The turning of the Communist Party
Two lectures at the National Archives in the series "The political parties in Argentina History" on 25 October and 1 November 2000
1.Razones and background of the shift from ideologically / culturally
conference October 25, 2000
"... it is time that the policy of national democratic front will stop at the corner of useless objects to the revolution in Argentina "...
Ernesto Giudice. "Letter to my comrades." 1973
There are not many opportunities to reflect on the history of Communist Party official circles being that the Communist Party, and more generally the culture of Marxism and socialism in Argentina, is one of the cultures older policies of our people whose presence can be seen throughout the history of social struggles in Argentina.
constitutes this cycle, in my humble opinion a change, a step to begin to consider the history of the Left for what it is, as part of the history of culture. and as part of the history of politics in Argentina.
Let's talk about what is called the turn of the Communist Party, discussions and decisions around the Sixteenth Party Congress in 1985 and the first question, the first question is to inquire why it is considered much importance to these discussions, modifications.
The Communist Party has more than 82 years old and actually has more than that because Daniel Campione as demonstrated in this cycle, the Communist Party's history is inseparable from the history of the Socialist Party founded in 1896.
The materials in which convenes 21st Congress of the Communist Party to be held on 3,4 and 5 November this year, says it will be the congress of the Socialist Party founded in 1896 by the Internationalist Socialist Party, then Communist, founded in 1918, and to some extent is the congress of a new party, the party founded again by the Sixteenth Congress.
Is this true? Is this right?
is an issue that is under discussion within the Communist culture within the culture of the left in Argentina.
In the first ten years of life, between 1918 and 1928, the Communist Party held eight meetings.
Between 1928 and 1946, in the next 22 years, the Communist Party held three meetings.
Between 1946 and 1969, in the next 23 years, the Communist Party held two congresses.
Between 1969 and 1985 in the next 16 years, the Communist Party held three meetings.
One could argue that much of that time was in illegality as a cause of non-compliance with the Statute that established the completion ordinary party congress every four years.
However, it is a weak argument because one of the main capabilities demonstrated the Communist Party during those years was his tremendous organizational strength and its ability to circumvent the repression that allowed him to publish without interruption from 1928 to 1985 his weekly press, almost always, even in periods of legality had some daily publications, newspapers and magazines.
The point is that from 1928 to 1985, almost the same line of tables occupied the Communist Party leadership, and the main thing is that during this period were handled almost the same ideas during this long period of nearly sixty years.
To adequately assess the XVI Congress please refer to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party held in 1928, a Congress that ends a long period of political disputes and ideological disputes over the direction of the Argentine Communist Party culminating in a very special.
culminate in large part thanks to the intervention of the Communist International issued a Charter to intervene in the debate and encouraging the group to consolidate as the party leadership in 1928, the group known to form part of the Victoria Codovilla, Paulino González Alberdi, brothers Ghioldi, etc.
This is an item that apparently can be circumstantial and that became a matter of considerable weight.
The weakness of the group that constitutes the official leadership of the Communist Party, which leads to expressly require the intervention of the leadership of the Communist International, will affect their own discussions and in their own resolutions.
should be remembered that the Communist International, Lenin's death, and in a period where the idea socialist revolution that began on November 7, 1917 in Russia would be only the beginning of a widespread rebellion in Europe has weakened dramatically, begins to lose the original meaning.
The revolutionary wave that Lenin dreamed actually existed, but did not succeed. The rebellion broke out, at least in Germany, Italy and Hungary.
But the rebellion was defeated and killed the principal leaders in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebcknet; incarcerated Antonio Gramsci in Italy and stopped the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in what is a powerful symbol the detention of the revolutionary wave that began in November 1917.
The Communist International, Lenin formed at the request of a staff of a revolutionary offensive, a process believed to be uninterrupted world is transformed into an organization that first is going to fiercely defend the existence of socialism in one country and then going to lead this defense in the defense of foreign policy and the conditions for the survival of this country.
The importance given to the Communist International in Latin America is too weak and be resolved until 1928 a Secretariat Latin American front which does not put a Latin American but a European group of Bukharin, one of the losers in the discussion groups of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
So Droz Ebert is installed as secretary of the Latin American Secretariat of the Communist International, a position that can be considered as a kind of punishment for those who lost their internal was played in Europe.
Droz will develop the guidelines of the Communist International for Latin America and is convening a conference, the first Conference of Communist Parties of Latin America takes place in June 1929 and will define its tasks as follows (verbatim): "Latin American countries, despite their formal political independence, are semi-colonial countries which should be examined from the standpoint of our tactics as colonial and semi. As he continues Ebert Droz, the revolutionary movement in Latin America can be characterized as a peasant revolution and anti-imperialist and therefore falls into the category that has been agreed to call a bourgeois democratic revolution. "
In Actually, a few months before this definition, Victorio Codovilla, in a bulletin internal Communist International for Latin America had written an article on the characteristics of Latin America slightly different from what Ebert accordance Droz a more strictly to what Vladimir Ilich Lenin had written in the book "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" dependent on the nature of countries like Argentina, the famous rating Lenin had made Latin American countries in that book.
is not the point today to start an argument strictly one or the other definition, but check that the definition imposed by the Conference of the South American communist parties as their vision than it was Latin America, is not Codovilla Victorio, José Carlos Mariategui is obviously not one of the Marxist leaders already operating in these countries as Chile and Recabarren Mella in Cuba already had a degree of intellectual development and important political but this will be sent to the International Secretariat of the Communist International, who certainly knew very little about the area.
The party conference of 1929, which is a very inteligenciada conference, very consistent, very in tune with the VIII Congress of the Communist Party of Argentina, 1928, will face two positions on this point: a is presented by the International Secretariat, which will be the winner, the position behind which aligns the delegation of Argentina composed by Victorio Codovilla and Paulino González Alberdi, and the other is the position of the Peruvian delegation. "Anti-imperialist point of view is the thesis he had written José Carlos Mariategui and that sends health issues and can not participate.
Mariategui in his "Anti-Imperialist Viewpoint", will appeal to the history of Latin America will rely on his classic "Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality" where, for a fairly paradoxical for Argentines, much of its theoretical tool to analyze the American reality is to be supported in the Argentine Esteban Echeverría, Echeverria makes the analysis of social classes in the Viceroyalty and the view that the three existing classes: the oligarchy, the commercial bourgeoisie and the so-called lower classes: slaves, Indians, gauchos, the possible combinations that could have happened in a revolutionary process, namely that the commercial bourgeoisie allied to the lowest segment of society and not only resolve the question of political liberation but measures aimed at an independent level of social development, the reality is that actually saw the other combination of classes, and the commercial bourgeoisie and the oligarchy, which limited the First Alliance to formal political independence, keeping economic power in the hands of those who would open way to neocolonialism.
Mariategui This analysis makes for Peru and other Latin American countries, in my opinion, where best is in itself confirms Argentina where he soon the process of the First Independence and the revolutionary impulse May will be drowned by this combination of social economic interests of the oligarchy, especially Buenos Aires, which from many years before the British Invasion of 1806 already had strong relationships with British imperialism through the mechanism of smuggling illegal trade.
In fact, the marriage of Mariategui spoken in Argentina is a marriage of three very early formed between British imperialism, the oligarchy (especially the one that dominates the humid pampas and nearing port, the oligarchy of Buenos Aires) and the commercial bourgeoisie that dominates the output port and export of the Viceroyalty and after Argentina to Spain.
From
this view of history is that Mariategui and deepens an analysis of the continuity that is the conquest Viceroyalty and the Republic has the Viceroyalty from the presence of a fundamental element which is the land, the main means of production in those years for the type of economic model will be based on agricultural exports.
Mariategui is why we think is in error, as Haya de la Torre raised from the APRA and Droz from the South American Secretariat of the Communist International, hope for the national bourgeoisie in Latin America (and we add, Argentina in particular), follow the path of the national bourgeoisie of China, India and the national bourgeoisie was possible to form strong partnerships with these sectors behind a program of national liberation.
Mariategui In view, a view I share entirely the bourgeoisie in Latin America was born subordinate to imperialism and never had, at least in the south, in these countries, calling for independent development.
born sepoys, was born with will be subordinate to the empire, and as they grew, as it grew into a logical unit subordinate subordination to imperialism has grown to reach the limits of carnal relations Menem preaching or the current automatic alignment Argentine Foreign Ministry in any conflict that breaks out in the world as has happened in these days Argentina's refusal to condemn the genocide of the Palestinian people in the General Assembly of the United Nations.
It may seem an exaggeration to claim twenty-nine link the debate with the General Assembly of the United Nations these days, two thousand, and yet I think there is a consistent line of subordination to imperialism which is interrupted only momentarily throughout history.
Mariategui said that the revolution that mature in Latin America is a socialist revolution, which can and must set up partnerships with other social sectors, with other political forces, but has to be clear that what is there to fight socialism in Latin America has in the opinion of Mariategui the advantage of having a tradition in the production system, at least of the Incas, which he considers the "primitive communism."
Beyond the discussion of the real nature of production in the Inca empire, an issue that does not seem to be the crucial thing to note is this attitude of Mariategui of standing up to the reality in search of finding ways for processing, not early attitude of looking at reality as a wall that you can not break down and which must be conditioned and conditional.
is interesting, and is a work that is done, make a more serious side of life and work of José Carlos Mariategui and Codovilla Victorio.
more serious when I say, I say this because for many years, the official culture Communist work was ignored and the José Carlos Mariategui path, and vice versa when studying rarely Mariategui not intended to argue with people Mariategui underfunded or so degraded what was a debate between equals, between revolutionaries who had an even personal experience rather similar and very symbolic.
Both came from poor households, the two made a very big personal efforts to achieve an education quite minimal: no Mariategui Codovilla not have college degrees. I think Codovilla had studied in Italy the Lyceum, a form of secondary education.
Mariategui will be expelled from Peru, and he writes that Europe discovered in Peru. For its part, Codovilla will be expelled from Italy for his early revolutionary activism, as a student of the Lyceum. And the paradox that in this exile to Argentina Codovilla could never pull away from the first visions that formed on Italian capitalism in his teens.
'29 By the age difference is not great, but the two have come from very low to important places in a move that at the time was what was transforming the world.
The problem is that Marxism will develop either.
Mariategui 's Marxism Marxism is not a neat, not too orthodox Marxism. Mariategui actually looking in Marxism weapons to confront the system of domination in Peru.
Virtually all of Mariategui political shelf life will be under the rule of Leguia, a quite typical of Latin America that will govern for eleven years and is basically a man of strong positivity. And it uses the whole ideology of positivism to justify his government from the theory of continuous development and progress.
