Commentary

The Lessons of Argentina

In December 2001 Argentina was rocked by a powerful protest movement which, in the course of a month, brought down four presidents. The Argentinian people were demanding an end to the neo-liberal policies which were reducing them to poverty and vowed to throw all of the existing parliamentary parties out of office. The workers occupied abandoned factories and began to operate them by themselves. In all kinds of circles, the Argentinian experience was hailed as a new way of doing politics, a revolutionary movement without political parties or leaders. The absence of effective parties of the Left was actually cited as a strength of the Argentine revolution.

A year and a half later a new Peronist president has been installed, the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are still being implemented and the Argentine people are still not in control of their own destiny. What has happened to the much-touted leaderless revolution? The fact that the installation of a new president from the old ruling party has not been met with another upsurge of protest indicates that this particular revolution has exhausted itself without achieving any of its goals.

This experience in Argentina demonstrates in the clearest possible way that a spontaneous revolution without organization and leadership is impossible. It also shows that in order to gain control of their lives the people of a country must dismantle the old institutions of political power and establish new ones. Ignoring those institutions of power and attempting to organize a parallel economy simply does not work.

Those who so loudly proclaimed the Argentinian experiment as the solution for all the world's people in their fight against neo-liberal globalization and U.S. imperialism are now strangely silent. This is unfortunate because there really is much to be learned from this experience. If a spontaneous, grass roots revolution is not a viable alternative to the failed socialism of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, then what is? Is it not possible to learn from the experience of the Soviet Union and other formerly socialist countries in such a way as to duplicate their successes while avoiding their errors?

These are not academic questions for Canadians. In many ways Canada is very similar to Argentina. In Canada, as in Argentina, the Left is currently fragmented and ineffective. It has been incapable of providing the leadership which the movement so desperately needs. Far from being a positive thing, if this weakness is not overcome the movement will forever lack coherence and organization. It will condemn the movement to the role of protesting and reacting, but never actually achieving its aims.

Over the past few years, a number of attempts have been made in Canada to rectify this situation. Most of these have centred on trying to convince the movement to adopt the NDP as its "parliamentary wing". At the same time, others have attempted to convince the movement that their particular political organization is the only alternative, the only genuinely revolutionary leadership. All of these attempts have failed, because they are all based on the premise that the movement should serve the interests of some particular political party or organization and not the other way around. Furthermore, those who are attempting to build organizations which actually serve the interests of the movement face determined opposition from these sectarians who consider the sole purpose of the movement is to build their particular organizations and who attempt to wreck any movement which refuses to submit to them.

This is the problem which is holding back the movement in Canada and the problem will not go away by worshipping at the altar of spontaneity in Argentina or elsewhere. If Canada is to avoid the fate of Argentina, the progressive and revolutionary people must continue to grapple with the task of building those instruments and institutions of leadership which can provide coherence to the movement and enable it to achieve its aims.