BUENOS AIRES—In recent weeks, several polls have indicated a sharp rise in support for the Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores—Unidad (Workers’ Left Front—Unity or FIT-U), a coalition of socialist parties in Argentina. Support has risen from 2.7 percent in the last presidential election to anywhere between 10 and 15 percent in current national polls. In the working-class suburbs of Buenos Aires and among young people, support is likely to be more than 25 percent.
Myriam Bregman, the FIT-U presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, is the most popular politician in the country. Brazilian polling firm Atlas Intel, which was the first to predict recent far-right victories across Latin America, found that Bregman had a 47 percent approval rating among 4,800 surveyed voters. She was the only prominent politician with a net positive rating. The result was confirmed in two additional polls conducted by consulting firms Tendencias and Zentrix. Tendencias also found that more than 23 percent of voters view Bergman and the FIT-U as the “official opposition” to the government, second only to the main Peronist figure and Buenos Aires provincial Governor Axel Kicillof at 32 percent.
This is a huge breakthrough and is creating significant reverberations through Argentinian politics. While the socialist left is stronger in Argentina than anywhere else in the world, it is still relatively marginal. Now, Bregman is on all the mainstream news channels, being interviewed about the FIT-U program. For the first time in the country’s history, millions of workers are open to supporting a candidate from the socialist left rather than the Peronists, the traditional centre-left party in Argentina.
The FIT-U is no ordinary coalition of socialist parties. The four groups in the alliance are all explicitly revolutionary organisations from the Trotskyist tradition. The program of the FIT-U calls for the nationalisation, under workers’ control, of the key sectors of the economy and for a “government of workers and the people achieved by the mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed”.
“Without a doubt: we are facing an extraordinary opportunity and challenge”, four Argentine socialist intellectuals wrote in an open letter in response to the polls. “In Argentina today, there is the possibility that a revolutionary option will be seen with sympathy by a sector of society that is no longer small.”
To understand why this is happening, we have to go back to the current far-right President Javier Milei’s shock election victory. Milei, a media personality with no party machine, rode to power two-and-a-half years ago on a wave of bitter disillusionment with the Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez.
Once in government, Milei unleashed a wave of attacks on every front. A savage devaluation of the peso destroyed the living standards of the poor and transferred wealth to the rich. Proposals to attack workers’ rights, education and health were put forward. And like far-right governments around the world, Milei combined all this with a culture war offensive targeting LGBTI people, feminists and the left. He even tried to revive the image of the disgraced military dictatorship (1976-83).
Since the election, the struggle against Milei has ebbed and flowed. There have been impressive mobilisations and important campaigns. However, the president has succeeded in many of his attacks. A key reason is the complicity of the Peronists in the National Congress. Several of their politicians provided Milei with the votes needed to get his attacks through the Senate.
The Peronists are also the main force in the leadership of the trade unions. They have used that influence to hold back the struggle against Milei, stifling militant activity and calling mostly ineffective actions of their own. When Milei pushed anti-worker labour laws through the Congress, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), the main trade union federation, called a strike without seriously mobilising for it. When the laws went to the Senate, CGT leaders refused to call anything at all. More broadly, the Peronists have promoted the idea that the only way to defeat Milei is to wait until the next election—an approach that repeatedly runs up against the reality that many people remain disgusted by the corruption of previous Peronist administrations.
This orientation has been in stark contrast to the FIT-U, which, on the streets and in the Congress, has stridently opposed Milei in the way many workers believed the Peronist should have done.
The situation came to a head a few months ago. Milei’s standing has been undermined by a corruption scandal involving Manuel Adorni, the chief of the cabinet of ministers and a close ally of the president. Milei has refused to withdraw support from Adorni, undercutting his image as an outsider taking on the corrupt elite. Meanwhile, working-class living standards have continued to go backwards because of the high inflation Milei promised to tame.
The Peronist leaders, who have moved sharply to the right in recent years, are struggling to hold their disillusioned working-class base. This has created more space for the FIT-U to grow. In contrast to the Peronists, the FIT-U has supported every struggle against Milei while also arguing for independence from the Peronist parties.
Left-wing electoral breakthroughs are hardly unknown in contemporary politics. In recent years, we have seen Mamdani elected the mayor of New York, the solidification of France Unbowed, the revival of The Left in Germany, and the rise of the UK Greens. In the 2010s, the rapid growth in support for the radical left parties SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain stemmed from the anti-austerity movements in those countries. And Argentina has long been a country with a sizeable left and higher levels of struggle.
What makes the Argentinian situation so different, though, is that the left space is not being filled by moderate bureaucratic forces that just want to manage a reformed capitalist system. Or vague left populists who dismiss revolutionary politics and downplay the class struggle. This time, revolutionary socialists are the ones channelling the discontent of millions of workers into support for their political project.
