missives such as yours not to alarm me, and my stay in that quarter of New York allowed me to see very clearly the contemptuous attitude which many pseudo-revolutionaries there, of a petty bourgeois type, have about our Latin American countries, making themselves accomplices of imperialist scorn. You, Marc Loris, are one of them.'[48]
Another SWP leader, Charles Curtiss, showed his good instincts by showing his disagreement with the 'Letter' of Loris although with its tone, rather than its content -- in a private letter to the delegate of the IEC in Argentina, recommending to him the prudence which the letter lacks.[49]
In vain. Although Lagos himself wrote to Quebracho:
'Believe me, I consider the letter of M Loris, in which he carries out a criticism of your position and distorts it...superficial, poor tactics and in the end counterproductive. I know that your position is not that which M Loris criticises.'[50]
For Quebracho the problem had ceased to be the Argentine and even Latin American 'centrists'. From then on his enemies would become the 'centrists' who led the International.
Because of the political and organisational questions involved, the Argentine 'case' meant a real 'test' for the IEC and its capacity as the leadership of the Fourth International. In Argentina the 'movement' had developed with practically no contact with the international leadership, and with scarcely any written contact with its Latin American Department (DLA) until later. In a report of the latter to the IEC of May 1940 could be read:
'The Latin American Commission (GAL) has tried to unite all these groups (it refers to the GOR, the LOS and the "regional" bodies) into one organisation, but up to now its attempts have failed. At first their differences were minor and of a largely personal type...In Inicial no 7, a basic document appeared on the character of the revolution in Argentina, which tends to demonstrate that it will be exclusively Socialist. Recently the GOR has sent a letter to the CAL asking to be recognised as the Argentine section of the Fourth International...The Inicial group has put forward the exclusion of comrade Quebracho as a condition for the unification with the GOR. The CAL has sent a text expressing its disapproval of this ultimatum...Now the differences are taking on a political aspect, and therefore it will be much easier for us to decide which of the groups expresses the ideas of the Fourth International.'[51]
We have already referred to the texts of the first intervention of the IEC in the debate. About the same time the latter decided to send a delegate to the countries of the 'Southern Cone' with the aim of moving towards the unification of the groups existing there. Terence Phelan (the pseudonym of Sherry Mangan) arrived in Argentina during the first months of 1941. He did so in the capacity of correspondent for the magazines Time, Life and Fortune, a job he had obtained at the request of the IEC, with the object of facilitating his trips around the world, in order to build up contacts between the IEC and different groups. Mangan had adhered to US Trotskyism since 1934.
His first stable contact seems to have been with the LOS in Argentina, and in particular with the youth responsible for its paper, Jorge Abelardo Ramos, or 'Sevignac'. In his first report to the IEC he notes the impasse in which the LOS was vis-a-vis its slogans referring to Argentina and the world war -- an impasse, we say, connected to its policy of 'transforming the imperialist war into a civil war' and 'revolutionary defeatism' in a country not involved in the war. At the time the slogan of the LOS was 'Not a kilo of meat, not a gramme of wheat, for the imperialist powers!' Thus it did not propose to take advantage of the war to expropriate imperialism, but merely to suspend exports. Phelan bemoaned the 'poorness' of this slogan, and asked himself what British and French workers would think of it. At the same time he maintained, however, that the differences between the LOS and the LOR (ex-GOR) were not programmatic, but ones of 'application', or tactical. [52]
Likewise his relations with the LOR quite rapidly became tense. In June the unity congress of the POR and POI in Chile took place. The result was the POR, Chilean section of the Fourth International. Phelan took part as a delegate from the IEC and Quebracho, on his own account, for the LOR. In the course of the congress, Phelan read from the 'Letter' of Loris quoted above and played a greeting from the LOS on a record. Justo was annoyed, but took the opportunity to put his positions on 'national liberation', for which the congress was grateful. Each one saw the congress as a triumph: Phelan because he believed that it had demonstrated that the unification of the groups was possible, Quebracho because he saw it as a triumph of the 'revolutionaries' -- POR -- against the 'centrists' -- the POI.
