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Socialist Workers' Party (Argentina)

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Socialist Workers' Party
Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas
AbbreviationPTS
LeaderNicolás del Caño
PresidentJosé Montes
Founded1988
HeadquartersBuenos Aires
NewspaperLa Verdad Obrera (1992–2015)
La Izquierda Diario (2015–)
Think tankKarl Marx Institute of Socialist Thought (IPS Karl Marx)
León Trotsky Study, Research and Publishing Center (CEIP León Trotsky)
Student wingEn Clave Roja (Universities)
No Pasarán (High schools)
Youth wingJuventud del PTS
Women's wingPan y Rosas
Union wingMovimiento de Agrupaciones Clasistas
IdeologyTrotskyism
Marxist feminism
Political positionLeft-wing
National affiliationWorkers' Left Front
International affiliationTrotskyist Fraction – Fourth International
ColoursRed
Seats in the Chamber of Deputies
3 / 257
Seats in the Senate
0 / 72
Seats in the Buenos Aires City Legislature
2 / 60
Website
pts.ar

The Socialist Workers' Party (Template:Lang-es), previously known as the Workers Party for Socialism (Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo), is a Trotskyist political party in Argentina. It was founded in 1988, as the first schism of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), a Trotskyist party led by Nahuel Moreno until his death. Within the next four years, the MAS split into more than 20 groups.

In the presidential election of 2007 it obtained 95,000 votes (0,57%). The number of voters for this party in the 2003 parliamentary election was 42,331 (about 0.25%). In the 1999 presidential election the party had obtained 43,911 votes (about 0.23%).

Located on the left side of the political spectrum and member of the Workers' Left Front,[1] the PTS aims to establish a working-class government that breaks with capitalism, putting forth a material hegemonic force grounded in the main combats and organization processes of the working class—such as the student and women's movement—, seeking to develop revolutionary factions within them.[2]

By establishing this electoral coalition, the PTS managed to enter the Argentine Congress for the first time after the legislative elections of 2013.[3] As part of the Front, it obtained representation in the Buenos Aires Legislature,[4] as well as the provincial legislatures of Buenos Aires, Córdoba,[5] Jujuy,[6] Mendoza[7] and Neuquén[8] and in the city councils of Godoy Cruz, Las Heras, Maipú and Mendoza[9] in Mendoza and the city councils of Libertador General San Martín, Palpalá and San Salvador in Jujuy.[6] It has one national deputy, Nicolás del Caño; current or recent provincial deputies include Christian Castillo, Raúl Godoy, Myriam Bregman and Laura Vilches.

The PTS has presence in 15 provinces and in Buenos Aires City; its members have minor seats in the Buenos Aires Underground union (AGTSyP),[10] the Neuquén ceramics workers union (SOECN),[11] the Western Soapmakers Workers Union (SOJO),[12] as well as occupying secretaries in the United Argentinian Tire Workers Trade Union (SUTNA), the United Trade Union of Education Workers (SUTE, Mendoza) and several sections of the Buenos Aires Education Workers Trade Union (SUTEBA) etc. Its youth branch conducts the student unions in highschools,[13] and the universities of Buenos Aires (UBA),[14] La Plata (UNLP), General Sarmiento (UNGS), Quilmes (UNQ)[15] and Comahue (UNCo).[16] The PTS also publishes the digital newspaper La Izquierda Diario (the daily left), located among the top 100 most visited websites in the country.[17]

History

Origins

It emerged in 1988 as a schism within the Movement for Socialism (MAS); starting as the Internationalist Bolshevik Faction, an inner faction that had formed towards the MAS's third congress. In its first documents, the PTS declared that the MAS had a revisionist definition of internationalism and had degenerated into a "national-trotskyist" organization, polemising against the MAS's then-official policy that claimed that "Argentina was the center of world revolution". In these documents, the PTS upheld the political legacy of Nahuel Moreno and held that the MAS's leadership had "degenerated" after Moreno's death.[18] Later, however, after suffering three schisms, the PTS published several critical balance sheets about Moreno's positions, leading to a break with his tendency, the IWL.[19] Currently, the PTS defines itself as:

«A revolutionary Marxist organization whose theoretical, programatic, and principle basis are found in the legacy of over 150 years of struggle of the socialist and labour movement, the Communist Manifesto, the critiques to the Gotha and Erfurt programmes, the lessons of the Paris Commune, the lessons of the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions, of the First and Second Internationals, the Communist International in its first four Congresses, the struggle of the Left Opposition against the bureaucratization and stalinist thermidor, of the theory-programme of Permanent Revolution, the Transitional Programme and the banners of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky.»

