ARGENTINA
Defeating Milei: Left strategy in times of reaction
First published in Spanish at Revista Jacobin. Translated and annotated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint.
Globally, the left faces a strategic debate on how to respond to the current reactionary surge. The answer depends on how we characterise the period, what we understand by the extreme right, and what kind of political unity we deem necessary to confront it. In Argentina, the discussion is gaining prominence given the gradual decline of Milei’s government. Before examining the Argentine case, however, it is worthwhile considering the global scale of the phenomenon.
The far right is advancing worldwide at an uneven but decisive pace. It is not invincible, as evidenced by Viktor Orbán’s recent electoral defeat in Hungary, but neither is it merely a temporary phenomenon. In the last European Parliament elections, if its various political factions are combined, the far right became the second largest force in Parliament, just one seat behind the traditional right, represented by the European People’s Party. In France, Le Pen’s party has a real chance of reaching the Élysée Palace for the first time. In Italy, Meloni has governed since 2022 with sustained approval ratings, while in Germany, the AfD broke through the post-war cordon sanitaire to become the second largest party in the country. In the United Kingdom, Reform UK is leading the polls for the first time ever. [This is no longer the case in August 2026.- Ed]
Trump leads the world’s leading power with an explicit agenda of authoritarian state restructuring and openly supports his far-right allies around the globe. In Latin America, although Bolsonaro was ousted from power three years ago and Lula has since improved key social indicators, with economic and employment growth and a recovery in popular incomes, Flavio Bolsonaro has even surpassed Lula in some runoff polls. In Ecuador, Daniel Noboa is consolidating an authoritarian regime that combines the systematic persecution of activists and opponents with a disturbing institutional entanglement with drug trafficking. In Chile, José Antonio Kast has been in power since March of this year. The examples could be multiplied: Erdoğan’s Turkey, Modi’s India, Bukele’s El Salvador, or Netanyahu’s Israel. The global force of this phenomenon is impressive.
Although the far right still resists definitive characterisations because it is a heterogeneous and developing phenomenon, the events of recent years force us to abandon a thesis that was until recently dominant: the one that saw in these movements merely a strident and only discursively more aggressive variant of the traditional right. While a "bourgeois normalisation" towards conventional conservatism cannot be ruled out in certain cases, the prevailing trend points in the opposite direction: a real authoritarian threat, ready to erode democratic freedoms, social rights won in the 20th century, and even the physical integrity of the political opposition.
The examples are piling up. In the United States, Trump transformed ICE into a federal political police force of arbitrary arrests and deportations. Trumpism is experimenting with projecting it as a general instrument of authoritarian control beyond immigration: a tentative move that became evident with Steve Bannon’s recent suggestion to use it to "guard" the November elections under the pretext of alleged fraud in the making. Netanyahu is waging a war of extermination in Gaza and prosecuting his opponents. Milei is leading the largest offensive against the working class since the last military dictatorship and intensifying the repression of social protest. Bolsonaro instigated an attempted coup on January 8, 2023. Bukele governs El Salvador under a permanent state of emergency, with tens of thousands detained without due process, and has turned this prison model into an object of admiration for much of the Latin American right. Orbán, for more than a decade, built an authoritarian regime, the self-styled "illiberal democracy," which the rest of the international far-right bloc has also turned into an aspirational model.
But the authoritarian advance does not yet equate to lasting consolidation. In recent months, several events have occurred that seem to indicate a slowdown in this advance: Orbán’s electoral defeat, Trump’s declining popularity and his quagmire in Iran, Milei’s deteriorating image, and Meloni’s defeat in the last constitutional referendum. Examples could also be cited in the opposite direction: Flavio Bolsonaro leading in the polls, Reform UK breaking Britain’s historic two-party system and its successes in the last municipal elections, and Fujimorism’s strong performance in the Peruvian runoff. All of this demonstrates that we are facing an open situation and that the far right has not yet stabilised its project. It is an ongoing political battle, with advances and setbacks, that will likely continue for some time.
The global trend is still unstable, but it transcends any passing situation. We are going through a reactionary period, following Valerio Arcary’s analysis: a prolonged cycle in which the balance of power becomes unfavorable due to the accumulation of defeats, the left is left on the defensive, and the extreme right maintains a strong social base. The electoral growth of the right wing is merely a symptom. What is at stake is a deeper disruption of the political and social balance, which reduces the capacity of the popular classes to defend themselves and increases the risk of far-reaching defeats. Stopping the far right is, therefore, the central political task of our time.
The Argentine case: Milei as the crystallisation of a defeat
In contrast to the global trend, much of the analysis by the Argentine left assumes that the local political situation continues to be defined by the pendulum swing of an unresolved and unstable balance of power, usually described as polarisation or hegemonic stalemate. In that interpretation, the partisan forces that represented the two poles of the pendulum would go through a parallel crisis: just as Milei swept away the traditional right, Peronism would suffer in the other camp a crisis of representation that the left would be capitalising on. It would be, as Tony Cliff would say, the 1930s in slow motion: a context of polarisation in which neo-fascism and the radical left would grow at the same time, and in which the task would be to prepare for a new offensive after the brief interval of Milei’s government.
The diagnosis is wrong, and misguided — even delusional — political consequences follow from it. Social power relations have deteriorated significantly in recent years. In a country where, for a long period, the possibility of adjustment policies and pro-business structural reforms was blocked — a reality that both Kirchnerism and Macriism grappled with, each with their own strategy — Milei managed to impose "the most significant fiscal adjustment in a peacetime economy" (IMF). And he did so not only without an immediate social explosion, but by consolidating his power. Something shifted at the very heart of society.
