By Guillermo Pacagnini
In an article published on its website, Izquierda Socialista (IS) engages in a debate with our party about the use of the slogan Constituent Assembly (CA).[1] The text introduces confusion, because it amalgamates the positions of the MST with those of the PTS and distorts the formulation of our politics. It also proposes a characterization of a static situation placed outside of reality and a policy that abandons the method of the transitional program.
Nothing has changed? No blindness is worse than that of whom does not want to see
IS denies not only the magnitude of the change that has taken place in the government, but the change itself. Incredibly, its author asks himself (literally): “What’s the change?” He ignores that in a few days we went from the president being enticed to “use the pen” to being practically displaced from the podium of decision-making while Massa concentrated the main forces of the Cabinet under his control.
The center of the scene was occupied by this new “superminister.” Analysts, the press, the streets… everyone speaks of an evident change in the relations of power within the government coalition. This is a qualitative change.
IS, with a static and non-Marxist analysis, asks again “Is it… not the same [government] that has been in power since 2019?” We are not going to make a legal discussion of categories; it is evident that there was a change and a qualitative one, a change in the government that also subtly touches the regime, a turn to the right with the endorsement of the entire ruling class political arch. The wing of the Renovating Front, linked to the US embassy, came to concentrate the main levers of power and is not here to “apply the same adjustment” as IS says. It means an attempt to configure a more solid government device that can apply a greater adjustment: the one demanded by the IMF and the bourgeoisie. The Massa plan is not more of the same; it is an evident deepening of the austerity plan.[2] [3] [4]
The “correct use” of the Constituent Assembly: a transition slogan
IS distorts the facts when it says that we raised the CA slogan as our central response to Massa’s inauguration, because we placed it on the cover of our newspaper, Alternativa Socialista No. 811. Let’s see:
- First, we began to agitate the need for a Constituent Assembly before Massa took office; we did so correctly, in response to the acceleration of a political and economic crisis with a run on the exchange rate, inflationary spikes and a sensation of evident political vacuum in the government that put the entire ruling superstructure in check and a new Minister of Economy was installed in less than a month. An acceleration that imposed a deep engineering to try to save governability.
- Second, Constituent Assembly was not “the center” of our politics, but rather part of a system of slogans that included This is no longer tolerable, They must all go, Let’s prepare a New Argentinazo (1 page in our newspaper), Workers’ and people’s economic plan (2 pages), Let the people decide everything, Constituent Assembly (1 page) and Government of the workers and the left (2 pages). It seems that the scribe of the IS article stayed on the cover and did not read the content of AS No. 811. The Constituent Assembly is placed as a slogan against the regime and not as an axis or slogan of power in the program that we raise in the face of this crisis.[5] [6]
- Third, behind this debate the reality emerges that IS has buried this slogan, that it was completely absent in its response to such a national calamity. A slogan that is part of the transition program, which becomes fundamental when there are sudden changes and crises accelerate. And especially when the regime conceives more undemocratic solutions, which must be responded to from a revolutionary position.
Is it not true that before the jump in the crisis with Guzman’s resignation, a kind of triumvirate began to function, the bourgeois opposition was summoned and solutions were considered to prop up governability, including early elections? It is correct to appeal to this slogan, “the most democratic one that exists within the bourgeois democratic regime,” which, nonetheless, acquires a transitional character in crises placed within a system of slogans.
The Constituent Assembly is a slogan that is becoming more valid in the face of the anti-democratic course that bourgeois democratic regimes are taking, in this crisis in this phase of the decline of capitalism. In this case, the appointment of a kind of prime minister, who pushed the president into the background, even stepping over and ignoring the mechanisms in place in the current established presidential regime. And this was decided between four walls by a handful of leaders. That is why a correct policy begins by denouncing and unmasking that anti-democratic character and proposing a more democratic solution like a Constituent Assembly.
