The following is a document submitted to the 20th Congress of the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS) of Argentina and approved by its national leadership.
***
In this document, we want to develop some general criteria for the political orientation of the PTS/FITU’s 20th congress. We begin by clarifying the relationship between (1) our organization, (2) the vanguard, that is, the most combative and organized sectors of the working class, including youth and other militant movements, and (3) our broader base (the masses).
There’s a Combative, Anti-bureaucratic Vanguard of Class Struggle Emerging. It Can Be Multiplied.
In Argentina, the level of unrest took a leap during the violent resistance to the harsh state repression on March 12, in the mobilization of soccer fans and workers in defense of retirees. These events bring to mind the mobilizations of December 2017 that marked the beginning of the end of Mauricio Macri’s government.
Back then, however, Peronism —a nationalist bourgeois party— managed to divert the discontent toward the 2019 elections. And that led to the disastrous administration of Alberto Fernández, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Sergio Massa
What’s new is this: Over the past year, there have emerged several combative forces with the potential of playing a leading role in a political general strike, if the resistance continues to develop and multiply. This inclusion of the workers’ movement would represent a qualitative leap, opening the path for a pre-revolutionary (or directly revolutionary) situation
These forces include (1) neighborhood assemblies composed of teachers, public employees, students, retirees, precarious and self-employed workers. (Though they’ve slowed down, they are now reactivating) (2) a wide array of labor struggles, including anti-bureaucratic currents; (3) groups of retirees who protest each Wednesday in front of Congress and who spearheaded the demonstrations against the presidential veto on pension mobility; (4) the student movement, which reached a high point with the occupation of 100 university campuses in October and November 2024 (though this momentum was eventually curbed by deans, union bureaucracies, and the University Students Federation of Argentina, it nevertheless formed a new layer of student activists who are just now returning to class); (5) the women’s movement, which led two mass mobilizations in 2024 and 2025; and (5) the LGBTQIA+ movement, which mounted a surprising show of force on February 1 in response to Milei’s statements on gender diversity at Davos, where he associated “gender ideology” with child sexual abuse.
While many of these movements ebb and flow, they are all learning experiences— thousands of people are acquiring combative and organizational skills. These experiences offer the potential for transformative leaps forward.
The March 12 protests were striking not only for the resolve shown in confronting police repression, but for the hatred directed at the CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo, labor federation). This frustration surfaced in chants, signs, and speeches condemning the CGT’s inaction. It was so palpable that Héctor Daer, one of the federation’s top leaders, felt compelled to call a national strike for April. The same anger animated the actions of soccer fans who rallied to defend pensioners when the government attempted to slash their benefits. These moments resonated with millions, who condemned the repression and saw in these new social forces a courageous stand against both the government and its goons.
Combative, independent forces, inside both the workplace and the student movement, are growing. The task before the PTS is to boldly encourage this development by promoting organizational forms appropriate to each area: from mobilizations and workplace committees (comisiones internas) in union spaces, to the broad organizations we have already begun to build. These different organizational forms include self-organized student groups, reactivated neighborhood assemblies, cultural initiatives in struggle, and healthcare collectives. Many such formations already exist — it is up to us to nurture, coordinate, and activate them.
On the Relationship Between the Party, the Vanguard, and the Masses
For us in the PTS, the general strike is part of our strategic orientation. This is a more promising prospect than that of the 2001 revolt in Argentina or Chile’s 2019 uprising, both of which ended with partial general strikes that came only at the end of the process and allowed the ruling class to regain control. In Chile’s case, the regime redirected the revolt into a fraudulent Constituent Assembly, keeping the hated Piñera administration in place. That outcome was possible because there were no coordinating bodies with real mass influence capable of articulating an alternative political path.
Revolts of this kind are easier to contain, redirect, or defeat. They tend to dilute the unique power of the working class — particularly its ability to challenge capitalist domination from the heart of production and distribution — and they marginalize the essential role of the student movement. While the participation of unorganized sectors of the working class and the poor is vital, and while their combativeness is often the most immediate and explosive, their ability to carry the process forward depends on uniting with decisive sectors of the working class.
A political general strike, rooted in the working class and joined by all oppressed and exploited masses, could topple the government and intensify the polarization between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces. It would also confront us with a crucial test: to win mass influence and fight for a workers’ government.