Labour movement

The Socialist Workers' Party has presence in several unions.[20] They occupy seats in the leadership of the Buenos Aires subway union (AGTSyP),[21] is part of the joint Multicolor slate that leads nine sections of the teachers' union of the Buenos Aires Province (SUTEBA),[22] they also were part of the opposition slate in the Buenos Aires Graphic Federation[23] and is part of the union leadership in several graphic companies. The Violet slate (whose members include PTS militants and independent activists) is the main opposition slate within the telephone union (FOETRA),[24] the PTS also leads the opposition slate in the food union (STIA), where it is part of the union leadership within the factories with the largest number of workers.[25] Aside from its presence in unions and guilds, the PTS has an extensive presence within internal commissions and delegates in industrial companies (soapmakers, soda workers, metalworkers, steelers, etc.), services (railroad workers, aeronautical workers, etc.) and state and health workers, etc.[26]

The PTS has also spearheaded some of the most important conflicts within the industrial labour movement that have shaken the publicopinion, such as leading the struggle of the occupied tile factory FaSinPat (formerly Zanón),[27] which led to the filming of the documentary The Take by Naomi Klein, as well as the struggle in the Kraft Foods factory (now Mondelez) in 2009.[25] More recently, they were active participants in the occupation of the Donnelley printing factory, a conflict that gained wide national trascendence and is currently a worker-controlled factory.[28] The PTS was also participant of the struggle of the Lear Corporation workers, which was considered by the CEOs of the main companiesin the country as one of the most important conflicts in 2014,[29] which included 240 dismissals, 21 demonstrations in the main highway of Buenos Aires, 16 National Days of Struggle with pickets throughout the country, 5 repressions, 22 detainees, 80 injured, 16 judicial measures in favor of the workers, two weeks of lockout by the bosses, etc.

Before the FIT

In 1999, José Montes, rank-and-file delegate of the Río Santiago Shipyard, ran as presidential candidate along Oscar Hernández, Siderar worker, as vicepresident under the slogan "workers vote for workers" (in Spanish: "trabajador vote trabajador") and stressing not to pay the foreign debt.[30]

In the 2001 legislative elections, the PTS presented candidates in 7 districts, obtaining 105,849 votes for national deputies.[31] After the 2001 crisis, the PTS refused to run candidates for the 2003 elections, calling for boycott and for a "general strike until all of them go and impose a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly”.[32]

For the 2007 elections, the PTS went on coalition with the MAS and Socialist Left under the name "Left and Workers' Front for Socialism" (in Spanish: Frente de Izquierda de los Trabajadores por el Socialismo), winning nearly 100,000 votes (0,57%) with José Montes as candidate. In 2009, the PTS went on a similar coalition named "Anti-capitalist and Socialist Left Front" (in Spanish: Frente de Izquierda Anticapitalista y Socialista), being fifth place in important districts such as Córdoba and the Buenos Aires Province, duplicating their votes that year.

Workers' Left Front

In 2011, the PTS formed, along with the Workers' Party (PO) and Socialist Left (IS) the Workers' Left Front (FIT from its Spanish acronym), which stood Jorge Altamira (PO) as presidential candidate and Christian Castillo (PTS) as vice-president. In the primary elections they obtained 500.000 votes and in the general elections 660.000 for national deputies.

Currently, as member of the FIT, the PTS has parliamentary representation in Córdoba, Neuquén, and other provinces.[33]

In the 2013 elections, the FIT won nearly 1,300,000 votes nationally. Nicolás del Caño, as member of the FIT, was elected as national deputy for the Mendoza province with 14% of votes. In June 2015, Myriam Bregman also won a seat as PTS deputy for Buenos Aires Province.

In the 2015 elections in Mendoza, Noelia Barbeito, PTS candidate for governor, got third place with 110 226 votes (10,32%).[34] Nicolás del Caño, in the elections for mayor of that province's capital city, was the second most voted candidate with 17% of votes and winning over the Front for Victory.[35]

In the primary elections of August 2015, the PTS, presenting their slate with Nicolás del Caño as presidential candidate and Myriam Bregman as vice-president, won with 51,07% (370.764 votes) in the inner elections against the PO-IS slate that proposed Jorge Altamira as president and Juan Carlos Giordano as vice-president, which obtained 48,93% (355.290 votes). The PTS slate also won in 13 provinces.

Organization

Publications

The PTS created the Karl Marx Institute for Socialist Thought And the Leon Trotsky Research, Study and Publications Center, the latter of which is recognised as the only one in South America dedicated to publishing and spreading of the Russian revolutionary's works and that of the international trotskyist movement.[citation needed] Both institutions possess a library of over 3,000 volumes specialized in Marxism and the history of the international and Argentine labour movement and are located in a building in downtown Buenos Aires (Riobamba 144), where courses and seminars are dictated and several research projects are organised.

