Argentina is proving to be a powerful example of how to fight back against the Far Right and anti-worker austerity. From retiree-led protests to a recent national strike, people’s organizing in the streets and in their workplaces are weakening the far-right president, Javier Milei. Faced with this opposition, the president is relying on brutal repression, carried out by his ruthless Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich. Even members of Argentina’s Congress have not been spared.
On April 16, members of the Workers’ Left Front (FIT, a coalition of socialist parties) were attacked along with retirees at a protest outside of the National Congress building. These retirees protest every Wednesday to demand a liveable fixed income instead of their meager pensions. Every Wednesday, FIT deputies in Argentina’s Congress join the protests.
While these deputies have faced repression before for standing side by side with workers and popular sectors of society in protest, this week was especially brutal. Alejandro Vilca, a deputy with the Party of Socialist Workers (PTS) (the sister organization of Left Voice and one of the parties in FIT) was tear-gassed so much that it caused corneal ulcers.
From a hospital, Vilca wrote on social media (with help from a colleague):
I completely condemn the actions of Patricia Bullrich’s security forces, which repress and intimidate retirees every Wednesday to prevent them from pursuing their just demands. I want to remember the minister whose Gendarmerie murdered two young workers, Ivo Torres in La Quiaca and Fernando Gómez in Orán. We will always support their struggle. They will not silence us. We will continue, as we do every week, standing firmly alongside the retirees.
Meanwhile, from inside Argentina’s congress building, another PTS deputy, Christian Castillo fiercely denounced the repression of the retirees’ protest and the attack on Vilca.
The interventions of the PTS and FIT offer a powerful example of the role that socialists can play in electoral politics.
This is in contrast to the example of reformist U.S. politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While they galvanize masses of people interested in fighting the Far Right, they use their massive platforms as elected “socialists” to sow faith in the capitalist Democratic Party and institutions of the capitalist state. They tell tens of thousands of workers that our power is not primarily rooted in our own collective action and ability to run society, but rather in acting as a mass of voters to pressure Democrats to pass more left policies. The FIT, in total contrast, uses its platforms as elected socialists to tell thousands to not rely on the institutions of the state and instead have faith in their own struggles and power as workers.
This approach also acts as an alternative to another mentality in the U.S. Left which rejects participation in electoral politics. While this rejection comes from an understanding that participation in the capitalist state won’t lead to liberation, it cedes that space for struggle. Elections are, for better or worse, one of the main ways that masses of people engage with politics. It is important for socialists to use that to our advantage. What the PTS and FIT show is that there are ways to intervene that don’t depend on funneling people back into capitalist parties or sowing illusions in institutions that will never represent workers.
We do not need to lean on the Democrats or any other politician that works for a capitalist party — we need our own independent party in Congress and in the streets.
