On December 12 and 13, in Buenos Aires, the meeting of the Latin American organizations of the Anticapitalist Network took place. Comrades from Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina participated. The SEP of Turkey, the ISO of the United States and the SOL from Spain also participated in the debates.
We confirmed that reality has ratified the central definitions of our foundational document, and we discussed the current world juncture and the situation of several countries, such as the United States, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela and Turkey.
Systemic crisis
The dynamic of the economic crisis that started in 2008 and can only be compared to the great depressions that preceded the first and second World Wars, is towards a deepening of it and not towards its resolution. This explains the accumulating tensions between the different world powers and the economic war between them. The workers of the world must know that none of these groups are progressive, as some so called left sectors try to make us believe. Beyond their differences, they all apply brutal austerity plans in their countries and zones they influence to maintain the profit of the banks and corporations they represent.
The fall of the old two-party regimes
The world economic counter-revolution carried out by imperialism during the 90s and the setbacks it meant for workers and the people, far from allowing the ruling class a period of stability, has had a devastating effect on the political regimes that emerged at the end of the Second World War. The fall of the Stalinist apparatus meant the loss of their privileged associate for the confrontation with the working class. Social-democracy and bourgeois parties started to flounder under the anti-workers policies they applied.
First to the left
At the beginning of the new century, as a response to the dark “neo-liberal” period, workers and other popular sectors around the world carried out rebellions and revolutions across the world. In Latin America, the neo-liberal governments fell one by one and new ones emerged, some with a left nationalist, others with a progressive tint. When the revolutionary wave arrived in Europe, new expressions started to emerge in the left, like Syriza in Greece and other similar experiences. None of these variants had in mind anti-capitalists reforms to save people from misery, and quickly succumbed and weakened as their economic crisis left no space for middle grounds.
And now to the right
The right, which has gotten into office in several countries in the last years, has won more because of the disappointment of the mass movement with the traditional parties and the expressions of false progressivism, than because of its own merit. Their flags are business efficiency, heavy-handed policies against crime, the struggle against corruption, xenophobia against immigrants and those who fight, supported by mostly reactionary sectors of religious fundamentalism, like evangelic churches. Some of them, still on the margin of the world context, begin to hoist a neo-fascist discourse. Nonetheless, not one of these projects has consolidated yet, and to do so they will need to fatally defeat the working class before the economic crisis -which allows no concessions- undoes them as it did the progressives.
A polarized world
The most probable immediate perspective isn’t a progressive strengthening of these right wing expressions, but rather a weakening of these kinds of projects and a radicalizing confrontation of the masses with their policies. A clear example of this is what’s happening in France with Macron. In the world, polarization reigns. Trump emerges and this strengthens the growth of socialism, Sanders and the radicalization of swaths of youth. A proto-fascist like Bolsonaro wins, but the Brazilian mass movement awakens from its PT-induced slumber. Fascist and anti-rights groups thrive, but a new world feminist wave is unleashed with a strong anti-capitalist component.
There is space for the radical left
The emergence of right wing expressions and the crisis of the reformist expressions of the left and the false progressives in their different forms cannot confuse us.
There is a huge space to the left that no one is even trying to occupy, among the workers and the youth, among the women and the most exploited sectors of society. But we can only occupy it if we fight for it on the streets and with a clearly socialist and revolutionary program; if we do not give in to the siren songs of the political fronts with sectors of the
supposedly progressive bourgeoisie to confront the right, as proposed by Kirchnerism or the PT in Brazil to face Bolsonaro. If we face the campist propagandists and the counterrevolutionary governments they try to cover up in Nicaragua, Venezuela or Syria by developing an independent and class-based policy against the variants that the empire tries to build. If we intervene in the mobilization processes to dispute the leadership of the apparatuses, including the right, without falling into the abstentionism of certain opportunist or sectarian expressions of the left. If we don´t surrender the banner of the struggle against the European Union to the right. If we become the vanguard in the defense of democratic rights and carry out a transition program to respond to each of the present and historical needs of our class. In short, if we don´t lose sight of our strategy of fighting for a workers’ government and socialism in each country and the entire world.
Tactics and strategy
The turn to the right of the traditional reformist, nationalist and progressive leaderships is scandalous. But so is the fast assimilation to the regime of new phenomena like Syriza, Podemos or more recent variants like the Broad Front in Chile, among others. In the face of this reality, without dismissing the validity of certain tactics in certain moments, what is essential in this moment of the class struggle, is the building of our parties and of a revolutionary socialist International. This perspective has allowed us to take steps forward in our construction, incorporating new groups and comrades to the Anticapitalist Network and working with other revolutionary organizations with which there’s the possibility of building a great international current. And we’re going for more.
Alejandro Bodart