Currently, as recorded by all opinion polls Milei’s image is suffering a significant decline. However, this does not justify concluding that we are in a situation of “equilibrium”, as if it were a mechanism that had simply been delayed a little longer than expected. After two years in office, in a context of plummeting revenues and paralysed consumption, the fact that the government maintains an approval rating of between 30% and 40%, having started with support close to 50%, speaks more of resilience than weakness. It is worrying to imagine the political power it could wield if it had an expansive economy like the one that underpinned Menem’s first term between 1991 and 1994. It’s not surprising that it’s eroding. What is remarkable is that it remains standing amidst an austerity experiment unprecedented in the democratic era.
Milei’s political survival says something important about the evolution of social and political power relations. The Argentine situation can no longer be considered static, marked by the eternal and almost metaphysical impossibility of resolving the historical "Argentine stalemate." We are not simply passing through one of the poles of a pendulum that always oscillates between the same points: the pendulum movement itself has been eroding the capacities of social resistance. It is curious that the Gramscian concept of "catastrophic stalemate" is usually invoked and the main conclusion of his analysis is ignored: the catastrophic stalemate does not describe a state of permanent paralysis, but an unstable and self-eroding dynamic that tends to be resolved through bonapartist leadership.
This shift in the balance of power can take different paths. The most obvious one was open repression: military dictatorships, fascism, or state violence aimed at crushing unions and workers’ organisations, atomising the workforce, and breaking their collective trust. Another way, complementary or alternative to direct coercion, is the exemplary defeat of a strategic labour sector: the classic cases of the British miners against Thatcher or the air traffic controllers during the Reagan era show how the breakdown of a historically strong union can discipline the rest of the working class. Terminal economic crises, especially hyperinflation, can also play this role by instilling widespread and paralysing fear. Finally, there is a less analysed mechanism, derived from Gramsci’s analysis of the "catastrophic stalemate": a gradual alteration of power relations caused by a prolonged political deadlock, in which each force manages to veto its adversary’s project but cannot impose its own. This dynamic erodes the social base of the contenders themselves and instills in the population a widespread sense of demoralisation and hopelessness. The recent Argentine case can be seen as an example of this logic.
As Adrián Piva’s recent work shows, in recent years we have witnessed the silent maturation of a social defeat that explains relative passivity in the face of a colossal fiscal adjustment and a generalised decline in income, unthinkable at another time. This process has an objective basis: the economic stagnation that began around 2011-2012, which cumulatively eroded the capacity for collective action. The intuitive association between crisis and revolt is often misleading: when deterioration stabilises, what proliferates is unemployment, having to take on multiple jobs, and the fragmentation of the workforce, and therefore the weakening of the social power of the working class.
In recent Argentine history, this was compounded by persistent inflation, which reached triple-digit annual figures. As Perry Anderson observed in his analysis of stabilisation plans in Latin America during the 1980s, hyperinflation can operate as a “functional equivalent” of a dictatorship: it terrorises the population, imposes discipline without the need for direct coercion, and prepares the ground for demands for order. Although Argentina did not recently experience hyperinflation, it did go through a prolonged period of high inflation that was enough to cause profound wear and tear and generate a general demand for order. The picture was completed by the political failure of the last Peronist government, which demoralised the progressive movement and fostered an anti-statist atmosphere that was crucial for Milei’s rise. The combination of these factors weakened the combative force of society and allowed the new government to implement measures that, under "normal" circumstances, would have provoked enormous resistance.
This silent erosion was mirrored by the consolidation of a right-wing social and political bloc which, after a gradual radicalisation, ultimately crystallised in the figure of Milei. This bloc reacts politically to the cycle that began in 2001 and, more specifically, to the way in which Kirchnerism managed it. The power dynamics established after the 2001 crisis were contained and institutionalised during the first Kirchner administration. In other words, they were stabilised and, in a sense, preserved through the partial channelling of popular demands within a context of exceptional external prosperity. That strategy had some initial successes, during which Kirchnerism managed to rally a significant portion of the business community behind it. When the right-wing offensive erupted in 2008, Kirchnerism shifted towards a strategy of political accumulation based on polarisation and the consolidation of a hard core of support: it generated a climate of politicisation and ideologisation, though not of mobilisation or self-organisation, a feature that distinguished it from the Venezuelan or Bolivian experiences during those same years. This politicisation was expressed in the incorporation of a new generation into militancy with an anti-oligarchic discourse, in the capture of a large part of the intellectual left, and in the cultural prolongation of the period inaugurated in 2001.
But that strategy did not disorganise the right-wing social base that was being built in parallel; on the contrary, in a way it consolidated it through the same logic of permanent polarisation: fortifying a core of support on the basis of constant confrontation with an enemy also serves to cohere and activate that adversary. And the economic cycle that had made the whole scheme possible, sustained by Asian demand for commodities, the high exchange rate inherited from the 2002 devaluation and previously eroded wages, began to run out between 2011 and 2012.
Pointing out the limitations of Kirchnerism should not reduce the new right to a mere epiphenomenon of progressive frustrations. The Argentine right had its own agency and a social and institutional terrain on which to develop: anti-Peronist middle classes, the agrarian bourgeoisie, large media groups, sectors of the judiciary, concentrated business interests, international support, and a long-standing anti-popular culture. The Milei phenomenon can only be understood as the condensation of a multicausal process, in which the limits of progressivism weighed as an important factor among several. This is confirmed by the fact that in the world the extreme right appears as a replacement for all types of political signs: right-wing, centrist or social democratic governments.
The construction of the right-wing bloc, for its part, had its own history. The Kirchnerist strategy began to generate tensions with the dominant classes as early as 2005, when sectors that wanted to mitigate the incorporation of popular demands, especially wage increases, left the government, which was reflected in the departure of Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna. But the real turning point came in 2008, with the "rural conflict." Faced with this confrontation, most of the urban middle class broke with the ruling party and reverted to their traditional anti-Peronism. This is how an anti-Kirchnerist identity was constructed, combining a rejection of populist style with a desire for social distinction from the popular sectors receiving state assistance. Added to this was the defense of concrete material interests: from the rejection of export taxes on commodities, which united the agrarian bourgeoisie with the rural middle classes, to the protection of dollar savings, affected by the currency controls imposed from 2011 onward. This identity solidified before finding a suitable political instrument: since 2008, there had existed an electoral segment, initially a minority but increasingly cohesive, willing to support any candidate with a realistic chance of defeating Peronism. Macri capitalised on it in 2015; Milei, in 2023.
