Nahuel Moreno, Eugenio Greco, Alberto Franceschi

Theses on the Guerrilla

Nahuel Moreno, Eugenio Greco y Alberto Franceschi

Theses on the Guerrilla

1986

English translation: Daniel Iglesias

Cover and interior design: Daniel Iglesias

www.nahuelmoreno.org

www.uit-ci.org

www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar

Copyright by CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales

Buenos Aires, 2017

cehus2014@gmail.com

Theses on the Guerrilla

1

The program of Trotskyism is to make the world socialist revolution, permanently mobilising the working class to achieve the destruction of the world imperialist system, the seizure of power by the international working class and the construction of socialism worldwide. To carry out this program, Trotskyism proposes the construction of the International, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, without whose leadership the world socialist revolution cannot succeed. Therefore, the only two general strategies of Trotskyism are the permanent mobilisation of the working class and the masses for the seizure of power and the construction of the party. In relation to its program and its strategies, everything else is tactical. We have no programmatic or strategic agreements with any current, movement, and tendency or party whose program, organisation and/or methodology are opposed to the independent, democratically self-organized and permanent mobilisation of the workers at the international and national level and to the construction of the International and its national sections.

2

The workers-socialist revolution, like every revolution in history, is also a people’s revolution. The working class cannot seize and exercise power unless it is with the mobilisation and support of the majority of the population, that is, without the alliance of the workers with the non-proletarian masses exploited and oppressed by the imperialist capitalist system, their regimes and governments.

The need of the workers-peasants-people’s alliance to make the socialist revolution and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in the political field, in the obligation of the revolutionary workers’ party to carry out a policy of alliances with the political leaderships of these social classes and layers. These alliances are not only legitimate but essential to mobilise the masses and seize power. This is demonstrated by the experience of the Bolsheviks, who had to make an agreement with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to bring the soviets to power in Russia in 1917 with the support of the peasantry.

But this policy of alliances only leads to the socialist revolution if the working class and its revolutionary party remain independent, acting as the head, as the leader of the whole people. This is so because the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois leaderships are mortal enemies of the permanent and democratically self-organized mobilisation of the workers, of the seizure of power by them and of the socialist revolution. Any alliance with these leaderships is, therefore, tactical, momentary, an agreement for common action. Its aim is to mobilise the masses in the widest possible way. It can and must be done only when those leaderships head, promote or open a breach for mass mobilisation. And it is bound to break as soon as those leaderships betray the revolutionary process, as is inevitable because of their class character. This was also the case in Russia, where the Left Socialist Revolutionaries quickly broke with the Bolsheviks and went on to fight in the camp of the counterrevolution against Soviet power.

3

The emergence of petty bourgeois leaderships independent of Stalinism that have led triumphant revolutions, as Castroism was at the time and Sandinism is now, can lead us to the mistake of believing that with these leaderships and their organizations we are joined by a common strategy — to make the political revolution against the bourgeois regime of the day and the independence of the country from imperialism. It would be a serious mistake because we have no common strategy with those petty bourgeois leaderships independent of Stalinism. They, like any petty-bourgeois leadership, oscillate between the bourgeoisie and the working class. They play, now a progressive role, now a reactionary role. But in the long run it is inevitable they will betray the revolution, at some point in the revolutionary process, for this profound class reason —they are petty bourgeois.

For us, the political revolution is but a moment of the socialist revolution. Therefore, although we can agree with the petty bourgeois leaderships in overthrowing a pro-imperialist dictatorship, we do not agree on who should replace it. They are fully prepared, as proved by the Castro regime with Urrutia and by the Sandinistas with Chamorro and Robelo, to replace the dictatorship with a bourgeois government of class collaboration. We fight for the working class to take power to make the socialist revolution. And, if we can, we do it immediately because the worst thing that can happen to a revolution is to remain stagnant in the “stage” of the democratic political revolution, as Nicaragua also demonstrates. The only thing uniting us to these leaderships is we are both against the dictatorial regime, but we are sharply divided on what we are for — they are for a new bourgeois government, we are for a workers’ and peasants’ government. There is, therefore, no common strategy.

