Tan Daoming: Political Lessons from the Communist Party of Argentina's Failure to Transition from a Century-Old Party to a Major Century-Old Party
The Communist Party of Argentina (PCA) is truly a century-old party in Argentine politics, and it was the first Communist organization in the Latin American region to cross the hundred-year threshold. Since its founding in 1918, the PCA has set the tone for the Latin American region, withstanding the severe challenges of shifting domestic and international political winds and making significant contributions to the struggle against imperialism, opposition to domestic autocracy, and the fight for the legitimate rights of the working class. However, from its founding until the early 1980s, the PCA's total membership trended upward, growing from 766 people to nearly 200,000; thereafter, it continually declined, with only 17,000 members in 2021. It has long ceased to be the largest Communist Party in Latin America and has been relegated to a marginal minor party domestically. In fact, not only did the PCA fail to grow in terms of membership, but in its history of more than a century, it never became a ruling party, nor did it ever hold a substantial number of seats in either the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate. On the contrary, it has repeatedly suffered defeats to the Radical Civic Union [1] and the Justicialist Party [2] in presidential and parliamentary elections, eventually becoming a "junior partner" in a left-wing alliance dominated by the Justicialist Party. In the presidential election held at the end of 2023, the Justicialist candidate was defeated, and the PCA once again returned from being a participating party in government to an opposition party. This article attempts to answer: why did the PCA, a century-old party, fail to become a century-strong party? In other words, what political lessons are worth drawing from its hundred-year history?
I. Lack of Courage for Innovation and the Prevalence of Dogmatism
The most important political lesson of the PCA's failure to become a century-strong party is its long-standing lack of courage for innovation and the prevalence of dogmatism within the party. For a considerable period, it was deeply influenced by external forces such as the Comintern and the CPSU. Its internal drive for independent development was severely insufficient, and it consistently failed to explore a path to socialism suited to Argentina's national conditions.
The PCA and its predecessor, the International Socialist Party, emerged and developed during a line struggle [3] against the Socialist Party of Argentina led by Juan B. Justo. The PCA criticized the Second International reformist line pursued by the Socialist Party for failing to integrate the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete reality of Argentina. Consequently, it decided to break with the Socialist Party, hoping to independently explore a socialist path suited to Argentina’s national conditions. Regrettably, although the PCA broke away from the reformist Socialist Party, it soon became subject to the direct intervention of the Comintern and subsequently fell under the powerful influence of the CPSU. Soviet-style dogmatism prevailed within the party for a long time, leading to its failure—even today, a century later—to find a socialist path consistent with Argentina's national conditions.
Shortly after its founding, the PCA successively became a branch of the South American Secretariat and the South American Bureau of the Comintern, accepting direct Comintern leadership and actively following the Comintern’s political line. It was thus strongly affected by changes in that line. However, in the decade from its founding until 1928, dogmatism within the PCA had not yet become dominant. The leadership engaged in several debates on how to implement Comintern resolutions. Based on different reasons, the "United Front faction," the "Chispa" (Spark) faction, and the Penelón faction all attempted to maintain a degree of independence for the PCA outside the Comintern. However, after the early leader José Penelón was expelled from the party in 1928, for the next half-century, the PCA became what is called an "externally-oriented political party"—following the Comintern and the CPSU every step of the way and losing its drive for autonomous development. Because it treated external dogmas as "golden rules and precious precepts" [4] that it dared not alter, the PCA was also called "Creole Communism" by some domestic and foreign critics.