Building on this accumulated ground, Macri provided the final ideological piece that unlocked the radicalisation of the right. As Javier Balsa shows in ¿Por qué ganó Milei?, after the failure of his government he offered his own base a coherent explanation: "we pursued gradualism instead of shock therapy; we didn’t dare repress those who mobilised to defend their corporate privileges." Offering an explanation for the failure serves to appease one’s own social base and provides a future strategy, which naturally follows from the diagnosis: neoliberal shock therapy and whatever repression is necessary. This interpretation paved the way for whoever would most consistently embody what Macri failed to achieve.
Milei represents the culmination of fifteen years of right-wing construction in the face of an exhausted progressive camp. His rise depends not only on his own strength but also on the strategic weakness of his adversary: the social bloc that sustained the partially favourable balance of power after 2001. The right wing’s social base emerged more radicalised from Macri’s failure. Kirchnerism’s base entered a stage of demoralisation and confusion. For all these reasons, the extreme right must be understood as an organic phenomenon and not as a circumstantial accident.
This characterisation does not imply, of course, that the political context and the relations of power that made Milei’s rise possible are irreversible. But the most likely thing is not a sudden turn of the situation. If there is recomposition, it will have a slower and more cumulative pace, similar to the cycle that opened in 1995 and ended in 2001.
Milei is the byproduct of a still partial social defeat; his programme seeks to transform it into a far-reaching defeat, capable of drastically modifying the relationship between the State and capitalist accumulation and sweeping away the vestiges of "collectivism", labour regulations and social rights accumulated in a century of workers’ conquests. On the other hand, if the extreme right is interpreted as an accidental phenomenon, detached from social power relations, the conclusion will be that its government is unviable and that it will lead to a sudden reactivation of conflict. Under that premise, the left wouldn’t have much to innovate: it could simply stick to business as usual and even wait for a drastic shift that would redirect social discontent from the far right to the radical left. The reality is quite different: a social defeat has significantly altered the balance of power. Today, there is no combative society capable of swiftly retaliating. That changes everything.
Social defeat and its limits
This is not to argue that the social defeat has produced a homogeneous shift to the right across the entire population or an irreversible loss of the capacity to resist. I call "social defeat" a negative practical alteration of the balance of power: the loss of capacity of the popular classes to block regressive offensives that, at another time, would have encountered much more intense resistance. Social and political defeats have diverse scopes: they can be circumstantial, allowing for a rapid recovery, or historical, requiring the effort of an entire generation to reverse, with countless nuances in between. Furthermore, the true depth of a defeat is never immediately apparent; its real impact is gradually revealed through its effects.
The empirical work on which Balsa relies, conducted in 2023, allows us to clarify this. His surveys showed a society divided, broadly speaking, into three thirds. One third with coherent economically progressive positions: defense of the role of the State, labour rights, and redistribution. Another third with a hard neoliberal core. And an intermediate, more diffuse third: centrist, moderate, apolitical, or simply frustrated sectors, without a firm ideological framework in any sense. As the electorate ultimately fractured into two large blocs, what typically determined the primacy of one or the other was which of the two strong minorities managed to attract the majority of the middle sector. There was, therefore, no mass conversion of society to neoliberalism or the right: the bloc of redistributive positions and the neoliberal bloc started from a position of approximate numerical parity. The decisive factor occurred on another level.
The central phenomenon is the radicalisation of the right. The study records the near disappearance of "classical liberals," who combined free markets with cultural progressivism, in favor of an "authoritarian liberalism" where economic ideology coexists closely with social conservatism, xenophobia, and antifeminism. A radicalised and cohesive right wing, in a context marked by the failure of the last Kirchnerist government, was able to engage and sway the middle third of the electorate. This diffuse sector fragmented between abstention and, in a decisive portion, votes for Milei, who was captivated by a viscerally anti-popular and anti-Kirchnerist discourse. It was this shift of the middle sector, driven by the right-wing pole, that ultimately tipped the scales.
We don’t know exactly how these currents evolved after two years of Milei’s government. The hardline government supporters showed remarkable resolve in the face of fiscal austerity and falling revenues, but the current government crisis seems to be gradually strengthening the opposition and creating cracks in its official support base. Even the business community is beginning to consider an alternative figure capable of sustaining the economic programme should Milei’s declining popularity jeopardise his electoral viability. However, as a counter-trend, the long years of inflation seem to have solidified a common sense, particularly within that strategic middle sector: the demand for a "balanced" macroeconomy and a fiscal surplus, in opposition to the "populist" tendency to expand spending "irresponsibly." It is no coincidence that almost the entire political spectrum has embraced the demand for fiscal discipline, which, to some extent, originates from the grassroots.
In any case, empirical studies on 2023 remain relevant: there is a social base with redistributive positions, equivalent in size to the neoliberal core, willing to oppose the current adjustment programme. Although this progressive sector is not immune to the subjective effect of the inflationary crisis, which disciplines its expectations, it maintains a fundamental challenge to the regressive nature of the model’s distribution. Today, however, that base functions more as an ideological bloc than as an active political force: it is on the defensive, trying to avoid the worst. It is the exact opposite of its adversary’s radicalistion.
Empirical data on social conflict under Milei confirms this diagnosis. According to the Ministry of Labour, in 2025 there were 465 labour disputes involving strikes in Argentina, the lowest figure in two decades; in the private sector there were only 157, the lowest number in the statistical series. According to a survey by the consulting firm Diagnóstico Político, picket lines fell from 8,239 in 2023 to 3,893 in 2025: a decrease of nearly 53% and the lowest since 2011. The conflict that does exist is predominantly defensive: according to the Centre for Argentine Political Economy (CEPA), 63.6% of the cases surveyed between January 2024 and February 2026 correspond to layoffs.
