English

26/6/2022

The formula of the PTS, electoralism that turns its back on the struggles

The voter: a new historical subject.

Congress proclaimed Bregman and Vilca as candidates for 2023

The Party of Socialist Workers (PTS) Congress ended with the proclamation of Myriam Bregman and Alejandro Vilca as candidates for 2023. More than a congress, it was, then, an electoral conference. For the PTS, 2022 is just the year between the 2021 and 2023 elections, and the political tasks are determined not by the class struggle, but by this calendar.

Indeed, the closing release of the congress announces that “in the second cordon of the province of Buenos Aires, in places like La Matanza, the Left Unity Front held a historic election last November, surpassing 10% of the votes in several localities”, to conclude: “the PTS decided to deepen the work of the party, opening dozens of ‘socialist cultural houses’ in different locations of Greater Buenos Aires, where the open assemblies of the PTS are held”. In other words, the issue consists of relying on the voters of 2021 to develop assemblies with the aim of grouping forces for the candidacies of 2023. The interesting thing about this resolution is that clearly, the exceptional growth that occurred in some districts of the province of Buenos Aires had a great boost with the thousands of people organized with the Polo Obrero, who carried out an intense electoral campaign like never before, jumping from the vindictive struggle to politics, and breaking with a traditional vote for Peronism. Until now, the PTS has remained absent from this entire process.

Internist proclamation

The proclamation of the complete list of candidates excluded the rest of the Left Front-Unity (FIT-U). It is, then, an internalist proclamation -that is, not to fight against the parties of the bourgeoisie, but to take over the places of the FIT-U. Through electoral means, the PTS wants to resolve a crisis that was present in its congress, referring to the setback in the development and mobilization of its own party, something that contrasts visibly with what is happening with the Partido Obrero. But, instead of seriously facing a debate and overcoming its own limits, the PTS leadership lights a candle to the electoral calendar to get out of an impasse. In its calculations, a relative electoral success within the FIT-U would show the validity of its electoral strategy.

The PTS’ proposal of an electoral formula comes at the very moment when the entire bosses’ arch is in a battle against the piquetero (unemployed) movement to break its struggle, a battle that is reflected in an intense attack on the Partido Obrero and its public spokesmen, that has taken the form of an attack on the financing (voted in each assembly) of the independent piquetero organizations. PTS’ candidates kept quiet about these attacks, which include attempts to criminalize the struggle through criminal charges. The PTS doesn’t feel challenged by these attacks because it’s looking from the outside at the struggle that is being waged. They know that it is not against them, and they don’t want to confuse the Kirchnerist electorate, much less when the attacks against the piquetero movement come from Cristina Kirchner herself.

This method is the opposite of building a class party, let alone a combat party. The cadres of a revolutionary party are forged in the class struggle, both in triumphs and defeats. The socialist culture that they proclaim to promote, that does not teach to go to the pickets and strikes, is chit-chat, it is closer to the “socialism” of the stage of degeneration of the Second International than to Bolshevism. More recently, the leadership of the PTS seems to be inspired by the organization manual of Nahuel Moreno, who also wanted to open socialist premises in the early ’80s to replicate in our country the experience of the french Socialist Party with Mitterrand’s presidency, or in the “legal left centrist” party, headed by Coral in the ’70s.

On the other hand, there is no support for the piquetero movement without supporting the claim promoted by these mobilizations: the opening of all social programs – that is, universal insurance for the unemployed. The PTS counterposes to this program the reduction of the working day to 6 hours, which, in backward countries like ours, without developed industry and with a high job impoverishment, is pure propaganda; instead of a concrete way out of the current crisis of hunger and unemployment.

Electoral orientation

The designation of Bregman as a candidate is especially functional to this policy because she stands out for her absence from all the massive mobilizations, camps, blockages, etc. This scheduled absence of the now presidential candidate and national deputy is part of an electoral calculation, of an adaptation to the systematic attack by the media on this struggle. On the other hand, while Kirchnerism is on a crusade against the struggle of the unemployed, Bregman does not miss an opportunity to adapt her interventions to officialism and its media. Even in the parliamentary field, where the spokesmen of the ruling party concentrated their entire intervention against the single paper ballot on attacking macrism (former ruling party), without attacking the party ballot with which all the parties of the regime have systematically stolen from us, starting with Peronism.

This electoral orientation has its expression, finally, in contempt for trade union work. Our commitment to the emergence of the working class in the political scene, overcoming the bureaucracy and imposing a national strike, is inscribed in the enormous crisis and in the great strikes such as that of SUTNA (tire workers’ union), the teachers of San Juan or La Rioja, or the Rio Grande’s metalworkers. But this perspective must be prepared union by union, with a policy of united front and organization for the claims, through the groupings and especially the defense of the unions, sectionals and bodies of delegates recovered from the hands of the bureaucracy. The PTS, on the other hand, is dedicated to harassing the combative leadership from a “bassist” perspective and, deep down, to reduce its activity in the labor movement to be a point of support for this permanent electoral campaign. This strategy completely left them out of the last election of 50 SUTNA delegates, among whom the workers did not elect any from the PTS.

The XXVIII Congress of the Partido Obrero

The Partido Obrero, on the other hand, voted for a campaign for a working-class’ way out of the crisis and for building a popular movement under socialist flags. The slogan of our congress aims to conquer, for a working-class’ way out of the crisis, the oppressed classes of society, in the face of the historical exhaustion of Peronism as a popular movement. The basis for raising this slogan is that our militancy organizes neighborhoods throughout the country in the fight for their claims, against the government apparatus and its bureaucrats. The response of the PTS accuses us of going to a front with sectors of the center-left, something that no one could remotely believe. It is a classic resource, which consists of covering oneself from an adaptation of the integration to the regime through leftist criticism of other currents.

These are two divergent orientations for the left.

 

Translated by Lucía de Luca

Versión en español