The defeat of the Peronists in the elections
"We Radicals went banging on the doors of the military bases to get support against the Peronists, the Peronists did it against the Radicals, Conservatives against everybody."
Although this comment, which in itself was revealing enough, was made as a self-criticism, sums up the
The final official results of the Argentine election were announced on November 2.
They gave the Radical Party an overall majority on all counts.
The results in the presidential votes were:
Raul Alfonsin (Radical Party) 7,659,530 votes;
Italo Luber (Peronist) 5,936,556 votes
- Oscar Alende (Partido Intransigente) 344,434 votes.
Raul Alfonsin has an overall majority in the 600-strong electoral college that will elect the new president on November 30, of 317 delegates, against 259 for the
Peronist.
The new president will also have a majority in Congress. The Radicals won 129 seats, the Peronists 111 and the Partido Intransigente 3.
the other small parties.
BUENOS AIRES - The results of the
October 30 elections reflect better than all the talk what is happening in Argen-
It has to be said that nobody expected such a smashing victory for the Radicals. What is more, the great majority of the people were expecting an "inevitable"
victory for the Peronists.
Even when it was obvious that the
Peronists had lost, they were not only reluctant to accept this fact, they were incapable of understanding a country where the Peronists were no longer the
So, they kept on insistbiggest force.
ing to the last possible minute that it was not certain that they had been de-
1973, Peron got 7,359,252 votes
(62 percent of the total). The Radicals got 2,905,719 votes (24 percent).
Alianza Popular Federalista, a rightist party, got 1,450,996 (12 percent).
the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores
(1) got 181,474 votes (1.5 percent).
four parties were the only
In 1983, ten years later, the make up of the political forces, their alliances, and their role has changed completely.
of four candidates for the presidency, there were 13. Moreover, this proliferation of candidates reflected nothing more than splits in previously existing socialists were divided into sev-
There were the Trotskyists of the MAS and the Partido Obrero, the nationalist socialists of the Partido Socialista Popular, the Frente de Izquierda
Popular, the Alianza Democratica Sociallista, and the Partido Intransigente. At the same time, the right also went through its own splintering
There was the Alianza Federal, the Movi-
The other 9 seats went to miento de Integracion y Desarrollo, the Union de Centro Democratico, the Partido Democrata Cristiano.
The only two forces that maintained their continuity were the Peronists, in the Partido Justicialista and the Radicals, in the Union Civica Radical.
A TACTICAL VOTE
For reasons that I will go into later, the campaign developed pressure chosing between the two big parties.
The Argentine people did not vote for the alternative they wanted necessarily but for what seemed to represent the best guarantee against everything represented by the immediate past, which preoccupies the minds of Argentinians, that is, the military junta and the repression.
The results of this election can only be compared with the one in 1973, because that was the last. This time, with 90 percent of the vote counted, the Radicals got 7,117,167 votes (52 percent of the
The Peronists got 4,462,432 (40 The Partido Intransigente, up till now "the" left party got 326,993 parties of the left and right got the remaining 4 percent (2 percent of the ballots were blank or invalid for other
It is worth mentioning the score of the MAS because in 1973, then the PST, it got 181,000 votes and in these elections it got only 40,164 (0.29 percent). Partido Obrero, which ran its first election campaign, came in last, with 12,844 (0.09 percent). The Communist Party had hoped to capture several local govern-
It did not win a single one, and ended up with only 2 percent of the vote.
For the right-wing parties, it was a similar story. The Movimiento de Integracion y Desarrollo got 1 percent.
While the people thought that it was most important to vote for a party that the choice the voters made basic contradictions in the political situation within the country.
On the one hand, there is a general outcry against the military dictatorship. Even in the furthest right election rallies, you could hear people shouting: going, to end, it's going to end, the military dictatorship is going to end." ("Se va a acabar, se va a acabar, la dietadura militar.")
