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Argentina - May 26, 2024

At the International Feminist Meeting “Radicalize democracy” held in Argentina and convened by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation financed by German imperialism...

The FIT-U seals a political pact with Kirchnerism and other employers' parties in Latin America and the Spanish State

On April 19 and 20, the international meeting “Radicalize Democracy - Feminist strategies against the new rights” was held at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

They gathered to make the working class believe that there is a “democracy” that can be “upgraded” and “radicalized” to put it at the service of the working people and their demands and thus supposedly confront “the new right currents.” This is the old formula of “progressive democracies” versus “dictatorships” with which Stalinism subjected the international proletariat to its “democratic” executioners for decades, leading it to the worst defeats and tragedies.

The first thing we must highlight is who were those who met to talk about “radicalize democracy.” This Meeting was organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation which, as stated on its website, is financed directly by the German imperialist state through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Foreign Office. That is to say, this was a meeting openly sponsored by the bandits of imperialist Germany, one of the main powers of Maastricht... and of the counter-revolutionary forces of NATO! Among other things, the German state is also a strong supporter of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel and its current massacre of the Palestinian people. What “democrats”!

To be painted as “leftist”, this foundation dares to carry the name of Rosa Luxemburg, when they receive lush funds from the same German state that ordered her murder in 1919. It makes us revolutionaries boil with hatred that her murderers want to usurp the name of one of the greatest Marxist revolutionaries and we are not going to allow it. Hands off these murderers of Rosa Luxemburg! (see box)

Birds of a feather…

Relevant exponents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, such as Irene Montero of Podemos (former Minister of Equality of the Spanish State), took part in the International Meeting. There were also representatives of the bourgeoisie of the “pro US left” of Latin America, such as Irina Karamanos from the party of President Boric of Chile, Verónika Mendoza of Peru -who supported the coup leader and murderer Dina Boluarte- and other members of bourgeois governments from Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, etc. (see box)
Argentine Kirchnerism was widely represented with Paula Pennaca, MP for La Cámpora or Eli Gómez Alcorta, former Minister of Women, Gender and Diversity during the Fernández government, among many others.
Representatives of the Argentine union bureaucracy, the CGT and the CTA, and leaders of national and international Stalinism also attended, such as the exponents of the Chilean CP Karol Cariola, current president of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile, and Irací Hassler, mayor of Santiago.
We are not surprised... The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, in addition to what was said before, is linked to a social-imperialist current in Germany called Die Linke (The Left), which is the successor of the Honecker party (SED) of the old East Germany that, as part of the Stalinist scoundrel that handed over the former workers' states in '89, imposed the capitalist restoration and guaranteed German reunification on imperialist bases.

But how could such a conflagration of forces talking about “radicalize democracy” be credible? Someone else was still needed: leaders and MPs of the FIT-U of Argentina also participated in this Meeting, such as Vanina Biasi of Partido Obrero, Andrea D'Atri of PTS, Celeste Fierro of MST and Mercedes Trimarchi of Izquierda Socialista.

Not only did PTS, PO, IS and MST participate in the Meeting as a “tendency” of it, as we will soon see, but they were also part of the convening organizations. That is to say, it was a Meeting co-organized by the bourgeoisie, Stalinism, the Argentine union bureaucracy and the renegades of Trotskyism of FIT-U to discuss a common program with the excuse of “confronting the new right currents.”
What were the leaders of the FIT-U doing in a meeting financed by one of the main NATO states, lecturing on “feminism” with imperialist bourgeois women and representatives of bourgeois governments that apply the worst plans against working women and the entire working class?
The apothegm of Marxism that “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves” and that the battle is class against class, was swept away with a stroke of the pen in that meeting of class collaboration. The fight for women's rights was used as an excuse to subject the working class and its most exploited sector, the working women, to their executioners.

The program of the international feminist meeting: “radicalize (bourgeois) democracy”….
A liberal scam to sugarcoat the fierce dictatorship of capital against the exploited masses

On the site of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, we read that the Meeting was called “in light of the advance of the new right currents” and therefore, it states: “It is urgent to radicalize the current democracy and offer a real alternative to this present. That's why - more than ever - we have to meet, debate and think together! In solidarity, from different perspectives and experiences, both nationally and internationally.” (our bold)
The slogan of “Radicalize democracy” It was then the programmatic point that united all the participants from their different “perspectives and experiences”: “deepen” bourgeois democracy to “confront the right”… A true fallacy that tries to deceive the women of the working class and the whole of the proletariat.

The “democracy” defended at that Meeting and called to “radicalize” is bourgeois democracy, which is nothing more than a sweetened cover for the most ferocious dictatorship of capital to guarantee the exploitation of the working class (and it must be said, the triple exploitation of working women). Because every bourgeois republic, even the most democratic one, has always been, and could not be anything else, nothing but a machine for the oppression of workers by capital, an instrument of the political power of capital, that is, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
This is the true Marxist position that the revolutionary Third International and the Fourth International defended against reformism and social-imperialism throughout the 20th Century.