In Argentina, positivism is also the ideology of the ruling classes, however, and this is the difference between one and another block of power between the dominant one in Peru and Argentina dominant in the Generation of ' 80, which justifies the establishment of the nation and the organization of the capitalist system in full in Argentina will be able to exercise so great a cultural hegemony that positivist ideology penetrate not only the dominant strata of society but to conformation groups themselves socialists in those early years.
positivism and liberalism are to be mixed with the origins of socialism and will have a devastating effect, with dramatic results on the theoretical basis of the newly formed Communist Party.
In 1973 one of the most important intellectuals of the Communist Party, exasperated at being unable to settle his differences with the rest of the resignation of the Communist Party leadership and sends a letter entitled "Letter to my comrades" which says that for years have wondered, as many have asked him what was ultimately the strategy of Communist Party power that many people could not distinguish permanent changes in alliances and the ever-changing support on either political faction.
Ernesto Giudice, like all of them will accept the idea of \u200b\u200bthe bourgeois democratic revolution, but says the two main variants that history has known how to break through a bourgeois revolution, the revolution commoner bourgeois held in 1789 in France and the revolution dome, by agreement made by the British bourgeoisie in 1766, it appears that the Argentine Communist Party leadership had chosen the path of the English bourgeois revolution by the agreement. And after all the years he believes he has discovered that the real strategy of the Communist Party is to take saturation power for the system. The strategy to penetrate every pore of society, as did the British bourgeoisie to the monarchy in Britain.
Y requested in the letter, and transcribed almost verbatim: "It is time that the policy of national democratic front will stop at the corner of useless objects to the revolution in Argentina."
Here we are exactly in point number one meeting that was to try to show why the abandonment of the policy of national democratic front that makes the Sixteenth Congress, and working in these years we have tried to implement, an issue we will try to consolidate in the next XXI Congress to do in these next few days, is an energetic shift, very serious, the Communist Party.
A shift in policy of the Communist Party, in the way of seeing the Marxism of the Communist Party, in the eyes of Argentina's history that had the game in the way of communist militants linked to each other and communist militants to the rest of the left and that all these changes, and some others that try to address later, these changes are in some way a real re-founding of the Communist Party to the extent that if for some reason the magical and imagine the author of the play "Conversations with Che Guevara" make some militant communist missing 25 years ago back to life and see what is the Communist Party I hardly could recognize and may even disqualify you with the same language that was disqualified for other leftist groups in the '60s.
Exactly what is it that changed with the XVI Congress of the Communist Party?
First changed the characterization of Argentina, a key issue for a communist party. What we are talking about which country we want social change?
While the language has changes and the various conferences are some changes, basically from 1928 to the Sixteenth Congress maintained the idea that Argentina lacked capitalist development. That Argentina was a country whose main feature was the dependence understood primarily as an external factor, and therefore as an external factor of domination empowered the idea that a sector or the national bourgeoisie as a whole to participate in a active, in an honest, in a manner consistent with the liberation struggle national and social.
The idea that there was a "normal" development of capitalism which has led to Argentina at the same place you got Canada and Australia countries with which Argentina has shared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the same potentialities for economic development is an idea that penetrated far into the Communist Party.
The July 17, 1942, in a report to the Executive Committee, the party secretary, Jerome Arnedo Alvarez, says: "We Communists are willing to not raise any political or social demand lock or impede the free and progressive development of capitalism. "According to him, he clarifies:" By developing progressive development we mean a boost and enliven the country's natural resources while taking into account their interests and, in particular its working population ... "
That kind of capitalism never existed in Argentina, or may exist, because capitalism is organized by the capitalist economic interest and maximum gain, so you never worry capitalism , or turn away a millimeter of the pursuit of maximum profit in order to preserve the environment, health of the residents, etc..
The stubbornness to pay the foreign debt that has the system of capitalist domination in Argentina, prioritizing payments to international financial speculators for the most basic response to the health of our children is what makes a child dies in Argentina every fifty minutes from lack of proper attention given idea that does not exist, nor will there ever such kind of capitalism "normal" to which he aspired Arnedo Alvarez.
This idea is rarely expressed in a pathetic and so transparent, had in fact deeply penetrated the political consciousness of the party leadership and explains much of the attitudes and positions taken over the years.
This issue of the dependence of the Communist Party actually very early the complaint in 1928, long before the appearance of current in sociology known as the current dependence in the '60s.
Yet again a reading is entirely mechanical and dogmatic Marxism, and in particular the work of Lenin on imperialism and Lenin definition gives only as an example in her research más general sobre la transformación en imperialismo del capitalismo pre monopolista a finales del siglo XIX se toma como una enseñanza bíblica, como una ley sagrada capaz de explicar para siempre las características del capitalismo latinoamericano sin más tramite ni estudio.
Y de esta combinación de “capitalismo normal”, la teoría de la dependencia, el papel de la burguesía nacional, surge la idea de la revolución por etapas.
Primero la revolución democrática burguesa, luego la revolución socialista para cuya transformación, se explicaba, se requiere del papel hegemónico of the working class in the first stage, an issue that is resolved automatically by the growth of the Communist Party.
And in these four or five ideas condenses the theoretical basis that explains the policy, at least the official policy of the Communist Party for sixty years.
With the issue of growth of the Communist Party is essential for the transformation of the bourgeois democratic revolution into socialist revolution, it is essential to the growth of the party, and if the Communist Party is considered the vanguard of the revolution to be the bearer of pure Marxism Leninism is obvious and natural that the attitude toward other revolutionary force that is intended, or even communist left will be the attitude of hostility, intolerance and unwillingness to unity.
With
which completes the picture that explains the tragedy of the Argentine Communist Party. The tragedy of having fought a result, heroically for many years with a political outcome in such a small accumulation of forces.
there at this point a question about the story is very important.
virtually
official vision of history which is almost a liberal view of history that establishes a continuity between May Caseros, the generation of '80 and the national organization led to an idealization of the forms of representative democracy in Argentina and a misunderstanding of the true current system of domination in Argentina between the '30s and '80s.
This idea of \u200b\u200bcontinuity between May unrestricted, Caseros, the generation of '80, Sáenz Peña Law and the organization of institutions of representative democracy in Argentina did not explain the true meaning of the alternation between elected civilian governments according to constitutional and military rule imposed by military coups.
This misunderstanding of the real history coupled with the view that Argentina lacked the capitalist development will be in the fundamental theoretical basis of the policy of national democratic front, and the struggle for democratic revolution bourgeois.
This type of issues that are going to bring out a brutal way before the turn of history and the Communist Party's decision to participate in the Democratic Union next to the largest sector of the Radical Civic Union, Democratic Party Progressive and Socialist Party against the other alliance headed by Perón and integrate other sectors were radicals and socialists throughout history engine for discussions, leaders and attempts to modify this policy.
These attempts have responded with a methodology of intolerance in the debate and refusal to modify the basic line drawn in 1928 and is maintained over time that led to a number of revolutionary militants who were incorporated the ranks of the party and the Communist youth ended his life elsewhere, in other organizations which, to give just some examples could appoint Mark Osatinsky who had been secretary of the Communist Youth of Santa Fe and then was one of the leaders of the Peronist Youth Regional of the North based in Tucumán, Roberto Stay who had been secretary of the Communist Youth Circle Faculty of Law of the UBA and died fighting the dictatorship from the ranks of Montoneros, and Joaquín Basanta, leader of the Communist Party of San Juan. expelled in 1956. and one of the cornerstones of the July 26 Movement of Cuba in the organization of the influx of weapons from Miami to the Sierra Maestra in 1958 and continued to work with the intelligence of the Cuban revolution until his death in 1990 who was lucky to meet him personally in his last days of Havana excited by the Sixteenth Congress and suspicious of the direction of Gorbachev and Co. ..
All this changes with the Sixteenth Congress, we abandon the idea that capitalism is needed and states flatly that Argentina is a capitalist country without a doubt, that the cause of the ills of our people must that and that the solution proposed by the communist is a socialist revolution.
That to win the socialist revolution is to build people's power, we must build people's capacity to resist, to confront and defeat the current system of domination and that this task is not may be the work of any strength left alone for what is required as an initial step, Primal, the constitution of the unity of the Left in Argentina as a target and as a daily practice of political behavior.
A I am referring, if changes were of such magnitude, if that was changed was so great, I think we should dismiss as conspiracy theories that this was the result of conspiratorial activity a secret service who knows where, or even the personal views of all of this happened because of the role of one, two or some militants or leaders of the party or the Communist Youth
I think the history of the Communist Party is a contradictory story.
A conflicting story between discourse and practice. Generally much more advanced practice the speech.
is a story of contradictions among the members and leadership, among the members among themselves and also between members of the management.
is so bad accept the idea, which exists to the Sixteenth Congress, a path entirely consistent, perfect, and to explain why the revolution was not must appeal to real magic passes why this path, the policy that no errors had not had success, like going to the reverse idea that eighty years of the Communist Party, hundreds of thousands of activists who went through their ranks and have brought from unions to football clubs, from public libraries to credit unions, from volunteer fire organizations to have some of the most prominent scientists, artists and intellectuals in their ranks, all that is disposable and not play no role in the real history of Argentina.
The history of a party can not be read only on the statements and documents from his leadership, the history of a party is in many lines of action, and in the case of a party like ours, the establishment and membership of hundreds of thousands of colleagues who went through their ranks.
Beyond the illusions and valuations, I think if we follow the idea of \u200b\u200bAntonio Gramsci that the parties are what they are in the class struggle, that all this has been said, and that are the reason the turn made inevitable, the Communist Party, most of the time in the class struggle in Argentina played for the side of the working class and people.
What the XVI Congress began to discuss is that the imprecision in the strategy, the difficulty in understanding the reality and the difficulties in policy meant that the contribution of the Communists to the class struggle in Argentina were less productive and less efficient than it would be desirable.
In the Communist Party from 1928 to 1985 there were many discussions that are called fractions. What is the difference between the fractions and the turn?
Firstly most of the fractions are remembered by the group or the international political force which was aligned with each of the respective fractions and so are the fractions of the Chinese, Yugoslavs, etc..
The XVI Congress basically begins by discussing the balance of the class struggle in Argentina and promptly begins discussing the election results of 1983, the withdrawal of the Communist candidate for president who was the formula Rubén Iscaro Irene Rodriguez and support for the Peronist-led formula Luder / Bittel, in this discussion because he had come to this policy behindist took the province of Buenos Aires to support the end is passed Herminio Iglesias a question which had been the policy during the military dictatorship, which had been raised for the first time that tactic to differentiate between fascist and non-fascist sectors in the army, and that discussion of the dictatorship is the discussion which had been the attitude of the Communist Party before the rise of Peronism and the two symmetrical consequences had this attitude for so long that the variations were then found that the variant was uncritically support Peronism and especially to the Peronist union bureaucracy or the variant sectarian, liberal , gorilla. One tends to bow to the right Peronist union bureaucracy, the other tends to bow to the radical and the "progressive" wing of liberalism in Argentina. These two behaviors coexisted for a long time in the match.