There were, of course, major days of mobilisation against the government: the marches of March 24, the Antifascist and Antiracist Pride March after Milei’s statements in Davos, the CGT general strikes and the university demonstrations against the budget cuts. These large mobilisations show that the capacity for resistance is not broken, and that a foundation of organisation and politicisation persists which, although diminished, constitutes a point of support. But, for the moment, they are not enough to alter the underlying situation: low levels of labour conflict, a historical contraction of the piquetero movement, and an absence of sustained processes of self-organisation in workplaces.
The asymmetry in the magnitude of the adjustment is striking. According to CIFRA-CTA, the economic and social research centre linked to the Argentine Workers’ Central Union, real registered wages fell by about 9% under Milei’s administration, or 13% if a CPI calculated using a more up-to-date basket of goods and services than the official CPI is used. Measured by the official CPI, the wage loss was markedly uneven across sectors: in February 2026, public sector wages were 18.3% lower than in November 2023, and in the national public administration, the loss reached 37.2%. This is compounded by a decline in job quality, reflected in an expansion of informal employment.
This weakness is also evident in the ideological sphere. Recent university election results are an indicator of this: the left is losing its ability to influence younger generations. In the student elections at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), a historically important barometer of politically engaged youth, the left registered its worst performance since the late 1990s. This does not imply that youth have become massively centrist or right-wing, but rather that the discourse of the left, which maintains its hard core, has ceased to operate as an attractive alternative on a broader scale.
The low level of conflict is shaping the hypotheses about how Milei’s government might end. A defeat driven from below, by a resurgence of popular mobilisation, would undoubtedly be the best scenario: it would remove Milei from power and allow for a rapid rebuilding of the popular movement’s social strength. A sudden shift or social explosion cannot be definitively ruled out; no one has a seismograph for class struggle. But the trends point more toward a gradual process of recomposition, not an explosion. Therefore, the fight to defeat Milei will predictably shift to the electoral arena.
This diagnosis has an important political consequence for the entire coming cycle. A potential electoral defeat for Milei in 2027 would open a new political juncture, but it would not, in itself, close the reactionary period. The conditions that produced it would continue to operate: the social right wing built since 2008, the ebb of social conflict, and the atmosphere of pragmatism inherited from both progressive failures and right-wing radicalism. The Brazilian case serves as an eloquent mirror: although Lula defeated Bolsonaro in 2022 and managed to improve key social indicators, Bolsonarism retains an electoral base close to 35% and continues to compete in very competitive conditions in the upcoming elections.
The fact that an electoral defeat doesn’t end the political cycle doesn’t mean it’s all the same whether or not it’s inflicted. In such a situation, buying time is crucial. Defeating Milei electorally isn’t enough to rebuild the strength of the popular movement, but it does prevent the far right from achieving a strategic victory: it stops them from seizing their current window of opportunity to permanently and drastically alter the balance of power between the social classes.
Why aren’t we in the 1930s?
The prevailing Marxist left-wing interpretation of the far right invokes the 1930s as a frame of reference: crisis of the liberal order, rising fascism, acute polarisation, and still-open revolutionary possibilities. This analogy is misleading and leads to misguided political orientations. There are at least three reasons to reject it.
First: revolution is off the political horizon. This may seem obvious, or heresy, depending on the context. In 1932, the Communist International was still operating with the expectation of an imminent insurrection, and it wasn’t entirely wrong. Germany was the central stage. The accumulated revolutionary defeats (1918, 1921, and 1923) had failed to demobilise the working class or the revolutionary left, as evidenced by the resurgence of the Communist Party during those years.
Today we do not live in an era where a revolutionary rupture is part of the immediate picture. The socialist perspective can only be rebuilt starting from this reality. When the working class cannot go on the offensive, the main task is to rebuild the social and political foundations for a future counter-offensive. This alters the relationship with classical Marxist analyses of the 1930s. For Trotsky, for instance, anti-fascism had a dual dimension: it was simultaneously a unified defensive struggle of the entire working class and a direct anti-capitalist struggle, aimed at turning resistance to fascism into a lever for proletarian revolution. Today, that second dimension is absent: no serious analysis can maintain that in Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, or any developed country, the conquest of power through insurrection is on the horizon in the short term. The task is defensive, and this point redefines the entire strategic reasoning.
Second: mass workers’ parties no longer exist, at least not in the sense of the large reformist parties of the early 20th century. The so-called "united workers’ front" presupposed large organisations with a real and massive presence within the working class, one reformist and the other revolutionary. Today, that landscape has disappeared, and this forces us to rethink what class unity means when the parties that historically represented it have changed in nature. We will return to this point.
Third: there is no social polarisation, there is a radicalisation of the right. In the 1930s, there were active mass movements on both sides of the political spectrum. Today, only one pole is radicalised and emboldened; the other remains defensive and mired in pragmatism. Society is fractured into two opposing camps, but this fracture has not produced a symmetrical radicalisation. The right has become radicalised. This asymmetry implies, as Henrique Canary explains, that the myth of a shared "anti-system field" is a fantasy: there is no politically neutral social radicalism that the left can contest with the extreme right simply by raising the "anti-system" tone of its discourse. What the far right calls "the system" are, in reality, the social rights and public freedoms won in the previous period: union rights, redistributive policies, and "woke" culture. Constructing a left-wing version of this radicalism does not bring the left closer to the masses; it disconnects it from the actual levels of popular consciousness and militancy.
The strategic legacy of 20th-century Marxism remains important, but mechanically applying it to the present leads to a false analogy with the 1930s. The lesson worth preserving is the need for a unified and patient policy, supported by social mobilisation. In the 1930s, the united front was a tactic for uniting an organised working class with a strong presence and offensive capacity. Today, a mass policy against the far right starts from a much more adverse position: a more fragmented working class, with less confidence in its own strength and lower levels of awareness and militancy.