As Trotsky stated,[7] it is a policy par excellence for semi-colonial countries where democratic slogans have a key importance. Being ideal as a bridge to the middle sectors against the illusions of the masses that, despite IS’s desires, weakened as they are, still exist and must be disputed. It is an excellent slogan to mobilize that, despite its bourgeois democratic origin, if it is taken up by the masses in mobilization, it can have very different consequences from its initial character. We always understood it this way. A slogan to oppose the atrocities of the bourgeoisie, to unmask the anti-democratic character of the governments and their regimes that decide behind the backs of the people, and for unity with the middle classes.[8]
And we always articulate it with the demand of a workers’ and people’s economic plan and subordinate it to the slogan of power, as is clear in our publications. To vote in the CA for an increase in salaries automatically updated with inflation, the non-payment of the debt, the distribution of working hours, the nationalization of banks and foreign trade, the agrarian reform and the expropriation of corporations and monopolies. But also the political tasks to democratize decisions, such as the dissolution of the aristocratic Senate and its replacement by a legislative assembly elected by a single district, election of judges by popular vote, among many other measures.
Being a fundamental slogan, it will never be the essential one, the axis of the program. This, as we propose, should be the workers’ and people’s government, which we also formulate on this occasion as “of the workers and the left.”
Izquierda Socialista abandons an entire tradition of our Morenist current regarding the use of the slogan of a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly. Not of the “misuse” that was made in the nineties, which surely those who designed this article will remember well.
We vindicate Moreno’s approach, which was clear when he predicted that the CA was one of the three paths along which the revolution would advance, together with the non-payment of the debt and the fight for the punishment of the genocides, three fundamental transition slogans for this stage. “…three very powerful levers for the revolutionary mobilization of the masses towards the triumph of the socialist revolution.”[9]
Undoubtedly, the Constituent Assembly is in debate and present in the Latin American crises and processes, as recently happened in Chile and Peru. Beyond its limitations or how it ended up in these processes due to the problem of leadership, we raised the fight for a Free and sovereign Constituent Assembly.
Propagandism and economism versus revolutionary politics
However, Izquierda Socialista, displaying an extreme skepticism that does not allow it to see the sharp changes taking place in reality, also believes a priori that if a Constituent Assembly were established, the left would be a small minority and could not accomplish anything. Incredible. Once again, an anti-dialectical position, far removed from what we historically maintained with Moreno. With this criterion, we should not demand a general strike from the bureaucracy either.
Each slogan must be analyzed in context and its relative importance changes according to the reality of the class struggle. Izquierda Socialista proposes that we put aside the method of the transitional program and limit ourselves to making propaganda for socialism. And for agitation and action, to have a trade unionist and economicist policy like theirs, since their “workers’ and people’s” solution is reduced to calling for a strike and a plan of struggle. As for a political solution, nothing.
The apex of this economicist propaganda: for IS the “workers’ and socialist solution” is reduced to solely and almost uncritically asking the bureaucracy for a national strike, which is testimonial.
The icing on the cake is at the end of the article. They lie again, around the fallacy that our center is the Constituent Assembly, and that theirs is to strengthen the FITU and call for a march with Militant Unionism to Plaza de Mayo on the 17th. Frankly Fellinesque, because until today, IS argued against such a march, both at the FITU committy and at the Plenary of Militant Unionism. Its policy, that of marching behind the traitorous CGT, remained in an absolute minority, which forced them to back down.[10]
Debates should be serious. They should be based on reality but, above all, be honest.
[1] Debate con PTS y MST / ¿Ante la crisis del gobierno la salida pasa por ir a votar en una Asamblea Constituyente? (izquierdasocialista.org.ar)
[2] Massa: cambio en el gobierno o cambio de gobierno – Las noticias más importantes de Corrientes (diarioellibertador.com.ar)
[3] Asume Sergio Massa: el rol del «Primer Ministro» y la etapa de una nueva gestión | BAE Negocios
[4] Dúo de poder. Nueva era entre Cristina y Massa: un pacto de discreción para la toma de decisiones – La Nación
[5] Que el pueblo decida todo. Asamblea Constituyente libre y soberana – Periodismo de Izquierda
[6] El capitalismo no va más. Un gobierno de la izquierda y la clase trabajadora – Periodismo de Izquierda
[7] León Trotsky, El programa de transición. La agonía del capitalismo y las tareas de la IV Internacional
[8] Nahuel Moreno. Actualización del Programa de Transición
[9] Nahuel Moreno. 1982. Empieza la revolución.
[10] 17 de agosto. No vayas a la marcha trucha de la CGT – Periodismo de Izquierda