Speaking of “radicalize democracy” wants to sugarcoat the dictatorship of capital suffered by the exploited, to prevent them from undertaking a class-against-class combat for the socialist revolution to free themselves from exploitation and establish their own ruling.

This fraud against the masses that today they are trying to promote in Argentina, speaking of “radicalize democracy,” has already been paid dearly by the working class of imperialist Europe. Different social-imperialist currents, including the German Die Linke and the Spanish Podemos -which were part of this meeting- along with other “left” bourgeois wings such as Mélenchon from France or Varoukafis from Greece, years ago set up a “Plan B” to “democratize” imperialist Maastricht to achieve a “real democracy”. With the fallacy of “radicalizing democracy”, they expropriated the struggles of the European workers to subject them to the imperialist regimes that unloaded the entire weight of the crisis against the working class and the masses, taking away all their conquests as in France, Greece, Spain, etc…
“Radicalize imperialist democracy”? To the Fifth French Republic of 200 families and its murderous army of Foreign Legion mercenaries who massacre in Africa? “Democratize” the Bourbon monarchy, oppressor of the people of the Iberian Peninsula?

These same people spoke of a “more social Europe,” and this is how things ended up: the 35-hour work week and pensions were taken away from the French proletariat and labor flexibility was imposed. The same thing happened in Greece, Portugal, Spain and the entire European continent. And not to mention the Glacis states, which are brutally looted as colonies.

It is the same policy that they want to propose here today. That is why Montero from Podemos participated, a party defending the imperialist monarchy of the Spanish State, which she never called to defeat. Montero was a representative of the government of the Spanish State, which is part of NATO's command and which years ago crushed the insurrection for Catalan independence. From that government, she fought tooth and nail the ferocious plundering of oppressed nations like Argentina by Spanish transnational companies. This is the “democracy” they defend!

Democracy... For what class?

As Lenin said against the renegade of Marxism Kautsky: “It is natural for a liberal to speak of “democracy” in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: ‘for what class?’” (The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky)
Therefore, the only valid thing that a working class could do at that “meeting”, if it really wanted to defend the interests of the workers, was to denounce that they were only discussing how best to deceive the masses to perpetuate capitalist exploitation.

But the currents of the FIT-U erased all class delimitation by participating in a meeting with this program. They discussed whether or not it is possible to “radicalize democracy in general”, without ever revealing its class content: that bourgeois democracy is that of a minority (the exploiters) over the majority (the working class and the exploited).
We are facing an absolute misrepresentation of the entire Marxist and Leninist theory of the State and the revolution that deliberately silences and omits that the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary violence are necessary after the seizure of power to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to inspire fear to the reactionaries and maintain the authority of the people against the exploiters. And for this reason, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a thousand and a million times more democratic than the most democratic of bourgeois democracies, it is the proletariat organized as a ruling class -as Lenin would say in The State and the Revolution- in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners: the landowners and capitalists.

Lenin affirmed that Kautsky took from Marxism what the bourgeoisie could accept and that he threw overboard and kept silent about Marxism what was unacceptable to the bourgeoisie, that is, the revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie to destroy it. This was exactly what the FIT-U did at that meeting: sweep the fight for the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat under the rug, in order to be part of the different “perspectives and experiences” of the meeting.

Two theories and two programs face each other in the international class struggle. On the one hand, reformism that says that in this rotten capitalist society, dominated by imperialism that only imposes wars, looting and misery, the working class can improve its standard of living and deepen its democratic freedoms. A farce and an ignominy.
Against this old policy sown by Menshevism, social democracy and Stalinism, the position of the Fourth International and Trotskyism arose, which states that in this time of crisis, wars and revolutions, without taking power, the proletariat cannot free itself and not even improve their living and existence conditions.
For reformism, the alternative is “democracy” versus “dictatorship”… “Biden versus Trump”, they said, to “radicalize democracy” in USA and from the “most radical democracy” came one of the worst butchers in history, who leads the massacre and extermination of Zionism to the Palestinian people in Gaza and has led USA to control 60% of weapons sales worldwide. This is how the servants of Biden and Wall Street “radicalize democracy.”

The alternative is clear: today more than ever, socialism or barbarism.