And that discussion of Peronism then it will be a discussion about politics and start to discuss the whole strategy of the bourgeois democratic revolution.
And in discussing the strategy of the bourgeois democratic revolution, appears Mariategui and 29 conference and the conference of '29 comes the need to think that there was only one way to be a Marxist but, least in the '29 had two and if there were two in '29 maybe could have been more than one way to be a Marxist during that time.
And then this sequence will be closed with a discussion of the methodology, the relationship between militancy and party, and that discussion each of the militants ended up discussing his life and his draft balance of membership in a sequence very complex and that not everyone could do it in a comprehensive manner and from this view is now easy to explain, but that none of us was easy.
whole process will bear fruit for at least three reasons.
First . because the Communist Party was about to explode or was exploding as a result of the magnitude of errors involving Luder Bittel support and errors committed during the military dictatorship, especially for a party that had brought over a hundred missing and several thousand political prisoners
Secondly, because he had matured a generation of activists in the party that had starred in his youth an experience as the Coordinator of the Youth Policy in the '70s and that the 80 had known closely successful experience of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the offensive of the Farabundo Martí in El Salvador and from those experiences he had met other experiences, other literature, other thought than that circulated under the supervision of the Commission for Propaganda and ideological equipment.
And thirdly, because in the direction of the Communist Youth and part of the party leadership, it is understood that if the Communist Party was not a process of turning the match was going to explode and would disappear from the scene.
This is the background and causes of the debate process of the XVI Congress had a dual character.
If one thinks as the militant youth of the '70s, you think it's a turn that was late and that it would have made him a communist militancy have made the XVI Congress in 1968, for example, and power participating, and participated in the struggles opened by the Cordobazo otherwise, from another perspective as Ernesto Giudice claimed in his letter to my comrades, with the fantastic idea to build a force for revolution.
And so, from one point of view, the shift of the Party is a turn delayed and delayed.
But if you think from the point of view what happened in the world soon after the fall of Socialism and the virtual disappearance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist movement can say with total objectivity, I think, that the turn of the Communist Party had anticipatory in nature, preventive.
And that without the debates of the Sixteenth Congress, the Communist Party of Argentina, for its special relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I tried to explain throughout the talk, by the degree of penetration of the dogmatic reading of Marxism, the degree of intolerance towards other readings revolutionary and to other experiences could hardly have survived the fall of real socialism, the USSR, the triumph of Menem in the election of '89 and all that happened in these years.
Because in reality, far from the vision so strong fault in Argentina by the weight of Judeo-Christian morality, self-criticism was not to find blame, to save us and know who it is that we ruined life "but is made from a glance, a revolutionary perspective from a balance of the class struggle in Argentina, from a stronger commitment to the generation that fought and almost won in the 70s, and from the commitment to missing persons whose flag should eventually lead to victory.
And from that perspective, the shift of the game was to better serve workers and the Argentine people.
ever Lenin spoke of strengthening the self finally making it, Fidel said so in a more Latin, and with this term: "the feast of our self, the enemy will only eat the crumbs" .
The essence of this feast will benefit the people and the struggle of Argentine workers.
The turning of the Communist Party
2. Changes in real political action. Fifteen years of struggle for the unity of the left
Jose Ernesto Schulman conference
in the Archivo General de la Nación.
on 1 November 2000
We will try to give continuity to the opinions and thoughts that we did last week.
We attempt to demonstrate that the Communist Party came a real change, the shift is a real change in the way of looking at the reality of the strategy and everyday political behavior of concrete political practice
also tried to explain that this process began as a process of self spot on the 1983 electoral positions, but to the extent that was unfolding was reaching its own dynamics, and was covering each of the instances that constitute the thought of a political party, the debate on political developments point to the more general strategy, including thinking revolutionary theory of Marxism.
What we want to emphasize is that by modifying the way of looking at reality, to change the way close to Marxism, the result was that changed the look of reality and how we have tried to think of the week passed to the shift as a process of error correction can also be thought to turn a new reading of the national reality, Latin America and the world and on that basis the resulting change in the actual policies and the formulation of a new strategy.
So if we think the shift as a policy change Communist Party's real, try to make the history of the Communist Party leads us to believe the story of the last 15 years, history of social struggles of the workers and popular struggles, and arrived at some basic concepts which Antonio Gramsci is that the story of a political party is the story of a country from a monographic point of view.
can not understand the history of a party or an internal process of a party which is east of the turn, if not from an understanding of what really happened in the entire social life Argentina. Obviously in the short time we have to talk about not dealing podermos such a task but simply point out some tips for outstanding research and debate.
The turning of the Communist Party began with gestures that were produced in response to challenges of the real political struggle, not necessarily from the beginning designed as part of a strategy whose end is the one that was, the turn complete, integrated policy of the party.
The first gesture or one of the first acts of anticipating and if they start the turn, took place in Rosario in October 1984 with the completion of the first act of homage to Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born in Rosario , the first public, post-dictatorship and the first public event that the Argentine Communist Party perform a tribute to Che.
With this act of homage to Che began a process of reconciliation among the Argentine communists with Guevara and marked from the practical point of view the breaking of almost complete dominance of the Soviet hermeneutics of Marxism in the Communist Party Argentina.
Opening the thought of Guevara was only the first step of opening and incorporation of Mariátegui thought of Jorge Shafik Handall, then general secretary of the Communist Party of Salvador and now President of the Chamber of Deputies of Salvador, one of the commanders of the Farabundo Marti also thought Pineiro Losada one of the commanders of the Cuban revolution and author who died recently in those years a very important book was called " The paths of unity "and in general a strong shift in the way of looking at Marxism, which had been characterized by the euro-centrism, a sharp focus on topics of Latin American Marxism and strong links with Central American revolutionary processes were in a boom and development.
remember that the revolution Sandinista Nicaragua had won only 6 years behind the July 19, 1979, that the Cuban revolution was in the process of strength and growing throughout Latin America that challenged the power experiences in Guatemala with the URNG National Revolutionary Union of Guatemala in El Salvador with the Farabundo Martí and many of these countries.
The first sign of recovery and reunion with Che project 15 years in a consistent policy of the Communist Party argetino of promoting both the theoretical renewal of Marxist thought in Argentina and Latin America, as in a strong desire to link up with the rest of Latin American revolutionary forces
result of this first act and the policy was applied from there, made many Latin American seminars on the thought of Guevara, helped found the journal Free America, the Label really only magazine that exists in Latin America since the critical thinking that leads a Brazilian priest Frei Betto, whose secretary general is from Argentina and Communist Claudia Korol and also produced some of the seminars that movement of the joint-Free America and the meeting forces that were to converge all the way to San Pablo forum but from a profile try left there in St. Paul Forum is a vast movement that goes from the PT in Brazil to the PRD in Mexico to find their own agenda on the left and try to make way in there.
The act of October '84 then got his first sense of rupture with a way to see Marxism and openness to other readings and basically thinking that Guevara was screened in this manner and was also a sense that projects on time
In the speech that Patricio Echegaray, then secretary of the Communist Youth in the act of homage to Che in Rosario center Speaking of the discussion concentrated on the possibility: If in Argentina and Latin America could begin a process of revolutionary change or as formulated from radicalism, and especially since the "Alfonsina" in the government, conditions of the correlation of forces in Latin America and Argentina meant that some issues were theoretically just like to discuss the debt, but from a political standpoint was virtually impossible to take the battle for the payment and do not club debtor countries.
possibilism The debate quickly became the meeting with a discussion deeper still, that was the discussion on the balance of challenging social and political struggle of power which took place in Argentina between 1969 and 1975, and the responsibilities of the genocide and the 1976 military coup
Indeed the possibility that preached Alfonsin, Storani, Caceres and the main body of the former Coordinator of the Radical Youth mutated in the ruling hegemonic force in Argentina, came from a group of intellectuals including protruding Portantiero, Arica, José Nun and many others they had been in the '60s and '70s fundamental part of the more critical and intellectual committed to Marxist thought, Gramsci and Che Guevara in Argentina.
And the transformation of this intellectual current expressed something far deeper than the decision was an important part of the intelligentsia in the 70s had contributed to the revolutionary struggle from thought and from practice, say the decision to abandon the struggle, the assumption that changes in Argentina were irreversible and that therefore the only thing he could do was try to improve the actually existing capitalism and governments who defended
Ultimately The balance that intellectual current 70 years ago, is that you never had to fight, that defeat was preordained from before even that all forms of political violence is bad in itself, deplorable and disposable.
Actually this discussion in the world revolutionary movement is an old discussion. Discussing the consequences of defeat of the Paris Commune, Engels said that the most painful of defeats is that people forget the reasons why they fought, and Marx had critical views to the direction of the Commune of Paris before confrontation broke out between the Commune and the French government, which would be assisted by his "enemy" the German army, is very explicit writing letters saying that there had been a mistake to fight, that in any case the mistake was not to fight with more substance, more, more capacity and organization: "The bourgeois bastard put Versailles Parisians with the option to stop the fight or succumb without a fight. In the second case, the demoralization of the working class would have been a disgrace enormously greater than the fall of any number of bosses "and the same discussion had occurred in 1905, after the events of the call the first Russian revolution when Lenin is to discuss with the same sense that sorry or scared by the defeat that never should have argued have struggled.
Echegaray Which raises the act of Che, and will develop in the months following discussion with the possibilities is the same: the struggle of the Argentine people, their social, political, including organizations policies that had chosen armed struggle to pave the way for their political project was a fair fight and the discussion should be what were the causes that prevented the triumph of that struggle. The discussion was as lodí improve the fight, but never of the type proposed Arico, Portantiero and Nun that should never have been fought, a vision of sorry for the fight.
The other gesture that will go to build the turn of the Communist Party and that will be leveraged forward too, will happen in June 1985 when Dr. Alfonsin, the President's Office, announced radio a coup plot, calls for the Plaza de Mayo in defense of democracy and a crowd that has been mobilized in defense of democracy and against the coup raises that Argentina is in a state of war economy and that there Proceed to the first radical adjustment from which, without interruption, have followed one after another until he lost track of how many have been up to today we are already suffering the second ajustazo government La Rua
But you can set, if time, the history of adjustments "democracy" began in June of '85 with the Austral Plan, declared by Alfonsin from a discourse of justification that this approach is based on possibilistic
The thesis of democracy or chaos and that to save democracy, the economy had to be adjusted so as not to upset the owners of real power will be repeated as discourse justificatory adjustment until today. Change sometimes cute, but the speech is always the same: if we do this market gets angry if we do what se enojan los militares, es el mismo discurso justificatorio en los 15 años, la misma lógica del pensamiento colonizado que busca transformar a la victima en responsable de la violación sufrida.