This is a huge opportunity, but it also places a staggering responsibility on the FIT-U. It is one thing to correctly see the failures of SYRIZA, Podemos and other neo-reformist parties. It is another to show that at least the beginnings of an alternative strategy against capitalism are possible. It is unsurprising, then, that the situation has also intensified significant debates and discussions about the way forward for the FIT-U.
The four parties that make up the FIT-U are the Socialist Workers’ Party (PTS) of which Bregman is a member, the Workers’ Socialist Movement (MST), the Workers’ Party (PO) and the Socialist Left (IS). Anyone not a member of one of these parties cannot be a part of the FIT-U, which has no existence outside of the electoral united front. So the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for the FIT-U even before the recent surge in polling are unable to be members of the organisation—unless of course they join one of its constituent groups.
Before the recent polling breakthroughs, the MST had proposed that the FIT-U be transformed into a united socialist party, open to everyone who agreed with the FIT-U program, in which each of the four groups, and potentially others, would have the freedom to organise as internal tendencies. The MST considers this task to be all the more urgent now. Sergio Garcia from the MST leadership recently noted in Periodismo de Izquierda, a prominent left-wing outlet:
“Already in the previous situation, the need for change was posed, as the Front could not continue in a limited electoral format, stuck in routine and distant from a basic strategy to intervene into the class struggle. Now, in the new situation of a left turn, the urgency of a change is massive.”
The MST proposal was not accepted by the other parties of the FIT-U, and in particular by the PTS. It argued that such a move would dilute the alliance’s revolutionary politics and turn it into something akin to the broad left-reformist parties of Europe. It also points to the not-insignificant political differences among the four parties. The changing situation, though, seems to have generated a greater willingness to explore new ways to transform the revolutionary left into a mass force.
“Our position is that the FIT-U, as a coalition of organisations that agitates and propagates a classist and socialist program, was and remains very positive, but not enough”, explained Emilio Albamonte, one of the founders of the PTS, in an interview for Ideas De Izquierda.
“We cannot settle for a coalition of four groups, relatively small, in which we often have no agreement in the class struggle, and which once every two years make electoral political agitation. Our whole discussion is that the new location of the left raises the need both to move towards a revolutionary party of the forefront, making qualitative leaps in that field, as well as in the promotion of the class struggle.”
The PTS has proposed forming a new independent workers’ party as the way forward. As a more immediate measure, it supports the creation of popular committees to elect Bregman as president, a proposal also backed by the MST, the PO and a broader layer of non-party intellectuals, cultural figures and social activists.
Revolutionaries in Argentina hope that establishing a large revolutionary socialist party is now possible. If such a party could be formed, it could have a significant impact on the class struggle in the country.
The Trotskyist parties here have some influence in the workers’ movement, more so than Trotskyists in any other country. However they are still an embattled minority facing a powerful and corrupt Peronist trade union machine. They also often have sharp disagreements among themselves over trade union work—the parties of the FIT-U even run against each other in some union elections. A united party could find a way to resolve such disputes and create unified left interventions in the unions.
A significant breakthrough for the FIT-U electorally could then feed back into the workers’ movement, bolstering the anti-bureaucratic socialist forces. Having a party with 10,15 or more percent of the vote supporting militant activity in the unions could make a real difference. This is particularly important, as the strength of the trade union bureaucracy makes it essential that there be political intervention to promote workers’ self-activity.
Where the debates in the FIT-U will end up, and whether the FIT-U will consolidate and build on its success, is anyone’s guess. The country’s volatility also makes it hard to know what will happen next. It is possible that support for the FIT-U could rise and fall sharply depending on what the other parties do and the broader economic and social situation. The election is likely to be more than a year away—and a lot could happen between now and then. Everyone serious on the Argentinian left knows that the opportunity won’t last forever, and what the FIT-U does in the coming weeks and months could be decisive.
For now, though, an opportunity has arisen to advance the socialist left in a serious way. If that continues, the various positions within the FIT-U will be put to the test in the real world.
Argentina also holds lessons for socialists across the globe. The FIT-U shows that socialism can become a popular force without abandoning or watering down its revolutionary principles. While Argentina is a particular case, many of the challenges are similar to those the revolutionary left faces everywhere. The Argentinian working class remains highly fragmented and disorganised, with large sections engaged in contract work and precarious labour. Most of those voting for the FIT-U are not worked-out socialists, let alone revolutionaries. The neoliberal hollowing out of politics and the undermining of class identification have scared the country and played a big role in the rise of the far right here as well. Despite this, it has been possible to carve out a space for revolutionary politics.
In the 21st century, there have been social rebellions and political breakthroughs for the left around the world. But the revolutionary left can put itself in a position to seriously intervene in these developments only if it has a base of organised Marxist activists who fight for genuine socialist politics. In Argentina, there are thousands of Trotskyist activists in the various far-left parties. Whatever the weaknesses and debates among these parties, the existence of such forces has made the FIT-U possible.
