Fifth Congress of the
Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
Draft Program of the Revolutionary Workers Party
A. In the final and decisive stage of the advance of the world revolution, our country finds itself in the position of a semicolony of Yankee imperialism that has attained a certain degree of capitalist development. Economically uneven, politically uniform, Argentina is suffering from a chronic structural crisis in which the proletariat is the basic driving force of the revolution and the urban petty-bourgeoisie and poor peasantry of the North are its main allies.
1. The world revolution has entered the final and de-cisive stage of its development, characterized by:
(a) The growth of the revolutionary war against im-perialism and the native bourgeoisies in the dependent countries, with this struggle constituting the central axis of the world revolution and with the Vietnamese people constituting its fighting vanguard.
(b) Advances in building socialism and participa-tion in and active encouragement of the world revolu-tion by the workers states: China, North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and Albania.
(c) Secondarily, the progress of popular struggles in the advanced capitalist countries against the imperialist wars and for democracy and the rights of the working class and exploited minorities (principally the North American Blacks).
(d) The concentration of bourgeois power in the hands of a smaller number of imperialist monopolies, closely tied to their respective states; and the transformation of the USA into the political and military police force of the world counterrevolution, resulting in:
I. The impossibility of interimperialist wars, which con-stitutes a favorable conjuncture for revolutionary struggles.
II. The direct or indirect intervention of imperialism in all revolutionary wars and struggles.
(e) The contradictory and negative role played by the degenerated workers states, headed by the Soviet Union, resulting from:
I. Their condiiationist policy that permits imperialism to use nuclear blackmail and continue its counter-rev0lutionary escalation.
II. The distortion imposed on the revolutionary processes by the Communist parties that follow their line.
III. The contradictory development of socialist construction, opening up the possibility for a return to capitalism in some of these states, particularly Yugoslavia.
IV. The incipient growth within them of the struggle for workers democracy.
2. Latin America constitutes the second most important area, after Asia, in the development of revolutionary war in the dependent countries; the development of this struggle being characterized by:
(a) The exhaustion of the experience of reformist struggle and the resulting development of people’s struggles, especially of their armed vanguards, against imperialism and the native bourgeoisie.
(b) The consolidation of workers’ democracy and the relative step forward in socialist construction in Cuba. (c) The irreversible sharpening of the contradictions of the capitalist system throughout the continent, because of increased exploitation and the advance of popular struggles.
3. Argentina has achieved a relative degree of distorted capitalist development in the context of mainly Yankee imperialist domination. This process is characterized by:
(a) The formation of medium industry and some smallscale heavy industry. These are tied primarily to the domestic market and secondarily to the world market, and almost totally under the control of American, and to a lesser extent, European monopoly capital. They are subordinated to the foreign capitalists’ plans and interests.
(b) Stagnation and crisis in light industry, mainly in the big regional processing industries, caused by the contradictions generated by monopoly control of the national market (the sugar industry in Tucumán; cotton, tannin, and forestry in the Chaco; the vineyards in San Juan and to a lesser extent in Mendoza; yerba mate in Misiones, etc.).
(c) The unevenness of this capitalist development in the various zones of the country, with the concentration spreading out from the periphery to the center, leaving isolated areas of development in the interior. As a result, in certain areas the country’s chronic structural crisis has reached an acute and irreversible phase, especially in Tucum‡n, with a similar trend in other regions, notably Córdoba.
(d) The stagnation in agricultural and cattle production, which has oriented toward the domestic market and remained virtually frozen since 1930, throwing into crisis sectors linked to the regional processing industries.
(e) Lack of development in the mining industry and monopoly control of energy and fuels.
4. Since 1930 and particularly since 1955, the relative and dependent capitalist development of our country has brought about profound changes in class relationships, characterized by the following features:
(a) The formation of a strong, highly concentrated industrial proletariat, constituting the exploited class with the greatest weight in Argentine society.
