The Relevance of Leninism Trotskism

[Versión en Español]

It was a good initiative that the 3rd International Leon Trotsky Event should be held under the motto “Tribute to Lenin 100 years after his death”. This is because it unites the figures of the two main protagonists, political leaders, militants and theoreticians, of the October Revolution of 1917 and of the creation of the Third International – and later the Fourth International by Trotsky – giving continuity to the great revolutionary delimitation that they carried out against opportunism in defense of revolutionary Marxism.

It is also important to highlight the fact that this III Event is taking place in Argentina, a country where the organizations that claim to be Trotskyism have had a relevant development for decades and were protagonists of important interventions in political and class struggle (class-based trade unionism, the Argentinazo of 2001, the emergence of piquetero movement). Thus, the term Trotskyism in Argentina has become synonymous with left-wing and revolutionary opposition to the capitalist regime.

This provides the III International Event a particular character. It should not be just another academic event of history or sociology, but a special forum to debate, clarify and verify the points of convergence and divergence between left organizations that claim to be Trotskyism, on the main issues that revolutionary political struggle faces at a world scale and in Argentina. 

The relevance of Trotskyism

In the same way that Lenin “used” the studies and approaches of Marx and Engels as a granite base for the presentation of his Marxist theory of the state when he wrote “The State and Revolution” in 1917, today it is necessary to verify whether Lenin and Trotsky’s approaches were not only correct in their time, but whether they are still valid as a guide for the revolutionary struggle for workers’ governments and international socialism.

It is necessary to take into account the development of a vast opportunist/revisionist tendency of Lenin and Trotsky’s proposals, which – specially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR – considers that “the historical cycle of the October revolution” has closed and that the left should “reformulate” and “update” political/programmatic proposals of Lenin and Trotsky, “revising” and “enriching” them. It does not escape us that one must have a critical attitude towards the legacy of Marxist theory. But it should be noted that in this case this operation of “revision” and “updating” has thrown overboard the principled positions and the revolutionary essence of the “masters” of the revolutionary socialist programme proposals. 

The catastrophe of capitalist crisis

We are in an era of crises, wars and revolutions and debates on internationalist socialist strategy (and tactics to be developed) should be central. 

The economic crisis that began in 2008 was not just a cyclical crisis of capitalism. Its importance is equal or greater than the one of 1929, which led, a decade later, to the Second World War. 

This is a first point for debate: are we facing a situation of capitalist exhaustion and catastrophe? 

The crisis that began in 2008 has not been overcome. The unprecedented state bailouts of banks and companies in 2008 and 2020 have only succeeded in slowing the fall, not restarting an upward cycle. They have come at the cost of brutal austerity against working masses, without being able to prevent the arrival of new outbreaks of austerity. Last year’s Silicon Valley Bank-centred financial crisis not only took down several US banks, but also precipitated the collapse of Switzerland’s largest bank, the historic Credit Suisse. And this year, the “black Monday” that began at the Bank of Japan spread internationally, taking shareholder losses (much of the so-called leading-edge AI industries) to the tune of $3 trillion. This shows the historical exhaustion of capitalist system which, with ups and downs, will get worse and worse, provoking great social and political upheavals and paving the way for world war and revolution. It is a serious mistake of the left to reduce this decline to the episodes of capitalism itself with its anarchic functioning and its cycles of rise and fall. The developing capitalist crisis has as its backdrop, the exhaustion of the capitalist regime, evidenced in an overproduction of capital that has nowhere to invest itself, because the rate of profit is falling and no profitable sectors are appearing. This can only be solved by violent restructuring involving the bankruptcy and disappearance of capitalists and the advance of concentration and centralization of capital. The size of capitalist development makes this process not easy, because capitalists fight tooth and nail to defend their positions and not disappear. The capitalist restoration in former workers’ states did not result in the final victory of the powers that worked for it, as the capitalist euphoria presaged 30 years ago. On the contrary, as the Theses of the CRFI (Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International) of 2004 emphasized, this process of restoration generated greater crises and contradictions, recreating the world capitalist crisis in a more violent way than before. The restoration process itself was, in turn, conditioned by that crisis, hitting the Chinese-US coupling that was the engine of growth in the first decade of the century, and transforming it into ruthless competition. 

The capitalist crisis and the violent competition for restructuring uses as tools not only the destruction of productive forces by peaceful means or by attacks on the masses, but war and militarism itself, which are growing by leaps and bounds.

Imperialist war divides the waters

We have openly entered a period of war, which is evolving into a world war. A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies has been published, documenting 183 ongoing armed conflicts, the highest number in many decades. Military spending by all powers has multiplied, particularly that of the United States.

One the one hand, strategic centers of escalation are the direct confrontation in Ukraine between NATO and Russia, in the heart of Europe. Zionist offensive, also supported by the United States and NATO, against Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, which is spreading to the rest of Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen). 

It is accompanied by the warlike arming against China (US military agreements with Taiwan, Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, India; economic warfare; imperialist boycotts; multiplication of diplomatic and military maneuvers and incidents). They are also intertwined with the intensification of coups and uprisings in Africa with French imperialist reverses. 

These are not strictly separate conflicts; the trend is towards a general war.

It is no coincidence that conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine are taking place in the nerve centers that have historically confronted inter-imperialist struggle. Palestine was the scene of violent imperialist restructurings of Middle East in the first and second world wars. And Ukraine, too, has been a key element in the clashes of both wars for the domination of Central Europe, Russia and West Asia.

A third world war incorporates, as a key element, economic and political subjugation of Russia and China (and other countries where capital was expropriated) by imperialism in order to make a capitalist restoration/colonization under its tutelage. This is taking place in a framework of growing division and clash between imperialist metropolises themselves. It should not escape us that the war in Ukraine is a shot across the bow by Washington against the European Union. The fact that Russia has been forced to cease to be Europe’s source of cheap energy supplies has led to the old continent’s increased dependence on the United States. And this is not a situation that has been overcome: conflicts between the two sides persist over aluminum and steel tariffs, green energy and climate change, the automotive industry and technology that have led to reciprocal sanctions and economic retaliation. The tension extends to ties with China and Russia as the backdrop is who gets the main slice of capitalist restoration. This is to say, an inter-imperialist dispute over imperialist penetration of the former stratified economies. 

On the other hand, for all the talk of a confluence between Russia and China, there is far from an identity of interests. The Kremlin is suspicious of the growing Chinese advance, which is also extending its influence in countries and areas that were previously under Moscow’s tutelage. With these considerations, we can say once again that we are facing a transition towards a world war that will not be a linear path and is bound to undergo crises and realignments until it opens the way to a definitive configuration of contending forces. A sharp political struggle is taking place within European Union against this backdrop. The parties that have most argued for the need of an alliance with the United States in NATO against Russia have been dealt an electoral blow (France, Germany, Britain). The far right, more sympathetic to agreements with Putin (and China), has been gaining ground (Germany’s AfD, Le Pen in France). The landscape and the constitution of blocs are not yet defined. 

How do organizations that claim to be Trotskyist intervene against this background of crises, wars and revolutions?

We are in a similar situation to that which Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky had to face from the beginning of the 20th century in order to fight the revisionists within the social democracy of the Second International. They saw an uninterrupted development of capitalism, albeit with crises that could be resolved. They considered that capitalists were not interested in a war that would damage their business and that a pacifist tendency would prevail to settle existing differences among themselves. They even saw the possibility, developed in Kautsky’s proposals, of the creation of a collegial ultra-imperialism, which could regulate differences and guarantee an orderly exploitation of the masses.

Lenin explained that war was not a possible or “preferred” policy of capitalist governments, but an inherent feature of capitalism in its final, decadent stage. Imperialist and colonial wars of subjugation are the continuation of competition between monopolies, sharpened into generalized warfare. Its policy of revolutionary defeatism in the world war, against the “patriotic union” of reformism with its bourgeoisies, was the preparation for the revolutionary victory in Russia in 1917.

Today the war, with center in Ukraine, has been a watershed within the world left. Imperialism has been working since the end of the Second World War to end States where capital had been expropriated and to move forward with a capitalist restoration under its rule.

It was the Stalinist bureaucracy that developed the process of capitalist restoration, encouraged and sustained by imperialism. This, which was analyzed and predicted (and confronted) by Trotsky, succeeded in imposing itself. But not on the terms desired by imperialist finance capital, which did not crave the creation of new capitalist states to compete with existing imperialist positions. Imperialism worked for a capitalist restoration under its direct mandate, for an imperialist recolonization of Russia, China and other states where capital had been expropriated. Regimes like those of Putin and Xi Jinping, with their contradictory differences and characters, have taken Bonapartist control of the state apparatus to defend capitalist development in their countries in clash with foreign control of the process.