The Meeting sealed a political front of labor parties with the bourgeoisie

They will want to allege that Trotskyism proposed a policy of unity of action “even with the devil” and that the devil is not asked to remove his horns. But was the Meeting to define actions and measures of struggle? Not at all. It was an instance where they sealed a political and programmatic front, as the leaders of the FIT-U themselves say.
Vanina Biasi, from the PO, in her speech, sitting next to Kirchnerist leaders and officials and together with Montero from Podemos, stated: “Let’s agree on something. There is no agreement with anything here. I am against integrating a capitalist government; I am against thinking that capitalism is reformable (...) I want to know how women can get out of this quagmire, how the working class can get out of this quagmire. And they don't do it separately. Because today we have to discuss and tomorrow we will have to discuss how we are going to destroy Milei's regime. (…) I am convinced that within the melting pot of political positions that we have here, we have tools to unite in a common struggle. (...) Do we all want to defend the women's movement? Well, let's be guided by the program of the women's movement. Let's establish it. Let's say: ‘this is the program I want to follow’. If I am going to tell you that Peronism cannot be consistent with the defense of the women's movement... well, a part of the audience, the majority, is leaving me... Then I say: ‘I want to defend women’, ‘women's program first’”.

This is a blunt confession of how the leadership of the FIT-U leads working women and the entire working class to lower their program and their rightful demands in order to maintain their agreement with bourgeois parties. For example, it is prohibited to raise the need to expropriate the capitalists, because that would mean attacking the businesses of the Peronist bourgeoisie... because Peronism, in Biasi's words, would “leave the premises.” Let alone mentioning the dictatorship of the proletariat...
Trotsky said, about Spain in the 1930s, that “A bloc of divergent political groups of the working class is sometimes completely indispensable for the solution of common practical problems. In certain historical circumstances, such a bloc is capable of attracting the oppressed petty-bourgeois masses whose interests are close to the interests of the proletariat. The joint force of such a bloc can prove far stronger than the sum of the forces of each of its component parts. On the contrary, the political alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whose interests on basic questions in the present epoch diverge at an angle of 180 degrees, as a general rule is capable only of paralyzing the revolutionary force of the proletariat.

This fragment from Trotsky's “The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning” explains crystal clear what happens to the program and the demands if the proletariat forges an alliance with its class enemy, the bourgeoisie, as observed in the speech of this leader of PO.

We now understand why FIT-U MPS have been voting for years the laws, for the Peronist government, that they called “progressive” for the workers and “criticizing” the negative ones, and they have already formed a political front with Kirchnerism in parliament with which they intend to defeat the Milei Bases Law. FIT-U has openly broken away with Trotskyism, upholding that “true democracy can be achieved with socialism” eventually in the future and just in case without mentioning the revolution or the seizure of power, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, -so that the bourgeois girls do not get scared- and in the meantime, they discuss with the “democratic bourgeoisie” how to “stop the right.”

Against the perfidious policy of class collaboration of Stalinism and the renegades of Trotskyism... Stop submitting the exploited to their executioners!

They speak of “a long wave of democracy”, as Irene Montero of PODEMOS did, in the midst of the deepest rottenness of the capitalist system, which the only thing it does is promoting genocides led by the “democratic” Biden, to whom all directly - or supporting Sanders' "left wing" of the Democratic Party - called to vote "against Trump."
It is cynical without limits that this capitalist scoundrel comes to talk about “radicalize democracy” in Argentina, where US imperialism with General Richardson touring the continent has decided to come for the lithium triangle and throw the exploited into barbarism, plundering the sclerotic veins of Latin America and the entire colonial and semi-colonial world. What democracy are they telling us about?

“Let's not talk about generalities against capitalism,” Kirchnerism told the FIT-U at the Meeting, “let's talk about concrete things, about the possible.” And the FIT-U continued to present on the panels, talking about “socialism”, “the hardships imposed by the capitalist system”, “socializing the means of production”… for the Greek calends. The FIT-U spoke more and more about socialism at this Meeting, and more and more it dressed the sepoy bourgeoisies of the entire continent and their leaders, the imperialist pirates, as “progressive” and “democratic.”

The former Trotskyists held so many meetings with international Stalinism throughout the world that they ended up embracing the entire Stalinist framework and all of its politics. From the León Trotsky Meeting in Havana in 2019, with the so-called Trotskyist and CCP member Frank Hernández, to the Mediterranean Conferences with sinister characters such as Darya Mitina, Putin's official, the collapse of the former Trotskyists has not hit rock bottom. Today, they are sitting next to the parties of the executioners of the working class, discussing common programs.

The former Trotskyists of FIT-U have taken the clean banners of the Fourth International to the mud of class collaboration, to meetings with the sepoy bourgeoisies, anti-workers who starve and repress the working class.
We Trotskyists are not going to allow it!
We revolutionaries maintain that the most immediate task, the most pressing and the only possible path for the liberation of the working class is to set up its own organizations of self-determination and direct democracy and, with the socialist revolution, take power. It is that for the working class to live, imperialism must die.

Today more than ever we must refound the Fourth International, recovering it from the hands of those who have taken it to the mud of class collaboration and to the feet of Stalinism! We must restore the revolutionary party of Mateo Fossa and León Trotsky in Argentina!

German imperialism, hands off from the heroic revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg!

Those who continue the policy of class collaboration of Stalinism, hands off from the Fourth International!

Editorial Board of the paper Democracia Obrera of Argentina, integrant of the FLTI