The seven years from 1928 to 1935 was the period during which the PCA followed the ultra-left theory of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. In 1928, the Comintern convened its Sixth Congress and proposed the "Third Period" ultra-left theory, which was completely divorced from the actual revolutionary conditions in Third World countries at the time. This theory held that the "Third Period" (i.e., after 1928) was an era in which capitalism was entering a state of total collapse and the proletariat would seize power; it therefore required Communist parties in all countries to lead the proletariat in a life-and-death line of "class confrontation" against the bourgeoisie. The Sixth Congress was also called the congress that "discovered the Americas" because it characterized Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina for the first time as dependent countries subordinate to imperialist powers. In these countries, feudal relations similar to those of the Middle Ages co-existed with the reality that sectors vital to the national economic lifeline—such as industry, commerce, finance, and transportation—were controlled by imperialist blocs and domestic oligarchs. Therefore, the Comintern required Latin American Communist parties to strengthen party building and expand their mass base while emphasizing that their tasks were, on the one hand, to carry out anti-feudal struggles and launch land revolutions, and on the other, to oppose imperialism and strive for national independence. However, the Comintern proposed a "two-stage revolution theory": only after passing through a series of preparatory stages and achieving victory in the bourgeois-democratic revolution could Third World countries, including Argentina, transition to the socialist revolution stage and implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In November 1928, the PCA approved the resolutions of the Comintern's Sixth Congress at its own Eighth Congress, announcing its support for the "Third Period" strategy. Based on the "Third Period" theory, the PCA's Eighth Congress analyzed the characteristics of Argentina's economic structure, concluding that it was externally dependent on British and American imperialism and internally distorted by deep-rooted latifundismo [5]. Under this distorted economic structure, Argentina's industrial bourgeoisie had not yet matured, the industrial proletariat was far from being developed or strengthened, and the material conditions for launching a socialist revolution were not yet present. Therefore, the PCA's revolutionary goal at the current stage was to promote the realization of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, carry out a land revolution, and launch an anti-imperialist revolution. Only after completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution would it move toward the ultimate revolutionary goal—realizing socialism in Argentina. It can be seen that the decisions of the PCA's Eighth Congress almost completely copied the resolutions of the Comintern's Sixth Congress, fitting the "two-stage revolution theory" like two halves of a tally [6]. In particular, the PCA adopted the "class confrontation" line as required by the Comintern, which had a highly destructive effect on its ability to establish a united front with other left-wing forces and exerted a negative influence on the PCA's exploration of the "indigenization" of Marxism.
However, due to changes in the international situation, the ultra-left line of "class confrontation" was implemented for only eight years before being discarded by the Comintern, to be replaced by the right-leaning "Popular Front" line. In 1935, at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, because Italian and Spanish Fascism and German Nazi forces were rampant in Europe, anti-fascism became the top priority for international Communist forces, especially the CPSU. The Comintern shifted to requiring Communist parties in all countries to form "Popular Fronts," uniting all progressive and democratic forces—including the national bourgeoisie—to jointly oppose the European Nazi-Fascism led by Hitler and Mussolini (and shortly thereafter, Franco). According to the new spirit of the Seventh Comintern Congress, the PCA announced on one hand its support for establishing an anti-oligarchic, anti-imperialist national democratic front composed of the country's democratic and progressive forces. On the other hand, at the trade union level, the PCA decided to dissolve the Committee for National Trade Union Unity (CUSC)—which had been established in 1930 under the requirements of the Sixth Comintern Congress and was organized and led by the PCA—and join the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which was then still controlled by the Socialists. This was equivalent to handing over the leadership of the labor movement to others. In 1938, the PCA's Ninth Congress formally adopted the "Popular Front" line, arguing that the urgent task was to promote the goals of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, thereby indefinitely postponing the country’s socialist revolution process. The PCA maintained this dogmatic line—which involved both abandoning leadership over the labor movement and failing to engage in armed struggle at the appropriate time—for more than half a century, until it was relatively thoroughly repudiated at the Sixteenth Congress in 1986.
Before the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, the PCA was a branch of the Comintern and had to unconditionally implement the line prescribed by it; even the appointment and dismissal of PCA leaders were decided by Moscow. After the Comintern was dissolved, the PCA continued to follow the instructions of the CPSU. Nikita Khrushchev, who came to power in 1955, adopted a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with capitalist countries like the United States, explicitly opposing the use of armed struggle by Communist parties around the world and emphasizing instead economic competition with capitalist countries. The CPSU's "peaceful coexistence" policy solidified the political line the PCA had long pursued—targeting the bourgeois-democratic revolution—and eventually resulted in a "monolith" of "orthodox" Marxist dogma as interpreted by official Soviet channels. This damaged the autonomy and innovative spirit that the PCA should have possessed and nearly extinguished its initiative to explore the indigenization of Marxism.
The Comintern was far away in Moscow, guiding the global communist movement from a height, and could not thoroughly understand the national conditions of Third World countries like Argentina. Meanwhile, the CPSU, as the ruling party of a nation, had its own national interests, and it often required the proletarian parties of Third World countries to serve its own practical interests, even at the expense of the long-term interests of those countries. In other words, neither the Comintern nor the CPSU could point out a correct path for the Argentine revolution based on Argentina's actual conditions. Regrettably, the PCA leadership lacked the courage for theoretical innovation, treating Comintern resolutions and CPSU instructions as laws that could not and dared not be broken, and subsequently fell into the "quagmire" of dogmatism.