Even if these leaderships, cornered between the rise of the masses and the imperialist aggression, are forced against their will to expropriate the bourgeoisie and establish a workers’ state, as Castro did, we still do not have a common strategy with them. For us, national revolutions are moments of the international socialist revolution. The constitution of workers’ states has as a fundamental and priority objective to build a powerful lever to assist the development of the world revolution. These leaderships, precisely because they are petty bourgeois, are nationalists, not internationalists. When they take power, they do the impossible not to expropriate and they never put the country at the service of the extension of the revolution. And if they expropriate, they establish a totalitarian regime to demobilise the masses and dedicate themselves to “building socialism in their own country”. There is, therefore, no strategic coincidence, because our strategy is opposed to theirs — to establish in the workers’ state a Leninist regime, the only one that, based on the self-organization and democratic mobilisation of the workers, has as a central purpose the development of the international socialist revolution.

4

The difference between the independent petty bourgeois leaderships and the traditional apparatuses is that the former, in some circumstances, do want to make a revolution, even if it is only against a hated regime, while the latter are consciously counterrevolutionary. This is why we vindicate the independent petty bourgeois leaders, if they remain consistent with their own program, as great fighters and heroes of the democratic and anti-imperialist revolution, while we denounce the bureaucrats and Stalinists as counterrevolutionaries.

But this difference cannot hide from us the fact that the independent petty bourgeois leaderships, due to this class character, are much closer to the bureaucracy and Stalinism than to us. This is the only way to explain why Castro joined the Stalinist world apparatus; why the Sandinistas, without having been incorporated, faithfully apply the policy that Stalinism advises them; and why the Salvadoran guerrillas are being controlled by Stalinism even before the victory of the anti-imperialist democratic revolution, and why they no longer propose to end with Duarte, but to share the government with him, that is, they are no longer consistent even with the democratic anti-imperialist revolution. In conclusion, although it is true that with independent petty bourgeois leaderships we can travel together a stretch of the road longer than what we can travel with Stalinism, it is still that, a stretch of the road. But we do not agree on the strategy, that is, in what direction to steer.

For this reason, our policy of alliances with independent petty bourgeois leaderships is the same as with Stalinism, the trade union bureaucracy, and even with nationalist bourgeois leaderships — it strictly boils down to agreements for common action, keeping our total political and organisational independence, to mobilise the masses and displace them as leadership.

5

The fact that the independent leaderships play a more progressive role in some period of the class struggle than Stalinism and other counterrevolutionary apparatuses does not mean that they are the best possible leadership of the popular sectors allied to the proletariat. The Trotskyists do not abandon these social sectors at the disposal of these independent petty bourgeois leaders. We fight for the working class to direct its allies, which means displacing the petty-bourgeois leaderships — including the guerrilla — from the leadership of the non-proletarian popular sectors. We want the poor peasants, the rural proletariat, the impoverished urban petty bourgeoisie, the marginalised, the semi-proletariat, etc. to recognise as their leadership the working class and its revolutionary Trotskyist or Trotskyist-like leadership, not the petty bourgeois organisations. This implies, among other things, that the Trotskyists do not accept that the non-working popular sectors are a private preserve of the petty-bourgeois leaderships. Our aim is to have Trotskyist factions of peasants, lower petty bourgeois, and so on, (although we may not have the strength to implement it if our party is small), to fight the bourgeois, petty bourgeois and bureaucratic organizations in all social sectors, explaining that only under the leadership and rule of the working class, they will succeed in destroying the hated regime and satisfying their demands.

6

Any policy of alliances involves agreements between leaderships. Such agreements can be a simple unity of action, fronts or common organisations. Unlike the agreements, which only commit the party to fight for the common point on which it was agreed, the fronts already imply the existence of a leadership, that is to say, a certain degree of centralism, and of common rank and file organisms. For this reason, Trotskyism never considers, even as a hypothesis, to make a front, much less a common revolutionary organization, with non-working-class organizations, be they bourgeois or petty bourgeois, since this would mean we would be willing to accept the discipline of those organizations or, what is the same, the loss of the independence of the party and the working class before the non-proletarian organizations.