(b) The formation of a modern petty bourgeoisie composed mainly of salaried workers, whose numbers are very large and whose broadest layers have a low standard of living similar to that of the working class.
(c) Chronicand in recent years, growingimpoverishment of the rural proletariat and the poor peasantry, who are numerically important in the North.
(d) The strengthening of foreign imperialist domination by a growing and nearly complete takeover of the country’s domestic economy by monopoly capital, in particular Yankee capital, through control of banking, finance capital, and industrial investment.
(e) The conversion of the traditional landholding oligarchy into a modern financial, industrial, and agricul tural big bourgeoisie closely tied to imperialism and the armed forces. As a minor partner, this bourgeoisie shares in the control of the national economy.
(f) The formation, particularly in recent years, of a broad underemployed and unemployed layer living around the cities and in the countryside, which constitutes an oppressed and oppositional sector.
5. These class relationships were expressed on June 28, 1969, by the liquidation of formal bourgeois democracy, the installation of a military dictatorship serving the interests of the monopolies, and increasing totalitarian control of the national liferepressive legislation, transformation of the unions remaining in the framework of bourgeois legality into semistate agencies, and in general militarypolice control of all of Argentine society.
6. The working class has a great tradition of economic struggle. This has been in the framework of legal unions and under the influence of bourgeois ideology but without parliamentarist tendencies. In recent years the sharpening of contradictions in the Argentine economy and society has produced a process of ideological revolution in this class, characterized by the search for, and incipient formation of, illegal and semilegal organizational forms, and the growing use of violent methods of struggle. The workers have progressively moved away from bourgeois ideology and become increasingly open to the ideological concepts of their own class.
7. The process of ideological revolution took a qualitative leap forward in May 1969 as shown by:
(a) The beginning of revolutionary war by armed sectors of the workers and popular vanguard.
(b) The growth of spontaneous struggles in the workers and popular movement.
8. The lowest layers of the petty bourgeoisie, mainly urban salaried workers, are undergoing a process of growing pauperization, throwing them into conflict with the regime and impelling them toward the proletarian camp. Because of the independent role played by the student movement in the process of production, it is the most dynamic expression of the tendencies of this sector.
9. The rural proletariat and the poor peasantry in the North have absolutely no way out within the context of the system and are being driven relentlessly toward the revolutionary camp. In the Northwest, these sectors have a long tradition of struggling side by side with the sugar workers, who for years have been the most combative and conscious sector of the industrial proletariat.
10. The growth of the means of communication and the centralizing of the bourgeoisie’s political and military power tend to give a uniformity to the course of politics on the national level that combines with the uneven development of the economy and society.
B. By revolutionary war against the regime, the Revolutionary Workers’ Party is fighting for the establishment of a revolutionary workers and people’s government in order to carry through the antiimperialist and socialist revolution the country needs.
1. By the tasks it has to accomplish, our revolution is antiimperialist and socialist, that is permanent. The reasons for this are as follows:
(a) Imperialist penetration is the principal cause of the distorted development and chronic crisis of our economy and the suffering of our people; it is the plunderer of our riches and the main obstacle to our independent growth.
(b) This imperialist domination is nothing more than the highest stage of the capitalist system, which no longer has room for anything but a minority of superdeveloped capitalist centers and a large majority of dependent countries. Maintaining this relationship, as well as the search for, and preservation of, new markets has become a matter of life and death for the system.
(c) It is the dependent countries such as ours that almost by themselves have to bear the weight of the crisis of the world capitalist system, and this is leading to an explosive rise of economic, political, and social unrest within them.
(d) In this process the imperialist monopolies find their main ally and defender in the national bourgeoisies, which are incapable of maintaining themselves by their own means. In the bourgeois context, there is no way out for such elements except by stepping up the exploitation and plundering of the workers, drowning their protest demonstrations in blood; and engaging in intermonopoly warfare and piratical competition.