The PTS has also published several individual works such as the "Lucha de Clases" (class struggle)magazine, having its own contributions written to update fundamental elements of Marxism to contemporary reality.

For over a decade the PTS has also taught the Karl Marx Free Cathedra[36] in several universities of Argentina. The Free Cathedra is a series of conferences made to discuss ideologically and whose main subjects have a wide variety of topics, from analising Marxist theory to interpreting current historical phenomena through it.

It used to edit its printed newspaper, called La Verdad Obrera ("working-class truth"), but since 2015 it publishes the digital online newspaper La Izquierda Diario ("the daily left"),[37] and the bi-monthly magazine Ideas de Izquierda ("ideas from the left"),[38] having collaborations with independent leftist intellectuals. Along the Trotskyist Fraction - Fourth International, its international organization, the PTS publishes the International Strategy magazine and several books on Marxist theory and compilations of classic authors.

It also has a website that is daily updated,[39] renewed since early 2007 with multimedia information.

Every week, the PTS hosted the radio talk show "Pateando el Tablero" ("kicking the board"), now known as El Círculo Rojo (the red circle), as well as similar talk shows in several parts of the country.

Since March 24, 2009, the PTS broadcast an Internet TV program called TVPTS,[40] with live transmissions, DVD productions and projections in giant screens. Its website is daily updated and has over 2000 ranging from several topics. Furthermore, the PTS organises the cinema group Contraimagen, which has produced several documentaries.

Since 2012, the PTS made the TV program Giro a la Izquierda (turn to the left),[41] in the city of Córdoba, broadcast through CanalC.

Youth

In all 20 universities of the country, the PTS organises students through their student branch "En Clave Roja" (red key), conformed by PTS youth militants and independent activists. In highschools, the PTS does the same through their student branch "No Pasarán". It's part of the school presidencies of the Social Science and Philosophy schools of the University of Buenos Aires, the Humanities School of the UNGS (General Sarmiento) and the IUNA. Nationally, along with women students and independent female workers, the PTS makes work through its women branch Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). Between late 2010 and early 2011, the party's youth organization was re-structured and they formed the PTS Youth as a general youth branch that groups both university and highschool students as well as young worker militants.

International

The PTS, internationally, is the largest section of the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International,[42] being a founding section of it along the Worker Revolutionary League of Bolivia and the Workers' League for Socialism - Contracorriente (now known as the Socialist Workers' Movement) of Mexico; other members include the Workers' Revolutionary Movement of Brazil, the Venezuelan Workers' League for Socialism, the Revolutionary Workers' Party of Chile, the Workers' Current for Socialism of Uruguay, the Revolutionary Internationalist Organisation of Germany, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency within the French NPA, and the Workers' Revolutionary Current of Spain.

Electoral history

Presidential elections

Year[43] Formula First round Result Notes
votes % votes
1995 Alcides Christiansen - José Montes 27.643 0,16 Red XNNot elected (11th place) Movement for Socialism - PTS
1999 José Montes - Oscar Hernández 44.551 0,24 Red XNNot elected (9th place) Contested alone
2007 José Montes - Héctor Heberling 84.694 0,44 Red XNNot elected (10th place) Left and Workers' Front for Socialism
2011 Jorge Altamira - Christian Castillo 503.372 2,30 Red XNNot elected (6th place) Workers' Left Front
2015 Nicolás del Caño - Myriam Bregman 812.530 3,23 Red XNNot elected (4th place) Workers' Left Front

Congress elections

Year [43] Votes % Deputies Senators Notes
2011 582,770 2,82%
0 / 130
0 / 24
 Workers' Left Front
2013 1,224,144 5,25%
3 / 127
0 / 24
 Workers' Left Front
2015 982,953 4.18%
1 / 130
0 / 24
 Workers' Left Front
2017 1,051,300 4.28%
2 / 127
0 / 24
 Workers' Left Front

