CHILE

Bachelet’s victory has solidified popular fronts as the bourgeoisie and the imperialism preferential alternative to manage Latin America.

The second turn of the Chilean’s presidential election, occurred in January 15, confirmed the Socialist Party candidate, Michelle Bachelet, as the new president of the country. Because of a small percentage of votes (54% against 47%), Bachelet, Ricardo Logos’ ex-minister of defense, defeated Chilean Alliance candidate Sebastián Piñera, a businessman who represented the moderated right wing.

Bachelet and Piñera presented themselves with a pro imperialist economic program similar to the one that has been used in Chile since 1973. This program was implemented by the military dictatorship established by a contra-revolutionary imposition orchestrated by the CIA and Pinochet against the government of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity (UP).

Based on the November 05 report presented by the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), Chile is practicing politics of tariff reduction and elimination of commercial barriers since the beginning of the 70´s. In other words, the “democracy” has been using the same economical orientation since the military regime. During these more than 30 years, occurred a brutal attack against social conquests such as the, today’s privatized, public social security system and the fragmentation of the workers’ organization through the obligatory establishment of individual trade unions per company.

Through a reactionary pact, in 1989, the military dictatorship gave way to civil governments in an accorded transaction celebrated between the army force and the Socialist Party. During this scheme, Bachelet’s figure had a prominent rise. It occurred because she was, at the same time, the daughter of the, back then, air brigade general and also the Socialist Party’s leader. It is also important to mention that she studied military strategy in the Inter-American Defense College in Washington.

Since then, the “Concertación”, political coalition between the Socialist Party and the Christian Democracy, controls the national government. Over the years, the pro-imperialist economical orientation was taken further with the free-trade celebration between US and EU which generated an elevated number of unemployment in Chile.

The popular front government administrated by Ricardo Lagos was the best expression of subservience to the political imperialist monopolies. The “socialist” government voted in the United Nation Organization in favor of Cuba’s blockade and sent troops to Haiti. It also was the first one in Latin America to endorse the Venezuelan plot against Chavez. Their systematic attacks against the workers were answered with important proletarian fights, such as the general strike in August of 2003 in opposition to the adjusts dictated by the IMF.

THE STALINISM MOVES AHEAD AS A BOURGEOISIE’S APPENDIX

During the first round of the presidential election, the Communist Party (PC) integrated to the popular front “Juntos Podemos Más” (Together We Can More) with the Humanist Party (HP) and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). They supported Hirsch’s candidature who got at that time 5,4 of votes. However, for the second round, the Communist Party (PC) announced their support to Bachelet, decision which was strongly opposed by their militants.

PC’s own declaration of electoral support to Bachelet presented a contra-revolutionary positional content when they affirmed that “on the presidential election’s second round, the electors see themselves obligated to decide between two candidacies. Both candidates have the intention to give continuity to the neoliberal administrative system imposed by the dictatorship (CC of Chilean PC Politic Declaration, Santiago 12/27/05).”

This evidence did not stop the Stalinism of supporting the Socialist Party candidacy. By declaring the danger of “returning to the right government”, they moved ahead as a bourgeoisie’s appendix and supported its “neoliberal” candidature.

In order to best trade off its political opportunism, the PC “required” the Socialist Party to include five specific points in Bachelet’s program. However, since she did not assume any type of compromise, they gave their support anyway to the ex-defense minister.

A program with a straight democratic face sustained by the Stalinism was not accepted by the candidate. They proposed changing from a binominal electoral system to a proportional which gives right to collective negotiation and workers’ strike. They also supported the use of resources originated from the fiscal surplus in order to raise the minimum wage. The Communist Party asked for respect to the native people and compromise with the human right organizations. All of these five point propositions were not accepted by the Socialist Party’s candidacy because they fundamentally chocked with the IMF’s interests.

Even with this negation, Bachelet was invited to participate in an activist plenary at the Workers’ Unique Central (CUT), which is controlled by PC and PS. At this time during the plenary, the CUT declared its political support to Bachelet.