NATO is the main driving force behind the war in Ukraine. Capitalist restoration in the variety of countries of Eastern Europe has involved their transformation into semi-colonies of European and US imperialism and political and military allies in a process of encircling Russia.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in turn, is reactionary, because he is doing it to defend the positions conquered by the new Russian capitalism in its alliance with sectors of Russian bourgeois oligarchy. It is an imperialism of the “old type”, of military-administrative occupation, similar to what tsarism was in its time.

This is an inter-imperialist war, in which we revolutionaries must oppose the two belligerent reactionary sides.

However, a part of the world Trotskyist left has sided with NATO imperialism and has as its main slogan the defeat of Russia. The justification for this is that Ukraine is a semi-colonial country and that it would be a “just war” of defense of a backward country against the Russian imperialist power.

This position is a consequence of the adaptation to the ideological propaganda of imperialism, which presents international clashes as a confrontation between democracy (from imperialist plunder) and authoritarian governments. Such pressure can be seen in the presence of left groups that have been supporting imperialist regime change operations in every previous incident, e.g. Syria and Libya.

Some groups have invented that we are facing a war of “dual character”: on the one hand, it would be a national war of Ukraine against the imperialist advance of Russia, which should be “supported” and, at the same time, an inter-imperialist war of NATO against Russia, which should be “denounced”. But… they support the actions of Zelensky’s army, which is completely colonized by NATO against Russia.

It is an imposture to talk about – and call for support – an “independent Ukrainian resistance” against Russian invasion. This hypothetical “resistance” would act in association with troops acting on behalf of imperialism. The war is being waged by NATO, with Zelensky government as its puppet and using Ukrainian people as “cannon fodder” for its war plans to wear down Putin’s regime and advance on Russia. The organizations that militarily support the war against Russia, claim that the struggle is autonomous of the Ukrainian government, which only refers to receiving military aid from imperialism. But the development of two years of hostilities has clearly shown that it is openly and directly directed by world imperialism, which is systematically moving towards total intervention (sending mercenaries and “advisers”, imperialist tanks and planes, authorization to use long-distance missiles against targets on Russian territory, concrete announcements of preparations for a massive influx of troops: France, Poland, Estonia).

This coincidence of part of the world left with NATO is undoubtedly a leap in a pre-existing trend of integration into the bourgeois state. The Mandelist NPA’s campaign for “arms to Ukraine” has been the preparation for its incorporation into Mélenchon’s Popular Front, which inscribed support for NATO operations in Ukraine in its founding programme and has voted accordingly in parliament. The Democratic Socialists in the United States, where much of the left has dissolved, have a very strong crisis over their vote for the Pentagon’s military budgets and their integration into an administration like Biden’s, marked by its militarism and genocidal character.

On the other hand, a minority section of the left, which claims to be Trotskyist, has aligned itself with Putin in his invasion of Ukraine, seeing this as a progressive anti-imperialist defensive reaction. It confronts the neo-Stalinist currents that politically subordinate themselves to the Bonapartist Putin’s warriorism.

This nationalist “campism” pretends to give the BRICS a progressive or multilateral character. But the BRICS are far from building an alternative bloc to the current world and setting up a substitute international order. It is beyond the possibilities of such a heterogeneous, unequal bloc, with clashes and conflicting interests, but it should be added that it does not propose to do so either. The aspirations of China and the BRICS are limited to greater autonomy within the established order: they do not seek to put an end to the capitalist economy or its institutions – only, and in certain specific cases, to dispute a greater place in them. Far from the emergence of a “multipolar world”, a sort of new order in which the old hegemonic powers and the new alternative poles of power could peacefully find a place, far from this absolutely idyllic narrative, the reality we are facing as a result of capitalist decomposition is a fracturing of global economic and political unity, which, as is well known, is the breeding ground for international political crises, inter-state rivalries and war.

In contrast to these positions of alignment with the two imperialist camps, we have been fighting with a number of organizations to regroup the revolutionary Marxists who oppose the two sides of the inter-imperialist war, calling for “revolutionary defeatism”: To fraternization between the soldiers and workers of Ukraine and Russia to end the war-mongering, anti-worker regimes of Zelensky and Putin, to set up workers’ governments in each country and calling for workers throughout Europe and the world to wage class war against their bourgeoisies. “War on war” has been the slogan raised by Liebknecht in the First World War, positing that the enemy of the workers is within each country: it is their exploiting bourgeoisies. This orientation is not only an ideological location, it aims to develop the already existing tendency to carry out workers’ actions of confrontation with the imperialist military apparatus by demonstrating on the streets, blocking the delivery of armaments in the factories, ports and military stations.