Instead, we do accept or promote common fronts or organisations with other working-class leaderships or organisations. We are in the unions and in the soviets, which are more or less permanent fronts of the working class, and it is compulsory for us to be. We can even be part of a workers’ party with pro-bourgeois bureaucratic or Stalinist popular-frontist working-class leaderships to wrest a backwards working class from their submission to bourgeois parties and win the political independence of the proletariat.

On these fronts, if they are of masses or even if they reflect a very progressive and dynamic phenomenon of the worker’s vanguard, we can come to discipline ourselves to them. If in addition, the functioning is democratic, our discipline can become almost complete. Never is our discipline complete, since a workers’ front can apply a policy contrary to our principles — we do not support or discipline ourselves to a union of white American teachers, even if they are the great majority of teachers, if they demand the segregation of Latino teachers; we do not support or discipline to the US trade unions that were demonstrating in support of the imperialist war in Vietnam.

These workers fronts are fronts and not simple agreements because they have a certain degree of centralism, a leadership, common rank and file organisms where the different currents or factions fight to impose their policies and that we aspire and fight for them to be democratic, a certain permanence in time, etc.

We can also make political agreements with counterrevolutionary or reformist working-class leaderships, just as we do with bourgeois or petty bourgeois leaderships. Both the fronts and the agreements with counterrevolutionary or reformist working-class leaders have the same dual purpose as the agreements we make with non-proletarian leaderships — to mobilise the workers and destroy the bureaucracy. We are in the soviets to mobilise the workers to power and to displace the reformist currents that participate in the soviet. We are in a Labour party to defend the political independence of the class and to displace its collaborationist leadership. And we make an agreement like the one of the Argentine MAS and CP to mobilise and advance the consciousness of our class and win the leadership of the vanguard to the CP.

7

The Revolutionary United Front, however, is a front between our Trotskyist organisation and vanguard working-class currents that evolve towards our program. It is a transition towards the revolutionary workers’ party. If the front fits, it will quickly tend to become a revolutionary workers’ party. We will fight to make it permanent and organised in a democratic centralist way. This means, among other things, that our discipline to it will be absolute since we will tend to dissolve our organisation.

Like the agreements with non-proletarian leaderships and the fronts and agreements with counterrevolutionary working-class leaderships, the Revolutionary United Front seeks the mobilisation of the masses. But it is a tactic falling within the strategy of building the party. For this reason, it differs from the former in that we do not want to destroy the revolutionary workers’ organisations with which we make the Revolutionary United Front, but to strengthen ourselves all by making a united party. If in the development of our Revolutionary United Front policy, the evolution of these currents stops and they crystallize as centrists, the Revolutionary United Front is broken and the centrists become a new obstacle to the construction of the party and must be treated as such, that is, agreements to mobilize the masses and destroy them.

8

While the agreements and fronts made by the Trotskyist party are tactics based on its fundamental strategies of mobilising the masses for the taking of power by the proletariat and building the party, as a general principle these tactics are mandatory. One of the principles of Trotskyism and Leninism, which differentiates it from ultra-leftism and sectarianism, is precisely the compulsory nature of any agreement or front that helps the mobilisation of the masses and/or the building of the party.

But this principle is combined and subordinated to another: Our policy is not directed at the leadership, organisations or sectors of the vanguard of the workers’ movement to whom we propose agreements or fronts or on which we want to work to win them for the party. On the contrary, our policies and slogans are dictated by the needs of the masses and, taking into account their conscience, they seek to build a bridge between such mobilisation and the socialist tasks. This is why, at every moment of the class struggle, Trotskyism raises a transitional program that starts from the needs of the working class and the great popular masses.

Any attempt to define our policy and slogans based on the lines, concerns or needs of the organisations with which we make agreements or fronts, or of the sectors of vanguard on which we privilege the activity to build the party, is vanguardist revisionism. It leads us to move away from the working class and to capitulate to non-proletarian sectors, or working-class opportunist or centrist sectors and prevents us from mobilising the masses towards the triumph of the socialist revolution.

