Peru - April 15, 2023

The "lessons" of the PTS / La Izquierda Diario from the revolutionary struggle in Peru...

A scandalous balance sheet to save the Stalinist bureaucracy of the CGTP 

In its statement entitled "four months after the protests and the political crisis in Peru: The root causes that prevent a return to normality" (of April 2), the PTS of Argentina, through a militant from Chile, wants to make the workers, poor peasants and rebellious youth of Peru and Latin America believe that their greatest allies to succeed were the Stalinist bureaucrats of the CGTP, when they were the main supporters of Dina and the Fujimorist regime of the US and the greatest traitors of the mass struggle.

During the three months of the revolutionary offensive, the PTS dedicated itself to claiming that the working class had not intervened in the struggle, in order to make its whole program revolve around demanding that the Stalinist bureaucracy of the CGTP put itself at the head of the struggle. Today, when they can no longer hide the fact that hundreds of thousands of workers went out to fight, they say: "although the workers participated in the protests, this was in an unstructured or disorganized way", and then go on to affirm: "the role of the trade union bureaucracy is criminal, not only because at first they applauded the Dina government and gave it a vote of confidence, but because they constantly refused to call and organize the indefinite general strike in an effective way". 

How were these CGTP bureaucrats going to "call and organize the indefinite general strike effectively" as the PTS wanted, if they were in charge of supporting Dina, breaking the workers' and peasants' alliance that was being forged in the streets, and preventing the proletariat from leading the fight by paralyzing the key places of production?

The PTS is disappointed because "their" CGTP leadership "refused to mobilize" the workers' movement, which according to them would have allowed the working class to intervene in a well "structured" and "organized" way as PTS likes. It is clear that the PTS only recognizes a decisive intervention of the working class when it is called upon by the Stalinist bureaucracy of a trade union center that does not even represent 10% of the workers' movement.

They say it themselves: "The potential of the working class was shown by the positive on the day of the National Strike called by the CGTP on 9 February (...) This in truth was a partial one-day strike, with special participation (.... ) of the construction workers, organized in the Federation of Civil Construction Workers of Peru, who marched very disciplined, with red T-shirts showing the initials of the federation, helmets, gloves, masks and with a marked decision to fight, but the CGTP withdrew them before time, leaving the masses to their fate".

The PTS' mouth is drooling over the intervention of so-called construction workers marching "very disciplined", unlike the workers who "came up with the idea of going out to confront the coup government in an unstructured and disorganized way"? They are so obsessed with the column of a handful of bureaucrats from the Federation of Civil Construction that they ended up lost in the Avenida Abancay with Nicolás de Piérola in Lima... On that corner it became clear that on that famous February 9 nothing of what the PTS says happened: there was no strike nor any march of the rank and file workers of the civil construction. Stop lying! That February 9 was a milestone of the betrayal of that Stalinist bureaucracy. Those who led that march were the bureaucrats of the CGTP, together with the bureaucrats of the civil construction workers union, who entered the Government Palace, escorted by the police, to demand that Dina resign and that the coup Congress call for new elections, that is, a plan for an orderly departure of the bourgeoisie. The PTS consciously conceals this in order to cover up for the traitorous leaders of the CGTP who were "very disciplined" to support the pro-imperialist regime against the revolutionary struggle of the masses. 

The PTS lies: the working class did intervene despite and against the bureaucracy of the CGTP, setting up self-organizing organizations together with the poor peasants, students, etc. 

It wants so much to bring the masses to the feet of the bureaucracy, that in its statement, the PTS says: "One of the limits (of the mobilization, NdR) was the lack of development of institutions of self-organization and self-defense (...) overcoming the bureaucratic control of the main trade union centers and of the various coordinators of the mobilization. We say various coordinating bodies because this was also a limit to the process in the absence of a unified command of struggle to centralize the mobilization...".

Thus, the PTS consciously falsifies the qualitative fact that took place in Peru: overcoming those Stalinist bureaucrats, the masses in struggle began to set up their organisms of self-organization like the Committees of Struggle and Defense Fronts, to coordinate them, as with the Macro-Regional Coordinating Committee of the South, and began to centralize them on a national level by forging the National Committee of Struggle of the Regions of Peru.