In Argentina Phelan also noted the weakness and fragmentation of the groups of Trotskyists. Displaying great energy, he travelled throughout the country and convinced the 'regional' groups of La Plata, Santa Fe, led by Narvaja, and Corboda, where there were both Esteban Rey and 'Flores' (an early pseudonym of Posadas) -- to join the unity process. Eventually, he succeeded in uniting them all in a Unity Committee in which, in August, he then proposed that the LOR participate.
The LOR accepted with reservations, as it considered that it was correct to try to clarify the positions. The committee accepted this criterion and proposed that each group present written theses. The LOS did so. The LOR did so too, but in an odd way. Quebracho was convinced that it did not concern 'smoothing-out differences' but a political battle in which his positions must defeat those of the 'centrists', and so he started publishing a series of Documentsfor the Unification of the Argentine Fourth Internationalist Movement, the first being a 'Brief Chronological Outline'. In them he not only criticised the positions, but also the past activity of the rival groupings, and attempted to show the existence of a centrist current in Argentina from the very beginning of Trotskyism. Five Documents appeared, and the LOR circulated them publicly and throughout the continent, and continued to do so unperturbed even after the efforts at unity had broken down. This attracted to the LOR the sympathies of other Latin American groups, such as the Cuban and the Chilean, but it also brought upon it the wrath of the other Argentine groups and the criticism of Phelan himself who, discouraged, noted that the LOR and the LOS did not even agree on what to discuss.
In his interventions it is undeniable that Phelan gave much more importance to organisational questions than to political differences, which he tried to minimise. His contribution to the Unity Committee consisted of a huge 'Draft Resolution on the Organisation of the Party'. There he asserted, polemicising:
'Our comrade Quebracho has now quoted on various occasions, correctly, the words of our great theoretician L Trotsky: "It is the idea that creates the cadres and not the cadres the idea''. What he forgot to mention was the context of that quote, which refers to a situation where we already have the idea. That "idea" is nothing but the programme of the Fourth International.'
Quebracho retorted:
'Is it good enough to be in agreement with the programme of the Fourth International to achieve unity? No! It is not enough. That programme does not resolve all the manifold aspects which pertain to the revolutionary strategy in the subject countries and only touches upon what pertains to the character of the revolution in them. Therefore there is an imperative need to complete it by facing up to, and resolving, the many points of fundamental importance for the colonial and semicolonial countries which until now have not been clarified in a precise way. And as these points are precisely those which are in dispute here, it is consequently the case, that the programme of the Fourth International in the abstract is not sufficient, but that one must clarify it and agree on how it is to be applied in Argentina.'[53]
Contrary to the purpose for which it had been written, Phelan used the programme not to open up, but to close the debate. Just after the adoption of the Transitional Programme, Trotsky had praised the Trotskyists of New York, who instead of merely repeating it parrot-fashion, had set about studying how to adapt it to the concrete situation in the USA, and how to explain it to the masses.
Independently of the leadership of the Fourth International, one of its most important Latin American sections -- the Cuban POR -- became interested in the 'Argentine' debate, and put forward a more correct method and a more concrete position on the problems in dispute. Maybe its letter arrived too late (February 1942?):
'...in the problem of the Argentine comrades there are two fundamental things needed...for the unity of our forces in that country: starting from our Marxist-Leninist principles, there must be a specific evaluation of the Argentine revolutionary problem, in order to translate a general strategic line into the application of the specific tactic of struggle that corresponds to the conditions of the country. In the second place, the organisational aspects must be consistent with the previous point. We believe that this way of seeing things has not been properly interpreted by the majority of comrades, in spite of the correct insistence by the LOR on the necessity for clarity first and unity afterwards.
'Given our semi-colonial status, for us the problem of national liberation, in a country where the major part of the democratic gains have not been attained, is an integral part of the general process of the permanent revolution. It is obvious that for us national liberation does not mean in any way the transfer of the imperialist enterprises into the hands of a native bourgeoisie, but the expropriation, by the Cuban state, without compensation, of such enterprises. This implies, quite naturally, the conquest of power by the Cuban proletariat. And this conquest of power will not be the Socialist revolution, because what it would do would be to combine the democratic tasks with those Socialist tasks which were possible. It would be positively national liberation, but not executed under the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, but of the working class.'[54]
This position had the virtue of trying to integrate the national problems and the 'permanent revolution'. It outlined, nevertheless, a tendency to separate -- to 'place a wall' -- between the democratic and the Socialist revolution, when it held that the taking of power by the proletariat would not be the Socialist revolution. The taking of power by the proletariat means precisely that the democratic revolution has been transformed into a Socialist one, which will carry out 'in passing' (Lenin) the yet-to-be-accomplished tasks of a democratic nature. Quebracho later put forward a similar conception.