The PCA’s inability to extricate itself from dogmatism exacerbated the bureaucratic tendencies of the party leadership, leading to two forms of "alienation": one was the alienation of the relationship between the party leadership and ordinary members, and the other was the alienation of the relationship between the PCA, as a proletarian party, and the broad masses at the grassroots. This practice, pursued by the PCA over the long term, eventually caused it to lose the support of most grassroots masses, who turned instead to support the Justicialist Party led by Perón. With the return of democratic politics to Argentina in the 1980s, and especially with the failure of the Soviet model in the 1990s, the PCA conducted severe self-criticism of the dogmatism it had long practiced. Athos Fava, then General Secretary of the PCA, made the following self-criticism of the party's dogmatism and the leadership's bureaucratism in September 1986: "Internally, a high degree of 'administrativism' exists. Leaders are detached from the masses, detached from the difficulties of the members themselves, and even act more like managers than revolutionaries." From then on, the PCA decided to stop "mimicking others" [7] and instead walk its own path, but it was too late. It had already lost leadership over the working class and no longer had the strength to compete with the now-powerful Justicialist Party and the trade union forces it led.
The examples of the victories of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions can serve as counter-proofs of the serious harm caused by the PCA’s long-term immersion in dogmatism. Neither the Chinese nor the Cuban revolution was achieved under the "face-to-face instructions" [8] of external forces. A key experience of the Communist Party of China in achieving victory was timely shaking off the remote-control command of the Comintern through its agents and breaking the shackles of dogmatism. At the Zunyi Conference, it repudiated the "Left" leaning line of the Comintern represented by Wang Ming, decisively abandoned the "urban-centric theory" based on Soviet experience, and instead proceeded from China's reality to adopt a revolutionary path of encircling the cities from the countryside and seizing political power through armed struggle. Similarly, the occurrence of the Cuban revolution did not follow the line designed by the Comintern and the CPSU. In the 1960s, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina, which broke away from the PCA due to the Sino-Soviet split, pointed out sharply when criticizing the PCA's dogmatism: the Cuban revolution began from "a democratic revolution of national liberation and achieved a socialist revolution. Cuba realized Leninist theory in Latin America—namely, that there is no 'Great Wall of China' between one stage of revolution and another. It proved that only socialism can thoroughly solve democratic and anti-imperialist tasks."
The PCA leadership bears unshakable responsibility for the dogmatism that prevailed for so long. The core of the leadership during the period of the PCA's most serious dogmatism was Rodolfo Ghioldi...
...Ghioldi and Victorio Codovilla. Between the two, Codovilla bore the greater responsibility. As one of the PCA’s founding fathers, Codovilla enjoyed the deep trust of the Comintern and the CPSU. He traveled to Moscow many times to attend meetings of the Comintern and the CPSU, and served as a Comintern advisor stationed in Spain around the time of the Spanish Civil War. His status within the PCA was similar to that of Wang Ming [9] during the early period of the Communist Party of China (CPC), yet his influence over the PCA far exceeded that of Wang Ming over the CPC. Codovilla led the PCA for more than half a century, faithfully following the "remote guidance" of the Comintern and the CPSU, elevating their resolutions and instructions above those of his own Party. However, he contributed very little to the development of Marxist theory or practice in Argentina, leaving behind nothing but occasional pieces written for the moment, devoid of any theoretical innovation.
II. Lack of a Spirit of Unity and Rampant Sectarianism
For a long time, the PCA lacked a spirit of unity, and internal sectarianism was rampant. The Party organization splintered several times, which seriously weakened its cohesion and mobilization capacity. This is the second important political lesson for why the PCA failed to become a century-old major party.
Sectarianism is a chronic malady of Argentine party politics; nearly every political party undergoes varying degrees of more than one split after its founding. This was true for the Radical Party [10] and the Justicialist Party [11], as well as for the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party was no exception. However, the endless sectarianism within the PCA had its own specificity: almost every one of its splits was related to external factors.
