Miguel Sorans’ speech, a leader of Socialist Left (IS) and the IWU-FI
We are coming from two hard years because of the suffering and limitations that the COVID-19 pandemic has put on us. But, from IS and the IWU-FI, we continue our struggle together with the working class and the popular sectors. We had to learn new things, like how to use online meetings to relate to each other. Thanks to that, today we are broadcasting this act of homage to Nahuel Moreno live to different parts of the world. We are being followed throughout Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean, in Mexico, the United States, Europe and Turkey.
Despite the pandemic, we have had outstanding achievements, such as the fact that in November, in Argentina, the bourgeois press talked about the “Trotskyist left”. Because of the big vote achieved by the FIT-Unity, which became the third national force.
The new generations of the working class and youth should know that it was Nahuel Moreno who, since 1944, launched the construction of Trotskyism in the workers’ movement in Argentina. His small group of young people began by supporting the strike at the Anglo Ciabasa meatpacking plant in Avellaneda. Thus workers’ Trotskyism was born in Argentina. Thus began the construction of a revolutionary socialist party at the height of Peronism. But, being very young, he quickly saw the need for internationalism and so he travelled in 1948 to Europe to join the ranks of the Fourth International founded by Trotsky.
Moreno stood out for many things. For his theoretical and political contributions, for his work capacity, for his moral integrity, but, above all, Nahuel Moreno was a man of action. Of revolutionary action. His obsession was to advance the working class in its international struggle to end imperialist capitalism. His obsession was the triumph of the socialist revolution. And he made his life’s focus the struggle to solve the problem of the lack of revolutionary leadership. That is why his great legacy is the struggle to build the party and the international. That was his central teaching.
He was our master in the struggle to bring Trotskyism out of marginality, and he always fought against the opportunist and sectarian positions within the Trotskyist movement.
Nahuel Moreno’s theoretical, and political legacy is still valid. His elaborations are still very topical for the new generations of revolutionaries.
In all his written work, he always fought against those sectors of the left and revisionist Trotskyism, like Ernest Mandel, who predicted that capitalism could still grow and develop. Moreno insisted on the opposite, that the capitalist-imperialist system, since 1968, was in its decadence and a chronic crisis of its economy. 35 years after his death, we see that humanity is suffering from a hecatomb of over-exploitation, destitution and pandemic. Capitalism is experiencing the worst crisis in its history. The masses suffer the consequences, with billions of people in absolute poverty. That is why Moreno took up Trotsky’s warning of Socialism or Catastrophe! An alternative that is still valid.
Part of the topicality of his legacy was the fight against the claudication of wide sectors of Trotskyism to reformist left leaderships like the Cuban leadership. He fought an uncompromising battle against class-collaborationist governments and for class independence. Nahuel Moreno denounced the capitulation of the brothers, Fidel and Raul Castro, to the bureaucracy of the former USSR. He warned about their adaptation to their policy of pact with imperialism and class conciliation. For example, Moreno denounced in 1979 Castroism’s betrayal of the revolution in Nicaragua, endorsing the pact of Daniel Ortega and the FSLN with the bourgeoisie headed by Violeta Chamorro.
Decades after Moreno’s disappearance, the facts proved him right again. To support these leaderships was to lead the working class and the revolutionary vanguard to disaster. Castroism continued its path of betrayals by restoring capitalism in Cuba and endorsing the government of Hugo Chavez (later Nicolas Maduro), which maintained a capitalist economic structure in Venezuela while making speeches about a false “Socialism of the 21st Century”. Many sectors of Trotskyism and the left stumbled over the same stone again, especially Mandelism which supported, in its first years, Lula’s government (even giving him ministers), then Chavez-Maduro and also Syriza in Greece.
After years, the failure of these pseudo “progressive” governments has become clear. More than ever, the teachings of Nahuel Moreno to continue the intransigent struggle against these governments and for class independence are still valid. Now it is the turn of governments like MAS in Bolivia, Peronism in Argentina, Pedro Castillo in Peru or Boric in Chile or the possible Lula in Brazil.
But, as Moreno taught us, the important thing is that the struggle of the masses has not ceased. And as he said, “The struggle for socialism is difficult… But there is no God who says that we cannot triumph”. Despite two years of the pandemic, millions around the world are taking to the streets to confront the plans for austerity and plunder. From the popular rebellion in Chile, the one in Colombia last year, the 11 July protests in Cuba, the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people, the workers’ strikes in Spain, Italy or France or the recent popular rebellion in Kazakhstan. This is the basis for continuing to build our parties and the International.
35 years later, Moreno’s ideas are still alive and remain one of the main currents of world Trotskyism.
Moreno’s elaborations are still highly topical for the new generations of revolutionaries. There are thousands of militants in the world who claim to be morenoists. His works continue to be published in different languages. This year our comrades in Turkey will publish his book The Revolutions of the 20th Century in Turkish.
From IS and the IWU-FI, we follow his legacy.
As we learned from Moreno, we continue to build an international organisation, the IWU-FI, fighting all self-proclamation and sectarianism. We continue to fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International. Moreno never considered that his international organisation was already the Fourth. He always fought for the unity of principled Trotskyism and the unity of the revolutionaries, even if they did not call themselves Trotskyists. That is why from the IWU-FI we continue to struggle for new unity by exchanging with revolutionary organisations and militants from Portugal, Italy, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Africa and the Middle East.
In Argentina, we follow their teachings by building IS, supporting the struggles against the Peronist government of Alberto and Cristina Fernandez in search of a new political and trade union leadership. With Pollo Sobrero and the railway workers, we seek to unite militant trade unionism and support the development of the FIT (Left Front), we fight for a united alternative of class independence against Peronism, Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change) and Milei’s ultra-right.
The growth of the FITU (Left Front-Unity) and the Trotskyist left has made many ask themselves and us: what is Trotskyism? And to answer it is good to recall the anecdote told by the old workers’ leader Elias Rodriguez of how Moreno had recruited him to join the party in the 1940s. He said he asked him: “Moreno, what do you propose? “‘We propose the workers govern,’ he replied. And Elias thought that was the right thing to do, and he joined the party. In short, that is Trotskyism, which is the Socialist Left and the IWU-FI. The struggle for a working-class government to achieve a Socialist Argentina and a socialist world.
This is the best tribute we can pay to Nahuel Moreno!
We continue to build the party and the International!
Thank you, comrades.
(video)