The PTS has to keep on lying because what was on the agenda was not "to demand that the CGTP bureaucracy call a general strike", but the task set to oust Dina was to defeat that strike-breaking leadership. And that was done by fighting to extend, develop and strengthen those bodies of self-organization that the masses gave themselves, by calling on the rank and file workers inside the CGTP to rise up against the Stalinist bureaucracy, to set up their committees of self-organization and vote their delegates in assemblies to send to the National Committee of Struggle of the Regions to unite with the masses in struggle. By defeating the bureaucracy, the "unified command of struggle" that the exploited won in an embryonic form was strengthened! If this "unified command of struggle" that the PTS wanted, did not end up standing up, it was first of all because of the role of the CGTP bureaucracy which, together with the bourgeoisie of Pedro Castillo, Perú Libre, Nuevo Perú of Verónika Mendoza, etc., split the National Committee of Struggle of the Regions, a question that the PTS is also silent about.

They cover up so much for Stalinism, that not only does the PTS not even mention that the CGTP is led by Patria Roja and the Communist Party, but they do not even say in passing that it was that bureaucracy that took, armed with sticks, the premises of the health workers of CONFENUTSSA to prevent them from continuing to organize together with the National Committee of Struggle of the Regions. Stalinism made a military attack on a union shop to teach the working class as a whole a lesson so that they would not follow the example of the health workers, and the PTS keeps quiet about it!

Not to mention that for the PTS it was all about the "general strike called by the CGTP"... in a peaceful way. According to the PTS, it was possible to defeat the Dina government and the bloody coup commanded by the USA, its military bases and the Fujimorist officers, without calling on the masses to arm themselves; contrariwise, what was the order of the day was to set up the workers' and peasants' militia and call on the rank and file soldiers, sons of the people, to set up their committees and centralize in the National Committee of Struggle of the Regions, to set up the armed dual power to defeat the power of the bourgeoisie, to expel imperialism and its military bases, etc.

The PTS silences the struggle to win over the rank and file of the army, leaving intact this fundamental institution of the bourgeois state and the repressive forces that took the lives of more than 80 exploited, proving to be servants not only of Stalinism but of the semi-colonial Peruvian bourgeois state, under the tutelage of the US.

In the fighting in revolted Peru, two opposing policies came face to face. That of the Trotskyists, fighting to develop, strengthen and arm the self-organizing bodies of the workers and poor peasants to build the power of those below; versus that of the renegades of Trotskyism, which aim to support Stalinism on the left, with the PTS demanding that the CGTP bureaucracy mobilize the working class and other groups like the NMAS of Argentina travelling to Lima to meet personally with these strike-breaking leaders.

The whole balance sheet of the PTS, far from being at the service of preparing a second onslaught of the masses, only has the objective of saving the traitorous bureaucracy, which they do not call to defeat, although there is not the slightest possibility of resuming the revolutionary struggle without getting rid of those strikebreaking rascals.

For all of which, it can be understood that they falsify all the facts of these months of struggle in order to save Stalinism. And to close their balance sheet, they dare say that they are fighting for an "international current for the socialist revolution". Instead, when revolutionary processes are opened like in Peru, they put all their forces to support the Stalinism that leads the CGTP. They bring their leaders from Bolivia and Chile to meet with bourgeois politicians, like the congresswoman of Juntos por el Perú, Ysabel Cortez, and militants of the pro-imperialist party of Verónika Mendoza in a discussion (on February 15), where they legitimized the policy of leading the masses into the trap of a bourgeois Constituent Assembly that leaves the Fujimorista regime intact. And they also sent their deputies from Argentina to Lima to meet with human rights organizations of the imperialist UN and then give them that report to the Argentinean bourgeois Congress (February 22), instead of calling on the working class of the whole continent to rise up for a unified struggle against imperialism.

Once again the PTS, supporting Stalinism and its policy to save the regime as a whole from the left.