Therefore, our relationship with the organizations with which we make fronts or agreements and with the vanguard sectors on which we work is the systematic criticism of their positions, the confrontation of our policies and slogans, extracted from the needs of the masses and of their mobilization, with the slogans and policies of these leading organizations and sectors.

Our current has a long tradition of struggle against Mandelist vanguardism and against one of its most criminal expressions — the capitulation to the guerrilla organisations. This battle is one of the fundamental milestones in the development of what is today the IWL-FI.1 While the current guerrillas and vanguard phenomena are not identical with those of the first Castroist era, the general conclusions of this struggle are part of the tradition and principles of the IWL-FI.

1 Following on Moreno’s death in 1987, the International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI) went into crisis and in 1990 it began to split. Currently, Moreno’s followers in that organisation, and the keepers of the web page www.nahuelmoreno.org, are grouped in the International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU–FI). [Editor.]

9

To correctly apply the policy of alliances and all other Trotskyist policies it is imperative to make clear class and political definitions of the organisations and leaderships that act on the mass movement and its vanguard. Trotskyism rejects any class definition that takes into account only one characteristic or element: the program, the social composition of the rank and file, social origin of the leadership, organisational form, or any other. All these elements are part of the definition, but the two central characteristics are the leadership and the political line.

The problem of the leadership’s class is not its social origin, but whether the leadership proposes to construct or not an organisation organically independent of the bourgeoisie. If this is proposed, it is a workers’ leadership and its organisation is a workers’ organisation. It may be a trade union leadership, Stalinist, electoralist, union-bureaucratic, union-revolutionary, Bolshevik, but it is a workers’ organisation. If it proposes to organise all those who are willing to vote for it in the elections, or to do armed actions, or anything, regardless of social class, it is not a working-class but a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leadership. The fact that its rank and file can be largely working-class, as is the case, for example, of Argentine Peronism, does not change the class character of the organisation and its leadership; it only makes it more harmful and dangerous.

The political problem is summed up in the question: what does that leadership propose to the working class? Depending on the answer to this question it may be a right-wing, pro-bourgeois working-class leadership, such as the Argentine bureaucracy, or pro-bourgeois class collaborationist leadership, such as Social Democracy, Stalinist, centrist classist, etc.… It is only a revolutionary workers’ leadership if it is Trotskyist, that is to say, if it raises the program of the international socialist revolution or Trotskyist-like, that is if it is dynamic, it goes increasingly towards the left, it tends towards our program.

Of these two elements, the one that takes precedence, the starting point for any definition, is the class character. Defining an organisation from a momentary policy or from a more or less radical written program is a serious mistake that inevitably leads to opportunism. That is, it will leave us and our class disarmed when that leadership or organisation commits the inevitable betrayal of the revolutionary process that inexorably follows from its non-proletarian class character.

10

The guerrilla organisations and leaderships are not working-class, but bourgeois or petty bourgeois, by the mere fact of being guerrillas. Its leadership does not intend to build a workers’ organisation in the working class, but to organise all those who agree with them to make guerrillas, to serve as a base for the guerrilla or to support the guerrillas. Its demarcation line is not the working class, but individuals of any class who want to take up arms. Its program and its policy are to make guerrilla.

Guerrilla organisations are a phenomenon different from political parties that, when the time came, made guerrillas, as was the case, among many others, of the Chinese CP, Castroism and the Vietnamese CP. All of them were parties that, although in some period they assumed the guerrilla as a fundamental form of struggle, they subordinated it to the party. The guerrilla organisations are not subordinated to any party, but they subordinate their “surface” organisations and militants. When guerrilla organisations develop a “surface” organisation, trade union or political among workers or youth, it is the political arm of the guerrilla organisation. The guerrilla organisation is not, therefore, the armed wing of a political party (workers’ or not), but in reverse. The Argentine Montoneros, for example, had a large Peronist Workers Youth full of extraordinary union fighters, as well as a university youth, secondary schools, neighbourhood, etcetera. Either of them added many more members than the Montoneros’ combatants. But when Firmenich gave the order to go underground and relaunch the guerrilla, all those militants, without voice or vote, obeyed the order and left the workers and the youth to their fate.