Defending Palestinian resistance to the Zionist genocide against Gaza 

The Palestinian uprising on October 7 last year in Gaza against the ghetto walls of the apartheid-colonization imposed by Zionism meant a change in the relation of the masses with the military impulse of NATO in most countries. In contrast to the prevailing passivity of the masses about situation in Ukraine, achieved by the pro-imperialist policy of the leaderships, a real mass movement broke out against the genocide that has been unleashed by the state of Israel.

The Zionist/imperialist propaganda has tried to show that Palestinian military action, guided by a front of organizations led mostly by Hamas, was a “terrorist”, “barbaric” act, including beheadings of babies and rape of old women. Organizations claiming to be Trotskyist partially caved in to this pressure from the Zionist/imperialist campaign, delimiting themselves from the alleged “negative” aspects (terrorists, killing of civilians) of this powerful Palestinian military action. They argued that these helped the fascist Netanyahu to “justify” his genocidal operation against the Palestinian people of Gaza, with its massive bombing and military invasion that has killed 52 thousand people and injured and maimed hundreds of thousands. In their critical differentiation against the alleged fundamentalist terrorism of Hamas, the refusal of Palestinian fighters to take Zionist hostages on 7 October also stands out. A part of the left has rejected the hostage-taking and the civilian deaths (which – it has been demonstrated – were to a large extent part of the savage repression of the Zionist armed forces), they do not consider that we are in the presence of a permanent – genocidal, terrorist and expulsion war of Zionism against Palestinians: the first mass armed action of the Palestinian resistance is falsely moralized. In the framework of an anti-imperialist national war (as in any class civil war), hostage-taking is legitimate. Marx supported the hostage-taking of the Paris Commune revolution in 1871, to oppose the savage slaughter by the Versailles counter-revolutionaries of the communist workers taken prisoner. Trotsky, in turn, installed the hostage regime to confront a similar situation of massacres of communists and workers by the White armies. In the course of a war it is not only legitimate but necessary to use these methods to break the class enemy. This is what the Zionist state is doing, which has been keeping about 10.000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails for decades, used as political hostages. The Palestinians have taken on 7 October about 240 Israeli hostages (most of them soldiers, plus paramilitary civilians, etc.) of whom, after an exchange and several deaths under the fire of the Zionist invasion and massacres in Gaza, about 140 remain prisoners.

The Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party) is a socialist organization that has strategic differences with Hamas, a confessional nationalist organization that supports the theocratic regime in Iran and the reactionary Erdogan government in Turkey. Expectations of a reaction from nationalist regimes of the Middle East have shown in this year of war and genocide to be a dead end. They have maintained complete passivity while tens of thousands of civilians have been massacred and the organizational capacity and cadre structure of Hamas and Hezbollah have been dealt crushing blows. Their adherence to the bourgeois regimes in the Middle East was not reciprocated by them.

But differences which, like ours, are profound, cannot be a pretext for taking the flesh and blood out of the Palestinian struggle as it is unfolding. We claim the Palestinians’ right to revolt with all the means at their disposal. It is only on this field that those of us who claim to be socialists are in a position to win a place in the fierce struggle that is taking place and to fight for the re-emergence of the revolutionary tendencies that flourished during the “Arab Spring”. It is necessary to open the way for a revolutionary upsurge of the Arab masses, challenging the anti-working class and reactionary Arab regimes. This presupposes and poses overcoming political strategy of Hamas aligned with Iran and other Arab bourgeoisies, keeping expectations in them, as far as their behavior towards Israel is concerned, have proved to be unfounded. 

The Zionist genocidal offensive is part of the imperialist drive to World War. Netanyahu seeks not only to build a “Greater Israel” on the basis of the expulsion and genocide of Palestinian people, but to reconfigure the whole map of Middle East by changing the regimes in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran. 

It is striking that Trotskyist organizations that stand (albeit with buts) on the side of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, against the genocidal Zionist offensive against Palestinian people, are in the imperialist camp in NATO’s war against Russia. 

Do we have one imperialism in favor of democracy defense and national self-determination in Ukraine and another (the same) imperialism, supporter of fundamentalist and fascistic Zionism, in favor of genocide and national subjugation of Palestinian people in Gaza?

