Re: fascism and unions and the masses

[jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Juan Inigo)]

At the beginning, Carlos was unconditioned assertive in throwing his
condemnatory rays on the head of anyone who dared to fall, or Carlos had
decided he/she has fallen, to the sinful attitude of

>        Peron's first "theoreticians" as a "national bourgeois
>        progressive and revolutionary movement" came out of the
>        Communist Party and the left wing of the Radical Party
>        in 1945.  Peron aseduced them to write and propagate the
>        myth of national revolution.

or

>    This is an explanation of why Juan capitulated to Peronism and now
>    is searching for an explanation for it.  I have no problem with
>    his personal needs to adapt to Peronism.  Many other leftists did
>    the same in the 70s and the 80s.  It was what Peron called "the
>    little bottle of ink which want to change the color of the ocean"
>    What is not acceptable for me is to try to pass that adaptation
>    as Marxist ideology o Marxian annalysis.

But it sufficed with invoking the name and acts of Nahuel Moreno for a
miracle to occur. According to Carlos' "commandments," any ordinary mortal
that could have performed Moreno's practical political action, not just of
writing about the national revolution, but of co-founding a Socialist Party
of the _National Revolution_ (Partido Socialista de la Revolucion
Nacional), had "capitulated to Peronism" because "Peron seduced them to
write and propagate the myth of a national revolution," thus turning
him/herself into "what Peron called "the little bottle of ink which want to
change the color of the ocean."" But when it comes to Moreno, there is no
need even of "searching for an explanation for it," since it is not even a
venial sin, but has suddenly turned into:

>You have to attempt to reduce Nahuel
>    Moreno ... by associating to a multi-tendency party.

What according to Carlos _commandments- should be seen as Nahuel Moreno's
"capitulation to Peronism" produced by "Peron seduced them to write and
propagate the myth of a national revolution" etc., a content that takes
concrete visible form in his practical Peronist political action and
ideology of directing a newspaper whose leitmotif was "Under the command of
General Peron" (Bajo la conduccion del General Peron) has suddenly turned
into:

>You have to attempt to reduce Nahuel
>    Moreno to the point of describing a sentence in a newspaper
>    heading ...

This miracle has been produced in the name of Nahuel Moreno, rather, God Father.

But Carlos has shown at length how prodigal he can be concerning miracles.
He has brought Vandor back to life from among the dead for the sake of
turning him into a non-Peronist, he has multiplied the current blank votes
and the non-Peronist votes until being able to feed even the most
unimaginable political appetite, he has changed the path of time making May
1969 = March 1971, he has cleaned out the name and number of the Peronist
beast from every massive political action in Argentina for the last 50
years, and he has turned the real struggle of the Cordobazo into a
romantically fantastic episode (not only in content, but in its most
visible forms). Of course, all these miracles are the acts of God Son.

He has now served us with yet another fantastic miracle:

>    ... Moreno's political and
>    practical demonstration of how to create a political organization
>    that was capable of competing and overcoming Peronism at one
>    time in the centers of working class activity;  yes, the Marxist
>    who, *in practice", demonstrated how much a charlatan were people
>    like Juan in confronting Peronism, crushed the CP through a
>    tactical United front and yes, led many struggles during the 70'
>    and 80s.

As I have already pointed out,

>At the early '70s I held many discussions trying to make visible the short
>termed specificity through which Argentine capital accumulation was
>running, that needed to take concrete political shape in the appearance of
>an imminent socialist transformation. This appearance was so much
>determined as such, that it needed to be actively personified through the
>ideological claim about "I do believe that in the present epoch, politics
>determines over economics," fed by romantic fantasies fabricated by those
>who, according to their own claims (but obviously not according to their
>actual determinations), should have been the first ones to take
>responsibility in consciously ruling the struggle by being aware of its
>determinations beyond appearances. Twenty years later, Carlos is repeating
>these ideological fantasies. The difference is that he can deal with them
>as pure fantasies, while for other people have meant being objectively left
>defenseless in the hands of the torturers and murderers.

The appearance of the imminent socialist transformation was personified by
two main political expressions. The first one was the Juventud Peronista,
with its union section JTP (that struggled against the Peronist union
bureaucrats), its university section JUP, and obviously, its armed section
Montoneros. This was a massive political movement. The true scope of their
socialist ideology was synthesized in their claim for a "socialismo
nacional y popular" (national and popular Socialism). They always claimed
being the true expression of Peron's and Eva's Peronism, even after Peron
himself expelled them from the Plaza de Mayo (they blamed his rightist
"surroundings," that according to them were profiting from his old age, for
this; many jokes, tragic jokes actually, were made about they always seeing
an approval wink coming from Peron). In an increasing proportion, and
completely after the 1976 military coup, this movement concentrated itself
in Montoneros. By the time this political movement arose, Nahuel Moreno had
already left behind his "tactical" "under the conduction of General Peron,"
and opposed it.