To build a socialist, internationalist workers’ party, we must intervene in concrete sites of struggle. We aim to win decisive influence in workplaces (including workplace committees and unions), schools (and student unions), and any new forms of organization that emerge from precarious or oppressed sectors (women, LGTBIQIA+ communities). We must challenge the influence of other political currents — especially Peronism — and the union bureaucracy. This requires us to foster coordination: what we call “action committees,” which unite combative unions, shop-floor committees, student unions, retiree centers, neighborhood assemblies, and cultural movements. These bodies could evolve into broader coordinating structures (workers’ councils), allowing for a more open and effective confrontation with the bureaucracies.
Our approach follows the united front tactic: “Strike together, march separately.”
We envision the relationship among the party, the vanguard, and the masses as a system of interconnected gears.
The revolutionary party brings together the most conscious and combative sectors of the working class, youth, and intellectuals; it is also, by definition, internationalist.
The vanguard includes workers’ organizations, the student movement, and feminist and other fighting formations; its task is to unite the leading currents in the struggle and to promote open debate among them.
The masses, in turn, are influenced by these vanguard sectors and their leaders, including our party, which fights for the program and tactics needed to win while challenging reformist wings.
The vanguard is forged in struggle. Through their experiences in those struggles, the masses break with previous beliefs and may shift leftward under the influence of the vanguard and the revolutionary party. The PTS seeks to meet this challenge and gain mass influence by engaging the masses through the gears of a vanguard forged in class struggle.
This is a lesson drawn from the revolutionary experiences of V. I. Lenin, who led the Bolshevik party in the Russian Revolution — before its degeneration into Stalinism.
From this perspective, any electoral or parliamentary influence we achieve “from above” is meaningless if it is not grounded in organization “from below.” A party built on scattered contacts — whether in neighborhood assemblies, cultural centers, on social media, or even in our own PTS-hosted open assemblies — cannot substitute for organizing in workplaces and schools, where we can mobilize, coordinate with other militants, and influence their rank and file. A party that fails to develop this kind of structural force will inevitably slide toward electoralism, even if it boasts a visible presence “in the streets.”
Party building — including the recruitment of new members — is inseparable from forging organic ties with the vanguard and the masses (in workplaces and schools). By “organic ties,” we mean deeper, more consistent relationships that go beyond occasional exchanges or electoral moments, whether in national, union, or student elections. These are the kinds of ties we must cultivate.
Today, our organization has a broad presence: in the labor movement (more than 60 unions) and in the student movement (across 32 universities, 48 secondary schools, and 24 technical colleges). We have grown in militant strength, and continue to organize the most active groups of people in the class struggle— though not without difficulties.
Our weakest point remains the development of organic connections with the rank and file in workplaces and schools, with a few notable exceptions. Under the Milei government, one of our greatest limitations has been the absence of sustained mass mobilizations. Struggles have tended to erupt in isolation and then subside. That reality must frame our self-criticism and assessment of past interventions.
In the case of neighborhood assemblies — mostly centered in Buenos Aires over the past year — we sought to link them with nearby struggles, aiming to foster joint action committees. For example, we tried to connect GPS aeronautical workers with Ministry of Labor employees, human rights memorial sites [buildings and spaces that commemorate the thousands of people kidnapped and murdered by the military dictatorship], and workers at the Bonaparte Hospital and in the railway sector. However, concrete setbacks prevented broader unification. In this context, we struggled to establish sustained relationships with workplaces or schools located in areas where assemblies were active. In many cases, our political agitation yielded mixed results, but our interventions were consistently focused on collective actions — especially in the first half of the year and again during the wave of university occupations.
Given the absence of mass mobilizations, and of widespread anti-bureaucratic trends, our ability to help organize the most combative activists remained limited. The existing vanguard had little connection with the broader mass base.
Some of our regional party structures outside the capital did carry out more grassroots activity. The teachers’ struggle in Neuquén in 2023 was a clear example of a powerful labor organizing from below that forced the government to the negotiating table. We also advanced broader initiatives around gender-based demands through the socialist feminist group Pan y Rosas, whose events drew wider participation than just existing activists. This was particularly true in labor sectors that remained largely passive.
Still, much of our thinking and initiative concentrated on mobilizing and organizing the most active people first — through an intense calendar of mobilizations that stretched from December through June — and then strengthening the party. We intervened consistently in ongoing struggles, including union and student elections, and we launched multiple initiatives in the realm of ideological struggle: public forums, workshops, and a debate series called Jornadas por un Futuro Comunista. The emergence of new vanguard processes, especially neighborhood assemblies and the university conflict (culminating in a wave of occupations), demanded significant militant energy. Our goal was always to connect these processes to workers’ sectors where we already had a foothold.
From these processes came the bulk of the new layer of party recruits. This influx of members has translated into a surge in our university-based organizations, whose student membership has doubled — and with far better quality than before.
Where to Now in the Struggle?