There are organizations in the left camp and even in Trotskyism that put forward the “solution” of creating “two states” in the area: Israel and a mock Palestinian nation in part of Gaza and the West Bank (subjugated by a powerful fascist Zionist colonization). This is what the UN proposed in 1948, creating the state of Israel with the support of world imperialism and Stalin’s bureaucracy, expelling nearly a million Palestinians from their land and a “Palestinian state” that was never constituted, because Israel militarily occupied part of its territory and the rest was divided between Jordan and Egypt. And this was reiterated with the Oslo accords (1991) under Clinton’s auspices, creating a puppet mimicry of Israel. This was supported by the Fatah leadership (under pressure from the Russian bureaucracy), which became a sort of Palestinian police force in the service of Zionist rule. It is in this context that Hamas emerged, rejecting (at its inception) the “two-state” approach and claiming the historic banner of a single Palestine. 

The “two-state” approach ultimately implies the denial of Palestinian national rights and is therefore reactionary and pro-imperialist, as is evident from the experience of the last decades with the “Palestinian Authority”, which has become a fifth column within the Palestinian people.

Those who claim to justify these approaches in the name of finding a “bridge”, a “convergence” with the workers and the Jewish masses omit the fact that the Israeli collective is a population of settlers. The starting point for a solution of this clash is the recognition of this oppression of colonial character, which presupposes and raises the right of return of the Palestinians to their territory from which they were expelled, incompatible with the Zionist state. To be considered as an active factor in the revolutionary process in the Middle East, the Israeli workers should break with Zionism and strive for the triumph of Palestinian resistance and the destruction of the colonialist state of Israel. Supporting the constitution of a single, secular and socialist Palestine, part of the struggle for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, within the framework of a new social and political reconfiguration of the region is the only possible progressive way out of the disaster caused by the installation of the imperialist-Zionist enclave. 

In the emergency, we promote worldwide the united front to withdraw the Zionist army from Gaza, to roll back the increasingly violent colonization of the West Bank and Jerusalem, to force an end to the Zionist aggression against Lebanon and other fighting movements in the Middle East (Yemen, etc.). Zionist troops out. Stop the bombing of Palestinian and Lebanese people. Free all Palestinian prisoners held hostage by Zionism. To promote international mobilization against the sending of arms to Zionist state. Calling on the peoples of the Middle East to go beyond their pro-imperialist bourgeoisies and conciliation with Zionism, in support of the national anti-imperialist war waged by the Palestinians. The campaign of persecution against internationalists who denounce genocide, such as MP Vanina Biasi of PO-FITU in Argentina, is part of Zionism’s attempt to stop its discrediting and to limit the development of the mass movement against genocide.

In Argentina, we denounce Milei’s alignment with imperialism, with Netanyahu, and with Zelensky. A government that has made its slogan “there is no money” has committed itself to sending ships to the Middle East to help the Palestinian massacre. Zionism has become the role model for the entire international ultra-right, including neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, who fantasize about using its methods against the workers and oppressed sectors in their countries. We also denounce the almost complete passage of Peronism into support for Zionism, which works to block the development of a real mass movement against genocide in Argentina.

Venezuela and subordination to imperialist “democratic” propaganda

The crisis surrounding Venezuelan elections has had an impact on Latin America and the world.

A part of the left, including a part that claims to be Trotskyist, has come out in favor of recognizing the right-wing opposition to Maduro regime, supported by world imperialism. 

These organizations have come out in support of the mobilizations promoted by the right-wing Corina Machado, who in the past has not only promoted coup attempts but has also called for a US invasion of Venezuela. But these mobilizations raise as an exclusive agenda the fall of Maduro and the recognition of González Urrutia victory. For this left, electoral democracy is a universal banner to be defended, even in support of the candidates of US imperialism. It is clear that respecting the right of people to demonstrate and repudiate state or para-state repression has nothing to do with supporting or being in solidarity with these mobilizations. 

With the unilateral demand for the publication of electoral register, the left joins the “democratic” circus with which the Latin American center-left pays tribute to imperialism. We are witnessing a very marked tendency of the left to be trapped in the logic of “dictatorship versus democracy”, which imperialism and the right wing are installing for their own interests, ignoring the interests that are really at stake and the fraudulent nature of the whole electoral process. The “democratic” opposition in Venezuela has resorted to coup attempts and calls for foreign intervention; they defend the economic sanctions that the State Department applied to Venezuela and even the theft of gold reserves by the United Kingdom. It goes without saying that these measures constitute an aggression against their own country, they condition the political, economic and social process by creating a scenario opposed to democratic elections. 

