English
version of the letter sent to Democracia Obrera by Convergencia Socialista
(Socialist Convergence) of Argentina on February 18th.
Comrades of
Democracia Obrera
We write to you to express our solidarity on
the question of the aggression suffered by your militants when you tried to
speak before the Employed and Unemployed Workers National Encounter, summoned
on the past February 17th in the Colonial Theater of La
Matanza.
As soon as we knew about the fact, together
with the comrades from the MST, MA, PTS and FOS we demanded from the leaders of
the PO, the MIJP, the MTR and the MTL who presided over the assembly that they
granted you the right to speak in that moment.
The request was not accepted, and for that
reason (next to the delegation of the FOS) we presented a motion as a
resolution project (voted in minority), by means of which we reject the
accusation of provocateurs which the
members of the board used to justify the expulsion. The real provocateurs don't
come from the ranks of the parties of the left, but from the employers’
"servicios" [1]and
from the union bureaucracy.
We will continue battling to eradicate these
methods off the ranks of the working class, especially in the assemblies that
are summoned by those who claim to stand against the bureaucracy.
Fraternally.
For Convergencia Socialista
Juan Carlos Beica.
February 14th(sic), 2002.
Translated into English by Eva Guerrero and Marcos Smith
Before the attack of the armed Stalinist and PO gangs against Democracia
Obrera and dozens of fighters in the Asamblea Piquetera on February 16th
and 17th.
Before a true attack against the direct democracy of the movement of the
unemployed and the workers vanguard.
Before the bourgeoisie’ deputy D´Elía’s attack against Trotskyism.
Answer to Convergencia
Socialista (Socialist Convergence) from Democracia Obrera
Comrades:
On Monday February 18th
we have received your note in solidarity with our organization after we had
been victims of the expulsion and the accusation of provocateurs in the
Asamblea Piquetera on Sunday, February 17th, on the part of the
Communist Party, the diverse Stalinist and Castroist currents and the Partido
Obrero. Indeed we greet your brief statement!
These sultry facts were nothing else
than the continuity of what had happened
the previous day in Plaza de Mayo, where instead of a democratic assembly
it was carried out an act where only
they could speak those that the organizers of the act had agreed on in previous
meetings, and where, as you already know, we had been denied the right to
speak, too –a completely well-known question for you and all the
organizers. Soon afterwards, D'Elía, in the course of an act in the Congreso
Plaza (the square in front of the Parliament Building.NT) on Wednesday 20th,
openly attacked the whole Trotskyist movement, accusing the “Trotskyist right” of being part of the
attack of Bush against Cuba and Fidel Castro.
For that reason, we believe that
-although a serious one-, the aggression against Democracia Obrera is only a
part of a bigger problem.
In the first place, we hope you will agree with us on the question that the events on
Sunday 17th were as sultry as those on Sutarday 16th. The
crucial significance of what
happened on Saturday is that far from being a democratic assembly, it was an
act where only could speak those that the left parties and the organizations of
unemployed had agreed on previously in a perfectly established libretto.
Gravely enough, as a product of this agreement from the podium of the act on
Saturday someone could say -like it was effectively said - that the blood of
the fallen martyrs in Salta under the bullets of the Gendarmería had to be put
to the service of the pro-slavery politics of the employers of the Pymes, of
the Church and of Salta’s Governor Romero. This is serious because neither one
of those parties and groups that were among the organizers nor anyone of those
that could speak answered such a terrible argument, when no more than 48 hours
later Romero sent the Salta police to break heads and shoot on defenseless
women with their small children in arms.
The scandalous character of the agreement reveals itself in that on
Saturday and on Sunday they could speak without any restriction the bankers of
the Communist Party and of the Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos (an
Administration of Cooperative Funds belonging in the CP related organizations.
NT), that is to say the owners of the Banco Credicoop - representatives of the
French banking-, the same ones that have run away, along with Bank of Boston
and the rest of the banks, with the savings of the people. The expropriators of
the people had the whole democracy to speak as much as they wanted,
demonstrating that Altamira and the Stalinists toss to the workers and stay
with the bankers. Given your letter and attitude before what happened on
Sunday, we are sure that as much you as the FOS will coincide quickly in the
necessity of immediately delimiting yourselves from the ignominy of what
happened on Saturday, since it has intimate relationship with what happened the
following day in the Colonial Theater (The assembly continued here on Sunday.
NT).
Second, the crux of Sunday events, was not only an attack
on our organization: they not only denied the right to speak to Democracia
Obrera but to teachers’ delegates of the SUTEBA (Teachers’ Union) of La Matanza
(the Union local that had the honor to be present in the street combats on
December 20th in the Battle of Buenos Aires which threw down De la
Rúa. NT), of the Garrahan Pediatric Hospital, of the Central Wholesale Market
of Buenos Aires; to picketers from Comodoro Rivadavia, Santa Cruz and Chubut;
to picketers that had been the previous day risking their lives in the picket
line before the Shell refinery threatened by the police repression; to
picketers of the South Area of Great Buenos Aires who have disagreements with
Martino and his bureaucratic methods. And what is most serious: out of the
delegates from those more than 20 Popular Assemblies of the Capital, that
gather thousands practicing the direct democracy, from those that almost fill
Plaza de Mayo every Friday, the only one representative who was allowed to
speak was that “incidentally” belonging to the Partido Obrero.
