UNIDAD POPULAR'S
BALANCE-SHEET OF
ALLENDE YEARS
CHILE Under the regime of fierce repression that has reigned in Chile since the coup of September 11, 1973, the organizations of the working class have run up against major difficulties in working out and distributing general political documents. Last December, representatives of the Unidad Popular in exile, along with the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario -- Movement of the Revolutionary Left), released an appeal against repression in which they declared, among other things, that "a broader, united movement capable of mobilizing the great majority of Chileans is in process of being formed. " In February 1974 the same representatives published a document explaining that "the popular parties have succeeded in raising the level of their organization and leadership despite the barbaric measures resorted to by the dictatorship" and projecting formation of a "broad front of struggle, "that would include an overture toward sections of the Christian Democracy hostile to Frei. Finally, on May 1, 1974, a document that had been drafted inside the country was released. It drew a balance sheet of the Allende years, analyzed the current situation, and traced out an orientation for the struggle. Self-criticism in the wrong direction This document offers five answers to the question, Why did the Chilean working class suffer such a grave defeat: 1. "A process of this character could not have been tolerated by those who had controlled the wealth and power for 150 years." 2. There was no "united political leadership capable of galvanizing the popular forces and allowing them to successfully confront their enemies, "and this resulted in an "incapacity to effect a policy of alliances to isolate the principal enemies." 3. Dangerous ultraleftist tendencies were manifested, which "exerted pressure on the Unidad Popular and the government, " thus impeding an adequate policy of alliances. 4. "There was a lack of comprehension within the popular movement of the internal situation and the specific features of the Chilean armed forces, which made it difficult for the popular movement to collaborate with the patriotic and constitutionalist sectors of the armed forces. " 5. "Some manifestations of right-wing opportunism were also apparent, above all in a weakness in affirming the necessity for making radical changes in the structures of the bourgeois state, in bureaucratic attitudes, in an insufficient degree of workers' participation in the exercise of power, in instances of administrative corruption and insensibility of certain government functionaries to the concrete problems of the masses, in widespread economism among layers of the workers movement, in tolerance of fascist outbreaks, and in insufficient mobilization of the masses to support the measures taken by the popular government."
by LIVIO MAITAN Apart from expressing recriminations about the perversity of the enemy, the first point develops an imprecise analysis that distorts a total appreciation of reality. Incontestably, there was a minority of the population that organized opposition to the Unidad Popular and finally launched the coup. The exploiting classes always represent minorities, and tiny minorities at that. But the document implies that responsibility for this lies with "the right, " that is, with the most reactionary proimperialist and monopolist sectors of the bourgeoisie, which began plotting their conspiracies the day after the presidential election of September 4, 1970. Now it is true that during the first period of the Allende government decisive layers of the bourgeoisie did not directly oppose the government. It was for that very reason that Allende was able to obtain the necessary majority in parliament. The opposition got together and radicalized later on, when the bourgeoisie began to take account of the fact that the dynamic of social conflict and mass movement could not be controlled by the government and that under such conditions even the limited reforms enacted by the Unidad Popular were creating a situation in which the "normal functioning, "if not the very existence, of the capitalist system was being seriously compromised. As the bourgeoisie began to realize that its project of regaining control of the situation through legal or semilegal means was meeting with failure (in the Narch 1973 elections, for example), and as it began to see that obstruction and sabotage were not sufficient for attaining its ends and even threatened to provoke more and more vigorous mass responses, it opted for the extreme solution of the golpe. This is a very important point to remember: After a cerfain point, the entire bourgeoisie rallied to this perspective. Likewise, the leading groups within the armed forces, who had accepted the constitutional framework at first and had collaborated with Allende (even joining his government), decided to resort to open violence. On the question of the deficiencies of leadership, especially concerning the realization of a policy of alliances, heated polemics have already been waged, both inside and outside Chile. On this score it must first of all be remembered that the Allende government never lacked the active support of the masses. Just before the coup, Santiago was the scene of a very powerful mass mobilization. The critical analysis must have a wholly different axis. The mobilizations expressed a rather general support for the Unidad Popular, but they did not succeed in imposing clear solutions at crucial junctures. Second -- and this is the essential thing -- the highest points of the mobilization of the masses in struggle were out of phase. The most aggressive peasant struggles took place mostly during the initial period of the Unidad Popular government, while the workers radicalization attained its peak only after the abortive coup of June 29, 1973. This was not so much the result of an "incapacity" • of leadership as a consequence of the rejection by the Unidad
