After the end of the first phase of the electoral campaign, we find it necessary to start a debate with the organisations that are part of the FIT-U, aiming at advancing the debate with the vanguard that has been following it.
By Ricardo García
Therefore, we publish a summary of the FIT–U programme and our opinions on it.
A summary of the FIT-U programme
Its introduction states: “We defend the political independence of the working class against any capitalist stance, (…) we propose a class independence way out to overcome this trap in which they intend to trick the people.”
Their main positive points are:
- Break with the IMF and no public debt payment;
- Increase and indexation [to inflation] of wages and pensions, job security and nationalisation under workers control of any company that shuts down or lays off.
- Stop tax increase, nationalisation of privatised state-owned companies and of transport and energy companies. Taxes cuts for the poor, higher taxes for the capitalists. Expropriation of large agricultural estates and mining multinationals.
- Defence of education, health and popular housing.
- For the right to legal, safe and free abortion.
- Against the police itchy-trigger-finger policy; stop repression against the fighters; jail for the genocides.
- Out with the trade unions bureaucracy.
- For a workers’ and people government imposed by the mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed.
In this context, the FIT has grown. It is now a stronger tool against the bosses’ parties in the electoral dispute. Thus we put in a great deal of effort in the campaign to fight for the FIT’s vote.
However, some things need clarification. In their press releases, the parties that make up the FIT-U have indicated that other organisations, including us, were incorporated into the Coalition. It’s not the case.
The FIT-U accepted PSTU members on their slate, but we are not an organic part of the coalition, nor were we invited to be. We had no seat in their programme drafting, nor in the campaign strategy, nor in the definition of their candidates.
And although we have some agreements, we also have disputes. We consider this programme a positive electoral tool, because it defends the break with the IMF and no public debt payment, and we consider that a large part of its points are correct, but it is not our programme. We understand that it has several missing or wrong aspects.
Let’s highlight the most important ones:
- An implacable denunciation of the political regime, the democracy for the rich, is omitted.
- Nothing is said about the need for a revolution led by the working class and its organisations to take power. And as part of that, the need for self-defence of the working class to face repression.
- The mention that capitalism must be replaced by socialism is relegated to the last point, and only worldwide. It does not clearly say that we fight for a Socialist Argentina.
- On Venezuela, it focuses on the rejection of an imperialist aggression (which is correct), but it does not say that Maduro must be toppled by popular mobilisation.
The regime denunciation and the need for a Workers’ and Socialist Revolution
The elections and the Parliament are institutions whose purpose is the defence of the capitalist political regime and of private property. This must be clearly exposed during the election campaign.
The participation of so-called workers, socialist, and revolutionary parties in the parliament is an auxiliary, secondary base subordinated to the primary goal: the mobilisation of the working class and the people, and a revolution to destroy the capitalist state and impose a workers state. This must also be said.
The capitalist state will defend its domination with all its repressive weapons and to face it the workers have the right and the need to defend themselves and organise for it, with all their possibilities. This too.
The FIT-U candidates relentlessly insist on the importance of gaining more seats for left-wing representatives. But if that is not linked to what was said above, it creates an electoral illusion that astray the working class from their deepest need: to prepare for a revolution.
Phrases such as “we propose to impose, through struggle and mobilisation, a political alternative of the workers themselves” or “for a workers’ and people government imposed by the mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed” are not enough. They give the notion that having many left-wing representatives and mobilising the workers it’s possible to achieve that alternative and that government. It’s confusing.
And as we know, confusion is the friend of the capitalists and the enemy of the workers and of the socialist revolution.