(e) Owing to the nature of the relative capitalist development achieved by our country, the primary contradiction in our society is between the working class and the people as a whole on one side, and a minority of national capitalists and foreigners on the other.
(f) Therefore, our struggle is aimed at sweeping away imperialist domination and demolishing the capitalist system that oppresses us, destroying not only its state machinery and international mechanisms, but its entire system of economic, social and political domination, as well.
(g) The only way to do this is by abolishing private ownership of the means of production, banking and commerce, embarking on the road toward the socialization of our economy. That is, beginning the construction of the socialist society through a process of permanent revolution.
2. Ours is a workers and popular revolution in its class content, because:
(a) Owing to its role and weight in our society and because it is the direct victim of capitalist exploitation, the proletariat is the vanguard class of our revolution.
(b) Only the leadership and control of the working class, through the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat (or, workers’ democracy), will assure the permanent character of our revolution, the defeat of the enemy classes, the liquidation of bourgeois interests and pressures, and a consistent advance in building socialism.
(c) The proletariat’s main allies are the urban petty bourgeoisie throughout the country and the poor peasantry in the North. These forces do not have a direct interest in the establishment of socialism but they do have in the accomplishment of the democratic tasks and in overcoming the economic dislocation to which they are subjected and which they are incapable of confronting alone.
3. The only road to seizing power is through a prolonged revolutionary war against the regime. The reasons for this are the following:
(a) The irreversible and irreconcilable nature of the class
struggle; the role of the state and the bourgeois army, which by resorting to counterrevolutionary violence, compel the people to respond by armed struggle; the role played by Yankee imperialism as the police force of world counterrevolution.
(b) The exhausting of the reformist experience by the popular masses, who consequently can only continue their struggle in the form of a civil war of the working class and the popular sectors against the oppressors through building the Revolutionary Army of the People.
(c) This civil war will be transformed at the moment of foreign intervention, into a national antiimperialist war, linking up with the war that is developing in the rest of the colonized countries.
(d) In the first stage, we will conduct this war against an enemy that is more powerful than the fighting vanguard of the people.
(e) Imperialism must be fought in a worldwide confrontation with the strategic objective of destroying it. We can achieve this only by conceiving our war as part of the process of continental and worldwide revolutionary war.
4. Our revolution is part of the LatinAmerican and world revolution, and is therefore international in content and national in form, because:
(a) The revolutionary process is generated by, and developed on the basis of our social reality, and thus has specific national characteristics.
(b) As it develops, our revolutionary process will more and more assume a regional and continental character until, owing to common military objectives and strategic needs, it ceases to recognize boundaries and interlocks with the world revolution.
(c) From the LatinAmerican standpoint, our revolutionary war is the legitimate historical continuation of the war of independence led by San Martin, Bolivar, and Martí.
5. The Revolutionary Workers Party undertakes to propel, lead, and channel the Argentine revolutionary process.
Our main objectives being:
(a) To lead and propel the revolutionary war against the regime, in the process of its development creating the Revolutionary Army of the Argentine People.
(b) To organize in its ranks the fighting vanguard of the revolution, which is composed of workers and revo1utionar intellectuals, training them to be the leaders and inspirers of the people’s struggle against oppression.
(c) To win the people to the struggle to the death against imperialism and capitalism, until they impose a Revolutionary Workers and People’s Government and embark on the road of our antiimperialist and socialist revolution.
(d) To assure that the proletariat’s interests are defended by upholding the ideology of the working class MarxismLeninism.
(e) To participate in and develop the spontaneous struggles of the working class and popular sectors, raising the class consciousness of the workers, helping to organize them, and clarifying the tasks and objectives of their struggles.
(f) To promote alliances on different levels in order to accomplish joint tasks in the antiimperialist, democratic, and/or revolutionary struggle, always keeping up an uncompromising defense of the interests and political independence of the proletariat.
(g) Carrying out joint political and military actions uniting the various LatinAmerican fighting organizations and developing mutual aid among the countries.