The right of expression was also
denied to picketers from the North of Salta that are members of the Independent
Investigative Commission (Comisión Independiente Investigadora) of the murders
at the hands of the Gendarmería -like that of Anibal Verón - and who represent,
also, the comrades who were left lame and crippled for life because of this
repression. Among those delegates that were denied the right of speech -right
that is respected in any democratic assembly as the Neighbors’ and Popular
Assemblies that are generalizing- a well known working class leader, delegate
from the factory plant of Cerámica Neuquén in the homonymous city was also
denied to speak, what motivated the rejection of the huge deputation of workers
from Cerámica Zanón. The parents who have lost their children prey of the
trigger-happy police, also attending the Assembly, could not believe their eyes
when they saw that there was been sacked by means of the physical aggression
and under screams of “provocateur!” one of the lawyers that for years has stood
facing the Buenos Aires Province police fighting for the punishment to the
murderers of their children; besides, this same comrade is also a delegate of
the SUTEBA (Teachers’ Union) of La Matanza and lawyer of the picketers of
Mosconi.
In the third place, it was clearly evident the indignation that seized over dozens and
dozens of the comrades in Plaza de Mayo and in the Colonial Theater of
Avellaneda (a town in Great Buenos Aires close to the South of the Capital.NT)
before the ostentatious behavior of the security apparatus armed with
clubs. On Saturday in Plaza de Mayo
many had wondered why that terrible “security” was to take care of the podium,
instead of being in the limits of the square, attentive to the true danger posed
by the hundreds of policemen that surrounded the Plaza. They reminded of the
" security " organized by the CCC in the road blocks of La Matanza
last year to prevent the left parties from getting closer to the workers. Can anybody explain to us why none of the
organizers opposed to the security being inside the assembly? This
scandalous fact, with the security controlling, pursuing and expelling the
opponents, which the valiant attitude of the representatives of Democracia
Obrera helped bring to light is a scandal, isn’t it? Such an assembly would
deserve to have been organized by Moyano, Daer, or Stalin!
When we proposed to the self-claimed
Trotskyist parties, from the same beginning of the Argentinean revolution, to
push for self-defense committees in the organs of the masses, some of this
currents answered us that the left already has its own self-defense pickets.
But now we can see these “self-defense pickets” at work!: they are - in the
case of the PO and the CP - to pound on their opponents in the workers
assemblies. On the contrary, the self-defense committees we speak of should be
an instrument for the assemblies, voted and controlled by them, and never to
attack an assemblyman.
Of course we appreciate that you, together
with other currents, rejected the aggression of which we were object; but why
didn't all of you form a block of all the parties that claim to be part of
Trotskyism to demand -in the name of proletarian democracy - that
"security" to be immediately retired of the enclosure and put to
defending all the assemblymen from the outside? If you think about it, you will
agree with us on the question that never again it should be allowed that the
security controls those that fight.
For all this, although we consider
laudable your note and attitude, it is our duty to say that it cuts short. For
that reason our first immediate proposal is that, besides rejecting the Sunday
aggression against Democracia Obrera, all of us together should condemn the
deeds of the "security" and the antidemocratic character both of the
Saturday act and the Sunday meeting.
We can say, then, with total certainty
that the assembly on February 16th and 17th was even
worse than the 2nd Asamblea Piquetera carried out last year in La Matanza. At
least, in the La Matanza assembly, the opposition could speak (Martino, the
delegation of Ceramic Zanón, etc., included) certainly, not before a hard
battle was fought by a wide sector of the working class rank and file that
imposed it against the leadership of D'Elía and Alderete. AND the security of
the CCC and the CTA not even dared to touch a hair of any of the opponents!
All those scandalous events we enumerate
caused the comments that could be heard among the ranks of the workers present
in the Assembly i.e. “This is the same
thing that with D'Elía and Alderete”, “It
is the last time that I come here”; or took some workers from Comodoro
Rivadavia, to say: "This makes us
remember to the old PC". As a comrade picketer of South Area told us: "If this people governed the country,
all of us would be already in prison". The series of events generated
by the Stalinism and its accomplices like the PO, pursued an objective: to
cause a serious defeat to the unemployed movement and to the efforts of the
vanguard to conquer an organization of united front centralized at national
level.
At the same time, in dozens of
Popular Assemblies, as they take knowledge of these shameful facts, rejection
statements begin to be pronounced against them, like it happened during the
week in those that meet in the Cid Campeador Plaza, or in the neighborhoods of
Palermo, Paternal, La Boca, among others. And in some cases people toss to those
who they consider –rightfully- responsible of them, as the PO (like it happened
in the Popular Assembly of Ciudadela, in the Great Buenos Aires). The different
observers sent by these assemblies to Plaza de Mayo and the Colonial Theater,
when informing to their organs coincided in highlighting the antidemocratic
character of what they had seen. The Popular Assembly of the Cid Campeador has
taken an exemplary resolution to take to the Interbarrial (Inter-Neighborhood
Assembly, meeting in Centenario Park) -and that they have published in their
bulletin-: “… that all the political,
social organizations that are participating in the Neighborhood and
Inter-neighborhood Assemblies have the right to express their identity as well
as their proposals and opinions. In the same way they are demanded to put all
their energy to the service of the popular assemblies and not the popular
assemblies to the service of their organizations or parties". What a
magnificent lesson of proletarian democracy! Under the heat of a revolution
like the one that began in Argentina, the workers learn quickly!
For all this we consider an error to reduce everything to an
"aggression" against our organization. What happened was a direct attack against the
direct democracy, against the efforts of the millions of -employed and
unemployed- workers of the whole country who need -and struggle very hard to
conquer- a true, independent from the state and democratic, organization of
masses at national level that centralizes their fights and take in its hands
the crisis of the country.
