and postwar boom. Trading with all the belligerents in the Second World War, which broke the domination of British imperialism over its rivals, Argentina experienced a boom which contrasted sharply with the extreme dépression of the 19305. In th. 1930s reactionary governments had launched vicious attacks on such democratic rights as the working class had won in its previous struggles, ind the capitalist class hurvived these years by a real impoverishment of the masses. Now, for a brief period, the working class was in a position to wrest some gains from the employers. Not only that, but to further the project of "national" industrial development and gain support for it against the landowners and imperialist powers, Peron turned to the working class, and presented himself, along with his wife Eva, as the champion of labour and of the "descamisados (shirtless ones). Union membership doubled and trebled, in the old-established industries like meat-packing and sugarproducing, as well as in the new industrial sectors.
Peron aimed to establish control - state control - of the union apparatus (the UGT - General Confederation of Labour); but in these conditions, with the greatest development of union organisation in Argentinian history, real gains were being made by the working class, so that despite the government's practices of intervention", they could not always contain the struggles of the trade unionists. By 1955, the foreign exchange reserves on which the post war industrial growth had been based, had dried up, and imperialism was increasingly impatient with the restrictions on foreign capital. After the fall of Peron, foreign capital rushed into the country, and into conflict with the Argentinian working class. Since then, for the mass of the Argentinian working class, the rule of Peron has appeared as a golden age, and Peronism has been the dominant ideology of the labour movement. Because of the real gains made by the working class in the years between 1945 and 1955, this ideology cannot be characterised as fascist or wholly reactionагу as the Stalinists would have it. (For the CP, Peronism was fascist from the start, because of its opposition to British imperialism, the wartime ally of the Soviet Union.) But the Peronist bureaucracy has taken a heavy toll of the Argentinian working class. It has been split and divided, especially since it has been banned and threatened by military repression (the army has govDemonstration in Buenos Aires greets Peron on his retur erned since 1966); but while its right wing has engaged in blatant class collaboration, the lefts have thrown their members into adventures, without preparing them to defend their actions against the armed strength of the state. CIVIL WAR Since the Cordobazo' of 1969, when the military smashed through the barricades erected by the workers and youth of Cordoba, Aggentina has been in a state of incipient civil war. A class-struggle wing of the unions has begun to develop, most notably in SITRAC-SITRAM, the union of the workers in the Fiat factories of Cordoba. Last year this union held a confe. rence for revolutionary trade unionists, where the need for armed struggle against the dictatorship was overwhelmingly accepted, and support voiced for those groups engaged in it (the revolutionary left Peronists, Montoneros, FAR, FAP, and the ERP, led by the Argentinian section of the Fourth International, the PRT). The mass of the Argentinian working class, however, still accepts Peronist leadership: and the ruling class is now consciously attempting to exploit these illusions to avert a civil war in which they could not hope for any quick victory. General Lanusse, President since 197l, has been unable to leave Peronism out of account in his project for restoring "stability and holding elections in March next year. The Gran Acuerdo Nacional, his electoral bloc of bourgeois parties, excluded the Peronsists, and so was destined to renew violent conflict with the labour movement. Lanusse was therefore obliged to let Peron return, in the hope, grounded in long talks with the former dictator's representatives, of being able to form some kind of electoral bloc with him, or more likely his appointed successor.
Throughout the pre-election period, Peron has been wooing the military and discouraging or denouncing the extremists in his own camp. But the divisions in his own camp cannot be avoided. In the conditions of Argentina today, where the capitalist class can no longer make big concessions to the workers, Peron can only regain power, whether through elections or a coup, in alliance with sections of the military which would very soon move against the working class again. Like the regime of Velasco Alvarado in Peru, such a government would rapidly and brutally have to show its class nature.
ISSUE What is at issue is whether the working class breaks from Peronism by developing its struggles against the regime independently, or suffers important defeats, at the hands of the Peronist leadership itself. The way forward for the Argentinian working class lies in struggle against any move by the trade union bureaucracy to engage in or support any electoral pact with the bourgeois parties and the military; and in the arming of the struggles of the workers themselves and the building of institutions of dual power.
JW (British Section of the Fourth International) 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
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