In 1935, Leon Trotsky wrote to French comrades, offering some ideas that are key for us today, too:
In the unionized labor movement, our Balance of Activities describes both our involvement in struggles and the extent of our participation. The document, however, also notes a key limitation: the lack of a systematic strategy to build broad organizations or reach the rank and file in workplaces where we are present. This shortcoming was especially evident in sectors marked by greater passivity or retreat.
In this regard, a 1935 text by Leon Trotsky analyzing the French section remains relevant. It offers a striking observation about the gap between revolutionary activity and workers’ daily lives. Trotsky wrote,
Our comrades organize rallies, distribute pamphlets, and participate in demonstrations, but when the events are over, the workers return to their homes and our slogans are lost in the air. We have not built solid bridges with their daily struggles, their factories, or their unions. Thus, each event ends in a dead end: we are left alone, and they return to the routine controlled by reformism.
This insight captures one of the key contradictions we must overcome. We need to deepen our involvement in the everyday life of the workplaces where we operate. That includes social and cultural participation — no small task given the increasing atomization of working life and the retreat into family or individual spaces encouraged by social media and mass culture. Trade unions, dominated by bureaucracies and focused narrowly on wages and collective agreements, have also eroded social organization among workers.
In the rare cases where other leftist currents are significant actors, they replicate this detached style of politics. They build apparatuses that are similarly disengaged from the working class and make no effort to foster autonomous spaces where workers can socialize beyond the influence of employers. Of course, these tendencies can be reversed by the workers’ own initiative, if mass struggles or anti-bureaucratic organizing efforts take root, as we’ve noted is possible.
Over the last year, we have taken steps toward building a shared militancy with hundreds of independent activists. Examples of this orientation include the Posta de Salud [a moving outpost of medic assistance to protesters], which expanded our reach in workplaces and universities; the Salvemos el Tren campaign against railway layoffs; Amistad Obrera soccer tournaments in Tucumán (with workers from the sugar mills) and at the Madygraf Club (a hub for local workers); the year-end festival in defense of Hospital Posadas; the tribute to Nora Cortiñas, held with the Morón local assembly; the Working Youth Festival supporting the Hospital Bonaparte struggle; and the use of party venues and cultural centers to stay connected with broader layers during quieter periods. But these efforts, while significant, remain isolated — they do not yet constitute a systematic policy rooted in the day-to-day realities of the sectors where we work.
Among teachers, we have a broad presence across many unions nationwide, with more than 800 comrades, including both party members and allies in party-associated organizations. About 250 of them serve as union delegates. Within this sector, however, our party is highly uneven. Still, in the absence of grassroots struggles, we tend to focus on unions’ internal life, rather than toward building social and cultural activities with our comrades in schools. When struggles emerge, common organization emerges as a more widespread need.
In many industrial factories, we have been involved in various struggles and union processes, often facing employer retaliation and bureaucratic repression. Even so, we must learn to pair our interventions in these conflicts with efforts to take part in our coworkers’ daily lives and routines.
In the universities, the occupations in 2024 allowed us to organize a force of nearly 1,300 students — party members and independents — well beyond any other left organization. Yet we failed to fully mobilize this activism to influence the student base across institutions or to break through the dominance of student bureaucracies, which subordinated the struggle to the inaction of university authorities.
After the massive April 23 mobilization, we lacked a coordinated plan among PTS students and teachers. This hindered our ability to rally active university sectors in support of wage demands for both teaching and nonteaching staff. These demands received far less attention than the fear of school closures, which had driven the first march. As the government’s promise to keep universities open defused the mobilization, we needed to devise new strategies to reach the rank and file beyond classroom-level outreach. One possibility would have been to organize large gatherings in the schools themselves, focusing on defending public universities and workers’ wages. Doing so would have allowed teachers and students to reconnect with their base inside classrooms and to restore student socialization practices largely lost since the 1990s.
This struggle at the university level is long-term, but it intersects with core challenges we also face in the labor movement. One positive example came at the Universidad de Lanús, where we succeeded in combining ideological activities (talks and workshops) with the organization of “self-organized” (independent) activism during the conflict, along with social and outreach activities targeting the school base. This strategy allowed us to boldly intervene in the student union elections and win the Community Health Students Union (CeSaCo). We achieved something similar in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the Universidad del Comahue.
We’re living in a changing situation. And that comes with an invitation: to boldly try out new initiatives, to work at each level — party, vanguard, masses. There are opportunities awaiting us now, and it’s time to test our ideas and our practices in those opportunities
Translated and adapted from the original article in Spanish.
Translated by Remo Erdosain