La columna del Partido Comunista, que era muy numerosa, se retiró de la Plaza de Mayo cuando Alfonsin planteó lo de la economía de guerra, y comienza entre Alfonsin y la dirección del viraje del Partido Comunista una discusión pública; que por supuesto gana Alfonsin ya que él habla desde los actos oficiales y tiene como medios de comunicación a los medios de comunicación nacionales, a los dirigentes políticos y a los intelectuales organicos del sistema, sus órganos de prensao, sus revistas, sus periódicos.
Alfonsin dedica 4 o 5 discursos a la discusión que se había abierto con el Partido Comunista. Primero plantea que “a los que se niegan al plan Austral les decimos que no son de acá” y está estableciendo nuevamente que el que se opone a la política oficial es un extranjero, no tiene nacionalidad y en definitiva en la consecuencia de su razonamiento vuelve al discurso justificatorio de los españoles de que los indios en realidad no son humanos y por eso se los puede matar. Si no estas de acuerdo con el plan de ajuste, no sos argentino, si no sos argentino se puede volver a cometer el genocidio, el terrorismo de estado whatever ...
then argues that the Communist Party debates have reinstalled the issue of violence in Argentina and that democracy is in danger and even will make a speech in a public appeal to hold it the traditional policy of national democratic front that had supported the Communist Party for 50 years and we've tried to explain their consequences, and because changes even gone as far as using international travel to Cuba and seek to raise the Commander Fidel Castro, his differences with the Argentine community.
What bothered him so much Alfonsin to see, because the Argentine Communist Party was then a minority voting strength to the maximum, which had been in very difficult conditions when he left the dictatorship and also debate the XVI Congress itself had destabilized in a high
A Alfonsin was concerned about two or three things, first that the complaint by the Communist Party of the theory of demons, the ideology of the possibilities and the real role was playing the Alfonsin government, concerned that I consider to be the radical myth of human rights, this idea long held in Argentina that the governments of the Union Civica Radical and radicalism as a force, have had a high commitment to defending human rights, an idea that does not stand historical analysis if we think that the first radical President Irigoyen was the one who ordered the slaughter of Patagonia Rebelde, is the command the killing of the Tragic Week in Patricios Park neighborhood, or at the very same President Illia example, three months before being ousted in 1966, denied the personality of the Communist Party's election saying that we were a party "who had no commitment to democracy "they put 100 Angeloz radical leaders such as mayors of the" Jackal "Menendez Videla's dictatorship in the province of Cordoba that Dr. Alfonsin is the policy developed and built of impunity in accordance with the laws of Punto Final, neglect laws and agreements with Rico at Easter.
addition, secondly, what worried and bothered Alfonsin was that by breaking with the policy of the National Democratic Front and regain autonomy and political independence, the Communist Party ceased to be a force tolerable policy, ceased to be a force even usable in any political process and transformed into a genuine opposition force that occupied a place on the left, and was going to strengthen that area.
That first wave of the withdrawal of Plaza de Mayo will continue with the rejection of all praise adjustment plans, with the refusal to pay foreign debt and the consistent, without any hesitation in the condition it was Communist Party during the last 15 years in the resistance to setting plans Alfonsin, in reporting the nature of the Menem government even before he takes, participation in the fight against Menem from the first day and in every one cycle of struggle that was against the Menem government.
In our opinion the fight against Menem went on for three cycles and the Communists were part the first cycle of the struggles against privatization and played a rather important role in the railway strike de1991 40 days, the attempt to confront the most serious privatization was part of the labor movement were an important part of the second pregnancy cycle of struggles that began with the Riojanazo December 1993 when the town burned down the gates of Government House in the province of La Rioja and were also part of Santiagazo of December 18, 1993 which was a popular movement that ended burning all symbols of power in Santiago del Estero, and were also part of the third cycle of struggle against Menem was the mass mobilization against the 20 th anniversary of the coup in 1996.
words from that first act to leave the square to protest the declaration of a war economy are 15 years of a consistent policy to address the fit and the prescription of the International Monetary Fund is precisely the that have brought us to where we are, in the newspaper La Razon said today that Argentina 1000 per day cross the poverty line which means that his family receives $ 146 a month, that is the reality of Argentina after fifteen years of adjustment reported to save the economy and democracy. More crisis and less democracy.
The other gesture that foreshadows and make the shift at the same time training for the 1985 elections the People's Front for an electoral agreement between the Communist Party and the MAS and forces Peronist groups especially children and the province of Buenos Aires, Villaflor, Soares and some others and this is an absolutely unprecedented in the political left in Argentina, as good communists and Trotskyists in Argentina had been opposing forces at the highest level of confrontation.
From that first People's Front, which will weaken and diluted in April '87 Easter differences, to be reconstituted with the United Left in 1988, which will produce two major events: the first open elections are the first internal political force in Argentina carried out with great success, more than 400,000 voters in December 1988; as an effort to bring the organized left parties on the left is not organized in political parties or social call and especially to be revived, and it seems to me that is absolutely recoverable, the carrying out of the Square in May 1990 not in reply with a popular high-range, to that of Si to organize Plaza Bernardo Neustadt, then your program with Mariano Grondona and President Menem.
The first Izquierda Unida, the 1988, 89, 90, will be seriously affected by and change the world situation, by the fall of the Wall, the dismantling of the socialist camp, by reading it in the MAS first instance of the events that are fought in the former Soviet Union, they take only a weakening of the Stalinist leadership of socialism to be replaced by a new leadership of Trotskyist socialist character, from that perspective that they were not considered appropriate to participate into an alliance with a force that they characterized as Stalinist and decide to break Izquierda Unida, United Left the first, and stay. step. with Deputy elected by an alliance of left to them.
The Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union of course create a game like the Argentine Communist Party a tremendous shock, and inside are three views on how to address the crisis, the first is a vision of claudication: the current president of FREPASO senators block the province of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Sigal, then a current heads it clear that the USSR fell, they fell off the wall, that capitalism has triumphed, not makes no sense to continue to maintain a force to declare the revolution and socialist changes proposed in Argentina; the other view is a view that says that the revolutionary movement is in trouble, all it says is part of an enemy attack, let us hold that it is not true what they say about Stalin, it is not true what they say critically on socialism in the Soviet Union, keep the goal and continue as we have been all my life with an attitude that was a kind of regression of the changes since the XVI congress. that position was articulated and are now in a game called Extraordinary Communist Party Congress, a very small insertion in the actual movement
The third attitude is assumed by most then the direction of the party, which connects with all the effort from the journal Free America, seminars Che theoretical renewal and commitment to two things: to be linked to the revolutionary movement that takes the same attitude renewal of revolutionary ideas from the Communist Party of Cuba with Fidel Castro to the Frente Farabundo Marti in El Salvador and other organizations.
then be directed at consolidating the turn of the Sixteenth Party Congress initiated and spread even to a series of issues not analyzed so far with what you see in the crisis of socialism, with a renewed vision of socialism The role of the state under socialism, the recovery of the idea of \u200b\u200bautonomy of the labor movement before and after the struggle for power, etc.
This effort to deepen the turn, is first expressed in a document signed by five Latin American revolutionary leaders, The Five Letter signed by Jorge Shafik Handal, Narciso Isa Conde, Patricio Echegaray, Rigoberto Padilla, and 1990 posed two questions that now take on great importance in the distance, the first idea is to say, against all the then dominant discourse, which had not only crisis of socialism, but also had crisis of capitalism, these two crises were force and that capitalism also had its crisis that was unfolding, veiled by the crisis of socialism, and even stronger second idea is an idea in itself a profound renewal of revolutionary thought they will say the hope of revolution this in Latin America and will say Latin America is a continent of hope revolutionary Europe is not dominated by social democracy, is not the territory of the former socialist countries, Africa is also not the terrible consequences that has had the colonization, but in this continent, the history, the development of capitalism, for a number of combinations is possible that revives the hope of socialism for all the world and that is what actually happened in these ten years
If there is a place in the world where socialism has been kept alive is in Cuba, if there is a place in the world where the left has been renovated has been revitalized and has strengthened, it is in Latin America, the PT has just won a parliamentary majority in Brazil, the Farabundo Marti conquered it in March this year in El Salvador, the Frente Amplio is a force that can not be ignored in Uruguayan politics in Brazil has grown a popular movement, the Landless Movement, which generates experiences of people's power at the regional level, completely original, are more than a million peasants live in camps run Landless in Brazil, and in recent years has become, after several decades, a political force left, clear from the communist culture, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, to established as a force capable of challenging the power and proposed changes revolutionaries.
Thus, from the extreme weakness and breakage of the United Left seeks to maintain the unity and effort by building an alternative, the first form calls the Southern Front, participating in whole process of the Frente Grande foundation with the idea that it is possible and desirable, an agreement on the left to center-left sectors, with Christian sectors, with sectors that are oriented towards some kind of change, and the effort of the Communists will end as we know in a process of absolute hegemony of Chacho Alvarez in Front Great and expulsion from the Communist Party of the Frente Grande, in July 1994 marking the beginning of a rightward spiraling Frente Grande, then FREPASO, then Alliance and can be displayed in a parable that ends in this waiver where Chacho Alvarez it says it is impossible to change from within the government even in the basic theme of corruption.
What we have discussed about this experience is that it was right by encouraging and training a broad agreement against neoliberalism, against the model, but what we perceive at the time was right strategy and the true extent or the real danger Auyero group, Chacho, Meijide and above all the lesson we draw is that agreements can go to the left center-left forces, even with core strengths in the struggle to defend democracy and the struggle for social changes, however small, of what is left is to go together, go and visit constituted identity, as we say, go drive on the left to the center and not vice versa because we dominate and we Coptic, which is why this revival is that we have done three years ago and the United Left is not an effort that aims to build a political alternative in Argentina against neoliberalism and only in the United Left but we propose that the left again having an identity, the Left again have visibility that will be visible for part of society and from that gained political stature to propose to all the forces that refuse to validate the model of capitalism in Argentina to build what ever resolved or the 80-year history of the Communist Party or in the 120-year history of capitalism in Argentina, which is to constitute a political force alternative to capitalism with the strength to confront and to defeat it.
shift that day the Communist Party will fully come to fruition, and we can say so hermoza what we've created something bigger than ourselves.