What was imposed on last Saturday and Sunday is an agreement from above
of the parties and the leadership of some groups of picketers who decided who
could and who could not speak, which the agenda, order of issues, etc., were
and where the rank and file was denied to speak freely. That is to say, that it
was a farce of democratic deliberation, of the same kind of that practiced by
D´Elía and Alderete.
And in the same way that yesterday D'Elía and Alderete attacked Martino, the
UTD (Union of Unemployed Workers) of Solano, and the Polo Obrero (Labor Pole, a
workers movement led by the Partido Obrero) calling them "buchones"
(stool pigeons), those that yesterday ware attacked today repeat in a
continuity of those methods the same slanders against Democracia Obrera. But we
hasten to tell them that it is an honor to concentrate the hate of these
treacherous bureaucrats!
If Democracia Obrera had a merit,
this was to have exposed to the bones the monstrosity that was being consummated
in the assembly on February 16th and 17th. For that
reason, Stalinism and their allies could not finish obtaining a complete
victory, but a Pirric one because they had to accept - as reaction of the rank
and file before such a bureaucratic maneuver - the momentary supremacy of the
workers democracy , and the motion that
in the next Asamblea Piquetera anyone that brings command will be able to speak
was approved by acclamation. For that reason we can say with total
certainty –on the basis of the real forces present in the Colonial Theater and
in Plaza de Mayo - that the voting that you (SC) posed on the question of
Democracia Obrera had not really been defeated but maneuvered, so that you also
suffered in flesh and blood the methods of Stalinism. Even more, the conditions
were given for treating-with by means of a resolved action of the whole parties
that claim ourselves to be Trotskyist - a phenomenal defeat to the Stalinists
and their allies and to make way for the labor and popular vanguard toward the
third assault of the masses that demolishes this infamous regime, imposes a
regime of duality of power and brings to the fore the insurrection that imposes
a workers’ and people’s government.
Events as those that took place
there are not amazing coming from Stalinism and the union bureaucracy. Neither
coming from Juampi Cafiero's friends leaders of the picketers (Juampi Cafiero
is a politician from the Alianza, a former-Social Development minister of the
De la Rua cabinet. NT) that seek to administer some few thousands of Planes
Trabajar to the service of the Pymes' slavery masters. But they are very
serious coming from the leadership of the Partido Obrero who hand in hand with
the Stalinists were at the head of this policy –and who then repeated the
slanders against Democracia Obrera from their newspaper.
The attack of D'Elía against Trotskysm complete the attack of the Stalinists and their allies on the democracy of the exploited
But this didn't finish - neither it
finishes now- here: on Wednesday 20th D´Elía –from the podium next
to the Stalinists and Alderete, in the act commemorating the working class
martyrs of December- denounced in its speech “the Trotskyist right” of
attacking him and of being allied to Bush against the Cuban people. The serious
events of Saturday in Plaza de Mayo and on Sunday in the Colonial Theater had
in such a way their continuation in the attack of D´Elía, the Castroites and
the bureaucracy of the CTA and of the movement of unemployed workers, against
the forces that claim to be Trotskyist. And this attack aims to break our forces
in order to co-opt them, to complete subordinate to and subsume them into the
counterrevolutionary policies of Stalinism, the union bureaucracy and other
agents of the regime within the working class movement.
D'Elía slandered the Trotskyists
accusing them to be agents of Bush, in the same way as Stalin did to Trotsky
accusing him of being an agent of the Japanese Mikado or of the Nazi Gestapo.
The attack on our organization is, then, no other than a small example of the
policies mounted by the Stalinism as an agent of the bourgeois state and of the
imperialism within the working class organizations.
It is necessary to wonder why so
much fury against the Trotskyism on the part of the counterrevolutionary
leaderships. That is because the statements of D´Elía already announce the
enlistment of the counterrevolutionary forces of the union bureaucracy, of the
CTA, of the Stalinism, of the Church, prompted by the bourgeois state, to
squash the direct democracy that the workers and the people have conquered in
their Popular Assemblies and the unemployed workers in their heroic combat
feats like in Tartagal, Mosconi, Cruz del Eje, Jujuy, Cutral Có, etc. As an
example of what we denounce, let’s see that what the "Hippy"
Fernández (a leader of a fraction of the unemployed, former picketer in Salta,
who has turned “microentrepreneur”) said from the box on Saturday 16th
about the Pymes is already applying: the road block that is developing at the moment
in Mosconi -as you will be able to corroborate - is being sieged by the
employers of the Pymes to press for new outsourcing contracts with the oil
companies with cheap manpower at $120 a month.
The attack on Democracia Obrera,
imposed by the Stalinist and the PO “security” gangs against the rejection of
the majority of the Assembly, and the scandalous statements against the forces
that claim themselves as Trotskyst from a political patron as D´Elía, are a
minor sample of what those forces are preparing against the popular assemblies
and their direct democracy to preserve the power of the bourgeois semi-colonial
state and its hated regime, but throw a strong light on how and by what means
and methods they plan to control the revolutionary movement that has arisen in
Argentina.
D´Elía, together with the CTA, the
CCC, the PC, the neo-Castroites of Martino, the PO, etc., are nothing more than
the expression in Argentina of the Forum of Porto Alegre recently gathered
under the direction of the Castroism and of the European Social Democracy, who
are butchers Bush's, Blair’s, Jospin’s, Schroeder’s and other imperialistic
pirates’ agents.