By making the guerrilla a permanent program and strategy, the guerrilla organizations can never be defined as workers’ organizations, since, as Lenin argued: “The party of the proletariat can never regard guerrilla warfare as the only, or even as the chief, method of struggle; it means that this method must be subordinated to other methods, that it must be commensurate with the chief methods of warfare, and must be ennobled by the enlightening and organising influence of socialism. And without this latter condition, all, positively all, methods of struggle in bourgeois society bring the proletariat into close association with the various non-proletarian strata above and below it…” (VI Lenin, “Guerrilla Warfare”, 30 September 1906, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 11, page 221).

The guerrilla organisations are enemies of the organisation of the workers. They do not send their leaders, who are often extraordinary fighters, to organise the workers, to build within the working class a party, a union, a soviet; but they turn them into organising the guerrillas. Worse still, they use the working class, if they are involved in it, as a supplier of combatants, thus removing from the class (and sending to death) valuable activists and fighters and thus weakening the organisation of the working class. And when they do not physically remove them, they take them out of their activity, since they use them as support, to keep weapons or carry them, to make clandestine propaganda in favour of the guerrilla, etcetera; In this way, these workers’ fighters cannot, for elementary security reasons, do any or almost no activity of political or trade union organization of the working class.

The development of the workers’ struggles can bring about a crisis between the activists and leaders of the “surface” organisations of the guerrilla that better reflect the workers when finding that the orders of the “commanders” are harmful to their class. This crisis may even lead them to break with the guerrilla organisation. It is our duty to intervene in this crisis to deepen it and gain valuable individuals or revolutionary groups. But this should not lead us to confuse the guerrilla with a workers’ organisation since it is exactly the opposite.

11

Its petty-bourgeois class character makes the guerrilla organisation an enemy of the permanent and democratically self-organized mobilisation of the working class and the mass movement. Like any petty-bourgeois organisation, it oscillates between the working class and the bourgeoisie and moves from the most furious struggle to the most heinous truces; for example, the one signed by the Argentine Montoneros with the bourgeois government of Cámpora, or the Colombian M-19 with Betancur. The guerrilla organisation does not educate the working class to rely only on its own strength and on the mobilisation of its allies under its direction; instead, it creates false illusions that its problems will be solved by the hand of a handful of heroic combatants. It does not want, by any means, the democratic self-organization of the workers, the urban people, or the peasants, but seeks to frame them in a totally totalitarian military structure. It does not tell the workers that it should be they who take the power, but it tells them to support it so that it is the guerrilla organisation that takes the power. And, if it succeeds in taking power, it does the same thing as any petty-bourgeois organisation: it establishes a Bonapartist regime, with tight control over the mass movement to prevent further mobilisation and of a closed nationalism opposed to the extension of the revolution to the region and the world.

The guerrilla organization is inimical to the permanent mobilization of the masses, also, because their provocative actions unleash or serve as an excuse for unleashing violent repression and even coups d’état, which cut off or do away with the democratic freedoms torn out by the mass movement and that, for the Trotskyists and for Lenin, are formidable tools for the organization and broad deployment of the true class struggle.

For all these reasons, the guerrilla organisation is the deadly enemy of a fundamental strategy of Trotskyism: the permanent and democratically self-organized mobilisation of the workers. Trotskyism, on the other hand, although it never elevates the guerrilla to a fundamental and permanent form of struggle, accepts it as a fair tactic when, at certain moments, it helps the mobilisation of the masses.

12

The guerrilla organisation is also an enemy of the second fundamental strategy of Trotskyism: the building of the International and its national sections. By bringing valuable leaders and revolutionary cadres out of the working class, by pushing the working class to passivity through waiting for the rescuing combatants, by provoking repression and the coup, the guerrilla organisations reinforce the weight of counterrevolutionary apparatuses within the working class, in the first place of Stalinism. Bringing large numbers of combative or revolutionary activists out of their class greatly eases the task of all workers bureaucracies since those same activists, turned to the anti-bosses and anti-bureaucratic struggle, could be the ferment and leadership of the rebellion against bureaucracy and its annihilation.