SOURCE: http://cronicasdelnuevosiglo.wordpress.com/2000/11/01/el-viraje-del-partido-comunista/
Two lectures at the National Archives in the series "The political parties in Argentina History" on 25 October and 1 November 2000
1.Razones and background of the shift from ideologically / culturally
conference October 25, 2000
"... it is time that the policy of national democratic front will stop at the corner of useless objects to the revolution in Argentina "...
Ernesto Giudice. "Letter to my comrades." 1973
There are not many opportunities to reflect on the history of Communist Party official circles being that the Communist Party, and more generally the culture of Marxism and socialism in Argentina, is one of the cultures older policies of our people whose presence can be seen throughout the history of social struggles in Argentina.
constitutes this cycle, in my humble opinion a change, a step to begin to consider the history of the Left for what it is, as part of the history of culture. and as part of the history of politics in Argentina.
Let's talk about what is called the turn of the Communist Party, discussions and decisions around the Sixteenth Party Congress in 1985 and the first question, the first question is to inquire why it is considered much importance to these discussions, modifications.
The Communist Party has more than 82 years old and actually has more than that because Daniel Campione as demonstrated in this cycle, the Communist Party's history is inseparable from the history of the Socialist Party founded in 1896.
The materials in which convenes 21st Congress of the Communist Party to be held on 3,4 and 5 November this year, says it will be the congress of the Socialist Party founded in 1896 by the Internationalist Socialist Party, then Communist, founded in 1918, and to some extent is the congress of a new party, the party founded again by the Sixteenth Congress.
Is this true? Is this right?
is an issue that is under discussion within the Communist culture within the culture of the left in Argentina.
In the first ten years of life, between 1918 and 1928, the Communist Party held eight meetings.
Between 1928 and 1946, in the next 22 years, the Communist Party held three meetings.
Between 1946 and 1969, in the next 23 years, the Communist Party held two congresses.
Between 1969 and 1985 in the next 16 years, the Communist Party held three meetings.
One could argue that much of that time was in illegality as a cause of non-compliance with the Statute that established the completion ordinary party congress every four years.
However, it is a weak argument because one of the main capabilities demonstrated the Communist Party during those years was his tremendous organizational strength and its ability to circumvent the repression that allowed him to publish without interruption from 1928 to 1985 his weekly press, almost always, even in periods of legality had some daily publications, newspapers and magazines.
The point is that from 1928 to 1985, almost the same line of tables occupied the Communist Party leadership, and the main thing is that during this period were handled almost the same ideas during this long period of nearly sixty years.
To adequately assess the XVI Congress please refer to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party held in 1928, a Congress that ends a long period of political disputes and ideological disputes over the direction of the Argentine Communist Party culminating in a very special.
culminate in large part thanks to the intervention of the Communist International issued a Charter to intervene in the debate and encouraging the group to consolidate as the party leadership in 1928, the group known to form part of the Victoria Codovilla, Paulino González Alberdi, brothers Ghioldi, etc.
This is an item that apparently can be circumstantial and that became a matter of considerable weight.
The weakness of the group that constitutes the official leadership of the Communist Party, which leads to expressly require the intervention of the leadership of the Communist International, will affect their own discussions and in their own resolutions.
should be remembered that the Communist International, Lenin's death, and in a period where the idea socialist revolution that began on November 7, 1917 in Russia would be only the beginning of a widespread rebellion in Europe has weakened dramatically, begins to lose the original meaning.
The revolutionary wave that Lenin dreamed actually existed, but did not succeed. The rebellion broke out, at least in Germany, Italy and Hungary.
But the rebellion was defeated and killed the principal leaders in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebcknet; incarcerated Antonio Gramsci in Italy and stopped the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in what is a powerful symbol the detention of the revolutionary wave that began in November 1917.
The Communist International, Lenin formed at the request of a staff of a revolutionary offensive, a process believed to be uninterrupted world is transformed into an organization that first is going to fiercely defend the existence of socialism in one country and then going to lead this defense in the defense of foreign policy and the conditions for the survival of this country.
The importance given to the Communist International in Latin America is too weak and be resolved until 1928 a Secretariat Latin American front which does not put a Latin American but a European group of Bukharin, one of the losers in the discussion groups of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
So Droz Ebert is installed as secretary of the Latin American Secretariat of the Communist International, a position that can be considered as a kind of punishment for those who lost their internal was played in Europe.
Droz will develop the guidelines of the Communist International for Latin America and is convening a conference, the first Conference of Communist Parties of Latin America takes place in June 1929 and will define its tasks as follows (verbatim): "Latin American countries, despite their formal political independence, are semi-colonial countries which should be examined from the standpoint of our tactics as colonial and semi. As he continues Ebert Droz, the revolutionary movement in Latin America can be characterized as a peasant revolution and anti-imperialist and therefore falls into the category that has been agreed to call a bourgeois democratic revolution. "
In Actually, a few months before this definition, Victorio Codovilla, in a bulletin internal Communist International for Latin America had written an article on the characteristics of Latin America slightly different from what Ebert accordance Droz a more strictly to what Vladimir Ilich Lenin had written in the book "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" dependent on the nature of countries like Argentina, the famous rating Lenin had made Latin American countries in that book.
is not the point today to start an argument strictly one or the other definition, but check that the definition imposed by the Conference of the South American communist parties as their vision than it was Latin America, is not Codovilla Victorio, José Carlos Mariategui is obviously not one of the Marxist leaders already operating in these countries as Chile and Recabarren Mella in Cuba already had a degree of intellectual development and important political but this will be sent to the International Secretariat of the Communist International, who certainly knew very little about the area.
The party conference of 1929, which is a very inteligenciada conference, very consistent, very in tune with the VIII Congress of the Communist Party of Argentina, 1928, will face two positions on this point: a is presented by the International Secretariat, which will be the winner, the position behind which aligns the delegation of Argentina composed by Victorio Codovilla and Paulino González Alberdi, and the other is the position of the Peruvian delegation. "Anti-imperialist point of view is the thesis he had written José Carlos Mariategui and that sends health issues and can not participate.
Mariategui in his "Anti-Imperialist Viewpoint", will appeal to the history of Latin America will rely on his classic "Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality" where, for a fairly paradoxical for Argentines, much of its theoretical tool to analyze the American reality is to be supported in the Argentine Esteban Echeverría, Echeverria makes the analysis of social classes in the Viceroyalty and the view that the three existing classes: the oligarchy, the commercial bourgeoisie and the so-called lower classes: slaves, Indians, gauchos, the possible combinations that could have happened in a revolutionary process, namely that the commercial bourgeoisie allied to the lowest segment of society and not only resolve the question of political liberation but measures aimed at an independent level of social development, the reality is that actually saw the other combination of classes, and the commercial bourgeoisie and the oligarchy, which limited the First Alliance to formal political independence, keeping economic power in the hands of those who would open way to neocolonialism.
Mariategui This analysis makes for Peru and other Latin American countries, in my opinion, where best is in itself confirms Argentina where he soon the process of the First Independence and the revolutionary impulse May will be drowned by this combination of social economic interests of the oligarchy, especially Buenos Aires, which from many years before the British Invasion of 1806 already had strong relationships with British imperialism through the mechanism of smuggling illegal trade.
In fact, the marriage of Mariategui spoken in Argentina is a marriage of three very early formed between British imperialism, the oligarchy (especially the one that dominates the humid pampas and nearing port, the oligarchy of Buenos Aires) and the commercial bourgeoisie that dominates the output port and export of the Viceroyalty and after Argentina to Spain.
From
this view of history is that Mariategui and deepens an analysis of the continuity that is the conquest Viceroyalty and the Republic has the Viceroyalty from the presence of a fundamental element which is the land, the main means of production in those years for the type of economic model will be based on agricultural exports.
Mariategui is why we think is in error, as Haya de la Torre raised from the APRA and Droz from the South American Secretariat of the Communist International, hope for the national bourgeoisie in Latin America (and we add, Argentina in particular), follow the path of the national bourgeoisie of China, India and the national bourgeoisie was possible to form strong partnerships with these sectors behind a program of national liberation.
Mariategui In view, a view I share entirely the bourgeoisie in Latin America was born subordinate to imperialism and never had, at least in the south, in these countries, calling for independent development.
born sepoys, was born with will be subordinate to the empire, and as they grew, as it grew into a logical unit subordinate subordination to imperialism has grown to reach the limits of carnal relations Menem preaching or the current automatic alignment Argentine Foreign Ministry in any conflict that breaks out in the world as has happened in these days Argentina's refusal to condemn the genocide of the Palestinian people in the General Assembly of the United Nations.
It may seem an exaggeration to claim twenty-nine link the debate with the General Assembly of the United Nations these days, two thousand, and yet I think there is a consistent line of subordination to imperialism which is interrupted only momentarily throughout history.
Mariategui said that the revolution that mature in Latin America is a socialist revolution, which can and must set up partnerships with other social sectors, with other political forces, but has to be clear that what is there to fight socialism in Latin America has in the opinion of Mariategui the advantage of having a tradition in the production system, at least of the Incas, which he considers the "primitive communism."
Beyond the discussion of the real nature of production in the Inca empire, an issue that does not seem to be the crucial thing to note is this attitude of Mariategui of standing up to the reality in search of finding ways for processing, not early attitude of looking at reality as a wall that you can not break down and which must be conditioned and conditional.
is interesting, and is a work that is done, make a more serious side of life and work of José Carlos Mariategui and Codovilla Victorio.
more serious when I say, I say this because for many years, the official culture Communist work was ignored and the José Carlos Mariategui path, and vice versa when studying rarely Mariategui not intended to argue with people Mariategui underfunded or so degraded what was a debate between equals, between revolutionaries who had an even personal experience rather similar and very symbolic.
Both came from poor households, the two made a very big personal efforts to achieve an education quite minimal: no Mariategui Codovilla not have college degrees. I think Codovilla had studied in Italy the Lyceum, a form of secondary education.
Mariategui will be expelled from Peru, and he writes that Europe discovered in Peru. For its part, Codovilla will be expelled from Italy for his early revolutionary activism, as a student of the Lyceum. And the paradox that in this exile to Argentina Codovilla could never pull away from the first visions that formed on Italian capitalism in his teens.
'29 By the age difference is not great, but the two have come from very low to important places in a move that at the time was what was transforming the world.
The problem is that Marxism will develop either.
Mariategui 's Marxism Marxism is not a neat, not too orthodox Marxism. Mariategui actually looking in Marxism weapons to confront the system of domination in Peru.
Virtually all of Mariategui political shelf life will be under the rule of Leguia, a quite typical of Latin America that will govern for eleven years and is basically a man of strong positivity. And it uses the whole ideology of positivism to justify his government from the theory of continuous development and progress.
