1924-1987
By JOHN LISTER magazine preparing to go to press, we heard of the unexpected death revolutionary Nahuel Moreno.
Moreno has been one of the tew postwar Trotskyist leaders to succeed
- the Argentine PST (Socialist Workers Party) and more recently the Movement for Socialism implantation in the working Immediately before he was taken ill, Moreno had attended a MAS rally of as many as 40,000 supporters in Buenos Aires. and the organisation has grown rapidly in the fertile conditions Argentina since the fall of the Galtieri dictatorship.
The basis for this mushrooming growth had in part been laid by abilty of the PST to survive and function clandestinely under the repression the dictatorship from 1976.
It was during this number of us in Britain supporters of Moreno when they came seeking support for a campaign release of political prisoners. impressed at that time by the PST that time affiliated to ine Secertariat of the Fourth International and also in much agreement with political criticisms which levelled against both wings divided leadership of the USFI on their lines for the Portuguese revolution. It was on these points that Moreno formed first the Bolshevik Tendency and later the Bolshevik Faction, comprising much membership. meetings took place unitl 1979, when Moreno himself came to Britain to urge support for the newly-constituted Simon Bolivar Brigade, which military aid to the Sandinista struggle in Nicaragua. In the run up to the XIth Congress of the USFI, that year, some of us urged Moreno not to dop the polemic on Portugal, and to force a real debate over the differences he had raised. Brigade from Nicaragua in the summer of 1979 precipitated a rapid split by the discussion and prior to the
Events moved rapidly, and within a few months Moreno had entered a "Parity Committee" with French leader Pierre Lambert - whom Moreno only a few years previously. Though participate in the Parity Committee, this invitation was soon altered to
Nahuel Moreno in the of requirement that we first endorse a period that a detailed resolution.
first met
Since split the
Moreno's International Workers League has taken on a more sectarian, strident
We were tone of self-proclamation as "The world
- at movement".
Trotskyist
United however.
it is international grouping to attempt to systematise its politics into an up-to-
Moreno date programmatic document building of the upon the Transitional Programme.
find numerous disagreement with current not programmatic texts, which are eclectic and empirica..
evolution of Moreno, build substantial support for Trotskyist politics, further underline the scope of the political the Bolshevik
Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p25 with Lambert, struggle.
admitted managed
Interestingly.
the only major to make errors.
movement is
Supporters of Socialist Viewpoint will political points
Moreno and his least the development.
with
But political and failed to and his ability to changes that be can brought about through a combination of experience, circumstances and political
Moreno, interviewed last year, freely to "an infinite number of errors", which he clearly felt he had to detect and correct. But every curernt and individual continues vital issue for the opposing currents on the basis of their errors, and to fight instead to establish
Moreno stopped short learn the lessons of his own political evolution. It would be a tragedy if those who most respect his echoing his sectarian weaknesses.