The first split of the PCA originated from differing interpretations within the Party of the Comintern’s propositions. The Third Congress of the Comintern in June and July 1921 required Communist Parties in all countries to adopt the "United Front" strategy, triggering fierce debate within the PCA. A group of members, later known as the "United Front faction," believed this meant the Comintern required the Communist Party—which had only recently become independent from the Argentine Socialist Party—to merge back with the Socialists. However, the majority faction, led by then-General Secretary Rodolfo Ghioldi and early leader José Penelón, opposed this interpretation, arguing that the Socialist Party lacked influence in the labor movement and opposing a re-merger. After the Fourth Congress of the PCA in January 1922, the "United Front faction" was expelled from the Party, and some of its members returned to the Socialist Party.
Shortly thereafter, a second split followed quickly. In January 1925, Leon Trotsky lost his power struggle with Stalin and was expelled from the Revolutionary Military Council of the CPSU. At the Sixth Congress of the PCA in December 1925, some Party members known as the "Chispa faction" (named after their magazine La Chispa [The Spark]), were later labeled Trotskyists and expelled from the PCA. It must be specifically pointed out that the expulsion of the "Chispa faction" was a result of the PCA leadership seeking help from the Comintern, and it also marked the Comintern’s first direct intervention in the internal affairs of this young political party. Relying on rulings from far-away Moscow for internal political struggles undoubtedly set a bad precedent. The "Chispa" incident became an important turning point where the PCA lost its organizational and political independence.
A third split in the 1920s occurred in 1928. The PCA’s leader at the time, José Penelón, served both as the General Secretary of the PCA and as the head of the South American Secretariat established by the Comintern in 1925. However, Penelón hoped that the PCA would maintain a degree of independence from the Comintern in its daily work, thereby preserving some space for the autonomous development of the PCA. This position, which clearly lacked Internationalism, was severely criticized by another leader, Rodolfo Ghioldi, who demanded that the PCA remain in complete alignment with the policies formulated by the Comintern. As a result of the debate, the majority faction represented by Ghioldi won, and Penelón was expelled from the Party in 1928 and formed a new party. A more serious consequence of this split was that the PCA henceforth became a so-called "outward-oriented party" that heavily relied on external forces, completely losing the ability to question resolutions or instructions issued by the Comintern and the CPSU that deviated from Argentine political and social realities.
From the time Penelón was purged in 1928, the PCA leadership formed a core centered on "Codovilla-Ghioldi." This dual power structure remained in place until Codovilla’s death in Moscow in 1970, though its influence persisted until the eve of the PCA’s Sixteenth Congress in 1986. In the 1930s and 1940s, the "Bolshevization" promoted by the PCA leadership showed initial results; the Party organization maintained a degree of cohesion and saw no serious splits. This favorable state did not last. During the Great Debate [12] of the International Communist Movement in the 1960s, relations between the parties and states of China and the Soviet Union were severed. The PCA leadership chose to side with the CPSU, and this practice of taking sides led to the largest and most serious split in its history. From February to March 1963, at the Twelfth Congress of the PCA, the leadership headed by Codovilla expelled a group of young members who wanted to discuss the Sino-Soviet debate. This led to more than 4,000 members leaving the PCA to establish new, more radical working-class parties, such as the Communist Vanguard and the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR). These new parties criticized the PCA’s proposition of class reconciliation as a "compromise with imperialism," arguing that the PCA had degenerated into an opportunist and reformist party.
After entering the 1980s, the Soviet Union gradually showed signs of decline in the US-Soviet struggle for hegemony, and the CPSU became increasingly unable to exert control over the Communist Parties of various countries. Following the defeat in the Malvinas War (Falklands War), democratic politics returned to Argentina. Against this historical background, the PCA leadership—experiencing a generational transition between the old and the new—decided to implement a massive "turning point" in the Party's line. At the Sixteenth Congress of the PCA in 1986, the Party conducted a severe self-criticism of the political line of "peaceful coexistence" it had followed for decades, particularly its policy of appeasement toward Videla’s [13] dictatorial rule during the military government period. It decided to abandon the "National Democratic Front," which aimed to facilitate a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and instead called for the establishment of a socialist "Front for National and Social Liberation" led by the proletariat, accumulating strength for the eventual seizure of power. Seen from today, this turn was necessary at the time and was an important attempt by the PCA to seek political autonomy. However, the new line also triggered serious divisions within the Party. Leaders such as Rubens Iscaro and Oscar Arévalo, along with some members, accused the leadership of taking the Party "in the direction of guerrilla warfare and the ultra-left"; they were soon expelled or withdrew from the Party voluntarily.