In this context, it is necessary to defend class independence of the workers, refusing to align with the authoritarian regime of Maduro and neither with the right-wing opposition subordinated to imperialism.

Capitalist crisis and class struggle

The worsening of the capitalist crisis has broken the existing balances, dragging traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, including the opportunists of the center-left, into the crisis and the retreat. The scale of the “adjustments” against working masses, carried out by the “democratic” parties of the bourgeoisie, has led to the emergence and strengthening of right-wing sectors and even those who claim to be fascists. Lulist popular front opened the way for Bolsonaro in Brazil. Kirchnerism that carried out the IMF plans against the working people is the one that boosted the emergence of Milei. The same is happening with Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany or the “Fratelli” who came to government in Italy with Giorgia Meloni, riding on the decomposition of the “democratic” parties of the center-left. This ultra-right, however, has not – as fascism did in the last century – faced the destruction of workers’ organizations, nor the overthrow of parliamentary regimes. The bourgeoisie has not yet renounced the use of the trade union bureaucracies and the opportunist organizations that have governed workers’ actions as a subsidiary of the bourgeois state. Bolsonaro did not march to the destruction of the CUT led by the bureaucracy, the container of the irruption and centralization of the workers’ struggles. 

These rightists are characterized by developing xenophobic and racist approaches against immigrants and national minorities, in order to promote division among workers ranks. And by strengthening the repressive apparatus (and repression) against independent manifestations of mass struggle.

Nor have they managed to consolidate these regimes for the time being. Trump and Bolsonaro lost after a first term, although they are still playing hardball in the political and mass contest. Political instability has also led to shifts to the left of the political regime, from Labor in Britain, to Mélenchon in France, to leftist upsurges in Peru, Sri Lanka and the consolidation of Morena in Mexico. 

These ultra-right advances have revived the propaganda for class-collaborationist popular fronts in the form of “democratic fronts against fascism”. Both Lula and Biden called for the formation of a “World Front against Fascism”. 

It cannot escape us that a part of the world left has ended up succumbing to this pressure, joining the popular front led by Melenchon or remaining in the ranks of the Democratic Party, lining up behind the candidacy of Kamala Harris, or in the “popular” camp led by Lula. Mélenchon’s Popular Front especially showed the futility of aligning with the “democratic” bourgeoisie against the ultra-right, as well as the cowardly character of the reformist left. They formed a confused “republican front” with Macron, desisting from putting forward Popular Front candidates in favor of the traditional right. Macron then formed a government with the support of Le Pen against the Popular Front, showing that the democratic panic of the bourgeoisie is just extortion against the working class and the left. 

In this context, the struggle for the political independence of the workers and for the united front of struggle against fascism and the capitalist governments of hunger, war and repression is put in the foreground.

Capitalist exhaustion and crisis gives rise not only to wars and the growth of the right wing, but also to the expression of the resistance of the working and exploited masses through rebellions and revolutions.

We have had a process of growing tendencies towards trade union organizations, strikes and revolts in the United States; big strikes in Great Britain (last year there was even the possibility of a general strike, a phenomenon that had not occurred for a century) and in Germany; the wave of strikes and mass political demonstrations in France in 2023 against the anti-worker pension reform; the wave of uprisings in Latin America (Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia); the “Arab spring”; the uprising in Sri Lanka; the popular uprisings in Africa.

In this context, what is under discussion is whether the left will remain confined to acting as the caboose of the capitalist variants and adapted to the existing regime or whether it will set itself up as a channel of organization and struggle of the exploited in such a way as to break through the crisis and convulsions that are already developing and transform itself into an alternative of power. In short, it is a question of growing on the basis of a programme of class independence, socialism, of strategic struggle for workers’ governments and not of careerism and integration into the “democratic” bourgeois institutionalization.

This brings us back to the discussion of the type of organization to set up, which cannot be abstracted from the strategic objectives pursued. 

If there is one point on which both Lenin and Trotsky have stressed, it is the inescapable need to fight for the construction of workers’ combat parties. Parties organized on a militant basis, under the principles of “democratic centralism”: parties which intervene in class struggle in a centralized and disciplined way, which prepare cadres to aspire to play a leading role in the class struggle and in a revolutionary process of seizing power. This granite conception of Leninism/Trotskyism was abandoned by the SU (and various groupings claiming to be Trotskyist) and replaced by the movementist conception of “broad parties” or “tendency parties” or organizations with blurred class boundaries. 