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CHILE Popular parties of a strategy of revolutionary mobilization for the overthrow of the system through the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus. As for the problem of alliances, it is illusory to think that layers of small and middle-sized industrialists or layers of the commercial bourgeoisie can be won as allies of the working class in a battle whose dynamic places the very basis of the ir economic and social existence in danger. The real problem is to take advantage of the full potential of the class struggle of the exploited. And this the Unidad Popular did not do -- nor could it do it, given its theoretical and political premises. The problem was rather to offer a concrete perspective to petty-bourgeois layers whose interests were not coincident with those of the ruling classes but who found themselves in an impasse, for they were forced to bear the costs of a situation of disequilibrium and prolonged economic crisis. The only possible guarantee that could have been offered these layers was to show real determination, fo work for a qualitative leap that would have allowed for reestablishing "normality" on new bases: on the bases of collectivized relations of production and a planned economy. And the Unidad Popular, prisoner of its own schemas, neither wanted nor was able to do that either. The alleged responsibilities of ultraleftism have constituted a choice argument for the Communist parties ever since the coup. Let us admit that some manifestations of ultraleftism were in fact present. But these were completely marginal and played no important role in the social and political dynamic. But if the epithet ultraleftist is to be applied to the actions of peasants who occupied the land and thus carried out agrarian reform in a consistent way by overstepping the limits of the reform that had hitherto been kept within bounds set by the large landed proprietors and the rural bourgeoisie, and if it is also to be used to describe the factory occupations and expropriations carried out by the workers themselves, then it must be said that it was broad sectors of the masses and vanguard layers of the working class and peasantry that were guilty of this "ultraleftism." And would it not be the height of dogmatic arrogance and political opportunism to condemn the workers and peasants for their "disloyalty" to a preestablished schema when all they were doing was acting according to the logic of their class interests and seeking to exploit the potential of a prerevolutionary situation to weaken their class enemies?
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UCR MES peasants seize land ...ultraleftists? We have already mentioned the evolution in the attitude of the leading groups of the army. We must confess that we do not completely understand what the "popular movement" should have done to demonstrate its "comprehension" of the army -- a comprehension it displayed a lack of, according to the document. Is it that they did not believe strongly enough in the mystifying notion of the "constitutional loyalty" of the military and the army's fidelity to "democratic traditions"? Is it that they did not seek enough collaboration with the military and help the army reach its goals, even during the weeks when the coup was being prepared? Perhaps the soldiers and sailors who denounced the putschist maneuvers of the fascist officers and who were thrown into prison for their trouble under the Allende government were also guilty of this same "lack of comprehension"? For our part, we believe that it was a fatal error to count on the "exceptional" character of the Chilean army and to reject carrying out systematic work among the army's ranks. We believe that it was a fatal error not to be concerned right from the beginning with providing the working class and the peasantry with the only meaningful guarantee against a possible, if not probable, coup; namely, to arm them, to form self-defense teams in the factories and neighborhoods, and to form a militia. As for the "manifestations of right-wing opportunism, " the least that can be said is that the document speaks of them in a rather euphemistic fashion. In fact, the real point is not to denounce the "weaknesses, " "insufficiencies, " and misapplications of an essentially correct orientation. The nub of the question is that by its very nature and because of its strategic choices, the Unidad Popular did not pose the central problem of the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and the building of qualitatively new structures of proletarian democracy, just as it did not pose the problem of expropriating the bourgeoisie as such by creating organs of workers control and self-management. No doubt, a few particular errors could have been avoided even without a fundamental change of strategy. But in the framework of the basic orientation the outcome could not have been substantially different. Without adequate political and military preparation, the inevitable test of strength could not have been won. (1) Again collaboration with the Christian Democracy The document paints the current situation in Chile in somber tones, noting that it is characterized by barbaric repression