In the 1990s, severely impacted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the PCA’s past highly centralized leadership model was also challenged. The Party once again experienced several splits and even faced the threat of dissolution at one point. In late 1990, the PCA held its Seventeenth Congress. Some members, led by Francisco Alvarez, a member of the Central Politburo, proposed that the PCA should be dissolved in order to establish a center-left political organization that could accommodate various factions such as Peronism and Radicalism. Although the intra-party vote ultimately saved the Party from this existential catastrophe by a narrow margin, a portion of the members still announced their departure from the PCA. In 1994, Alejandro Mosquera—who had served as Secretary of the Communist Youth Federation and was ranked second in the Party—led a group of members who had lost confidence in the Party's development to withdraw. Together with some members of the Justicialist Party, they successively founded a new center-left party, the Front for a Country in Solidarity (FREPASO). In December 1996, sparked by internal disagreements with the PCA leadership and regarding what political strategy the PCA should adopt after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, some PCA members led by Pablo Pereyra announced their separation and established a new party—the Communist Party of Argentina (Extraordinary Congress) (PCCE). Since 2000, although the PCA has not had any large-scale serious splits, sectarianism within the Party has not disappeared.
In short, to a certain extent, we can say that the century-long history of the PCA is a history of continuous organizational splintering and rampant sectarianism.
III. Lack of Enterprising Spirit and Repeatedly Missing Opportunities for Development
The Communist Party of Argentina consistently lacked an enterprising spirit and repeatedly missed opportunities for development. This is specifically manifested as follows: it failed to seize leadership of the labor movement during the era of labor movements, lost to Peronism during the era of nationalism, abandoned armed struggle during the era of revolution, and was marginalized as a fringe leftist group during the democratic period. This is another important political lesson for why the PCA failed to become a century-old major party.
The PCA had several window periods for development and growth in its history of more than a hundred years. If it had been able to gain insight into the general trend of the times, grasp the historical initiative [14], and be proactive and enterprising, it could have grown from small to large and from weak to strong. Even if it could not take power and move toward the socialist path, it could have forged itself into a political force in the Argentine political arena that could not be ignored. Regrettably, the PCA repeatedly missed development opportunities and gradually deviated from the development direction of a century-old major party.
First, the 1920s and 1930s were the golden age of the Argentine labor movement, yet the PCA failed to achieve leadership of the labor movement in a timely manner.
In the early period of its founding, the PCA’s achievements in organizing and leading the labor movement were quite remarkable. It once became the leader of the "six major unions," represented by the construction workers' union, and organized a series of powerful general strikes to fight for the legal rights of workers. Had it continued to develop at this momentum, Perón—who started out with fascism—and his Justicialist Party might not have easily seized leadership of the labor movement from the PCA. Unfortunately, leadership of the labor movement ultimately slipped through the PCA's fingers and was stolen by Perón and his Justicialist Party, which marched under the banner of Justicialism. The fundamental reason was that Soviet-style dogmatism prevailed within the PCA, making it unable to act independently.
Regarding this, the famous Argentine Marxist José Aricó argued that the political lines of the Comintern in different periods had a decisive influence on the PCA’s leadership of the labor movement. For example, in 1928, the Sixth Congress of the Comintern proposed the theory of the "Third Period," advocating a "class confrontation" line. Based on this, the PCA strengthened its ties with the working class and expanded its support base among them. According to the instructions of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, the PCA established its own led union alliance in 1929—the National Committee for Trade Union Unity (Comité Nacional de Unidad Sindical Clasista, CNUS), thus forming a tripartite balance with the anarchist union alliance and the Socialist reformist union alliance. In 1932 and 1933, the CNUS organized two major strikes in the city of Buenos Aires, expanding the influence of the PCA. Regrettably, the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 required Communist Parties in all countries to implement a "People's Front," which led to class collaborationism in practice and ultimately disarmed the labor movement ideologically. The PCA dissolved its led CNUS and joined the largest union alliance in Argentina at the time—the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). Although the 1936 Buenos Aires construction workers' strike enhanced the PCA’s prestige at home and abroad, in hindsight, it was actually the PCA’s "swan song" in leading the labor movement.