On the other hand, the political parties have made deals with the military going back to before the 1976 coup d'etat. Given the contradictory position of the traditional parties, the key role in the political struggle falls to the workers organ-
Moreover, these organizations demonstrated their capacity for offering their own "answer" as a class to the economic situation by bringing out 98 percent of the workers on strike on October 4. RISE OF THE WORKERS MOVEMENT
This action was an impressive display of working-class solidarity and organization, uniting all the working-class forces in a single joint effort to press for a wage
Still more significant is the fact that the central rally on October 4 did not have a distinct party-political character (that is, it was not Peronist) but was an action by and for the workers outside the showed that today the great bulk of the workers are active on two levels. one hand, they work in unions affiliated
On the other, they are in trade-union activity focused on restoring the working class' is a fundamental contradiction generating major internal conflicts in the unions among the trade-union bureaucrats and between the labor conand the Obviously, the extent of the contradictions has an effect on the viability of the so-called National Recovery Plan that the next government will apply.
This highly unstable and contradictory political and economic situation. arises from the fact that the military are relinquishing the government after running the economy into disaster. Argen-
PST - Socialist Workers Party. This party was a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International at the time. It later split from the
International Viewpoint 14 November 1983
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ARGENTINA
tina, like Chile and Brazil, is another example that the force of arms is in no way able to overcome, and much less solve, the economic crisis of a neocolonial country.
The brute force of arms may intimidate big sections of the population but in no way can the armed forces restructure an economy whose contradictions are rooted in its ties to the economy of the industrialized capitalist countries. If the Argentine military have learned anything, it is that. The native bourgeoisie has also learned this lesson. It is for this reason that all the right-wing parties are the backbone of militant trade-unionism in the country, suffered a similar process. In the 1975-81 period roughly, the workforce in the key heavy industries dropped from 1,056,012 to 738,524.
The effects of these economic blows the key sectors of union activists were aggravated by the 30,000 "disappearances." About 50 percent of the "missing persons" were trade-union activists. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo [the organization of relatives of "missing persons"] have been able to show that most of these union activists were members, delegates, and official representaPOR UM
In Villa Constitucion, where the first massive repression against the unions was unleashed in 1975, the leaders of the engineering workers union were arrested and jailed. They were later released, and when they went back they found their union under the control of the bureaucracy and the military.
A movement then began for recognition of the rights of the rank and file. It was joined by other sections of workers. And finally it forced the bureaucracy to call a general strike on December 6.
THE "GROUPINGS"
The engineering workers created a new form of organization, called "Groupings," within unions, something like a trade-union current. This new form of organization spread rapidly, and today it exists in practically all the important unions in the country. What is notable in this case is the natural convergence of econ-
SCALSTA stressing the need for "a return to norm-
For to put it another way, to return the military to their barracks.
They want the military out of the way so that bourgeois democracy can open up the channels and possibilities of the free market, in the hope that in this way Argentina can regain something of its lost
However, no matter how much the bourgeois forces wheel and deal with the military, it is clear that the key to the Argentine situation is the working class.
INDUSTRIAL WORKING CLASS
The situation in the trade-union movement is very complex and contradictory. In the first place, the military followed a native industry in out their political and they set about dismantling the focus of the working class - the factories.
The workers' share of the national income dropped between 1975 and 1981 from 48.5 percent to 30.6 percent. The number of factories in the country declined by 18 percent. And the unemployment rate grew from about 20 percent in 1975 to 30 percent in 1981. It hit industries such as auto very hard. In 1974, there were 57,400 workers in this indus-
In 1982, the figure had fallen to
In general, all the key heavy industries, International Viewpoint 14 November 1983
Election campaign posters in Argentine (DR) tives of various types of the big indus-
Since the military coup, the two trade-union confederations (which are divided because of interbureaucratic wrangling ) have made some itiate joint actions. general strikes demonstrating the unions ability to stand up to the repression -April 24, 1979; July 22, 1981; December 6, 1982; and March 28, 1983. The latest one was on October 4, 1983, as noted
Nonetheless, it has to be pointed out that the union leaderships did not organize these general strikes because that was what they wanted to do. It was the ranks, which were involved in various struggles to raise their standard of living get more democratic unions, obliged the established union leaderships to undertake these actions. December 6 strike. In reality, it was the result of the extreme pauperization of the masses of workers, movement. At the time, the rank-and-file workers were demanding control over the
Commissions, which were supposed to build a bridge between the trustees appointed by the military and the real union leaders. What happened in practice is that they became a discussion club for the military government and the trade-union bureaucracy, from which the rank-and-file workers were excluded.
omic and political demands.