So many counterrevolutionary forces
deployed are the demonstration that there are approaching the unavoidable
crashes, in the fight for a revolutionary leadership of the revolutionary
working class, among Trotskyism on one hand and Stalinism and all the
treacherous leaderships on the other.
Comrades of Convergencia Socialista:
if you have taken the step of condemning the Stalinist attack on our
organization made by the PO and the CP, you will certainly understand that D'
Elia's statements are not at random: they aim to the subordination of the
forces of all those who claim themselves as Trotskyists to the infamous regime
that the revolutionary masses are confronting and struggling to demolish to the
end. The PO has already chosen unambiguously its trench: he prefers to be a
servant of the remains of the Stalinism, of the Castroism, that is of the
infamous regime; it takes part -together with the rest of the leadership of the
"picketers"- to the clique benefited with the handling without
control nor giving accounts of the Planes Trabajar and of the millions of pesos
involved in them.
Take notice that we have - as well
as the MST, the PTS and the FOS that claim to be Trotskyists-, and in spite of
the enormous differences that separate us, an unavoidable obligation: to face
together this ruthless counterrevolutionary attack that wants to make the
vanguard and the masses believe that Trotskyism is an agent of Bush…when it was
the Castroist bureaucracy the one that yesterday betrayed the Central American
revolution together with the Sandinoists and the FMLN, isolating Cuba and
weakening its conquests, and the one that had proclaimed “the peaceful road to socialism”,
giving up the glorious Chilean revolution in previous decades. The same one
that today has a sacred alliance with the bureaucratic traitors of the CUT of
Brazil, betrayers of the Brazilian working class.
The Castroist bureaucracy -following
the example of their teachers from Moscow that became restaurationists, and
then financiers and exploiters, giving up all the achievements of the worker
states - has gone totally to the field of the capitalist restoration associated
to the republican right wing of the yankee imperialism with investments in the
island, and to the European financial capital; for that reason today as their
servant, it is a jailer next to Bush of the anti-imperialist militiamen imprisoned
in Guantánamo, while it runs to fill the island with yankee flags in solidarity
with Bush campaign against terrorism after the attack on the Twin Towers.
The responsibility falls on all of us that claim to be part of Trotskyism
Comrades of Convergencia Socialista:
you together with the MST, the FOS, the MAS and the PTS come from making an
agreement with the Communist Party, with the Castroist supporters of Martino
and other Stalinists, to lead together with a program and a strategy in common
the picketer movement, with which agreement, as we have already let you know,
we differ completely since it is an agreement at the top, with parties that are
mortal foes of and try to suffocate all step ahead given by the masses to
impose their self-determination organs and a dual power regime. This
constitutes a serious error that we call you to think over.
But in spite of these differences,
the forces that condemn the attack of D'Elía and the attack on our
organization, cannot stop short of summoning a meeting of all the forces that
claim to be of the Trotskyism in Argentina, to immediately condemn D´Elía -friend
of Duhalde, Rodríguez Saá and the traitors of the union bureaucracy of De
Gennaro (CTA), all them enemies of the direct democracy that the revolutionary
masses are beginning to conquer.
Comrades: D´Elía and the CTA,
representatives and spokesmen of all the counterrevolutionary forces that
struggle to miscarry and to strangle the Argentinean revolution have
calumniated us all! It is because, like it has been demonstrated by the
whole precedent history of class struggle, in all revolution a river of blood
has been created between Trotskyism and Stalinism.
It is not time for words, neither
just for notes nor of adhesions and symbolic solidarities alone. It is
necessary to pass from the words to the facts: let us already summon together a meeting of all the forces that
claim ourselves of the Trotskyist movement in Argentina and at international
level, to launch in the factories, in the streets, before the organizations of
the masses a campaign for the condemnation to the Stalinism and their henchmen,
agents of the bourgeoisie that want to demoralize to the vanguard and the
masses -trying to make them take their allies for enemies and their enemies for
allies. This condemnation is already happening even spontaneously when the
observers sent by the popular assemblies denounced before thousands the
antidemocratic character of the assembly of February 16th and 17th.
A determined and combined action of all who claim ourselves of the Trotskyism
would put quickly in retreat this Stalinist conspiracy against the direct
democracy of the exploited.
You, together with the MST, the PTS,
the FOS, the LIT that have summoned and been co-organizers of that “united front”
with the Stalinism in the (left) picketer movement, have an obligation and a
fundamental responsibility in the immediate convocation to this meeting. (On the MAS we will speak later on)
The Stalinism and their new partner the PO, representatives of the counterrevolutionary International mounted in the Forum of Porto Alegre: if the villain confesses the prosecutor needs no proofs.
El Siglo, a
newspaper of the Communist Party of Chile, the most important in South America,
says:
"We come from participating in the International Seminar of
Communist Parties, carried out in Montevideo, Uruguay, from January 27th
to 29th, 2002; and in the II World Social Forum of Porto Alegre,
between January 31st and February 5th. Being outside of
Chile and moreover, participating together in these events along with
Communists and other varied social and political sectors, we have been able to realize
with more clarity of the strength that the fights against the neo-Liberalism
have today in the world... We have been
able to appreciate a new disposition of the Communist parties and of the other
social and political forces that there participated to the coordination of the
fights and initiatives ... There rises the proposal of the PT of Brazil in
the special session of Sao Paulo's Forum (sic) carried out in the Social Forum
of carrying out next year an International Forum of Political Parties. A proposal is posed to build a platform
of combined action, of building brotherly links between the European and Latin
American lefts.”