What left-wing forces like the PCA did not anticipate was the rapid rise of Peronism in the 1940s. Using military and political power with thunderous momentum, Perón, on the one hand, suppressed, co-opted, and divided the original union leaders, and on the other hand, established pro-Perón "parallel unions." While the PCA was enthusiastic about forming an anti-fascist People's Front and neglected the economic demands of workers, Perón utilized the favorable conditions of his control over the state apparatus to opportunely launch a series of social reform plans to improve the living conditions of workers. Beyond that, Perón also started with the legal system, requiring all unions to register with the government; otherwise, they were illegal organizations and faced serious consequences such as being banned, suspension of activities, forced dissolution, and the imprisonment of leaders. Through these measures—some soft and some hard—Perón completely defeated left-wing parties like the PCA and held the leadership of the Argentine labor movement firmly in his own hands. The PCA strongly condemned Perón’s practice of selectively and unrestrainedly satisfying certain demands of the grassroots masses, considering it demagogic, class-reconciling, and corporatist, and arguing that its purpose was merely to realize the centralized control of the unions by state power rather than truly changing the dispossessed and oppressed condition of the working class. Even viewed today, these views of the PCA undoubtedly contain some correct elements. However, regarding how to respond to the challenge of Peronism and how to retake leadership of the labor movement from the hands of Peronism, the orthodox Argentine left, represented by the PCA, was always at a loss, only to suffer defeat after defeat at the hands of Perón and later Peronists.
Second, in the 1940s and 1950s...
The 1940s and 1950s was an era marked by the vigorous rise of Argentine nationalism, yet the PCA (Communist Party of Argentina) sided against nationalism, thereby losing out to Perón and his Justicialist Party, which had raised the great banner of nationalism. During the 1940s and 1950s, the tide of nationalism in Argentina was in the ascendant. Because the PCA clung to left-wing internationalism, it failed to fully utilize this unstoppable wave of the times and instead criticized it. For example, regarding the Gaucho [15], who had been constructed by nationalists as a symbol of the Argentine nation, Aníbal Ponce [16], a key intellectual within the PCA, argued: "The Gaucho was in league with the Church (which knew how to exploit the Gaucho's barbarism) and the feudal lords (who knew how to bind the Gaucho to their own interests); he was undoubtedly the most terrible enemy of the revolution."
Furthermore, influenced by the Soviet Communist Party’s advocacy for "peaceful coexistence" with the United States at the time, the "Democratic Union" [17] co-founded by the PCA actually included the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, Spruille Braden, who pursued an interventionist policy toward Argentina. This undoubtedly provided Perón with a massive pretext to attack the PCA. From this, Perón firmly established his "tough guy" image as an opponent of U.S. imperialism and a champion of nationalism. When the PCA and other opposition groups raised the slogan "Anti-fascism is Anti-Perón," Perón responded with "Perón or Braden." He used this as his campaign slogan for the 1946 general election and ultimately defeated the opposition by a significant margin.
Third, the 1960s and 1970s was a "revolutionary era" in the Latin American region, but the PCA abandoned armed struggle and adopted a policy of appeasement toward the military government. By bidding "farewell to revolution" prematurely, the PCA greatly damaged its political prestige. The 1960s and 1970s were the "revolutionary era" for Argentina and the entire Latin American region. The Cuban Revolution, led by Castro and Guevara, greatly inspired left-wing forces in the region and prompted the struggle strategies of the regional left to trend toward radicalization. However, the PCA continued to insist on the so-called "peaceful coexistence" with the bourgeoisie and the establishment of democratic alliances. For instance, at the Conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) held in Havana in August 1967, PCA leader Rodolfo Ghioldi condemned those "petty-bourgeois nationalists" who believed that Latin American countries must "bypass the stages of agrarian revolution, anti-imperialist revolution, and democratic revolution to directly implement socialism." He also alluded to the Cuban Revolution as an act of "extreme adventurism." Although historical practice has proven that the successful experience of the Cuban Revolution—represented by the "focismo" [18] summarized by Guevara, Debray, and others—is difficult to replicate in more Latin American countries, this was not a legitimate reason for the PCA to abandon armed struggle. At that time, Argentina had two urban guerrilla groups that exerted significant influence in Latin America—the Montoneros and the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP)—neither of which was led by the PCA.