Faced with the problem, it at least put a clear position. That of Phelan, on the other hand, still considered national liberation as a secondary problem, and referred to it in his text for the Unity Committee:
'Argentina is a semi-colonial country, clearly capitalist (sic) and relatively advanced. This latter fact is primary and fundamental, and agreement on this is decisive. The democratic revolution, although very advanced, has not been completed. Arriving too late in this epoch of dying imperialism, the national bourgeoisie is incapable of accomplishing the remaining tasks of the democratic revolution, including that of "national liberation" from the yoke of imperialism...
'Unquestionably, in Argentina a longing, vague but intense, exists for national liberation from the imperialist yoke. Under the threat of losing not only the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie as allies, but even proletarian elements who feel such confused anti-imperialist emotion, and even delivering them into the arms of the national-Fascist-demagogue sector of the national bourgeoisie, we cannot risk disregarding that longing which, correctly understood and evaluated, can serve as an important point of departure for our propaganda.
'But a point of departure for agitation is not the same thing as a slogan of "national liberation". It describes the problem, it is not its solution. Convinced as we are that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can carry out, not only this, but all the tasks of the democratic revolution, we will have to take care in selecting our slogans, in order to avoid any tendency to blunt the class nature of our solution. Furthermore, we know the secondary and transitory position which the slogans referring to this problem must play within our programme of action. Above all we must not, through our interest in this problem, weaken even by an inch our struggle against native capitalist exploitation. Summing up, as a decisive principle in all the similar problems, we must always subordinate "national liberation" to the world proletarian revolution.
For Phelan, national liberation is not an objective problem, posed by the structure of the country and the state and its connection with world imperialism, but subjective, a 'vague longing' of the middle classes and some workers. His formulation for the revolutionary party appears only as a concession to those sectors, and not as the method whereby one disputes the leadership of the exploited with the bourgeoisie. The nationalist sectors of the latter are identified with Fascism. Thus Phelan put forward this argument, which he shared with almost all the left which took it up soon after, including even the Union Democratica.
Trotsky had started from the world economy, which had finally been united under capital by imperialism, in order to define the adherence of all countries to the capitalist economy. Phelan inverts it, and starts by defining Argentina as a capitalist country, and then reasons the degree of development of that capitalism -- 'relatively advanced' -- as a principle argument. The will to 'not blunt the class nature of our solution', and to 'subordinate national liberation to the world revolution', are correct, but neither Phelan nor the IEC understood the latter as did Lenin:
'The social revolution cannot take place other than under the form of a period in which the civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries unites with a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, comprising the movements of national liberation, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations.'[55]
The whole text by Phelan appears marked by eclecticism, because of his wish to conciliate, rather than to clarify, the positions in dispute.
The Unity Committee totally broke up, at least in respect of the participation of the LOR, in a series of unclear episodes. In a private letter to Curtiss, Phelan stated his belief that Quebracho was 'crazy, without doubt mentally unbalanced', which did not prevent him from seeing him as 'by far the most dynamic political talent of Argentine Socialism'. He feared that his loss would convert him into 'a new Mussolini, destined to join Fascist nationalism, in the Vargas style'. He thus alluded to the reproach attributed to Zinoviev against the Italian Socialists, of having lost Mussolini,'the greatest talent of Italian Socialism'. The private correspondence of Phelan reveals just how much the problems posed by Justo worried him in this sense.[56] In October violent disputes occurred between the LOR and Phelan over the absence of 'theses' from the LOR. Perhaps this was simply the way it decided to present them. As it turned out, the LOR decided to stay in the Committee only with 'observer' status. Phelan decided at the same time that he had already made concessions to the LOR.