For Stalinism, all this was gestated
when “diverse groups, especially the
newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique and ATTAC -France, begin intense steps for the
concretion of an alternative forum, “anti-Davos”. The idea carried out in Porto
Alegre responded to several reasons: the first one is that for symbolist
purposes it was necessary to make it in a country of the Third World, the second
is that Brazil provided the conditions and the glance went toward Porto Alegre
because it was the capital of a state -Rio Grande Do Sul - that was developing
an important experience of popular democratization. The authority of the state
agreed and it was given the go.”
For each country, taking the example
of Argentina especially, they give the advice: "it is necessary to build a great movement in which social
movements and the political forces of the left converge, fighting united”.
The strategy?: “the conformation of governments of national salvation, national
construction or reconstruction.”
We don't believe that it is
necessary a deeper explanation than these clear words, to sustain the
characterization that what met it in Porto Alegre was “a counterrevolutionary International to strangle the fight of the
masses with popular front policies of class collaboration" (Democracia
Obrera Nº 8 of January 22nd, 2002). An organization commanded by the
French imperialist bourgeoisie, the administrators of the Brazilian bourgeois
semi-colonial state as the PT, the Castroism and the Latin American and
worldwide Stalinist apparatuses. The first answer to this plan, when the echo
of the applauses were not yet silenced in Porto Alegre, was Lula conforming a
common formula for the presidential poll of this year in Brazil with the
president of the Liberal Party himself, the biggest textile capitalist in that
country.
We don't think it necessary
additional proof to demonstrate that what happened in Plaza de Mayo and in
Avellaneda on February 16th and 17th was –to the script -
what had been planned in the Stalinist symposium of Montevideo: to impose
agreements at the top of the parties and organizations (multi-sector bodies,
popular or national liberation fronts, etc.) to bury the direct democracy of
the workers and of the exploited.
This worldwide appointment of the
counterrevolution was also attended by the renegades of Trotskyism and
champions of “the party of Lenin and Jean Jeaurés”, the French LCR whose leader
Alain Krivine is part of that cave of imperialistic bandits, the European
Parliament, and impels in Palestine the observance to the dispositions of the
UN, that is to say the staunch defense of the Fascist, genocidal state of
Israel. In its Argentinean version, this policy that erases the bloody rift
that separates counterrevolutionaries from revolutionaries, is expressed as
“the party of Stalin and of Trotsky", the party of Echegaray, Altamira,
Castells, D'Elía and Alderete.
Is this the Revolutionary United
Front that currents as Socialist Convergence and the LIT (CI) propose? The
consequences showed up in Plaza de Mayo and in the Colonial Theater. You will
agree with us on that it is necessary to face and to condemn the creature's
parents, the Stalinist apparatus and their counterrevolutionary partners of the
European Social Democracy that are not “Creole as the milk-jam”.
The PO, has the sad merit of carrying
things up to the end. Under full sail, it has become a faithful soldier of this
strategy of Stalinism of a unique party (with it), to the point of copying it
even their speech. It says in its newspaper of Thursday, February 21st,
as a balance of what happened on last Saturday and Sunday (the highlights are
ours):
“... (the) block that summoned to the National Assembly is a reference
of the popular camp and an
alternative leadership in the heart of the working class". And they add, so that no doubts
remain: "the Assembly revealed a great political homogeneity, sustained
in four forces: the MTJD, the Polo Obrero, the MTL and the block headed by the
MTR". That is to say, Castells, the PO, the CP and the Castroism. He
failed to add: “…and the Church, the Pymes, and the bankers of the Credicoop”.
"Political homogeneity”? But this is an explicit recognition that they integrate a unique
party with the Stalinism and the Castroism! It is not necessary to be
surprised: the PO merely takes up to the last consequences what was voted in
Porto Alegre and what -like the spokesman of the Chilean Stalinism admits– had
been voted two days before in the Stalinist symposium of Montevideo. For that
reason El Siglo seems to say, “our
hour has arrived ", that is to say the moment for Stalinism to deploy its
entire counterrevolutionary efficacy. The problem is: it prepares itself to do
that on the shoulders of Trotskyism.
Because the truth is that besides
being the PO the most consequent, all
the parties that claim themselves of Trotskyism in Argentina, with the
Brazilian PST (U) as host -and with the presence of the PO- were in Porto
Alegre discussing the “revolutionary united front". For that reason, from
this “political homogeneity” with the
Stalinists, the PO calls everybody to be coherent:
"A finale of ‘task fulfilled’ should not hide that in the end of
the Assembly the two conceptions outlined in the debate were expressed again,
on whether to call or not the CCC and the FTV-CTA. A block that united the
organizations influenced by the PTS, the MAS, Socialist Convergence and the FOS
(all those, by the way, which had been opposed to the expulsion of a provocateur
from the group that makes itself be called `Democracia Obrera ´) outlined,
after not participating in the conformity debate around the final declaration,
its decision of presenting an office in minority... (which) revealed, once more
but the opposition between the builders of a classist movement of masses and
the sects.”
But the PO launches this ultimatum
from its new conquered position. From its newspaper it greets the great
political victory conquered on Saturday and Sunday. But this is not a
confusion, neither one of the typical zigzags of centrism: we can accurately
say that the PO has had “its August 4th ", and that it has lost
all its former centrist character to take the (qualitative) jump to a party
partner of the Stalinist apparatus, a one that has shifted to the bourgeois
order. For that reason, against its will, it has to recognize that all the
parties that claim themselves of Trotskyism, in spite of the big political
differences separating them, had to rush -some shyly, others in an impotent way
- in defense of Democracia Obrera and against its expulsion to the scream of
“provocateurs!”.