Even worse, to prevent the emergence of a Pinochet-style far-right regime in Argentina, the PCA did not hesitate to adopt a strategy of appeasement toward the military government established in 1976. It affirmed the military government’s proposed "National Reorganization Process" and supported the bureaucratic-authoritarian system established under the name of a "civil-military government." At the time, the PCA believed that when the national bourgeoisie was incapable of fulfilling the tasks of the democratic revolution, the progressive elements within the armed forces could be incorporated into a democratic alliance and play a progressive role. The PCA judged that Argentina was at a crossroads between reconstructing democracy and Pinochetism, and that cooperation with the Videla faction within the military was an important means to thwart the seizure of power by "Pinochetist" and other ultra-nationalist factions. However, the PCA's appeasement strategy failed to achieve its intended results. After the hardliner Galtieri came to power in December 1981 and began a pro-U.S. and anti-Soviet policy, only then did the PCA begin to explicitly oppose the military government and advocate for an early return to civilian politics.
In other words, during the fiery revolutionary years in Argentina and the entire Latin American region, the PCA became a spectator or even an absentee from the revolution, or even one of the very few left-wing parties that did not advocate for revolution. As the Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina (PCR), which split from the PCA, criticized in 1968: "These understandings and practices of the PCA led to obvious and profound opportunist deviations, causing the party to move from failure to failure, to the point that at critical moments the party could not play, and even lost, its role as the effective vanguard of the working class and the people... This deviation led the party to long remain a tail [19] of different bourgeois groups (whether liberal or nationalist)... It believed the bourgeoisie had the capacity to initiate the revolutionary process in our country, thereby effectively delaying the struggle for working-class hegemony." Bidding farewell to revolution prematurely during a revolutionary era was undoubtedly regrettable.
Finally, since the 1980s, which has been the "era of democracy" for Argentina and Latin America, the PCA once again missed opportunities for development and failed to grow into a governing party as rapidly as other left-wing parties in the region. Since the mid-1980s, the theme of the era has quietly shifted from war and revolution to peace and development. The democratization processes in various Latin American countries were in full swing, becoming an important part of what Huntington called the "Third Wave." Following Perón, the Justicialist Party returned to the center of national power under the leadership of Menem. Menem adopted neoliberal reforms according to the requirements of the situation and achieved a degree of success. At the beginning of the 21st century, due to the failure of neoliberal reforms, a spectacular "Pink Tide" formed in Latin America. Under the leadership of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Justicialist Party stood at the forefront of the left-wing tide. However, the PCA once again misjudged the global trend and the domestic situation, losing development opportunities. After breaking free from Soviet control in the 1980s, it reverted to advocating war and revolution; in the 1990s, it opposed Menem’s market reforms; and in the early 21st century, it opposed Kirchner’s so-called "political dictatorship." It was not until the Cristina administration that the PCA changed its political attitude and began to support a series of measures by the Justicialist government to protect labor rights. However, by this time, the PCA was politically incapable of achieving much and could only be reduced to a minor supporting actor in the governing coalition led by the Justicialist Party. The PCA was a member of the governing coalition in the most recent left-wing government, but it no longer possesses the strength to challenge mainstream parties or vie for national power. When the Justicialist Party lost the 2023 general election, the PCA also returned from being a participating party in government to being an opposition party.
V. Conclusion
The famous British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm once said: "Every Communist Party was the child of the marriage of two ill-assorted partners: a national left and the October Revolution." In fact, Hobsbawm's words are most apt when applied to the century-old PCA, except that this was a failed "marriage." On the one hand, the PCA made a brilliant debut under the agitation of the October Revolution, leading the trend in the Latin American region. Remaining standing for over a hundred years through countless storms is itself a great achievement that can be called a miracle. In this sense, it is worthily a century-old party. On the other hand, the PCA was long plagued by dogmatism and sectarianism, lacked an enterprising spirit, and repeatedly missed development opportunities. There are many profound political lessons as to why the PCA failed to become a century-old GREAT party, but its deep entrapment in dogmatism is fundamental. Primarily due to dogmatism—treating external instructions as the ultimate standard—it led to rampant sectarianism and a lack of enterprising spirit. Ultimately, it failed to achieve the Sinicization [20]... [here: indigenization] of Marxist theory or explore a path of socialism consistent with its own national conditions. The labels of "Creole Communism" and "outward-looking party" became an unbearable burden that the PCA carried for a long time. Because the PCA could not successfully transition from left-wing internationalism to a national socialist party, it was ultimately reduced to a supporting actor in the left-wing alliance led by the country's largest nationalist party—the Justicialist Party. From this perspective, the hundred-year history of the PCA provides both rich enlightenment and profound lessons, which are worth our summarization and absorption.
(The author’s affiliation: Institute of Latin American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Source: Socialist Studies, Issue 4, 2024.