In Argentina, positivism is also the ideology of the ruling classes, however, and this is the difference between one and another block of power between the dominant one in Peru and Argentina dominant in the Generation of ' 80, which justifies the establishment of the nation and the organization of the capitalist system in full in Argentina will be able to exercise so great a cultural hegemony that positivist ideology penetrate not only the dominant strata of society but to conformation groups themselves socialists in those early years.
positivism and liberalism are to be mixed with the origins of socialism and will have a devastating effect, with dramatic results on the theoretical basis of the newly formed Communist Party.
In 1973 one of the most important intellectuals of the Communist Party, exasperated at being unable to settle his differences with the rest of the resignation of the Communist Party leadership and sends a letter entitled "Letter to my comrades" which says that for years have wondered, as many have asked him what was ultimately the strategy of Communist Party power that many people could not distinguish permanent changes in alliances and the ever-changing support on either political faction.
Ernesto Giudice, like all of them will accept the idea of \u200b\u200bthe bourgeois democratic revolution, but says the two main variants that history has known how to break through a bourgeois revolution, the revolution commoner bourgeois held in 1789 in France and the revolution dome, by agreement made by the British bourgeoisie in 1766, it appears that the Argentine Communist Party leadership had chosen the path of the English bourgeois revolution by the agreement. And after all the years he believes he has discovered that the real strategy of the Communist Party is to take saturation power for the system. The strategy to penetrate every pore of society, as did the British bourgeoisie to the monarchy in Britain.
Y requested in the letter, and transcribed almost verbatim: "It is time that the policy of national democratic front will stop at the corner of useless objects to the revolution in Argentina."
Here we are exactly in point number one meeting that was to try to show why the abandonment of the policy of national democratic front that makes the Sixteenth Congress, and working in these years we have tried to implement, an issue we will try to consolidate in the next XXI Congress to do in these next few days, is an energetic shift, very serious, the Communist Party.
A shift in policy of the Communist Party, in the way of seeing the Marxism of the Communist Party, in the eyes of Argentina's history that had the game in the way of communist militants linked to each other and communist militants to the rest of the left and that all these changes, and some others that try to address later, these changes are in some way a real re-founding of the Communist Party to the extent that if for some reason the magical and imagine the author of the play "Conversations with Che Guevara" make some militant communist missing 25 years ago back to life and see what is the Communist Party I hardly could recognize and may even disqualify you with the same language that was disqualified for other leftist groups in the '60s.
Exactly what is it that changed with the XVI Congress of the Communist Party?
First changed the characterization of Argentina, a key issue for a communist party. What we are talking about which country we want social change?
While the language has changes and the various conferences are some changes, basically from 1928 to the Sixteenth Congress maintained the idea that Argentina lacked capitalist development. That Argentina was a country whose main feature was the dependence understood primarily as an external factor, and therefore as an external factor of domination empowered the idea that a sector or the national bourgeoisie as a whole to participate in a active, in an honest, in a manner consistent with the liberation struggle national and social.
The idea that there was a "normal" development of capitalism which has led to Argentina at the same place you got Canada and Australia countries with which Argentina has shared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the same potentialities for economic development is an idea that penetrated far into the Communist Party.
The July 17, 1942, in a report to the Executive Committee, the party secretary, Jerome Arnedo Alvarez, says: "We Communists are willing to not raise any political or social demand lock or impede the free and progressive development of capitalism. "According to him, he clarifies:" By developing progressive development we mean a boost and enliven the country's natural resources while taking into account their interests and, in particular its working population ... "
That kind of capitalism never existed in Argentina, or may exist, because capitalism is organized by the capitalist economic interest and maximum gain, so you never worry capitalism , or turn away a millimeter of the pursuit of maximum profit in order to preserve the environment, health of the residents, etc..
The stubbornness to pay the foreign debt that has the system of capitalist domination in Argentina, prioritizing payments to international financial speculators for the most basic response to the health of our children is what makes a child dies in Argentina every fifty minutes from lack of proper attention given idea that does not exist, nor will there ever such kind of capitalism "normal" to which he aspired Arnedo Alvarez.
This idea is rarely expressed in a pathetic and so transparent, had in fact deeply penetrated the political consciousness of the party leadership and explains much of the attitudes and positions taken over the years.
This issue of the dependence of the Communist Party actually very early the complaint in 1928, long before the appearance of current in sociology known as the current dependence in the '60s.
Yet again a reading is entirely mechanical and dogmatic Marxism, and in particular the work of Lenin on imperialism and Lenin definition gives only as an example in her research más general sobre la transformación en imperialismo del capitalismo pre monopolista a finales del siglo XIX se toma como una enseñanza bíblica, como una ley sagrada capaz de explicar para siempre las características del capitalismo latinoamericano sin más tramite ni estudio.
Y de esta combinación de “capitalismo normal”, la teoría de la dependencia, el papel de la burguesía nacional, surge la idea de la revolución por etapas.
Primero la revolución democrática burguesa, luego la revolución socialista para cuya transformación, se explicaba, se requiere del papel hegemónico of the working class in the first stage, an issue that is resolved automatically by the growth of the Communist Party.
And in these four or five ideas condenses the theoretical basis that explains the policy, at least the official policy of the Communist Party for sixty years.
With the issue of growth of the Communist Party is essential for the transformation of the bourgeois democratic revolution into socialist revolution, it is essential to the growth of the party, and if the Communist Party is considered the vanguard of the revolution to be the bearer of pure Marxism Leninism is obvious and natural that the attitude toward other revolutionary force that is intended, or even communist left will be the attitude of hostility, intolerance and unwillingness to unity.
With
which completes the picture that explains the tragedy of the Argentine Communist Party. The tragedy of having fought a result, heroically for many years with a political outcome in such a small accumulation of forces.
there at this point a question about the story is very important.
virtually
official vision of history which is almost a liberal view of history that establishes a continuity between May Caseros, the generation of '80 and the national organization led to an idealization of the forms of representative democracy in Argentina and a misunderstanding of the true current system of domination in Argentina between the '30s and '80s.
This idea of \u200b\u200bcontinuity between May unrestricted, Caseros, the generation of '80, Sáenz Peña Law and the organization of institutions of representative democracy in Argentina did not explain the true meaning of the alternation between elected civilian governments according to constitutional and military rule imposed by military coups.
This misunderstanding of the real history coupled with the view that Argentina lacked the capitalist development will be in the fundamental theoretical basis of the policy of national democratic front, and the struggle for democratic revolution bourgeois.
This type of issues that are going to bring out a brutal way before the turn of history and the Communist Party's decision to participate in the Democratic Union next to the largest sector of the Radical Civic Union, Democratic Party Progressive and Socialist Party against the other alliance headed by Perón and integrate other sectors were radicals and socialists throughout history engine for discussions, leaders and attempts to modify this policy.
These attempts have responded with a methodology of intolerance in the debate and refusal to modify the basic line drawn in 1928 and is maintained over time that led to a number of revolutionary militants who were incorporated the ranks of the party and the Communist youth ended his life elsewhere, in other organizations which, to give just some examples could appoint Mark Osatinsky who had been secretary of the Communist Youth of Santa Fe and then was one of the leaders of the Peronist Youth Regional of the North based in Tucumán, Roberto Stay who had been secretary of the Communist Youth Circle Faculty of Law of the UBA and died fighting the dictatorship from the ranks of Montoneros, and Joaquín Basanta, leader of the Communist Party of San Juan. expelled in 1956. and one of the cornerstones of the July 26 Movement of Cuba in the organization of the influx of weapons from Miami to the Sierra Maestra in 1958 and continued to work with the intelligence of the Cuban revolution until his death in 1990 who was lucky to meet him personally in his last days of Havana excited by the Sixteenth Congress and suspicious of the direction of Gorbachev and Co. ..
All this changes with the Sixteenth Congress, we abandon the idea that capitalism is needed and states flatly that Argentina is a capitalist country without a doubt, that the cause of the ills of our people must that and that the solution proposed by the communist is a socialist revolution.
That to win the socialist revolution is to build people's power, we must build people's capacity to resist, to confront and defeat the current system of domination and that this task is not may be the work of any strength left alone for what is required as an initial step, Primal, the constitution of the unity of the Left in Argentina as a target and as a daily practice of political behavior.
A I am referring, if changes were of such magnitude, if that was changed was so great, I think we should dismiss as conspiracy theories that this was the result of conspiratorial activity a secret service who knows where, or even the personal views of all of this happened because of the role of one, two or some militants or leaders of the party or the Communist Youth
I think the history of the Communist Party is a contradictory story.
A conflicting story between discourse and practice. Generally much more advanced practice the speech.
is a story of contradictions among the members and leadership, among the members among themselves and also between members of the management.
is so bad accept the idea, which exists to the Sixteenth Congress, a path entirely consistent, perfect, and to explain why the revolution was not must appeal to real magic passes why this path, the policy that no errors had not had success, like going to the reverse idea that eighty years of the Communist Party, hundreds of thousands of activists who went through their ranks and have brought from unions to football clubs, from public libraries to credit unions, from volunteer fire organizations to have some of the most prominent scientists, artists and intellectuals in their ranks, all that is disposable and not play no role in the real history of Argentina.
The history of a party can not be read only on the statements and documents from his leadership, the history of a party is in many lines of action, and in the case of a party like ours, the establishment and membership of hundreds of thousands of colleagues who went through their ranks.
Beyond the illusions and valuations, I think if we follow the idea of \u200b\u200bAntonio Gramsci that the parties are what they are in the class struggle, that all this has been said, and that are the reason the turn made inevitable, the Communist Party, most of the time in the class struggle in Argentina played for the side of the working class and people.
What the XVI Congress began to discuss is that the imprecision in the strategy, the difficulty in understanding the reality and the difficulties in policy meant that the contribution of the Communists to the class struggle in Argentina were less productive and less efficient than it would be desirable.
In the Communist Party from 1928 to 1985 there were many discussions that are called fractions. What is the difference between the fractions and the turn?
Firstly most of the fractions are remembered by the group or the international political force which was aligned with each of the respective fractions and so are the fractions of the Chinese, Yugoslavs, etc..
The XVI Congress basically begins by discussing the balance of the class struggle in Argentina and promptly begins discussing the election results of 1983, the withdrawal of the Communist candidate for president who was the formula Rubén Iscaro Irene Rodriguez and support for the Peronist-led formula Luder / Bittel, in this discussion because he had come to this policy behindist took the province of Buenos Aires to support the end is passed Herminio Iglesias a question which had been the policy during the military dictatorship, which had been raised for the first time that tactic to differentiate between fascist and non-fascist sectors in the army, and that discussion of the dictatorship is the discussion which had been the attitude of the Communist Party before the rise of Peronism and the two symmetrical consequences had this attitude for so long that the variations were then found that the variant was uncritically support Peronism and especially to the Peronist union bureaucracy or the variant sectarian, liberal , gorilla. One tends to bow to the right Peronist union bureaucracy, the other tends to bow to the radical and the "progressive" wing of liberalism in Argentina. These two behaviors coexisted for a long time in the match.