Through the new union bureaucracy the bourgeoisie pursues the complete subordination of the unemployed movement to its state, while it aims to liquidate the direct democracy conquered in the Popular Assemblies
What in fact happened on Saturday
and Sunday was a reaction imposed against the intents of putting up a great
democratic organization independent from the state, not only by the unemployed
but by all the exploited. What was imposed is an obstacle aimed to
thwart the task of the moment: to prepare and to organize a new assault of the
masses that finishes smashing up the infamous regime, and an open regime of
dual power that puts to the agenda the preparation of the insurrection of the
working class and its allies that conquers a workers’ and people’s government.
Undeniably, the struggle actions by
the assembly on February 16th and 17th could not generate
any enthusiasm, neither can those summoned -or the ones used to be summoned- by
Moyano, Daer and De Gennaro. Let us prove that: on Wednesday 20th,
in what ought to have been a great day of struggle, two months after the fall
of De la Rúa, a day of unity of the piqueteros movement with the popular
assemblies, it showed an almost empty Plaza de Mayo, where the picketers and
the popular assemblies were hardly present, with squalid columns - totally
disorganized and completely decentralized, being these at the mercy of the
maneuvers of the bourgeois state to control them and of the CTA to put them to
the feet of the Frenapo.
It is that the Stalinism and
Castroism, with the collaboration of the PO, are raising, close to the
leadership of the CCC and D'Elía and Alderete, a real new union bureaucracy
based on the privileges coming from the handling of the millions of dollars of
the “Planes Trabajar”, without any control or reports, the same millions of
dollars used to pay the pickets of hoodlums like those that have been seen on
Saturday and Sunday; a bureaucracy that even has deputies as D'Elía and
Altamira. You have to know that the mayors of the towns call every leader of
the unemployed movement to buy them. We should not have to expose this question
because it is the ABC of the Trotskyism: the base of any bureaucracy is not
ideology but the money. The bureaucracy doesn't have program neither ideology
and it could have been Peronist yesterday, Radical today or Stalinist tomorrow,
but they are all enemies of the proletarian democracy in the organs of the
masses -like on the last Saturday and Sunday- because they look after material
privileges. For that reason, everyone that inquires how the money -that they
manage as true employers- is distributed is accused of “provocateur”.
That is the base of why the Bloque
Piquetero hadn’t call for any assembly since September, since the 2nd
Asamblea Piquetera, giving the regime the same truce that D'Elía, Alderete,
Moyano, Daer and De Gennaro. This is the reason why a new Asamblea Piquetera
did not met in November, in December, neither in January, period in which the
Argentinean revolution opened up. Meanwhile the leaders of the Bloque Piquetero
used their time for secret meetings with mayors, provincial and national
government's representatives, councilmen, etc. That is the reason for which no
party or group can attribute to itself having prepared or led the great
revolutionary and expropriatory action of millions of unemployed that,
overcoming their leaderships, assaulted the supermarkets on December 19th.
The finishing touch for this policy was the presence (in December, after
De la Rua’s resignation.NT) in the Casa Rosada (the site of government) of the
PO, represented by Pitrola (seen on TV), endorsing the support of D'Elía and
Alderete to Rodríguez Saá, at the same time that they were consenting in secret meetings with the
"picketers" leaders and all the left parties to carry out the next
Asamblea Piquetera halfway through February. It is that, while in the basements
of the mass movement the experience of the given combats were processed and the
revolutionary forces, that overcoming every counterrevolutionary obstacle made
true the journeys from the 13th to the 20th of December,
were forging, the “combative” piquetera leadership -in a process opposed in 180
degrees- knelt down more and more before the bourgeois state.
The true is, as Duhalde has not been
able to bring into the streets his guards of hoodlums –as he did the day of his
assumption in the Congress, and later in Lomas de Zamora, and in the Central
Market- fearing of inciting the revolution that has begun and that has not stop
yet, if the union bureaucrats as Moyano, Daer and De Gennaro can not transit
freely in the streets nor face the masses, then
the key role had to pass to this Stalinist-bureaucratic fifth-column -openly
supported by the PO- as praetorian guard to miscarry the direct democracy
and the perspective of setting up dual power organs that could take the
Argentinean revolution to the victory.
The objective of this true
fifth-column, is to act as a real popular front, it is to wear away and to
demoralize the vanguard. They want to transform the unemployed pickets in
submissive organisms to the bourgeois state, and the popular assemblies not in
organs of working class power but in co-administration organs with the
institutions of the bourgeois state. The same thing is proposed by Luis Zamora,
transforming the popular assemblies just in meetings to give advice to the
futures deputies of the “new republic” that is proclaimed by (bourgeois ARI National
Deputy) Lilita Carrió.
The direct democracy of the Popular
Assemblies is under threaten. On one hand, it is because of those chamaleons
and hidden agents of the bourgeois parties and of the regime that hide
themselves behind a “non-politics” speech, as it is admitted it the bourgeois
newspaper La Nación, and on the other hand, by the plan of taking the popular
assemblies to the feet of the CTA and the Frenapo in the “March in defense of the
Democracy” on March 24th.
Facing this plan, we cannot say less
than: Out with those who were collecting signatures against poverty (the
Frenapo,NT:) while the workers and the people were assaulting the supermarkets,
and while we filled Plaza de Mayo and confronted the police to the price of
more than thirty dead! That is what the popular assemblies have to vote! Stop
with the agreements at the top between the parties and the leaders that decide
everything secretly! Democracy for all those that fight! For the workers and
the people voting by raised hands in those organs, to decide which parties and
which organizations can speak and subject their motions to the assemblies and
which not! Stop the security from repressing those that fight! For true
self-defense committees to confront the para-state bands of hoodlums of Duhalde
and Alfonsín and the repression!