Anti-fascist popular front?
What value, then, do the debates that Marxism developed in the face of the rise of fascism in the last century have, particularly those concerning the united workers’ front and the popular front? It is worthwhile revisiting the Marxist debate of the 1920s and 30s. The united front was first discussed in 1922 in the Communist International and later taken up again in the struggle against fascism. Lenin was categorical about its importance: anyone who didn’t understand the united front was lost to the communist movement. Perry Anderson defined it as "Lenin’s last great piece of advice to the Western workers’ movement before his death." For Gramsci, the united front policy seemed to involve more than just defensive unity with the reformists. Therein lay, in embryo, a new conception of revolutionary politics under Western conditions: the shift from manoeuvre warfare to positional warfare, and from the theory of the offensive to the theory of hegemony.
The united front was an effort to unify and bring together the activities of all workers, not just those who followed the revolutionary party. Its logic is relatively simple. The masses need to unite their forces to defend themselves. The revolutionaries, in turn, are better positioned to contest the leadership of the movement if they appear as its most unified wing, not as a divisive force. Since the masses learn primarily from their own experience, the distinction with reformism arises from the course of the struggle itself, when those leaderships demonstrate their inability to carry it through to the end. From there, more complex scenarios can emerge, such as a united front government: a unified government of working-class organisations, both reformist and revolutionary, conceived as a transitional moment in the struggle for power.
The problem is that, a century after that debate, the reality of the working class and the left could not be more different. As we pointed out, the united front of the 1920s presupposed the existence of two real partners with a massive presence among the working class: a reformist social democratic party and a revolutionary communist party. That world no longer exists. Traditional European social democracy, such as the French Socialist Party or the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, ceased to be genuine workers’ parties decades ago; today they tend increasingly to become organic representatives of their bourgeoisies, although they still retain a link with the working class that differentiates them from conventional bourgeois parties. The new left-wing forces, such as Die Linke, Podemos, and La France Insoumise, are significant actors, but their strength is primarily expressed in the electoral arena and does not translate into an organic mass base. Neopopulist experiences in Latin America, such as Kirchnerism and Morena, cannot be characterised as independent reformist forces either. While they possess deeper social roots than European social democracy, they are formations that simultaneously forge ties with factions of the ruling classes and with popular sectors.
If the united front presupposed the unity of workers’ forces that, together, constituted a social and electoral majority, today it is unclear who could occupy that position. Should unity be forged between small revolutionary groups of marginal influence and electoral machines deeply integrated into the economic and political networks of the ruling classes? What does it mean to speak of a united front when there are no longer two major workers’ parties vying for leadership of an organised working class, but rather fragmented left-wing parties, unstable electoral machines, and much weaker popular movements? A united political approach remains necessary, especially where left-wing and working-class organisations exist. But the landscape in which we operate is no longer the same.
This historical discontinuity with respect to the party landscape of the 20th century leads to one conclusion: currently, the exclusive unity of left-wing forces based on the working class, although it persists as the organising principle of socialist politics, is probably insufficient to stop the extreme right. This scenario shifts the debate to more thorny ground: the possibility of ad hoc agreements with dissident sectors of the bourgeoisie or with deeply institutionalised social democracies. Faced with this dilemma, the debate on popular fronts promoted by the Communist International (Comintern) following its Seventh Congress in 1935 inevitably arises.
The Popular Front was the Comintern’s policy that succeeded the ultra-leftist tactic of "class against class," a line that identified social democracy with fascism and rejected any joint action with reformist sectors. Under this new orientation, the Comintern shifted towards a strategy of alliances not only with workers’ parties, but also with "democratic" bourgeois parties in the struggle against fascism.
This policy was challenged by Leon Trotsky. The Russian revolutionary accurately identified the central risks: that the coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie would act as a brake on worker mobilisation, and that the Communist Parties, caught in the need not to "frighten" their allies, would end up operating as the last barrier against a possible revolutionary rupture.
In times of acute polarisation or revolutionary upsurge, the Popular Front often functioned as a mechanism of containment. Trotsky’s critique targeted this core issue: the alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie tended to discipline the working class, subordinating its own objectives to the maintenance of the coalition. France and Spain offered dramatic examples of this limitation.
But historical experience proved more ambiguous than the simplified version of the Trotskyist canon. The electoral victories of the Popular Front also bolstered the confidence of the working classes and acted as catalysts for mobilisation. Blum’s triumph led to the strikes of June 1936; in Spain, the Popular Front’s victory preceded an extraordinary mobilisation of workers and peasants, which reached its peak in the resistance to the Francoist coup. The fact that Stalinism later sought to contain and discipline that process does not negate the fact that, in its initial phase, unified anti-fascism helped to activate latent popular energies.
Perry Anderson pointed out that Trotsky made sectarian errors in his writings on France and Spain, by underestimating the need for alliances with non-working-class sectors in defense of democratic freedoms, a flexibility that he had shown in the face of the rise of Nazism or in his practical experience with Kornilov’s attempted coup in August 1917. But despite these errors, Trotsky’s analysis of the French case captured the ambivalence of the Popular Front, and was more nuanced and interesting than is usually recognised. Already in 1934 he wrote that, if the French socialists managed to win the confidence of the majority, the revolutionaries would be "always prepared to defend an SFIO government against the bourgeoisie." Once Blum’s government was formed, the tactic he proposed was not outright opposition, but a combination of pressure from below and partial demands on the leadership. In a letter of June 21, 1936, addressed to his French followers, Trotsky warned that repeating the slogan of a general strike "without defining or specifying it would be a mistake," and predicted that the next wave of strikes would most likely be directed not against Blum, but against his enemies: the "two hundred families," the Radicals, the Senate, and the General Staff. For Trotsky, this distinction was crucial: “We don’t lump Léon Blum in with the Wendel and La Roque factions. We accuse Blum of not understanding the formidable resistance of the Wendel and La Roque factions.” From this stemmed the obligation to present themselves to the working class “not as an obstacle, but as people who want things to move forward.”