The second of these political groups was the ERP, Ejercito Revolucionario
del Pueblo (Revolutionary People's Army), which has little more structure
than its military structure itself. This was the former PRT/El Combatiente
group that Louis Proyect referred to as

>... having been chosen by my party to defend Nahuel Moreno's
>perspectives there against the Robin Hood ultraleftists of the PRT/Combatiente.

A vast majority of the 30000 dead and missing people produced by the
bloodthirsty repression were related to Montoneros and ERP.

In the early '80s, when democracy was in process of being reinstated,
Nahuel Moreno's MAS produced a new "tactical" shift working in a political
action that was expecting to receive the mass of "deceived" Peronists. The
MAS won one or two seats in the national parliament over about 250. Of
course, this can be seen as an infinitely enormous "crushing" of the CP
that got none. Since the mass of deceived Peronists was clearly not
arriving, the MAS produced another "tactic" change and concentrated itself
again in its union action. It made some advances there mainly in the
teachers and health unions, but never was able to advance beyond being an
absolute minority in any general scale (for instance, it got the 6% of the
votes in the last bank employees union elections). Again, this can be seen
as a complete "crushing" of the CP, which has practically vanished away,
but we must not forget that we are talking about the scale in which a
rabbit could see itself crushing leaves vis a vis the scale in which a
Peronist elephant does.

Today, the MAS has splited, and in the May 95 presidential elections the
two branches together got less than 0.2 % of the votes.

Now, we already have the God Father and the God Son. The God Holy Spirit
that completes this insoluble trinity is Carlos'

>    Yes, I do believe that in the present epoch, politics determines
>    over economics.

that consequently needs to turn every real fact, figure and name into a
fantastic _interpretation_, to sustain on it the practice of the most crude
political opportunism. But this opportunism is not an abstract matter. Its
true content lies in the reproduction of the Argentine national process of
capital accumulation as a specific negation of capital's general necessity
to develop the material productive powers of society on the basis of the
appropriation of the ground rent. This reproduction takes a specific
concrete shape through the political action of a left that finds no need to
rule its action by discovering the specific base itself of this process of
capital accumulation and, therefore, of the necessity that determines its
own political action.

Carlos asks:

>    Where was Juan then?

Simple, I was struggling to discover the true nature of the Argentine
process of capital accumulation and, therefore, to develop an unavoidable
condition for any revolutionary action that could be conscious about its
own necessity beyond appearances. With a handful of exemptions, every time
I tried to advance with this development as a collective process, and I
did, my arguments were violently rejected by the left militants I was
trying to approach. One typical argument was of the sort:

>I have been immersed in Marxism
>for xx years. I also have a pretty good knowledge of Argentinian
>politics,..
>What point are you trying to make about "capital accumulation"? If I pay
>very close attention to your argument, you begin to sound more and more
>like an economic determinist than a Marxist. Capital accumulation is
>interesting, but it is not the determinant factor in the class struggle.
>What is so complicated about
>this?

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And, of course, even more frequently, my
arguments were rejected with just a "Yes, I do believe that in the present
epoch, politics determines over economics."

In other words, trying to point out the true nature of the Argentine
process of capital accumulation didn't make me popular at all among the
left militants that massively needed to personify it through an action
based on its appearances. Just transport the current discussion almost 25
years back when I was only giving the first steps in my developments and
the appearance of an imminent "national and popular socialist revolution"
was peaking, to get a vivid picture of how great the necessity of the
Argentine national process of capital accumulation to produce that
developments as a directly collective process was. Still, however small
this necessity goes on being today, its magnitude does not change in a iota
the fact that being aware of the specificity of the Argentine process of
capital accumulation and of the political forms that it consequently needs
to take is an unavoidable condition for the conscious ruling beyond
appearances of any revolutionary action here and in general.

But in Carlos religious conceptions, revolutionary action is that which
corresponds to what the revealed Word of God he produces by transforming
real facts, figures and names into fantastic abstractions says it is. So he
does not fill any necessity to demonstrate exactly at which point of my
developments concerning the Argentine process of capital accumulation I
supposedly go wrong; did I say demonstrate? he has shown not to fill even
the necessity of considering them. From Carlos inverted point of view, I
should have intentionally closed my eyes and said "amen" to the "revealed
truths" made of appearances that were current (and obviously still are)
among the Argentine left. Since I didn't, everything comes down to
condemning me for my lack of faith, to the horrible punishment of being,
maybe for all the eternity that Peronism might survive,

>    closeted with a book of Marx he couldn't read because he
>    was afraid of turning on the light

and excluded from any right of

>    trying to confront
>    peronism and its influence where it counts... In the working class

Well, I have managed myself not only to constantly read Marx, but to
constantly write and struggle to advance in a collective process of
conscious action however tough the real circumstances, to be frightened now
by Carlos' infantile resort to his charlatan's fantasies. And, of course,
the production in any extent (or even a failed attempt to advance in this
production) of the cognition beyond appearances that shapes the regulation
of the conscious revolutionary action through which capitalism needs to
annihilate itself into the general conscious regulation of human life,
socialism/communism, is a necessary concrete form of the class struggle as
much as any other.

Juan Inigo
jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



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