On our behalf, in our struggle to
impose the self-determination of the masses against the counterrevolutionary
forces, we are winning the right to speak in the organs of direct democracy
-and not by spurious agreements at the top with the treacherous leaderships- as
it was proved by the approval -and in some cases the closed applause and the
ovation- in those more than 20 popular assemblies where we went to denounce the
bureaucratic monster that was raised last Saturday and Sunday and the attack
against our organization.
It is a honor for us that this
bureaucratic piquetera leadership - that has secretly negotiated with the
government while the bullets of the repression whistled over the heads of the
genuine picketers and the martyrs like Aníbal Verón fell- show us as provocateurs. If this is the case: Long
life for the provocateurs!
It is necessary an urgent call
We insist again: a meeting and an
action plan to defend the direct democracy and to face this sacred alliance
against the Argentinean revolution become indispensable. From Democracia
Obrera, from the same moment that the Argentinean revolution opened up we have
been calling to the self-claimed Trotskyist forces to make -beyond the
differences between us-, practical agreements to drive the development of the
self-determination and labor power organs and to rise the necessity of the
self-defense pickets in the mass organizations. Unfortunately our request has
not been responded up to now, and on the other hand everyone have preferred to
sustain a front with the Stalinism and the Castroism as it has been discussed
and decided in Porto Alegre.
The events and the enlistment of the
counterrevolutionary forces called to choke and to miscarry the Argentinean
revolution, give us time no longer. We propose you an official meeting between
both leaderships to sum up a practical agreement and to move forward this
meeting and call in common to the other self-claimed Trotskyist forces and
mainly to the workers and popular vanguard and the masses in struggle, to
expose and to vanquish this fifth-column raised by imperialism, the bourgeois
state and their infamous regime to defeat the Argentinean revolution.
This meeting is urgent to start from
now on the struggle to impose a real democratic congress and with delegates
with commandment on April 2nd. Otherwise the PO, the PC, with D’Elía
and Alderete, tossing you and the other self-claimed Trotskyist parties, will
prepare it.
We wait your urgent answer. This
meeting is decisive because a statement of the whole Argentinean working class vanguard
and popular fighting organs to condemn D´Elía and Stalinism is urgent, since
the life to all those self-claimed Trotskyist depends on that, and what is more
important, the life of the Argentinean revolution depends on that. This road is
fundamental because the block that is needed is to defeat Stalinism and all the
treacherous leaderships, and to facilitate for the masses the course to
conquering self-determination organs to allow them preparing and to organizing
the new assault of the masses that opens a regime of dual power and puts onto
the agenda the insurrection to impose a workers and popular government.
An explanation on behalf of you becomes indispensable
Multiple queries arise from your
letter. If possible, there is one of them we want you to clarify immediately
for us: if the MST, the MAS, the PTS and the FOS, also endorse the letter that
is signed only by you. The question is that we have not received any position
in writing or statements from anyone of them. And this, after such a
Stalinist-Pabloist provocation, and what is more serious yet, after such an
attack against the direct democracy conquered by the workers and the people, as
the one expressed in that Assembly that was previously agreed and prepared up
to the smallest details behind the backs of the rank and file, by the
organizing board. This organizing board -both in what concerns to the
organization of the act on Saturday and of the Assembly on Sunday- was
assembled by the MST, the MAS, the PTS, the FOS, the PO, the MIJP, the MTR, and
the MTL. It urges to clarify this question because Convergencia Socialista and
all the parties noted in your letter were in the presiding board, and have
participated in the commission that had been discussing the organization of the
last weekend assembly for two months in the headquarters of the MAS.
It was in your hands to give us the
place of any of your speakers, as the rest of the parties that hit upon exercising
some kind of defense of Democracia Obrera, which should have had, without fear
to make a mistake, dozens of speakers between Saturday and Sunday. Can you
clear up why this did not happen?
These two clarifications are
decisive because we are sure that you will not allow these currents to wash
their hands.
It is also indispensable to clarify
the position of the LIT (CI) -of which you are the unofficial section in
Argentina- and that of the PST (U) of Brazil, on the facts of last Saturday and
Sunday, mainly because their representative was an eyewitness of all this facts
and particularly because on Saturday he ignored our request to intercede for us
so they allowed us to speak in Plaza de Mayo.
We expect you will also condemn the
scandalous politics of the MAS whose leader (Laura Marrone.NT), openly declared
in a cynic way covering the back to the Stalinists friends of D´Elía, in the
Assembly -when more than 15 delegates were being expelled- that we should be
given the right to speak, with voice and without the right to vote (!!!!!).
This way we should have not any argument to accusing them of antidemocrat
-question that we will denounce in the Popular Assembly where she
participates-. And all this after dozens of delegates were dragged under the blow
of clubs and gun tips to be expelled from that parody of Assembly, in which the
parties and the Stalinist commanders, who had previously agreed everything,
were entitled the whole right to decide and in which there was left no
democracy -out of the libretto- for all the participants in that assembly. Look
at these fighters for the direct democracy! With such defenders our small
current and Trotskyism are condemned ahead of time to be cannon-food of the
Stalinist fifth-column! This way, the currents that have renounced from
Trotskyism and from the “red terror” of the Bolsheviks come to an end: applying
-under a democratic robe- the worst of the terrors against the direct
democracy!