Notable also is the atmosphere that preceded the October 4 strike. It brought out nearly all workers, and the leaderships of the two CTs, both of which are Peronist, were not able to use their position of leadership to consolidate the Peronist movement's working-class base.
This July, 626,000 workers mobilized in work stoppages, strikes, marches, and protests to demand trade-union rights and improvements in wages and conditions. This included dockers, police, professors, doctors, bakers, oil workers, bank workers, store clerks, civil servants, customs workers, journalists, engineering workers, electrical workers, railroad workers, and
In August, 1,033,980 workers mobilized, including automotive workers, telebank workers, bakers, restaurant workers, professors, railroad workers, port workers, shipbuilding workers, electrical workers, and press workers. In this month, people began to notice the relationshir between economic demands and demands the dictatorship raised by the same workers.
In September, 2,241,770 workers in the same industries mobilized, along with airline and subway workers.
In this context of rising struggles, with continually more political demands, the leaderships of the national labor organizations were obliged to call a general strike. At the same time, they wanted to establish a new mechanism of control over the
The contrast with the October 4 strike was the big windup election rally held by the Peronists. While Radicals mobilized broad layers of the middle class - about 500,000 - who shouted slogans against the military dictatorship, the Peronists brought out a million workers. class mobilizations in the Peronism, when the unions marched into the square behind giant banners, with * union leadership at the head follor disciplined ranks, the Peronist
Pierre Frank, Livio Maitan, Ernest Mandel, Hugo Gonzales Moscoso.
this 1983 windup election rally in dis-
They did not march in organized groups. union contingents but in fact as individuals, although there were neighborhood organizations present.
You felt the disorganization of the workers and the deterioration of their standard of living. The people who came to the rally at the end of the campaign
The demand rose for bread were angry. and work. The people in effect held the Peronist worthies on the platform sponsible for this situation. But still they came, and this rally was much bigger and more militant than the Radical one.
The fact is that the petty bourgeoisie are not easy to get out on marches, whereas the workers are used to this.
So, the Peronist rally reflected the workers' continuing attachment to Peronism but also the disorganization of the working class and its impoverish-
This explains the jeering ceremony on October 17 in Velez to celebrate the unification of the Peronist
The one who was supposed to be the main speaker, Lorenzo Miguel, was not able to make himself heard over the abuse he got from the crowd. National TV showed a bottle hitting the microand just missing the face of the country's top trade-union bureaucrat.
The incident created such a scandal that in the following days the union bureaucrats were obliged to visit Lorenzo Miguel to do homage to him and explain that they had nothing to do with the events. Nonetheless, at the Peronists' election windup rally, although he was on the platform, Lorenzo Miguel was not presented to the public. jeering was directed against him. That is, rank-and-file making a distinction between adhering to Peronism as an ideology and letting themselves be led by the traditional Peronist leaders.
So, the Peronists electoral defeat is a reflection of what is happening in the Peronist structures for controlling the
This is the central problem, and here lies the key to their defeat in the masses. elections.
However, another thing has to be taken into account to judge the mood of the masses in Argentina. Although the Peronists say the contrary in their electoral propaganda, they did not participate in the resistance to the military. Or more precisely, the Peronist leadership did not participate, because the ranks were in fact deeply involved
In his campaign, Alfonsin presented himself as the champion of democracy and democratic rights. On the other hand, Luder did not identify himself so much with democracy. This fact created a lot of suspicion, and this has to be understood in all its implications. What the Argentines wanted, as shown by their tactical vote, was a return to democracy, the chance to live without fear.
The fear was terrible. Argentines ment.
Farrell Dobbs 1907-1983