For these reasons, the guerrilla organisation is one of the worst enemies of party building. And the more influence it has on the workers’ vanguard, the more dangerous it is as an enemy. Even a mass opportunist party is easier to fight than the guerrilla, since, by the pressure of the ranks it can be forced, for example, to call a general strike even if it does not want to. And with the general strike the class acts as a class, is tempered and renews the activism, it becomes easier to build the party. The guerrilla organisation, on the other hand, can go on a general strike that nobody wants, causing a defeat and repression, as happened in Colombia on 20 June 1986. The opportunist mass party leaves the working class and activists in their place, although trying to keep the class passive and bureaucratise or repress the activists. But the guerrilla pulls the working class out of its place, making it look at its spectacular actions, and pulls out of the working class activists angry with the bureaucracy.

Fighting guerrilla politics is imperative to build the party. If the guerrillas have a great influence on the workers’ movement or its vanguard, until we have destroyed that influence there will be no possibility of building the revolutionary workers’ party of masses, not even a strong vanguard party, as the guerrilla will act as a diversion channel for the activists who break with the traditional bureaucracy, taking them out of their class and away from the party.

13

The guerrilla organisations are terrorists. In almost all cases, their actions do not help the development of the mobilisation, the organisation and awareness of the masses. The guerrillas make a “pocket war” against the bourgeoisie and its state, exactly opposite to the civil war, in which the workers and mass mobilisation take armed, guerrilla (in the technical sense of the term), insurrectional or conventional war forms war between armies, as was the civil war in Russia. The terrorist actions of the guerrillas, by being decided by themselves, cause the confusion when not the repudiation of the mass movement. By not taking into account the masses, the guerrilla actions unleash or serve as an excuse to unleash a repression of the regime absolutely disproportionate to the level of mobilisation, organisation and awareness of the masses; the masses are defenceless, disorganised and unprepared to face this repression. Every action of the guerrilla — except for the very few exceptions in which, by chance, they help the mobilisation — disorganises, demobilises and disarms the workers. For these reasons, the Trotskyists not only do not support these actions but denounce to the workers their demoralising, demobilising and disorganising character. Our only obligation of principles in relation to the guerrilla is to defend it from the repression of the bourgeois regime.

The only guerrilla actions we support are those that strictly conform to the Leninist criterion: “… ‘expropriations’ of private property were not to he permitted under any circumstances; ‘expropriations’ of government property were not to he recommended hut only allowed, provided that they were controlled by the Party and their proceeds used for the needs of an uprising. Guerrilla acts in the form of terrorism were to he recommended against brutal government officials and active members of the Black Hundreds, hut on condition that 1) the sentiments of the masses be taken into account; 2) the conditions of the working-class movement in the given locality he reckoned with, and 3) care be taken that the forces of the proletariat should not be frittered away.” (VI Lenin, “Guerrilla Warfare”, 30 September 1906, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 11, page 221.)

Therefore, the Trotskyists we never support guerrilla actions in general and, in particular, we repudiate them before the masses in the vast majority of cases.

14

The armament of the proletariat is part of our program. Like any other task, it is not posed in practical form unless the proletariat or important sectors of it begin to understand its necessity and intend to arm themselves. If the proletariat decides to arm itself, there is no force in the world to prevent it; and if it is not willing to do it, there is no force in the world to achieve it. When the sharpness of the class struggle poses to the proletariat objectively the need to arm itself, but it does not yet understand it or is not willing to do so, the party cannot go beyond patiently explaining that it must arm itself, until it understands and takes action.

