This
article was written just days after the bloody '9/11' coup, led by General Pinochet, that overthrew the elected left
government of President Salvador Allende. It was published in the
Militant (No.172), 14 September 1973
After three turbulent years of social crisis and economic chaos, the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende has been snuffed out under the iron heel of the military. All the hopes, all the sacrifices of the Chilean workers and poor peasants during this period, have come to nothing.
The armed forces have seized workers in Chile by a military coup. The capitalists have thus used their military power to destroy the reforms instituted by the "Popular Unity” government.
The full responsibility for this tragedy must fall on the leadership of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. They failed to organise workers' councils of action and to arm the workers and appeal to the rank and file soldiers, sailors and airmen to set up committees, and not give support to the reactionary officers Generals and Admirals of the armed forces.
Instead of this, Allende sowed illusions in the "neutrality" of the army caste and the acceptance by the capitalists of thee Chilean constitution. This was the fatal error of policy for which the workers and peasants of Chile are paying in blood and suffering.
In this criminal and disastrous policy, the leadership of the Chilean CP had the support of the British CP leadership and the Tribune left, as exemplified in the articles by Eric Heffer in the Labour Monthly recently.
According to the latest radio news at the time of writing, workers are beginning to organise armed resistance, hundreds have been killed. Militant will analyse the events in the next issue.
Politically conscious workers all over the world have pinned their eyes on Chile ever since Allende’s election in 1970. They have reacted angrily in immediate demonstrations on every continent of the globe. They will be absorbing the lessons of this experience, asking how this terrible setback could have been avoided. It proved impossible to preserve a social statement, in which neither one of the two decisive classes held sway. The coalition imagined that it could freeze the class struggle, hold the entire population in check, while it issued successive decrees to reform society bit by bit. But the class struggle waits for no-one. Allende's election victory was the signal for all the pent-up energies of the masses to burst forth.
Workers spontaneously occupied the factories, peasants took over the estates. Allende had to preside helplessly over a magnificent awakening of the masses.
The ruling class bided its time, using its hold over the armed forces and the judiciary to squeeze concessions mercilessly out of Allende whenever necessary, It did not dare to provoke civil war while the movement was surging ahead. It realised anyway that, for all the reforms, Allende and his allies would hold the line at all costs against revolution. The big wage increases could be tolerated since raging inflation swallowed them up before the ink was dry on the banknotes.
ECONOMIC CHAOS
At the end of June 1973 the cost of living index had risen by 283.4% in 12 months. In the first six months of 1973 food prices rose by 68.6% and clothing by 166.7% and the money supply in circulation had more than trebled. The economy had become utterly distorted. A senior United Nations executive recently indicated that a bottle of Coca Cola cost more than a ton of steel and a cement bag cost more than the cement it contained!
The workers were partially protected against inflation. Wages were raised by 22.1% in January 1972 and again by 99.8% in October. In addition, they were paid partly in kind, rather than cash. This led to a booming illicit trade. Half the food consumed was bought on the black market while the dollar exchange is officially fixed at 350 Escudos, a dollar can fetch 2000 Escudos on the black market and it could reach 5000 soon.
The brunt of inflation was borne by a section of the middle class who relied on cash for their income. Inflation famed the flames of revolt. The only way the middle class could have been won to support of the UP government would have been by demonstrating to them that expropriation of the monopolies was their only salvation, that their only future lay with the workers.
But Allende's vacillation, temporising and half-measures only drove them to despair. The government faced a rising revolt of the shopkeepers, the lorry owners, the doctors and the highly paid copper miners in a series of crippling strikes. The Christian Democrats, the capitalist party which cashes in on these people’s votes, exerted ever greater blackmail on the government.
Out of the ranks of this stratum came recruits for the "Patria y Libertad" fascist gang which reared its head with increasing audacity, shooting trade unionists and socialists.
CIVIL WAR?
The officer caste grew more and more impatient and the capitalist opposition parties in Parliament were brazenly urging them to "protect the constitution" by ousting the government. For months the words "Civil War" have been on the lips of everyone from Allende downwards. Only 2 months ago the naval officers almost succeeded in seizing power.
In the face of this open threat, what was the response of the Socialists and Communists who were represented in Allende's government? Did they form a workers' armed militia? Did they mobilise the workers in councils of action to rally the masses against capitalism? On the contrary, more passionately than ever, they urged the workers to show "restraint" and put their trust in the existing institutions.
Allende grovelled before the military, begging them for support, while troops were taking up positions outside his palace!
Like the Spanish Republican government of 1936, the Chilean workers’ parties, ensnared in a coalition with bourgeois liberals, thought they could buy off the generals by offering them seats in the cabinet. The armed guards of capitalism spat on these concessions and the workers were left defenceless against them.
Louis Corvalan, general secretary of the so-called "Communist" Party, attributed the failure of last June's attempted coup to "the prompt and determined action by the commander in chief of the army, the loyalty of the armed forces and the police " and only lastly to the workers. He went on to assure the “reactionaries” who had suggested the “Communists were “intending to replace the professional army” – “No, sirs! We continue to support the absolutely professional character of the armed institutions. Their enemies are not amongst the ranks of the people but in the reactionary camp”.
It is leaders like this who bear responsibility for this defeat, singing lullabies to the masses even while the army, air force navy and police chiefs were jointly hatching their plots.
Carlos Altamirano, secretary of the of the Socialist Party, which is to the left of the CP, stated last weekend, that "the strength of the organised working class is sufficient to curb any reactionary coup". He protested at the detention and torture of hundreds of sailors in Valparaiso for possessing socialist propaganda. But he issued no call to arms, no demands for committees of soldiers and sailors against the officer caste.
The prospect of workers storing arms in the occupied factories and the ranks of the armed forces moving to the left was enough to speed the hand of the officers to drastic action. They surrounded the Presidential palace and put an end to the government with little more than a flick of their fingers.
Allende has now paid for his mistakes with his life; whether murder or suicide is in dispute.
The workers are now left without any lead. Like their brothers in Uruguay who, with bare hands, maintained a solid resistance to their military dictatorship for 151 days, the Chilean workers will act with courage and resourcefulness. They have suffered a savage blow. But they will undoubtedly fight back to the bitter end.
The experience in Chile holds vital lessons for workers everywhere. Yesterday in Greece, today in Chile, tomorrow in Spain, Italy and France. Unless the workers' leaders change course, the false arguments of Popular Frontism and class collaboration are a dangerous trend for the workers.
Militant warned on 1 October 1971 (Issue 81) “The "army" is undoubtedly sympathetic towards the workers' movement, in the sense of the rank-and- file, the workers and peasants in uniform. But the sympathy' of the soldiers will be of no avail unless the hold of the officer caste is shattered. That is impossible unless the army is faced with a powerful movement of the armed people. While Allende and the C.P. are busy lulling the masses with beautiful pictures of "peaceful parliamentary change", the ruling class is systematically preparing the ground for a counter-stroke.”
In one article after another, we hammered home this point while others were trusting in the "democratic traditions" of Chile's armed forces.
We in Britain dare not make the same mistake. Only the bold, clear programme of Marxism can avert similar catastrophes in every capitalist country in the world.
The British Labour movement must organise demonstrations of sympathy and support for the Chilean workers in their struggle against military reaction.
Read this article, from exactly a year before, to read Militant's warnings about the danger of exactly such a coup taking place.
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