The “broad parties” make it possible to bring together different sectors, with different platforms, which unite at the time of election campaigns. They are not organized to intervene unitarily in the class struggle. 

On this basis, the SU dissolved its French section, the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League), to open the doors to the constitution of a new party, the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party). Their dissolution of the Marxist programme and their democratizing adaptation to the parliamentary regime ended in deep frustration, the loss of thousands of militants and the incorporation of the old SU apparatus into Mélenchon’s Popular Front, after breaking with the left of their party. They presented themselves as a “new left”, of a “democratic” character, and ended up, as a logical conclusion of their programme, promoting class collaboration with the old reformist apparatuses. 

The “broad” parties have undoubtedly shown their dead-end character. We need fighting parties of the working class, a revolutionary workers’ international and a determined activity in the political and class struggle in order to be able to use the political crises for a workers’ way out.

How the struggle against the reactionary offensive of Milei’s government is being fought.

In Argentina, the international tendencies analyzed above are to a large extent refracted. We are facing a minority government (it has no parliamentary majority of its own in parliament, nor governors or mayors) that draws its strength from the support of all the national and imperialist bourgeois forces for a ferocious policy of attack on the historic gains of the working people. And the work of atomization of the workers’ and popular resistance carried out by the bureaucracy of the CGT, the mass organizations (UCR), the student body and the social organizations aligned with Kirchnerism.

The experience of 10 months with the anti-worker and reactionary government of Milei has led to the growth of popular anger against it and the development of growing tendencies of struggle. It is necessary, for the left, to lead the organization and mobilization of the anger, proposing to throw out Milei’s government with the struggle of the working people, of the students, of the state employees, of the workers who are being laid off and whose historical conquests (right to severance pay, etc.) are being trampled upon, of the unemployed and precarious workers organized with the piqueteros, of the artists who see their possibilities of intervention closed, of the pensioners threatened with genocide, etc. 

Milei out! Let’s organize the general strike to throw him out and defend the wages and living conditions of the people in the perspective of a workers’ government. To wait a year, until the elections at the end of October 2025, is to give him an important handicap that will lead to a historic crushing and demoralization of the masses’ struggle. 

There are organizations which put forward the need to wage a cultural and programmatic campaign against Milei’s liberalism and in favor of an alternative for a “communist future”. Programmatic debates must always be carried out systematically as part of the ideological struggle against the bourgeoisie. But this must be determined by direct action and intervention on the stage of the class struggle that is unfolding today. Otherwise it is nothing more than an electoral way out for 2025, similar to the Kirchnerist approach of trying to avoid a confrontation of the masses with the government and place the “battle” on the electoral field in a year’s time. Historically, electoral growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of the leading role of the left in the mass struggle and in its capacity to lead them to victory. 

The FIT-U has been constituted as a front that brings together four organizations that have been claiming Trotskyism for more than a decade on the basis of the postulates of class independence and workers’ government. This differentiates it from other democratizing left fronts (FREPU, Izquierda Unida) that Morenism integrated in the past with the Stalinist CP and sectors of Peronism.

A front of class independence, with a clear programme that puts forward the struggle for workers’ government, presupposes an objective field of delimitation with bourgeois nationalism. This is a big difference with the front versions carried out by Morenism, which has historically been characterized by its adaptation to Peronism. 

Having made this consideration, we cannot escape the limits of the FIT, which was constituted as a front to confront an electoral process and, to a large extent, it hardly managed to overcome that frontier, largely because of the internal tendencies that fought to narrow it to the electoral field, an expression of the tendency to political adaptation to nationalism, even turning its back on decisive processes of the class struggle that confronted the last nationalist government.  The PO always strived to extend the action of the FIT in all areas of class struggle. This came up against a brake not only outside but also inside the FIT itself.

In this context, one aspect that challenges the Argentine left is the characterization and policy it should adopt towards the piquetero movement. The enormous development that the piquetero movement has acquired and the place it has conquered on national political scene are factors that cannot be ignored. If there is the pretension of setting up a revolutionary alternative of the workers, one must not only support piquetero movement but be an active factor in its construction. However, the prevailing phenomenon is that part of the left has turned its back on this enormous process of organization and struggle of the most exploited and precarious sector of the Argentine working class. This is an anti-worker political discrimination, since for those who hold this position, “sociologically” the piqueteros would not be workers, a category that would be reserved for employed workers. Lenin and Trotsky, however, called especially for organizing the most exploited sectors and, in the first place, the unemployed, evicted by the political and trade union bureaucracies in order to attack them and break the divisionism that the bosses try to introduce among workers’ ranks in order to obstruct their struggles.