And that discussion of Peronism then it will be a discussion about politics and start to discuss the whole strategy of the bourgeois democratic revolution.
And in discussing the strategy of the bourgeois democratic revolution, appears Mariategui and 29 conference and the conference of '29 comes the need to think that there was only one way to be a Marxist but, least in the '29 had two and if there were two in '29 maybe could have been more than one way to be a Marxist during that time.
And then this sequence will be closed with a discussion of the methodology, the relationship between militancy and party, and that discussion each of the militants ended up discussing his life and his draft balance of membership in a sequence very complex and that not everyone could do it in a comprehensive manner and from this view is now easy to explain, but that none of us was easy.
whole process will bear fruit for at least three reasons.
First . because the Communist Party was about to explode or was exploding as a result of the magnitude of errors involving Luder Bittel support and errors committed during the military dictatorship, especially for a party that had brought over a hundred missing and several thousand political prisoners
Secondly, because he had matured a generation of activists in the party that had starred in his youth an experience as the Coordinator of the Youth Policy in the '70s and that the 80 had known closely successful experience of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the offensive of the Farabundo Martí in El Salvador and from those experiences he had met other experiences, other literature, other thought than that circulated under the supervision of the Commission for Propaganda and ideological equipment.
And thirdly, because in the direction of the Communist Youth and part of the party leadership, it is understood that if the Communist Party was not a process of turning the match was going to explode and would disappear from the scene.
This is the background and causes of the debate process of the XVI Congress had a dual character.
If one thinks as the militant youth of the '70s, you think it's a turn that was late and that it would have made him a communist militancy have made the XVI Congress in 1968, for example, and power participating, and participated in the struggles opened by the Cordobazo otherwise, from another perspective as Ernesto Giudice claimed in his letter to my comrades, with the fantastic idea to build a force for revolution.
And so, from one point of view, the shift of the Party is a turn delayed and delayed.
But if you think from the point of view what happened in the world soon after the fall of Socialism and the virtual disappearance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist movement can say with total objectivity, I think, that the turn of the Communist Party had anticipatory in nature, preventive.
And that without the debates of the Sixteenth Congress, the Communist Party of Argentina, for its special relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I tried to explain throughout the talk, by the degree of penetration of the dogmatic reading of Marxism, the degree of intolerance towards other readings revolutionary and to other experiences could hardly have survived the fall of real socialism, the USSR, the triumph of Menem in the election of '89 and all that happened in these years.
Because in reality, far from the vision so strong fault in Argentina by the weight of Judeo-Christian morality, self-criticism was not to find blame, to save us and know who it is that we ruined life "but is made from a glance, a revolutionary perspective from a balance of the class struggle in Argentina, from a stronger commitment to the generation that fought and almost won in the 70s, and from the commitment to missing persons whose flag should eventually lead to victory.
And from that perspective, the shift of the game was to better serve workers and the Argentine people.
ever Lenin spoke of strengthening the self finally making it, Fidel said so in a more Latin, and with this term: "the feast of our self, the enemy will only eat the crumbs" .
The essence of this feast will benefit the people and the struggle of Argentine workers.
The turning of the Communist Party
2. Changes in real political action. Fifteen years of struggle for the unity of the left
Jose Ernesto Schulman conference
in the Archivo General de la Nación.
on 1 November 2000
We will try to give continuity to the opinions and thoughts that we did last week.
We attempt to demonstrate that the Communist Party came a real change, the shift is a real change in the way of looking at the reality of the strategy and everyday political behavior of concrete political practice
also tried to explain that this process began as a process of self spot on the 1983 electoral positions, but to the extent that was unfolding was reaching its own dynamics, and was covering each of the instances that constitute the thought of a political party, the debate on political developments point to the more general strategy, including thinking revolutionary theory of Marxism.
What we want to emphasize is that by modifying the way of looking at reality, to change the way close to Marxism, the result was that changed the look of reality and how we have tried to think of the week passed to the shift as a process of error correction can also be thought to turn a new reading of the national reality, Latin America and the world and on that basis the resulting change in the actual policies and the formulation of a new strategy.
So if we think the shift as a policy change Communist Party's real, try to make the history of the Communist Party leads us to believe the story of the last 15 years, history of social struggles of the workers and popular struggles, and arrived at some basic concepts which Antonio Gramsci is that the story of a political party is the story of a country from a monographic point of view.
can not understand the history of a party or an internal process of a party which is east of the turn, if not from an understanding of what really happened in the entire social life Argentina. Obviously in the short time we have to talk about not dealing podermos such a task but simply point out some tips for outstanding research and debate.
The turning of the Communist Party began with gestures that were produced in response to challenges of the real political struggle, not necessarily from the beginning designed as part of a strategy whose end is the one that was, the turn complete, integrated policy of the party.
The first gesture or one of the first acts of anticipating and if they start the turn, took place in Rosario in October 1984 with the completion of the first act of homage to Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born in Rosario , the first public, post-dictatorship and the first public event that the Argentine Communist Party perform a tribute to Che.
With this act of homage to Che began a process of reconciliation among the Argentine communists with Guevara and marked from the practical point of view the breaking of almost complete dominance of the Soviet hermeneutics of Marxism in the Communist Party Argentina.
Opening the thought of Guevara was only the first step of opening and incorporation of Mariátegui thought of Jorge Shafik Handall, then general secretary of the Communist Party of Salvador and now President of the Chamber of Deputies of Salvador, one of the commanders of the Farabundo Marti also thought Pineiro Losada one of the commanders of the Cuban revolution and author who died recently in those years a very important book was called " The paths of unity "and in general a strong shift in the way of looking at Marxism, which had been characterized by the euro-centrism, a sharp focus on topics of Latin American Marxism and strong links with Central American revolutionary processes were in a boom and development.
remember that the revolution Sandinista Nicaragua had won only 6 years behind the July 19, 1979, that the Cuban revolution was in the process of strength and growing throughout Latin America that challenged the power experiences in Guatemala with the URNG National Revolutionary Union of Guatemala in El Salvador with the Farabundo Martí and many of these countries.
The first sign of recovery and reunion with Che project 15 years in a consistent policy of the Communist Party argetino of promoting both the theoretical renewal of Marxist thought in Argentina and Latin America, as in a strong desire to link up with the rest of Latin American revolutionary forces
result of this first act and the policy was applied from there, made many Latin American seminars on the thought of Guevara, helped found the journal Free America, the Label really only magazine that exists in Latin America since the critical thinking that leads a Brazilian priest Frei Betto, whose secretary general is from Argentina and Communist Claudia Korol and also produced some of the seminars that movement of the joint-Free America and the meeting forces that were to converge all the way to San Pablo forum but from a profile try left there in St. Paul Forum is a vast movement that goes from the PT in Brazil to the PRD in Mexico to find their own agenda on the left and try to make way in there.
The act of October '84 then got his first sense of rupture with a way to see Marxism and openness to other readings and basically thinking that Guevara was screened in this manner and was also a sense that projects on time
In the speech that Patricio Echegaray, then secretary of the Communist Youth in the act of homage to Che in Rosario center Speaking of the discussion concentrated on the possibility: If in Argentina and Latin America could begin a process of revolutionary change or as formulated from radicalism, and especially since the "Alfonsina" in the government, conditions of the correlation of forces in Latin America and Argentina meant that some issues were theoretically just like to discuss the debt, but from a political standpoint was virtually impossible to take the battle for the payment and do not club debtor countries.
possibilism The debate quickly became the meeting with a discussion deeper still, that was the discussion on the balance of challenging social and political struggle of power which took place in Argentina between 1969 and 1975, and the responsibilities of the genocide and the 1976 military coup
Indeed the possibility that preached Alfonsin, Storani, Caceres and the main body of the former Coordinator of the Radical Youth mutated in the ruling hegemonic force in Argentina, came from a group of intellectuals including protruding Portantiero, Arica, José Nun and many others they had been in the '60s and '70s fundamental part of the more critical and intellectual committed to Marxist thought, Gramsci and Che Guevara in Argentina.
And the transformation of this intellectual current expressed something far deeper than the decision was an important part of the intelligentsia in the 70s had contributed to the revolutionary struggle from thought and from practice, say the decision to abandon the struggle, the assumption that changes in Argentina were irreversible and that therefore the only thing he could do was try to improve the actually existing capitalism and governments who defended
Ultimately The balance that intellectual current 70 years ago, is that you never had to fight, that defeat was preordained from before even that all forms of political violence is bad in itself, deplorable and disposable.
Actually this discussion in the world revolutionary movement is an old discussion. Discussing the consequences of defeat of the Paris Commune, Engels said that the most painful of defeats is that people forget the reasons why they fought, and Marx had critical views to the direction of the Commune of Paris before confrontation broke out between the Commune and the French government, which would be assisted by his "enemy" the German army, is very explicit writing letters saying that there had been a mistake to fight, that in any case the mistake was not to fight with more substance, more, more capacity and organization: "The bourgeois bastard put Versailles Parisians with the option to stop the fight or succumb without a fight. In the second case, the demoralization of the working class would have been a disgrace enormously greater than the fall of any number of bosses "and the same discussion had occurred in 1905, after the events of the call the first Russian revolution when Lenin is to discuss with the same sense that sorry or scared by the defeat that never should have argued have struggled.
Echegaray Which raises the act of Che, and will develop in the months following discussion with the possibilities is the same: the struggle of the Argentine people, their social, political, including organizations policies that had chosen armed struggle to pave the way for their political project was a fair fight and the discussion should be what were the causes that prevented the triumph of that struggle. The discussion was as lodí improve the fight, but never of the type proposed Arico, Portantiero and Nun that should never have been fought, a vision of sorry for the fight.
The other gesture that will go to build the turn of the Communist Party and that will be leveraged forward too, will happen in June 1985 when Dr. Alfonsin, the President's Office, announced radio a coup plot, calls for the Plaza de Mayo in defense of democracy and a crowd that has been mobilized in defense of democracy and against the coup raises that Argentina is in a state of war economy and that there Proceed to the first radical adjustment from which, without interruption, have followed one after another until he lost track of how many have been up to today we are already suffering the second ajustazo government La Rua
But you can set, if time, the history of adjustments "democracy" began in June of '85 with the Austral Plan, declared by Alfonsin from a discourse of justification that this approach is based on possibilistic
The thesis of democracy or chaos and that to save democracy, the economy had to be adjusted so as not to upset the owners of real power will be repeated as discourse justificatory adjustment until today. Change sometimes cute, but the speech is always the same: if we do this market gets angry if we do what se enojan los militares, es el mismo discurso justificatorio en los 15 años, la misma lógica del pensamiento colonizado que busca transformar a la victima en responsable de la violación sufrida.