For Democracia Obrera
Carlos Munzer and Juan Pico
February 22nd, 2002
Translated into English by Eva Guerrero and Marcos Smith.
Last Moment - Last Moment - Last Moment
Emergency call to the self-claimed Trotskyist currents in Argentina
(Convergencia Socialista,
FOS, PTS, MST)
On Friday 22nd we were
finishing the writing of our letter answering the worthy solidarity note from
Convergencia Socialista against the aggression suffered by our organization and
dozens of labor fighters in the last Asamblea Piqutera headed by the Communist
Party, the Credicoop Bank, (transvestite under the name of Mobilizing Institute
of Cooperative Funds), pro-Castroists like Martino and the PO, when serious
news from the Great Buenos Aires, in fact from Merlo, are coming to us. There,
two hundreds of unemployed workers, with their families and children, coming
from the neighborhoods Arco Iris, Samoré, Pompeya, Loma Florida and Mariano
Acosta, were mobilizing to the square of Merlo demandig food in front of the Town
Hall, ruled by Otahecé, the Duhaldeist mayor.
They came as delegates from several
Popular Assemblies that are rising in their workers neighborhoods. When they
reached the square, they were received by a gang of 150 hoodlums armed with
clubs, chains and guns, and whom the mayor paid. All of them are “pointers” (so
called by the PJ to its paid patrons and hoodlums in the workers neighborhoods)
of Chiche Duhalde (President Duhalde’s wife and self appointed “minister of the
poor”) who under the scream of “death to the left!” and, “we will kill them
all!” attacked the column that was being formed disintegrating it savagely and
leaving dozens of wounded. The losses were not more serious, because of the
exemplary solidarity from the small merchants. Many were saved when the
curtains of the small trades rose to give them protection.
The attackers were “a thousand pesos
a month” paid agents, neighborhood pointers on which the Duhaldeist government
of the muncipality is settled. This same band of Otahecé is the one that
organized -together with the proprietors of the stalls in the Central Market
and the intendant of San Justo (that negotiated with D'Elìa and Alderete to go
to demand food)-, the brutal and wild aggression against the unemployed workers
that demanded food there, and that culminated with one of the comrades
murdered.
Comrades, when the
counterrevolutionary forces of the bourgeois state tremble because of the
expansion of a true revolutionary movement of unemployed, a movement that
organizes the hungry people of the Great Buenos Aires, close to the combative
unions, and close to dozens of factories that are in struggle against the
closures and the layoffs. For this reason they arm their counterrevolutionary
crash brigades, the brutal attack suffered by DO and dozens of fighters sounds
more and more reactionary and useful for the regime, just when we have to
discuss how we organize against the infamous regime and the semi fascist bands
of paid lumpen-proletarians that are already beginning to take action, and that
are becoming more and more audacious.
It sounds more and more vile and
irresponsible the attitude of all those responsible for the organization of the
16th and 17th assemblies, who allowed and then endorsed
with their presence, such attacks against the workers’ democracy in the
picketers movement.
We have wounded comrades in that
scuffle of those semi-fascist bands of agents of the damned infamous regime. It
is that the process of expansion of the unemployed movement and of assemblies
in the Gran Buenos Aires is not and it will not be peaceful. If the revolution
is already in progress, the counterrevolution is already -and it will be more
and more- in progress too.
From this point of view, the
Stalinism and their servants’ policy becomes more and more reactionary, since
they are liquidating the direct democracy, and blocking the extension and
development of the independent unemployed organizations that attack the
property of the monopolies, the imperialism and their direct representatives,
the bourgeois politicians.
The more it is tried to tight and to
control the unemployed movement and the independent organization of the
exploited that have started off in the Argentinean revolution, and the more it is
tried to liquidate their direct democracy, more and more it will weaken the
unity and the strength of the workers and the exploited masses and the
confidence in their own forces, and those examples of Merlo, today, and the
Central market, yesterday, will rapidly extend as a trickle of gunpowder.
The bureaucratic leadership of the
unemployed movement seeks to become the administrators of the “Planes Trabajar”
and develop into a real bureaucracy of the unemployed, distributing to their
preference, without any control, the millions of “Planes Trabajar”. They are
not more than the twin agents, but within the masses movement, of the Duhalde
and the Otahecé that arm the praetorian bands of the bourgeois parties of the
infamous regime.
The more the methods of the
Stalinist fifth-column prevail, demoralizing and disarming the fighters,
passing their enemies off as friends and their allies off as enemies, more and
more they will weaken the ranks of the working class and more they will
strengthen the bands of the bourgeois state. Because the question is, comrades,
why the hoodlums that attacked so that the delegates and fighters couldn't
speak in the assemblies on December 16th and 17th were
not with their clubs and their guns in the Central Market and in the hungry
town of Merlo?
Those bands, comrades, made their
first appearance in front of the Parliament attacking the left organizations
the day of the assumption of Duhalde. The lack of decision from your part on
calling the independent organisms of the masses to organize self-defense
committees, for the defense of the fighters and the mass organizations against
those bands, will be paid very expensive by the revolutionaries and the
unemployed movement. The encouraging of the semi-fascist bands indicates that
more and more they are needing a powerful punishment by the exploited and their
fighting organizations. For that reason we propose you the widest unity for
action, for that it would be indispensable to convene an urgent meeting to
impel them. The condemnation onto the Stalinist fifth-column and its servants
of the PO, would be one more step towards this objective.
For Democracia Obrera
Carlos Munzer and Juan Pico
February 23rd, 2002
Translated into English by Eva Guerrero and Marcos Smith