The organizations that make up the FIT-U try to portray piquetero movement as a movement that is dependent on the government’s social assistance, omitting the fact that all demands obtained, including food and the social plans themselves, have been achieved through direct action, by dint of mass protests marked by piquetes, roadblocks and encampments. The piquetero’s organizations have become the seedbed of thousands of activists who, in the heat of struggle and experience, have matured politically and acquired a firm class consciousness. It is for all these reasons that piquetero’s movement has been the favorite target of attacks and persecution by the bourgeoisie and that explains the current persecution by Milei government. 

Another aspect to pay attention to is what is happening in the trade union movement. The Peronist trade union bureaucracy has made a historic leap in its surrender to the Milei government, negotiating the regulations of the labor reform and avoiding by all means a working-class confrontation with the government. The penetration of ideas of the left at the base of the entire workers’ movement is presented as a key challenge at this stage, organizing the workers in the face of the government’s offensive with the aim of ousting the anti-worker government and the sell-out trade union bureaucracy in each union. There is also the challenge of forging a class-conscious pole to strengthen the struggles and take back the unions from the bureaucratic leaderships. This poses the development of class-conscious groupings and anti-bureaucratic fronts with the clear orientation of unity between employed and unemployed workers. It is a paradox that those who denigrate piquetero movement supposedly in the name of the “strategic centrality of the industrial workers’ movement”, however, also stand in the way of setting up an independent workers’ movement. 

What lies at the root of the pitfalls we have pointed out within the FIT-U, as we have developed in this text, reveals a democratizing orientation, which privileges an objective in its actions. Its north lies in the promotion of some electoral figures, who are oriented to “take care” in their public interventions so as not to “distance” themselves from a possible like-minded electorate, thus avoiding a clear delimitation with nationalism and a distancing of these “figures” from the main events of the class struggle which could eventually clash with the degree of consciousness of the masses. The Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party), on the contrary, forges its construction and its destiny, in every struggle that the exploited take up, confronting persecutions of the state and promoting the independent intervention of the working class.

Tasks and challenges

The building of revolutionary workers’ parties is part and parcel of the struggle to build a revolutionary international.

For the PO this goes through the re-foundation of the Fourth International, whose programme – which must be brought up to date with the phenomenon of capitalist restoration in the states where capital was expropriated – responds to the problems posed by the crisis of capitalism and the open stage of wars and revolutions.

But the refounding of the Fourth International cannot be an ultimatum, but the result of a common experience with all the organizations and militants who stand for internationalism and class independence in the face of the crucial events shaking the world. An international regrouping of revolutionary scope can only break through if it is capable of passing the test and the demands of class struggle. These crucial events, starting with the imperialist war, pose a demarcation of camps between revolution and opportunism. On the basis of the above, we put forward the following premises in view of a strategic struggle for the establishment of a revolutionary international:

First: the open rejection of imperialist wars, starting with NATO and Russia. Raising the position that the enemy of the workers is the bourgeoisie in each country. Advocate the fraternization of soldiers and workers and a common struggle to oust the governments of capitalist war and exploitation.

Second: the strategic struggle for socialist revolution, for the establishment of workers’ governments, destroying the bourgeois state.

Third: the rejection of popular fronts and class-collaborationist fronts. The struggle for the political independence of the working class and the formation of workers’, revolutionary and militant parties that actively intervene in the class struggle and fight for the conquest of power.

Fourth: support for the revolutionary processes and anti-imperialist struggles of the backward countries against the imperialist bourgeoisies, where the political autonomy of the working class is key. The non-negotiable starting point today is unconditional support for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against the Zionist state.

Fifth: to throw the pro-capitalist bureaucracies out of the trade unions and mass organizations, to take them back in defense of the interests of the workers and as instruments of struggle for socialist revolution. 

The challenge of promoting a global regrouping, on an internationalist basis, is still present, stronger than ever, in the face of the convulsive scenario we have to face. 

If the 3rd Trotsky Event contributes to the enlightenment of the world revolutionary vanguard on the great debates that are being raised, it will have been a positive step.