THE “LEFT” WING OF THE “JUNTOS PODEMOS MÁS” VOTED NULL CLAIMING ALLENDE’S POPULAR UNITY (UP) ORIGINAL PROGRAM

The other members of the front “Together We Can…”, PH and MIR, defended the null vote for the electoral second round. In a political act with more than 2000 people on January 11, Tomás Hirsch declared that “the null vote means that we do not endorse anyone of both candidates. They represent the continuing and deepening neoliberal political model that has continually attack our people (Free Press, 01/12/06).”

The Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (MRPF), the Christian Left (IC), the Socialist Block, the Communist Party (AP) and the Friends of the President Group ex-leaders (GAP) who used to secure Allende, were present in the null vote demonstration.

All of these groups claimed the Popular Unity original program, denouncing the Socialist Party and Bachelet of a supposedly brake with Allende’s legacy in order to become directed managers of the Yankee imperialism.

In the same speech in which he defended the null vote, Hirsch drew a bourgeois- democratic program in defense of a “democratic alternative of social justice which could look towards the future and recover the best of our history, of our past… For a constituent assembly towards a new democratic constitution (Hirsch).” His program, jointed with the “Together We Can…”, does not put itself in the camp of defense for the socialism and for the proletarian revolution. It appointed a bourgeois platform for the “democratization” of Chile through the old institutional regime.

The Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) also claimed this program when affirmed that “our party highly value the ‘Together We Can…’ efforts in this elections. They took the Chilean social democratic proposes to everywhere in the country. The MIR also considered that the popular answer established a good social and political base towards the construction of a political force to conquer a true democratic Chile (MIR Electoral Declaration: ‘Second Round, a dispute between robbers and the others without shame’).”

The MIR criticized the support given by the Workers’ Unique Central to the Socialist Party candidature by assuming a supposed Popular Unity/Allende’s government type of conduct in respect to the union’s independence. They affirmed that “during Allende’s government, the Revolutionary Worker’s Front (FTR) and the Popular Unity parties knew how to behave during its trade union development. Without affecting the worker’s interests represented in the popular government, they behaved with independence in relation to the institutional bourgeoisie. At the same time, the bourgeoisie kept attitudes that endorsed the potential dynamic between the industrial lines and Allende’s initiatives. This dialectic had its potential frustrated because of the military takeover (Declaration of the Worker’s Base Movement_ MTB, MIR’s activist arm).” Nothing is more false than that! Allende and his Popular Unity sabotaged the workers’ class independent organization through the industrial lines. Consequently, in October of 1972, the government reactivated the “gun control law” in order to stop the workers’ armament through proletarian militias. They pleaded institutional respect as affirmed by the “fellow president”. “There will be no armed forces other the ones predetermined by the constitution, the Military, Marine and Aeronautic Forces. I will eliminate any other that shows up (International CI_QI Committee Declaration, 09/18/73).”

About the actual Socialist Party, the MIR distorts the reality by declaring that “it is not too much to affirm that the Socialist Party does not keep any type of relation, either pragmatic or political, with the comrade Allende. It is incorrect to announce the Socialist Party as socio-democratic, since it is in reality a neoliberal party (Declaration of the Worker’s Base Movement _MIR Activist Arm).” The existing “neoliberal” politics of the Socialist Party is a pragmatic evolution oriented by the contra-revolutionary Popular Unity. They, instead of defending the proletarian revolutions, putted together in Chile a “pacific way towards the socialism”. Their objective was to preserve the bourgeois democracy so it would not chock with the capitalist interests.

This way, the MIR deforms the Chilean history; since the Popular Unity, the Socialist Party and including the Communist Party were the direct responsible for generating the ideal conditions for the military takeover. They adopted a program of bourgeois institutional guaranties by attacking the masses’ political initiatives and being sustained in the proletarian’s jackals. The Stalinist hostility with the parties that did not accept Allende´s program was so severe that it had a foul expression in August of 1972. The Stalinist police members attacked the MIR’s office in the Santiago proximities and killed five peasants! At that moment, the Communist Party required the banishment of left parties such as MIR under the ridicule pretext that their actions “had created conditions for a military intervention.”  The real true is that the today’s MIR sympathy for the “comrade Allende” comes from its own centrist politics used during the Popular Unity’s government. The MIR counted with a considerable support among the southern landless peasants and did not adopt an attitude of principles in relation to Allende. It generated a big confusion among the workforce. Its politics of “critical support” to Allende, in practice, meant a popular front permanent capitulation. This group removed its opposition to Allende in the election of the National Congress in March of 1973. It occurred exactly when the masses were in the urge of confronting the Stalinists and the capitalist state. At that time, a powerful call for the formation of an authentic workers and peasant government would attract the sympathy of the masses in ample sectors.

