The Trade Union Bureaucracy: An Essentially Ideological or Socio-Economic Phenomenon?
In September 1959, the party received an excerpt from the “Open Letter on Our Fundamental Differences,” signed by Moreno and addressed to the “Rodin” faction, made up of some trade union leaders.
Between 15 and 17 August 1959, the First Congress of Palabra Obrera (Workers’ Word) was held. Among the debates was an assessment that identified an union deviation and the lack of political work within the main unions as major shortcomings. This gave rise to a central controversy of the period: the nature and role of the trade union bureaucracy. Within the congress, the debate was led by Vasco Bengochea, on behalf of the Palabra Obrera leadership, and the Peronist leader Alicia Eguren, wife of John William Cooke, who had been invited to represent him as he was in hiding.
In this debate, Héctor Fucito (Rodin), an important party trade union leader, sided with Eguren. For them, it was necessary to win over the leadership of the 62 Peronist Organisations to revolutionary positions, based on ideological debate.
In the text we reproduce here, Moreno argues that the position of the leadership of the 62 Organisations, against the workers and their struggles, is not merely an ideological issue, but rather stems from an economic and social issue rooted in the privileges they enjoy as leaders in the bureaucratised trade unions.
Shortly after the congress, the members of the “Rodin” faction broke with Palabra Obrera and in September 1960, after the defeat of the conflict at Productex, in which they applied their orientation, they disappeared as an organisation.