This point allows us to draw a strategic conclusion that is probably counterintuitive to the common sense of the Marxist left: in many cases, the masses do not become radicalised despite trusting reformist leaderships, but rather through that trust. Popular mobilisation usually begins when broad sectors perceive that there is a political force capable of translating their demands into concrete results. In the initial stages of an upsurge, this force is usually moderate, national-popular, or reformist. Without this initial moment of confidence, a second moment of pressure, unrest, or radicalisation is unlikely. To posit unrest as the starting point, rather than understanding it as a possible outcome of a process, is to confuse the outcome with its conditions.
As the strikes of June 1936 demonstrated, the Popular Front’s victory acted as a catalyst for direct action. The same logic can be observed in other processes. In Chile under Popular Unity, confidence in the "electoral road to socialism" unleashed a mobilisation that even outflanked Allende himself on the left, with factory occupations and industrial belts. Argentina in 1973 offers another example: Cámpora’s inauguration in May and Perón’s in October fuelled a radicalisation of the popular movement that Peronism did not control, accompanied by a significant increase in labor unrest. Many more examples could be found.
Without equating historically distinct processes, they all show a logic that is important to retain: trust in a popular or reformist political leadership can unleash social energies that that same leadership does not fully control. Electoral victory, when experienced by the working class as their own, alters the collective mood, raises social expectations, and makes the idea that struggle is worthwhile more plausible. This dynamic does not guarantee a progressive solution; it can also be contained or defeated. But it refutes the notion that all reformist mediation only produces passivity.
So, what form should the unity of popular forces and their relationship with liberal or centrist parties take in the fight against the far right?
Two things must be distinguished. On the one hand, the Popular Front as a strategic subordination of the workers’ movement to the bourgeoisie, under the implicit slogan of demobilising so as not to "frighten" the allies. On the other hand, the unitary, specific, and temporary action, structured around a limited and precise objective: to block the path of reaction and defend threatened democratic freedoms. This latter approach allows the left to maintain its political independence, under the premise that the central task the following day remains the autonomous recomposition of the working class. Marxist tradition has not rejected this second type of intervention. For example, the united action against dictatorships in Latin America included the participation of bourgeois elements, even initially in processes that culminated in revolutions, as in Nicaragua and Cuba.
The Lula-Alckmin coalition in Brazil in 2022 was not a beautiful expression of revolutionary Marxism; nor was the Nouveau Front Populaire, which in 2024 temporarily blocked Le Pen’s rise to power in France. In both cases, these were defensive measures, born out of adverse power dynamics, that served an immediate purpose: to dislodge or contain the far right. But in neither case did the leadership of the alliance fall into the hands of the liberal bourgeois wing. In Brazil, it was Lula who spearheaded the process, not the Centrão1 parties; in France, hegemony fell to the force led by Mélenchon, not the Socialist Party. This internal equilibrium opened up two arenas of struggle: against reaction, through fronts with genuine electoral competitiveness, and within the "anti-fascist camp" itself, to prevent the fight against the far right from resulting in social-liberal governments that would ultimately demobilise and demoralise the popular classes. A broad alliance led by the centre tends to turn the fight against the extreme right into a defense of the existing order; a broad alliance with the hegemony of a reformist or populist leadership can, on the other hand, open up a more favourable terrain of dispute, especially when it is based on mobilisation and a programme of social recomposition.
The current challenge is to translate the lesson of unity to a social and political landscape profoundly different from that of the antifascist scenarios of the 20th century. In a reactionary period, unity against the extreme right is indispensable, but its content, its leadership, and its relationship to popular mobilisation are matters of contention. A socialist policy that merely defines or denounces falls short of the task. The left must intervene in the "anti-fascist bloc" as its most consistent wing: pushing for unity against reaction without dissolving class independence and linking every democratic battle to the material and organisational recomposition of the popular classes.
To radicalise? Or move to the middle?
Within the left and the opposition to Milei, two opposing responses are circulating in the face of the extreme right.
The first, predominant in Peronism and progressivism, argues that it is necessary to moderate oneself in order to align with the new ideological climate of society and capture the centrist vote that usually oscillates between one bloc and the other. As is often the case, this approach is not solely driven by ideology. It also reflects a broad consensus among the political elite regarding the need to curb fiscal expansion, which during the previous cycle had served as a means of containing popular demands.
The argument points to a real problem: the middle ground exists, it fluctuates, and without it, elections cannot be won. How else can one compete with the apolitical, centrist, or frustrated sectors that until recently leaned towards Milei or took refuge in abstention? The problem is that the shift to the centre — or directly to the right — paves the way for future defeats. The experience of the last Peronist government is the most recent example: a broad coalition that promised to restore incomes ended up managing austerity measures with progressive rhetoric and ceded the monopoly on discontent to the far right.
At the opposite extreme, it is argued that the rise of the far right is inseparable from the frustration produced by progressive moderation. The response, then, would be to radicalise the programme: to provide a clearer response to popular needs and strengthen the popular movement in the fight against the far right. The intuition is correct. But everything depends on what is meant here by "radicalise."
It is advisable to proceed with caution. At least in the immediate future, the social and political conditions do not exist for measures that break with the bourgeoisie or for abrupt intervention in large property ownership. As we have seen, there is no neutral "anti-system" radicalism that the left can contest by simply raising the tone of its discourse. Attempting to compete on that level leads to isolation.