La columna del Partido Comunista, que era muy numerosa, se retiró de la Plaza de Mayo cuando Alfonsin planteó lo de la economía de guerra, y comienza entre Alfonsin y la dirección del viraje del Partido Comunista una discusión pública; que por supuesto gana Alfonsin ya que él habla desde los actos oficiales y tiene como medios de comunicación a los medios de comunicación nacionales, a los dirigentes políticos y a los intelectuales organicos del sistema, sus órganos de prensao, sus revistas, sus periódicos.
Alfonsin dedica 4 o 5 discursos a la discusión que se había abierto con el Partido Comunista. Primero plantea que “a los que se niegan al plan Austral les decimos que no son de acá” y está estableciendo nuevamente que el que se opone a la política oficial es un extranjero, no tiene nacionalidad y en definitiva en la consecuencia de su razonamiento vuelve al discurso justificatorio de los españoles de que los indios en realidad no son humanos y por eso se los puede matar. Si no estas de acuerdo con el plan de ajuste, no sos argentino, si no sos argentino se puede volver a cometer el genocidio, el terrorismo de estado whatever ...
then argues that the Communist Party debates have reinstalled the issue of violence in Argentina and that democracy is in danger and even will make a speech in a public appeal to hold it the traditional policy of national democratic front that had supported the Communist Party for 50 years and we've tried to explain their consequences, and because changes even gone as far as using international travel to Cuba and seek to raise the Commander Fidel Castro, his differences with the Argentine community.
What bothered him so much Alfonsin to see, because the Argentine Communist Party was then a minority voting strength to the maximum, which had been in very difficult conditions when he left the dictatorship and also debate the XVI Congress itself had destabilized in a high
A Alfonsin was concerned about two or three things, first that the complaint by the Communist Party of the theory of demons, the ideology of the possibilities and the real role was playing the Alfonsin government, concerned that I consider to be the radical myth of human rights, this idea long held in Argentina that the governments of the Union Civica Radical and radicalism as a force, have had a high commitment to defending human rights, an idea that does not stand historical analysis if we think that the first radical President Irigoyen was the one who ordered the slaughter of Patagonia Rebelde, is the command the killing of the Tragic Week in Patricios Park neighborhood, or at the very same President Illia example, three months before being ousted in 1966, denied the personality of the Communist Party's election saying that we were a party "who had no commitment to democracy "they put 100 Angeloz radical leaders such as mayors of the" Jackal "Menendez Videla's dictatorship in the province of Cordoba that Dr. Alfonsin is the policy developed and built of impunity in accordance with the laws of Punto Final, neglect laws and agreements with Rico at Easter.
addition, secondly, what worried and bothered Alfonsin was that by breaking with the policy of the National Democratic Front and regain autonomy and political independence, the Communist Party ceased to be a force tolerable policy, ceased to be a force even usable in any political process and transformed into a genuine opposition force that occupied a place on the left, and was going to strengthen that area.
That first wave of the withdrawal of Plaza de Mayo will continue with the rejection of all praise adjustment plans, with the refusal to pay foreign debt and the consistent, without any hesitation in the condition it was Communist Party during the last 15 years in the resistance to setting plans Alfonsin, in reporting the nature of the Menem government even before he takes, participation in the fight against Menem from the first day and in every one cycle of struggle that was against the Menem government.
In our opinion the fight against Menem went on for three cycles and the Communists were part the first cycle of the struggles against privatization and played a rather important role in the railway strike de1991 40 days, the attempt to confront the most serious privatization was part of the labor movement were an important part of the second pregnancy cycle of struggles that began with the Riojanazo December 1993 when the town burned down the gates of Government House in the province of La Rioja and were also part of Santiagazo of December 18, 1993 which was a popular movement that ended burning all symbols of power in Santiago del Estero, and were also part of the third cycle of struggle against Menem was the mass mobilization against the 20 th anniversary of the coup in 1996.
words from that first act to leave the square to protest the declaration of a war economy are 15 years of a consistent policy to address the fit and the prescription of the International Monetary Fund is precisely the that have brought us to where we are, in the newspaper La Razon said today that Argentina 1000 per day cross the poverty line which means that his family receives $ 146 a month, that is the reality of Argentina after fifteen years of adjustment reported to save the economy and democracy. More crisis and less democracy.
The other gesture that foreshadows and make the shift at the same time training for the 1985 elections the People's Front for an electoral agreement between the Communist Party and the MAS and forces Peronist groups especially children and the province of Buenos Aires, Villaflor, Soares and some others and this is an absolutely unprecedented in the political left in Argentina, as good communists and Trotskyists in Argentina had been opposing forces at the highest level of confrontation.
From that first People's Front, which will weaken and diluted in April '87 Easter differences, to be reconstituted with the United Left in 1988, which will produce two major events: the first open elections are the first internal political force in Argentina carried out with great success, more than 400,000 voters in December 1988; as an effort to bring the organized left parties on the left is not organized in political parties or social call and especially to be revived, and it seems to me that is absolutely recoverable, the carrying out of the Square in May 1990 not in reply with a popular high-range, to that of Si to organize Plaza Bernardo Neustadt, then your program with Mariano Grondona and President Menem.
The first Izquierda Unida, the 1988, 89, 90, will be seriously affected by and change the world situation, by the fall of the Wall, the dismantling of the socialist camp, by reading it in the MAS first instance of the events that are fought in the former Soviet Union, they take only a weakening of the Stalinist leadership of socialism to be replaced by a new leadership of Trotskyist socialist character, from that perspective that they were not considered appropriate to participate into an alliance with a force that they characterized as Stalinist and decide to break Izquierda Unida, United Left the first, and stay. step. with Deputy elected by an alliance of left to them.
The Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union of course create a game like the Argentine Communist Party a tremendous shock, and inside are three views on how to address the crisis, the first is a vision of claudication: the current president of FREPASO senators block the province of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Sigal, then a current heads it clear that the USSR fell, they fell off the wall, that capitalism has triumphed, not makes no sense to continue to maintain a force to declare the revolution and socialist changes proposed in Argentina; the other view is a view that says that the revolutionary movement is in trouble, all it says is part of an enemy attack, let us hold that it is not true what they say about Stalin, it is not true what they say critically on socialism in the Soviet Union, keep the goal and continue as we have been all my life with an attitude that was a kind of regression of the changes since the XVI congress. that position was articulated and are now in a game called Extraordinary Communist Party Congress, a very small insertion in the actual movement
The third attitude is assumed by most then the direction of the party, which connects with all the effort from the journal Free America, seminars Che theoretical renewal and commitment to two things: to be linked to the revolutionary movement that takes the same attitude renewal of revolutionary ideas from the Communist Party of Cuba with Fidel Castro to the Frente Farabundo Marti in El Salvador and other organizations.
then be directed at consolidating the turn of the Sixteenth Party Congress initiated and spread even to a series of issues not analyzed so far with what you see in the crisis of socialism, with a renewed vision of socialism The role of the state under socialism, the recovery of the idea of \u200b\u200bautonomy of the labor movement before and after the struggle for power, etc.
This effort to deepen the turn, is first expressed in a document signed by five Latin American revolutionary leaders, The Five Letter signed by Jorge Shafik Handal, Narciso Isa Conde, Patricio Echegaray, Rigoberto Padilla, and 1990 posed two questions that now take on great importance in the distance, the first idea is to say, against all the then dominant discourse, which had not only crisis of socialism, but also had crisis of capitalism, these two crises were force and that capitalism also had its crisis that was unfolding, veiled by the crisis of socialism, and even stronger second idea is an idea in itself a profound renewal of revolutionary thought they will say the hope of revolution this in Latin America and will say Latin America is a continent of hope revolutionary Europe is not dominated by social democracy, is not the territory of the former socialist countries, Africa is also not the terrible consequences that has had the colonization, but in this continent, the history, the development of capitalism, for a number of combinations is possible that revives the hope of socialism for all the world and that is what actually happened in these ten years
If there is a place in the world where socialism has been kept alive is in Cuba, if there is a place in the world where the left has been renovated has been revitalized and has strengthened, it is in Latin America, the PT has just won a parliamentary majority in Brazil, the Farabundo Marti conquered it in March this year in El Salvador, the Frente Amplio is a force that can not be ignored in Uruguayan politics in Brazil has grown a popular movement, the Landless Movement, which generates experiences of people's power at the regional level, completely original, are more than a million peasants live in camps run Landless in Brazil, and in recent years has become, after several decades, a political force left, clear from the communist culture, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, to established as a force capable of challenging the power and proposed changes revolutionaries.
Thus, from the extreme weakness and breakage of the United Left seeks to maintain the unity and effort by building an alternative, the first form calls the Southern Front, participating in whole process of the Frente Grande foundation with the idea that it is possible and desirable, an agreement on the left to center-left sectors, with Christian sectors, with sectors that are oriented towards some kind of change, and the effort of the Communists will end as we know in a process of absolute hegemony of Chacho Alvarez in Front Great and expulsion from the Communist Party of the Frente Grande, in July 1994 marking the beginning of a rightward spiraling Frente Grande, then FREPASO, then Alliance and can be displayed in a parable that ends in this waiver where Chacho Alvarez it says it is impossible to change from within the government even in the basic theme of corruption.
What we have discussed about this experience is that it was right by encouraging and training a broad agreement against neoliberalism, against the model, but what we perceive at the time was right strategy and the true extent or the real danger Auyero group, Chacho, Meijide and above all the lesson we draw is that agreements can go to the left center-left forces, even with core strengths in the struggle to defend democracy and the struggle for social changes, however small, of what is left is to go together, go and visit constituted identity, as we say, go drive on the left to the center and not vice versa because we dominate and we Coptic, which is why this revival is that we have done three years ago and the United Left is not an effort that aims to build a political alternative in Argentina against neoliberalism and only in the United Left but we propose that the left again having an identity, the Left again have visibility that will be visible for part of society and from that gained political stature to propose to all the forces that refuse to validate the model of capitalism in Argentina to build what ever resolved or the 80-year history of the Communist Party or in the 120-year history of capitalism in Argentina, which is to constitute a political force alternative to capitalism with the strength to confront and to defeat it.
shift that day the Communist Party will fully come to fruition, and we can say so hermoza what we've created something bigger than ourselves.
SOURCE: http://cronicasdelnuevosiglo.wordpress.com/2000/11/01/el-viraje-del-partido-comunista/
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