The military program of the proletariat is opposed to the military program of the guerrilla organisations. The guerrillas argue that an army must be built to oppose the bourgeois army. The Trotskyists, we raise the self-defence committees in the perspective of the workers’ militia and the work on the bourgeois army to separate their popular ranks from their counterrevolutionary leadership, to lead the former to the camp of the revolution and, in conjunction with the workers’ militias, to make an insurrection, not a war of army against army. The need to build an army arises only from the constitution of the workers’ state or from the existence of a genuine civil war before the conquest of power, which implies the existence of geographical areas in which workers already rule.

Given that the military program of the guerrilla organization is opposed to the creation of the workers’ militia, to the work on the bourgeois army, and to the insurrection, such a program and the actions carried out by the guerrillas do not bring the proletariat to arms, but rather they move it away from them. The guerrillas are an absolute obstacle to our Trotskyist military program of the armament of the proletariat. It is, therefore, inadmissible that Trotskyism seeks to “educate” the proletariat in the need to arm itself by making propaganda favourable to the guerrillas and their actions. It is, on the contrary, essential to denounce the guerrilla organisation and its actions before the mass movement if we truly want the workers to arm themselves.

15

Faced with the rise of workers’ struggles, the guerrillas enter in deep crisis. Such a crisis becomes even more acute in the guerrilla organisations that develop “surface” trade union organisations. The militants of these organisations are subjected to a double pressure: the pressure of the guerrilla leadership and the pressure of the workers’ struggles, which act in opposite directions. Trade union cadres of the guerrillas are forced to choose between the needs of the workers and the orders of the “commanders”. This crisis will inevitably become deeper and more explosive when the guerrilla leadership, like any other petty-bourgeois leadership, turns to the bourgeoisie and/or makes an agreement with Stalinism, as it cannot fail to happen because of its class character.

It is an obligation of the Trotskyists to intervene in this crisis, not to avoid it, but to deepen and develop it. That is, to confront the trade union militants, youth, etc. of the guerrilla with the guerrilla leadership and lead them to break with it. It would be non-principled to influence this crisis by presenting the guerrilla organisation with the Revolutionary United Front since this is impossible with a petty-bourgeois organisation. On the contrary, such a proposal would strengthen the guerrilla leadership, as we would endorse it as a revolutionary workers’ leadership. We could never get the JTP (Peronist Workers Youth) or sections of it to break with Firmenich if we proposed to make a revolutionary workers’ party with Firmenich.

The tactic to deepen the crisis of the guerrilla organization, therefore, is the same as with any other bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leadership with influence among the masses or the workers’ vanguard — agreements for common action in the field of class struggle; complete independence of our party to apply a systematic policy of criticism and denunciation before the masses of the political inconsistencies of the guerrilla leadership and its nefarious methods. In such agreements, the Trotskyists must privilege the sectors of workers influenced by the guerrillas, who can be reflected in the constitution of a militant, anti-bosses, anti-government, and anti-bureaucratic trade union tendency. Our great fight is for these sectors to stop following the guerrilla and for them to break with it.

A transitional slogan in this sense should be to call on them to demand that the guerrillas be subordinated and under the discipline of the working class, of its mass organisations or the militant trade union current. This discipline has a limit, one of principles: never can the guerrilla be forced to disarm because the opportunist direction of a workers’ centre so decides. But if that centre demands that the guerrilla holds no more actions, they must abide by it, unless it is in self-defence. Our proposal would be for the guerrilla to be one of the armed detachments of the workers’ central and to carry out actions based on the needs of the workers’ struggle and the wishes of the workers.

Although it has never happened that a guerrilla organisation accepted this, we cannot rule it out hypothetically. But, in any case, this will not happen but through a hard internal struggle and the crisis and division of the guerrilla organisation. The Trotskyists must be the workers’ pole of this discussion, that is to say, the most clearly and energetically confronted with the guerrilla leadership in the program, politics and methods.

Only if such a rupture occurs there will be possibilities of realising a Revolutionary United Front with the union militants of the guerrilla and the hypothetical guerrilla sector that will accept their discipline since they would have become a workers’ current. However, it will remain to be seen whether they crystallise as a centrist workers’ current or if they evolve towards our program since if they become the first, there is also no possibility of the Revolutionary United Front. §