The most successful recent experiences of the left globally, such as Zohran Mamdani’s in New York, La France Insoumise, or Adelante Andalucía, are often cited as examples of left-wing radicalisation. But, strictly speaking, they do something else: they break with the socio-liberal model of conventional social democracy without putting forward an ambitious socialist programme. Mamdani’s central slogan was around the cost of housing and living in New York, not Red Vienna. The other cases point in the same direction. In this context, unity against the far right needs to be based on a "minimum programme," in the classic sense of the social-democratic distinction between a minimum and a maximum programme: a set of measures that, under current conditions, will improve the daily lives of the working class, restore collective confidence, and block the authoritarian onslaught.
It would be excessive to call this a radicalisation in the strict sense, at least in the sense that a socialist assigns to the expression. But it does force a re-evaluation of the programme that the various sectors of the political class, including to a large extent Kirchnerism, are willing to adopt. The last Peronist government frustrated its social base not so much because it failed to deliver on even modest promises to restore wages and incomes for the working class after Macri’s austerity measures, but because it faced pressure from below for profound structural reforms. This frustration stems not only from the will or mistakes of its leaders, but also from structural constraints to which I will return later.
The alternatives to Milei
Without ruling out a re-election of Milei — a hypothesis that the consistency of the right’s social base makes plausible, especially if the economic situation improves — we must ask ourselves what realistic scenarios could open up after 2027? Broadly speaking, four are emerging.
The first scenario is continuity within the space itself: a change of candidacy that preserves the programme and methods, with a figure like Patricia Bullrich capable of unifying La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances or LLA, Milei’s electoral alliance) and the Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal or PRO, of former President Mauricio Macri) and capitalising on Milei’s wear and tear. It would be a continuity of the far-right project, not a turn towards the conventional right. Another possibility is a change to the traditional centre-right, with Macri or what remains of PRO, offering a more orderly management of the same economic course, although probably with less authoritarian intensity. A third option is the Peronist right: Massa or a similar conservative leader, capable of capitalising on the decline from a market-friendly Peronist perspective. Finally, there is the possibility of a revival of Kirchnerism or progressivism, with Axel Kicillof being the most likely candidate at the moment.
The first three hypotheses are, essentially, variations on the continuation of the economic programme, whether or not they mitigate authoritarian methods. Therefore, it is worthwhile to focus on the fourth, which is the one that some sectors of the left envision as the desirable future.
What could be expected from a new Kirchnerist government? Not much. It would not be a government of rupture or drastic confrontation with the ruling classes; Kirchnerism never expressed ambitions of that kind. But that doesn’t mean such a government would be indifferent to the interests of the people. The fundamental question is whether the conditions exist to recreate a redistributive experience like the one that characterised the first Kirchner administration. That experience took place in a very particular political, economic and international configuration: the boom driven by Asian demand, combined with a balance of power partially favourable to the popular classes after 2001 and a salary greatly depreciated by the crisis and the abrupt devaluation carried out by the Duhalde government.
The current situation is more ambiguous. Argentina has accumulated a significant lag in competitiveness and productivity, which fuels business pressure for reforms that will ease restrictions and implement fiscal adjustments. Internationally, there are signs of a new cycle of increased export revenues, this time driven by demand for new export products: unconventional oil and gas, lithium, copper, and other critical minerals, although the results are not yet immediate. However the relationship of forces is much more degraded. The exceptional context in which the business sector tolerated a government with features of autonomy, on the condition of restoring social order, as happened with the first Kirchner administration, no longer exists. Any alternative government would likely face constant hostility from "the markets." Finally, the wage freeze imposed by Milei, which has persisted since the Macri and Fernández administrations, coupled with the ongoing structural reforms, could facilitate investment, provided that businesses perceive a favourable business climate. In short, there is some room for economic recovery and a partially redistributive policy without drastic changes to the economic structure or large landholdings — something no sector of Peronism is proposing. However, this room is narrower than the one enjoyed by the first Kirchner administration.
In any case, that narrow margin alone does not define the political orientation of an alternative government. Lula won in 2022 with a programme of modest income recovery for the working class. During the first stage of his administration, adapting to the expectations of the ruling classes and postponing some progressive measures eroded his base and gave Bolsonaro’s movement a boost. The picture began to change when the government resumed a clearer social agenda: expansion of the income tax exemption for low-income workers, greater tax burden on high-income sectors, public investment through the New PAC,2 and credit measures for precarious sectors. This approach allowed him to regain the political initiative and partially restore his popularity. Currently, the consolidation of his government is progressing in tandem with the campaign for a reduction in the working week, the approval of which would represent a far-reaching victory.
The Brazilian experience offers a glimpse into the limitations and potential that an electoral defeat for Milei at the hands of a partially progressive force stemming from Peronism would create. Such a government, unlike one of the traditional right or the Peronist right, would offer more favourable conditions for grassroots pressure. Its commitments to its social base, the unions, and the popular expectations it inspires would make it more receptive to mobilisation, without the left having to compromise its political independence. The objective would be to advance a programme for the recovery of income and popular rights, along with the defense of democratic freedoms and labour and social organisations against authoritarianism.
Tasks of the left
Milei expresses a partial social defeat as well as attempts to transform it into a lasting reconfiguration of power relations. This diagnosis establishes the starting point: the left cannot passively await the end of the government as if it were just another swing in the Argentine pendulum. The "mobilising utopia" of the current situation is to block the far right and create a more favourable environment for popular reorganisation. Putting this into practice requires building unity against reaction without sacrificing political independence. It also demands a slower process: rebuilding the social, union, national, and cultural strength of the popular movement. The most difficult discussions begin when it comes to giving concrete content to the unified orientation: with what programme, under what leadership, and with what relationship between electoral participation and grassroots mobilisation.
Before moving forward, we must dispel a misconception. In recent months, polls have surfaced placing Myriam Bregman3 among the leaders with the best public image, in some cases even in first place. This is promising. But it doesn’t equate to voting intentions, much less to a mass radicalisation toward the left. A left-wing figure can be valued by sectors far broader than their electoral base without thereby becoming an effective political alternative. In France, Olivier Besancenot enjoyed a near 60% approval rating in the late 2000s, surpassing leading figures in the Socialist Party and the right wing, even though neither the LCR nor the NPA4 ever garnered more than 5% in a presidential election. A segment of society may value a figure’s honesty, combativeness, and charisma without sharing their ideas or believing they can solve their specific problems.