and superexploitation of the working class, which is condemned to work for starvation wages and is constantly threatened by unemployment, already affecting a large percentage of the workers. At the same time, it denounces the junta's attempts to favor certain sectors (especially the armed forces) and even to "create a restricted category of privileged workers and bureaucrats. " This maneuver could also have a more strictly political aspect: It could involve an opening toward the right-wing of the Christian Democracy, which would be placed in positions of responsibility with the aim of putting the brakes on discontent among bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers. (2) Moreover, all the news during the past few months indicates that the repression has become more selective, striking sectors that are more restricted, but more important from the standpoint of organizing resistance. The Brazilian experience has shown that under certain conditions, operations like this can produce results. What orientation does the document propose to combat the dictatorship and block its maneuvers? The line of the "antifascist front" -- already sketched out in earlier documents -- is detailed much more explicitly here. In fact, not only does the document affirm "the necessity for deepening the unity of the democratic, progressive, and revolutionary forces"; it also adds that "the participation of the Christian Democracy in this front is a necessity of ever greater importance." Even among the armed forces, the document declares, The immediate objectives around which "all democrats must march together" in order to transform "the immense majority of the nation's rejection of the junta's acts into mass actions" are synthesized in five points: restoration of the rights of man; reconquest of democratic rights; struggle for the defense of living standards and employment; struggle against the pauperization of small and middle-level farmers, merchants, and industrialists; defense of "national independence." The "ultimate objective" is "the fall of the dictatorship, the destruction of the totalitarian and police state that it has created, and the construction of a new democratic, national, pluralistic, and popular state that will develop all the gains that the country and the people have won, that will liquidate the power of imperialism and the big monopolistic and agrarian bourgeoisie, and that will protect the interests of the great national masses by constructing a new economy that guarantees the independent development of the country. " "The struggle for renovated democracy, " the document explains, "is the only road that will lead the proletariat and its allies to construct a more advanced and more just society, a socialist society, on the basis of a process that would be supported by the immense majority of the country."
As for the forms of struggle, they must be chosen in consonance with "the necessity of uniting all democratic forces" in a context in which "the possibilities of democratic expression have been progressively limited. " "All forms (therefore) take on their full legitimacy. " We are left with this vagueness, the only explicit indication offered being a condemnation of "terrorism" and "adventurist actions. " Taking account of the fact that for the authors of the document the expressions
"terrorism" and "adventurist actions" have a rather sweeping application, it must be concluded that in practice all forms of armed struggle are excluded, at least for an indeterminate
The defin. 'ion of such a perspective shows just how partial and tactica, the self-criticism about "manifestations of rightwing opportu, "sm" is. In reality, the authors of the document seem to have ‹ awn no lessons from the tragic experience of
September 11, 1973. Or worse, they have drawn one lesson -exactly the opposite of the one that is appropriate. Today they are proposing unity with the party that ever since the early 1960s has represented the decisive layers of the Chilean bourgeoisie and that bears the greatest responsibility for the political preparation for the coup. At the same time they confirm the strategic program that was at the root of their past action: an alliance with sectors of the bourgeoisie; construction of a "democratic and pluralistic state"; definition of a "democratic and anti-imperialist stage" of the revolution, passage to socialism being relegated to a future and clearly distinct stage. They refuse to admit the elementary truth that the same contradictions that broke out during the Allende period and led to the defeat would break out a second time if the workers movement were to maintain the same orientation based on the same erroneous premises after the overthrow of the dictatorship -- at least if the authors of the document do not press their "rectification" all the way to rejection of any reformist measure susceptible of creating tension and accept the political hegemony of the Christian Democracy. In this. case -- a purely theoretical hypothesis -the course of events could be different, provided the masses do not thwart these nice little calculations. But we do not think that the leaders of the Unidad Popular envisage such a variant. For a revolutionary orientation The document released on May 1, 1974, provoked polemics within the Chilean left, wide sections of which have acquired a very lively critical consciousness during the struggles of past years. (4) But the orientation of the document is likely to be accepted inasmuch as it was drawn up by the Unidad Popular and especially by the Communist party -- which commands a network of cadres and militants that are far from solid -and can count on the endorsement of international forces and can appear as a response to a united demand arising almost spontaneously under such hard conditions of struggle. That is why offering a systematic and consistent critique of these conceptions is a prime task for revolutionary Marxists.
The problem of the correct strategic conception in the struggle against a dictatorship is not a new one in the workers movement. The advocates of the orientation outlined in the
Unidad Popular document -- whose objective is the restitution of a "democratic regime" -- have always claimed that to reject their orientation means to accept the idea that the overthrow of the dictatorship automatically means the overthrow of the capitalist system and the institution of a workers state. (5) That, according to them, would be a schematic conception that would prevent the broadening of the antifascist front.