C. The revolutionary workers and people’s government that we are fighting to achieve will usher in a new stage in the life of the nation, establishing workers democracy, ending imperialist domination, and initiating the struggle that will destroy the capitalist system and lead to the construction of socialism.
1. The new workers democracy will be based on a system of councils of workers and people’s deputies elected by a direct vote and subject to recall at any time. These councils will organize and direct the economic, social, and political life of the country on the local, provincial, and national levels, as well as controlling foreign relations.
2. This new workers democracy, that will lead toward the total destruction of the state apparatus, will be based on arming the people, eliminating the standing professional army and police, along with replacing them by workers and popular revolutionary defense militias and, temporarily, by a wellorganized people’s army for defense against foreign invasion until imperialism is defeated on a world scale.
3. The first measure taken by this government will be to abrogate all the political and military pacts that bind us to imperialism.
4. It will disavow the foreign debt and end ties with the International Monetary Fund and all economic organizatins controlled by imperialism.
5. It will expropriate all imperialist property.
6. It will expropriate heavy industry remaining in the hands of national capital.
7. The national state will run the enterprises already mentioned, basically, steel, petroleum companies, petrochemicals, packing houses, mining, transportation, communications, public services, etc., machine and machinetool manufacturing, etc.
8. It will nationalize banking, insurance, and all financial operations.
9. It will nationalize foreign trade, adopting a policy of trading with every country in the world, especially the socialist states.
10. It will nationalize domestic wholesale trade.
11. It will expropriate and nationalize the properties of the big landholders, both absentees and others, and organize tillage and husbandry, developing an intensive production of meats, cereals and derivatives.
12. It will expropriate and nationalize large sugar, tobacco and yerba mate plantations, large vineyards and lumber works.
13. It will gradually expropriate medium industrial and rural property owners, paying them compensation and allowing them to remain at the head of their enterprise only if they have not taken part in the repression against the people.
14. It will respect the rights of small property owners, encouraging them to organize in cooperatives, to which it will provide all necessary technical aid.
15. It will plan the economic activity of the country on a socialist basis so as to assure that its potential is developed in the interests of the people and the world revolution. It will develop the country’s technical infrastructure, carrying out the public works necessary for its advancement, especially in backward regions.
16. It will completely solve the housing problem in a way suited to the interests of the people, ending all realestate speculation for once and for all.
17. It will socialize medicine and its subsidiary fields, nationalize the medical laboratories and build hospitals and clinics, especially in the interior.
18. It will reorganize education on all levels, harnessing it to the needs of the people and of national development, making it compulsory as far as the secondary level and opening up the universities to the entire people according to their ability and aptitude.
D. Until a revolutionary workers and popular government is won, the Revolutionary Workers’ Party will wage an uncompromising struggle to defend the basic rights of the working class and of the people as a whole, trying to wrest as many gains as possible from the capitalist regime through the direct struggle of the masses.
1. Repeal of repressive legislation, especially the death penalty, martial law, the antiCommunist law and the one on oral verdicts in subversion cases.
2. Restoration of democratic freedoms and individual rights, especially freedom of association, organization, press, and the right to form unions.
3. Full observance of the right to strike and the repeal of all restrictive regulations.
4. Setting a minimum sliding scale of wages that guarantees a decent level of existence, with periodic readjustments by the parity commissions, which must be restored and allowed to function.
5. Ending all types of state interference in the union movement.
6. Drawing up and putting into practice a plan for building homes to be handed over to the popular sectors and paid for by them in payments not to exceed 10 percent of their salary.
7. No private control of hospital administration, guaranteed free quality medical treatment for everyone. Construction of hospitals and clinics. Control of the price and quality of medicines.
8. Reorganization of curricula on all three levels, so as to make them serve the nation; restoration of secular and free primary instruction and opening secondary education and the universities to the sons of workers, through a system of scholarships and student social labor.