The rise of a left-wing figure does not necessarily contradict the defensive nature of the period. In a context of Peronist crisis, but where a relatively consistent progressive social core persists, it is natural that a significant sector views Bregman favourably without necessarily breaking with the national-popular camp. Balsa’s work confirms this gap between sympathy, political identity, and voting intention: in 2023, four out of ten Bregman voters in the primaries migrated to Massa in the general election, and 58% of them actually felt close to the ruling party. A significant portion of this electorate functions as a porous boundary of the national-popular vote: it expresses discontent by voting for the left in primaries or in non-decisive elections, and returns to Peronism when the threat of a right-wing victory becomes imminent.
The phenomenon is, in any case, a positive symptom: it expresses the appreciation of a voice perceived as coherent within a progressive field tired of the conservative candidates offered by Peronism. The crucial question is what to do with this positive image? And here the ceiling of the Left Front reappears, which is above all a ceiling of understanding the current period. In practice, its main currents tend to treat Milei as a passing phenomenon and shift the focus of the discussion from how to defeat the far right to who leads the opposition: Peronism or the left. This interpretation makes unified efforts impossible, which are precisely the only ones that would allow both blocking Milei’s rise and consolidating the growth of the left. A left wing willing to operate as the combative wing of a broad bloc against reaction, capable of proposing the unified measures the situation demands without relinquishing its independence, could emerge strengthened from this cycle while simultaneously helping to curb the far right. For now, unfortunately, there are no signs that this shift is about to occur.
The government’s decline presents an opportunity for the left, provided it adopts a different approach. There is a core segment of society that has resisted the reactionary forces and values voices perceived as coherent and combative. This opportunity must be cultivated on several fronts. The first is the street: to converge as broadly as possible in every specific defensive conflict, against labour reform, in defense of public universities and healthcare, against layoffs, and against the repression of protest. Unity of action does not require programmatic agreement or the dissolution of identities.
In the electoral arena, the task is to construct transitional tactics that acknowledge the current reality and the threats at play. The left must start from a basic fact: it does not currently have the strength to remove Milei from government on its own. This is obvious. If the priority is to prevent the far right from consolidating its cycle of regressive reforms and its authoritarian hardening, then some kind of specific, critical and limited support for the candidacy that is in a real position to defeat it, foreseeably emerging from Peronism or from a broader progressive bloc, cannot be ruled out. Denying this problem in the name of political independence shifts the left to a merely symbolic position at a time when the possibility of preventing a more far-reaching defeat is at stake.
However, this support, where necessary, should not be confused with integration or political confidence in a future Peronist government: it would be strictly defensive, aimed at ousting the extreme right. As we argued earlier, a potential Peronist government is unlikely to break with the structural constraints of the Argentine economy, and will probably tend toward a moderate stabilisation, negotiated with sectors of the business community and limited by the mandate of fiscal discipline imposed by the inflationary crisis. But it would block the path to the far right and be more responsive to pressure from below. That’s why the left must intervene in two ways: help prevent Milei from taking power and prepare from day one to act with complete independence against that government, demanding measures to rebuild popular support and relying on social mobilisation. That this is perfectly possible is shown by a recent experience. In Brazil, PSOL5 built itself as a left-wing force independent of the PT, combining political autonomy, united action against Bolsonarism, and specific agreements with Lulaism when the situation demanded it. And throughout this process, it strengthened its position and influence.
On a strategic level, the task is slower and more decisive. An electoral victory can open up more favourable ground, but it doesn’t, in itself, change the balance of power. That change requires rebuilding the social strength of the popular movement: organising in workplaces and neighbourhoods, revitalising union activity, reviving social conflict, and challenging cultural hegemony. We must rebuild workers’ and popular institutions — in the union, party, and community spheres—that give social substance to any ambitious transformative project. It is there that the possibility of forging new political forces lies, forces capable of overcoming the limitations of previous progressive experiences from the left. Only on this basis will it be possible to build a fundamental alternative to the neoliberal order in crisis and to far-right reaction, and not merely defensive coalitions.
None of this guarantees anything. The period is adverse and could worsen. But the left faces a dilemma: understand the moment, buy time for regrouping and building a united perspective, or squander the opportunity while watching, from self-isolation, as the right consolidates its victory. In every country where the far right is gaining ground, regardless of national peculiarities, the same problem resurfaces: how to avoid sectarian isolation without eroding political independence, and how to build a unity that accumulates real strength to defeat reaction. How this dilemma is resolved will largely determine the direction this period takes.
Martín Mosquera is a member of Democracía Socialista, Fourth International in Argentina, and a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires.
- 1
In Brazilian politics, the Centrão refers to a group of political parties that do not have a specific or consistent ideological orientation and aim at ensuring proximity to the executive branch in order to guarantee advantages and allow them to distribute privileges through clientelistic networks.
- 2
The Novo Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (New Growth Acceleration Program or Novo PAC) is a massive federal investment initiative launched by the Brazilian government on August 11, 2023.
- 3
Myriam Bregman is a lawyer, acitivst and leader of the Argentine Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (Socialist Workers Party or PST). As a leader of the Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores – Unidad (Workers Left Front- Unity or FIT-U) she was elected as a National Deputy to the Argentine National Congress. The FIT-U is an electoral coalition of four Trotskyist organisations.
- 4
The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League or LCR) was the French section of the Fourth International until dissolving in February 2009 to form the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party or NPA).
- 5
The PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade or Socialism and Freedom Party) is a left-wing party founded in 2004 by a number of members who had been expelled from the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party or PT) led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is the organisation within which various revolutionary groups work, including the supporters of the Fourth International in Brazil.