It does not matter today or in the past, these groups always resisted to a revolutionary program in favor of the reformist popular front easier way.

THE POPULAR FRONT IS THE BODYGUARD OF THE IMPERIALIST INTERESTS

In 1973, Allende was victim of a counter-revolutionary attack because it arrived in the government as a product of a brutal mass’s rising. The workers’ class required that the popular front would seriously take measures that could represent a rupture with the imperialism and with the bourgeois expropriation.

The Popular Unity took the inversed way by constituting itself as the bourgeoisie’s last resource against the proletarian revolution. With the objective of conquering the capitalist’s trust, the Socialist and the Communist Parties supported themselves on the army forces as an intention to disarm the workers’ class and proclaim respect to the bourgeoisie constitutional order. It established the so called “pacific way towards socialism”. Banchero, the Chilean CP’s spoken person in Europe, made statements in a seminary organized by the World Marxist Review Magazine months before the scheme organized against the workers had come out. His statements show very clearly this counter-revolutionary strategy. He said: “One unmistakable characteristic of the Chilean revolutionary processes is that it starts and follows inside the institutional bourgeoisie past marks… In Chile, where is in course a popular democratic anti-imperialist, anti-monopolist and anti-feudal revolution, we essentially still keeping the old state machine. The government sections are driven by old bureaucrats. The administration exercises its functions under the popular government tutelage and control. The armed forces conserved its professional institution status. They do not take part in political debates and is subject of civil power which is legally constituted. There were developed a cooperative relationship between the army and the workers’ class in order to convert Chile in a democratic, free and developed country. The ‘ultra-left’ elements require the socialism to be introduced immediately. We defend that the workers’ class will reach the complete power gradually (citation retrieved from the International Committee for the Fourth International_ CI-QI_ political statement, 09/18/73).”

These politics demoralized the government and opened a way towards an army military dictatorship. The imperialism and the bourgeoisie did not trust the popular front because of the pressure that the workers imposed on the Popular Unity.

At the end of the 80’s, with the counter-revolutionary fall of the Berlin Wall and the liquidation of the USSR, the proletarian all over the world suffered a historical defeat. It permitted the imperialism to set out a profound offensive against the people. In this reactionary conjuncture, a new type of popular front typo of government was born. It was born no longer under the conditions of the “bourgeoisie last resource against the revolution” as illustrated with Allende’s government. It was born in fact as the imperialism preferential alternative when confronted with the complete political exhaustion of their traditional marionettes. They are responsible to continually the national re-colonization as occurred with Mandela and Thabo Mbeki from the South African ANC, with Lula from PT in Brazil and with Lagos from Chile. More than 30 years after the bloody military takeover, scheme commanded by Pinochet, the Chilean people is presented with the Socialist Party second government in the so called “re-democratization era”. Now under Bachelet command, it is raised to consolidate the “new” face of the popular front started by Lagos.

DEFEAT THE SOCIALIST PARTY BOURGEOIS GOVERNMENT

Bachelet “new” government means “more of the same”. In other words, it represents a profound capitalist offensive against the masses and its rights. The bourgeois democracy kept the dictatorship jackals not punished under its covers. In the same way, the new elected president’s spokesperson announced, for instance, that the government will keep the troops in Haiti for at least two more years, attending, this way, Bush and the European monopolies’ appeal.

The Chilean proletarian already had a sour experience of bourgeois government, four years with Lagos and other 15 years in which the “concertación” occupied the La Moneda Palace.

The traditional “right wing” growth is a product of direct disillusion of the masses with the neoliberal “left” which is represented by the socialist Party. Because of that, the workers need to prepare themselves to confront the SP’s new bourgeois government by adopting in their fights a proletarian-class program in order to form a Chilean alternative of revolutionary direction. This alternative would not come from the left wing of the “Together We Can…”, but we should learn lessons from the tragic popular front experiences that have marked the history of Chile.