References

  1. ^ "Se formó el Frente de Izquierda y los trabajadores". Sitio web del PTS.
  2. ^ Albamonte, Emilio; Maiello, Matías (2017). "Prólogo". Estrategia Socialista y arte militar. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Ediciones Instituto del Pensamiento Socialista. p. 37. ISBN 978-987-3958-19-9.
  3. ^ "Diputados de izquierda y de los trabajadores". Sitio web del PTS.
  4. ^ "Asume Patricio del Corro en la Legislatura porteña". La Izquierda Diario.
  5. ^ "Hoy asumió Laura Vilches la banca del Frente de Izquierda en Córdoba". Sitio web del PTS.
  6. ^ a b "Elección histórica del FIT en Jujuy: por primera vez ingresan diputados de los trabajadores". La Izquierda Diario. 23 October 2017.
  7. ^ "Mendoza: Juraron Cecilia Soria (PTS), Martín Dalmau y Héctor Fresina (PO) como diputados provinciales del FIT". Sitio web del PTS.
  8. ^ "Asume Raúl Godoy como diputado provincial en Neuquén". La Izquierda Diario.
  9. ^ "Terminaron de asumir todos los concejales del FIT en Mendoza". Sitio web del PTS.
  10. ^ "Elecciones en el Subte: crece la izquierda y por primera vez entra al Secretariado Ejecutivo". Sitio web del PTS.
  11. ^ "Abrumador triunfo de la Agrupación Marrón con más del 71% sobre la Lista Gris". Sitio web del PTS.
  12. ^ "Sindicato jabonero: La Bordó ganó en las principales fábricas y obtuvo la minoría". 16 June 2016. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  13. ^ "Por centros de estudiantes en todos los colegios". Sitio web del PTS. 13 September 2012.
  14. ^ "Balance y perspectivas de la UBA". Sitio web del PTS.
  15. ^ "La izquierda se impuso en la UNQ". 13 November 2017.
  16. ^ "Neuquén: el Frente de Izquierda gana el Centro de Estudiantes de Humanidades". 8 November 2018.
  17. ^ "laizquierdadiario.com Site Overview". Alexa.
  18. ^ Liszt, Gabriela. "Historia y balance del MAS argentino". Lucha de Clases. Revista marxista de teoría y política. 2006, http://www.ips.org.ar/?p=3110
  19. ^ Manolo Romano. "Polémica con la LIT y el Legado Teórico de Nahuel Moreno" [Controversy with the LIT and the Theoretical Legacy of Nahuel Moreno]. ft.org.ar. Retrieved 31 Dec 2013.
  20. ^ "Las izquierdas emergentes". April 2015.
  21. ^ "Secretariado Ejecutivo 2015-2019 - AGTSyP".
  22. ^ "Corriente Nacional 9 de abril // Lista Marrón". Archived from the original on 2019-01-19. Retrieved 2019-03-19.
  23. ^ http://www.archivosrevista.com.ar.ca1.toservers.com/contenido/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Varela.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  24. ^ "Agrupación Violeta Telefónicos: ELECCIONES EN FOETRA BS. AS. ¿Qué sindicato necesitamos los telefónicos?". 21 March 2013.
  25. ^ a b "Delegados de izquierda, nueva preocupación en las empresas". June 2014.
  26. ^ Varela, Paula (2015). "Las contradicciones y la izquierda". La disputa por la dignidad obrera. Argentina: Ediciones Imago Mundi. ISBN 978-950-793-192-5.
  27. ^ http://www.iisg.nl/labouragain/documents/aiziczon.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  28. ^ http://www.ambito.com/noticia.asp?id=753869
  29. ^ "Noticias de Chajarí | los obreros de Lear ganaron "el conflicto del año"". Archived from the original on 2015-07-16. Retrieved 2019-03-20.
  30. ^ Veiras, Nora (22 September 1999). "Suena a subversivo que un obrero sea candidato". p. 12. Retrieved 7 November 2018.
  31. ^ http://www.elecciones.gov.ar/estadistica/resultados_2001.htm
  32. ^ "Boicot activo a estas elecciones tramposas".
  33. ^ "Diputados Ceramistas". diputadosceramistas.wordpress.com. Retrieved 31 Dec 2013.
  34. ^ "Consulta de resultados elecciones - Inicio". Archived from the original on 2015-06-25. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
  35. ^ "Los intendentes de las ciudades de Mendoza y San Carlos se impusieron en las elecciones municipales - Télam - Agencia Nacional de Noticias". Archived from the original on 2019-03-24. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
  36. ^ "Catedra libre Karl Marx". laizquierdadiario.com. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  37. ^ "Página oficial de La Izquierda Diario". Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  38. ^ "Ideas de Izquierda". laizquierdadiario.com. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  39. ^ "Página oficial del PTS". Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  40. ^ "Página oficial de TVPTS". Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  41. ^ "Giro a la Izquierda". Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  42. ^ "Organizaciones de la FT". Fracción Trotskista - Cuarta Internacional. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
  43. ^ a b Todos los datos son extraídos de las wikipedias de cada elección, referenciadas en el año. [All data are extracted from the Wikipedia article of each election, referenced in the year]
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