Socialist Party

views updated

Socialist Party

Socialist ideas and publications have circulated in Argentina since 1870. El Obrero appeared in 1890 to communicate these ideas, and the German socialist club, Vorwärts, initiated the formation of the International Committee, which called on workers in particular to organize themselves and demand protective laws. La Vanguardia, a newspaper, founded in April 1894, called for a meeting of socialist groups to form the party. The party was formally established in 1896 when the First Congress approved the Minimum Program. Its Statement of Principles declared that workers were oppressed and exploited by capitalists and that the proletariat was responsible for reforming the situation. To bring about this socio-economic transformation, the party promoted universal suffrage and worker organization.

The Minimum Program was drawn up, with different variants, on the basis of electoral platforms: an eight-hour work day, improvement of working conditions, elimination of indirect taxes, taxation of large-property ownership and inheritance, extension of the vote to women, separation of Church and state, and divorce. The party encouraged industrial development to increase the power of the worker class, but strongly opposed all protectionism and defended free play of supply and demand. It promoted cooperativism, a mutual support association where people get together by their own free will to solve common economic, social and cultural needs, through the creation of a democratically controlled company.

Juan B. Justo became the indisputable head of the Socialist Party and the defender of gradual and progressive change. The main basis of the party was the ongoing mobilization of its adherents, and it gave priority to the education of workers. It participated in the political system but denounced fraud. Its most resounding triumph was the election of Alfredo Palacios in 1904 as national deputy.

The electoral reform of 1912 set a stage that was more favorable to political organizations. The Socialist Party faced hard competition from the Radical Party, which it considered a part of the old political structure. A significant increase in the electorate in the federal capital, Buenos Aires, resulted in several deputies and senators being elected. Although the electorate of Buenos Aires gave its support to the Socialist Party, the party could not consolidate a solid structure in the country's inland provinces.

The party always had a difficult relationship with workers' organizations and with the diverging opinions of many of its members. Different waves of opinion formed within it, causing several splits. Like Palacios, Manuel Ugarte was considered more nationalist than internationalist. Palacios was expelled from the Socialist Party for challenging its leadership and went on to found the Argentine Socialist Party, which was short-lived and had little success.

In 1912 another faction founded the Karl Marx Studies Center, which defended orthodox Marxism. Tensions increased when party members were forbidden to simultaneously hold membership in the Young Socialists, and due to the group's stance on the 1914 war. Several members were expelled, including José Penelón, Rodolfo Ghioldi, Vittorio Codovilla, and Alberto Palcos, and in 1918 they founded the International Socialist Party, which supported the Russian Revolution and eventually became the Communist Party.

Between 1916 and 1930 Argentine politics underwent an important change that had a significant impact on democratic movements in the country. The military coup of September 6, 1930, broke the continuity of constitutional government, and conflicts within the Socialist Party resurfaced. In the 1930s the party opposition from the Left was expelled and formed the Socialist Workers Party, which in turn underwent several internal crises until its dissolution. An Independent Socialist Party also was formed.

The emergence and consolidation of the Peronist Party drained militants from the Socialist Party, which lost many of its members to the growing Peronist movement. The Socialist Party opposed Peronism, and many of its leaders left for exile. With the fall of Perón in 1955, the Socialist Party was reactivated, with a renewed hope of attracting members from among the masses, but these new members failed to materialize as workers did not leave the Peronist ranks.

After 1955 Argentina was unstable. Plagued by repeated military coups, the Socialist Party remained on the political scene through its various rifts. In 1958 it split again, forming the Democratic Socialist Party, which continues in the early twenty-first century, as well as the Argentine Socialist Party. The latter was a coalition of socialists, Castroists, and Maoists; their differences prompted the party's division into the Argentine Socialist Party and the Vanguard Argentine Socialist Party, which further split into the Popular Vanguard Party (which self-dissolved in 1972 to join the Justicialist Party) and the Communist Vanguard Party. In 1966 the Argentine Socialist Party split again when Juan Carlos Coral was expelled from the group and joined a Trotskyite group to form the Workers Socialist Party, which ran candidates in the national elections of 1973 and was banned by the military dictatorship in 1976. In 1972 the socialists of the Argentine Socialist Party, along with other scattered minor groups, created the Popular Socialist Party.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adelman, Jeremy. "El Partido Socialista Argentina." In Nueva Historia Argentina, Vol. 5: El progreso, la modernización y sus límites, 1880–1916, ed. Mirta Zaida Lobato. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2000.

Aricó, José. La hipótesis de Justo. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1999.

Camarero, Hernán, and Carlos Miguel Herrera, eds. El partido socialista en Argentina: Sociedad, Política, e ideas a través de un siglo. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005.

Oddone, Jacinto. Historia del socialismo argentino. (1934). Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1988.

Walter, Richard. The Socialist Party of Argentina, 1890–1930. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Mirta Zaida Lobato

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture