Argentina - June 30, 2018

FIT deputies' new bill:

"Binding popular consultation" against the pact between Macri's Government and the IMF

The dream of every petty-bourgeois pacifist: "expanding democracy" with Bonapartist plebiscites and popular consultations

The PTS: the "peaceful way to imperialism’s defeat" in semi-colonial countries

A Stalinist poison with false Trotskyist cover
Seligra, Del Caño and Del Pla, leaders of the FIT signatories of the bill

Before the agreement between Macri and the IMF, the deputies of the PTS and the PO of the FIT have presented a bill to submit it to a "binding popular consultation" (ie a plebiscite?).
Posing that the pact can be broken with the IMF - that is, with the US - via a plebiscite, the FIT deputies want to convince the workers that with the vote in the polls it is possible to defeat the Yankee imperialism that oppresses and plunders the nation. That is to say, they claim that it is possible to expel the Wall Street pirates by "peaceful means".
The US organized Videla's coup and other genocidal dictatorships on the continent in the 1970s. Today he commanded the massacre of Al Assad and Putin against the Syrian masses. In Latin America, it has enlisted 9 military bases in Colombia, together with the NATO base installed in the Malvinas Islands to drown the masses in a bloodbath in defense of their interests in Argentina and the entire region. And now, while they set up a military base to guard the businesses of their oil companies in Vaca Muerta, they prepare with Macri to take the Armed Forces back to the streets in Argentina as was done in Rio de Janeiro. And to this the leaders of the PTS oppose you an electoral ballot!

Against the "peaceful road to break with imperialism" proclaimed by the PTS, the revolutionaries reaffirm that national independence is, along with the agrarian question, one of the two structural democratic tasks of a semi-colonial country like Argentina. And as the program of Trotskyism proposes, this cannot be achieved without the triumph of the socialist revolution, with the working class of all Latin America as part of a common struggle and mainly, with its best allies, the American workers.
But saying that through a plebiscite is possible to break with the IMF is a poison against the workers of Argentina, saying that in Venezuela this can be achieved with a "movement to demand the non-payment of the external debt, is a lack of respect against the exploited. There the government of Maduro kills the people with hunger and bullets from the Bolivarian Armed Forces and the fascist "chavist collectives" to pay the external debt. It is clear that the leaders of the PTS write very far from the streets of the plundered Venezuela.
The PTS has long since broken with Trotskyism. Its strategy in semi-colonial countries is that first we must expel imperialism by expanding bourgeois democracy, that is, through plebiscites and elections, and then, for the Greek calends, the time will come to fight for socialism. It is a reactionary pseudo-theory, continuation of social democracy and Stalinism.

Therefore, this policy of plebiscites and referendums is common in the mouths of the deputies and leaders of the PTS. Del Caño had raised to call a "referendum" on December 18 on the "pension reform" while outside the parliament room,  Plaza Congreso was burning with the working class facing the attack on pensions Even earlier, they had called for a referendum on the non-payment of the debt to the vulture funds in 2016.
Then the PTS defended this policy in an article in La Izquierda Diario on April 10, 2016 entitled "Controversy in the Left: vulture funds and popular consultation." There, defending himself against criticism of his plebiscite, he argued: "Debates on the use of democratic demands are not new to Trotskyism and Trotsky fought many times against those sectarian and propagandist positions. A demonstration of this was the debate that took place around the so-called Ludlow amendment in USA." PTS has formed his cadres falsifying this position of Trotsky on the Ludlow amendment to deepen his policy of fighting for a more generous (bourgeois) democracy.
The Ludlow amendment was a motion presented by the bourgeois Ludlow, deputy of the Democratic Party, in 1938 to amend the US Constitution and establish that the country could not go to war without first being approved in a plebiscite. Trotsky's policy was to take advantage of that plebiscite appeal (just as a bourgeois democratic means such as elections can be used), with the purpose of explaining the masses that war was not stopped with a referendum but with the proletarian revolution. Trotsky never called for a referendum to prevent war. The PTS' position is a gross falsification of the revolutionary of the revolutionary policy of the IV International in the '30s.

Trotsky did not argue with the leadership of the American SWP that they should call a referendum, but rather what to do with the amendment proposed by Ludlow in Parliament. In this regard, Trotsky said: "Naturally it would be better if we could mobilize the workers and the poor peasants to overthrow democracy and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, the only way to prevent imperialist war. But we cannot do it. The masses look more towards democratic means against war. This has two sides: a totally progressive one, which is the will of the masses to stop the war of the imperialists, the lack of confidence in their own representatives. They say yes, we send people to parliament, but we want to control them on this important issue that means the life and death of millions and millions of Americans. This is a profoundly progressive step. But they connect with this, illusions that they can achieve this goal only by this mean [the referendum proposed by Ludlow, N. of R.]. We criticize this illusion (...) We can dissipate these illusions not with decisions a priori but during a common action. "(Discussions of the Transitional Program, "The fight against war and the Ludlow amendment", March 22, 1938, bold ours).What does this have to do with the politics of the leadership of the PTS, which calls for defeating imperialism and curbing the war of the capitalists against the workers via elections and "popular consultations"?

We insist, never the position of Trotsky was to call a referendum. It was Deputy Ludlow who called him, as Del Caño does today. The program of the Fourth International against the war was not a plebiscite but the dictatorship of the proletariat. In that same letter Trotsky states: "The statement of the CN [of the SWP, N. of the R.], affirms that the war cannot be stopped by means of a referendum. That is absolutely accurate. This affirmation is part of our general attitude towards war, as the inevitable development of capitalism, and whose nature cannot be changed or eliminated by democratic means "(idem).
Trotsky's discussion with the SWP leadership of 1938 about the Ludlow amendment, which the PTS falsifies, was how to express that program under the conditions of that time in the US. In that discussion, Trotsky continued stating: "I think we can say to the masses, that we must openly say to them: dear comrades our opinion is that we must establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, but you still are not of our opinion. Do you believe that we can keep America out of the war through a referendum?. What will you do? You say that you do not have enough confidence in the president or in the congress that you have chosen and that you want to restrain them by means of a referendum. Well, very well, we totally agree with you that you must learn to decide by yourselves. In this sense, the referendum is a good thing and we will support it. Ludlow proposed this amendment, but he will not fight for it. He does not belong to the sixty families, but to the five hundred ones. He carries out this parliamentary slogan, but this fight is very serious and can only be led by the workers, the peasants and the masses, and we will fight with you. The people who proposed these means do not want to fight" (bold ours).
 Later on, Trotsky affirms that in each favorable occasion it is necessary to state that the referendum: "is not enough. The magnates of the war industry have their contacts, etc.; we must restrain them too; we must establish the workers' control of  war industry. "(idem) and so develop the program for the proletarian revolution.
If the "Ludlow - Del Caño" amendment were accepted by the bourgeois Parliament, the Trotskyists would call to use it to denounce the workers that imperialism is defeated with the revolution and not with an electoral ballot as the PTS wants. This is how this Gramscian current has ended: a neo-Stalinism transvestite of Trotskyist.

Federico Espinosa y Florencia Barcaz