No serious revolutionary Marxist would claim that the overthrow of a dictatorship -- whether military or fascist -- leads automatically to the seizure of power by the working class.
(That is a variant that, while it should not be excluded a priori, most often appears improbable, for reasons that we cannot develop here.) But it hardly flows from this that the workers movement should consider establishment of a bourgeois democracy -- even a "renovated" bourgeois democracy
-- as its own task, that it should collaborate with the bourgeoisie or "progressive sectors" of it in this undertaking; that, in other words, it should cooperate in solving the crisis of leadership that the fall of the dictatorship represents for the ruling class. Postwar experience in Italy and France is eloquent in this regard. By collaborating in "democratic" reconstruction, the traditional workers parties allowed the bourgeoisie to overcome one of the gravest crises in its history,
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to rebuild its mechanisms of accumulation and to reconstruct its political apparatus. Logically, once the crucial stage was surmounted, the reformists were kicked out of the governments they had entered. The problem for the working class is to wage a struggle against the dictatorship that strikes most strongly against the system as a whole and allows for the establishment of the most favorable relationship of forces for the laboring masses. In the phase that immediately follows the fall of the dictatorship, the problem is not to place the seizure of power on the agenda right away. It is to create and deepen a situation of dual power, and thus to develop revolutionary organs of democratic mobilization and organization of the masses. That means -to put it another way -- that especially in a country like Chile in which a crucial experience has stimulated a rise in the level of consciousness of broad layers of the working class, the peasantry, and the radicalized petty-bourgeoisie, that the perspective should not be one of a stage of "democratization" or "rationalization" of capitalism, a perspective that necessarily implies collaboration with the ruling class and acceptance of its hegemony for an indefinite period. The perspective must instead be one of prerevolutionary or revolutionary crisis determined in the final analysis by the bourgeoisie's inability to surmount the structural contradictions of its system. Hence the necessity for preparing a positive outcome of this crisis -- something the traditional parties have proven incapable of doing. The conquest of power by the proletariat cannot be placed on the agenda immediately after the overthrow of the dictatorship. But it is contained within the objective tendency of development and must be the strategic objective of that stage, independently of the mediations and tactical measures that may be necessary. The response to the second question -- the character of the "antifascist front" -- flows from this first premise. There is no doubt that a united policy is a prime necessity that corresponds to the most basic sentiments of the masses crushed by repression and superexploitation. But unity must be realized on a class basis. A united front of workers, peasants, and other exploited layers of the population must be constructed. This front cannot include the bourgeoisie, whose possible opposition to the dictatorship has a strategic objective that is qualitatively different from that of the workers movement. This does not mean that the workers movement should not exploit the political contradictions of the ruling class or that it should regret the fact that sections of the bourgeoisie come to oppose the dictatorship. Nor does it mean that it should reject possible convergence in action. But it does mean that the workers movement should not establish a political alliance or a common front at the cost of watering down its action or of renouncing the strategic perspective of revolutionary struggle. The international workers movement has had many absolutely clear experiences in this regard. But unfortunately, there is no one more deaf than one who does not want to hear! Finally, in a situation as exists in Chile today, any initiative in struggle against the dictatorship presupposes an extreme sensitivity toward the requirements of the morale and demands of the masses -- even the most basic ones. It requires systematic and patient propaganda work. Any struggle that strikes at the dictatorship and opens breaches, even modest ones, must be supported and stimulated. If the slightest possibility for illegal actions arises, it must be seized upon. We do not directly know the details of the situation that has developed in recent months, and even on the scene it is not easy to have an overall view. Nevertheless, it seems obvious to us that a stage of reorganization, accumulation of forces, and reestablishment of contacts with sectors of the masses is absolutely
8 necessary. Revolutionaries should not underestimate the tasks of preparation. At the same time, they should not allow the slightest equivocation on a fundamental point. It is not enough to assert that all forms of struggle are legitimate, as the Unidad Popular document does. It must be affirmed that the military dictatorship cannot be overthrown without armed strug gle and without the indispensable initiatives of the revolutionary vanguard in this area as well. The specific forms of the armed struggle at different stages of the struggle and the precise choices that should be made are the objects of very lively discussions. But it is not the purpose of this article to sketch out a response that can only be the result of a collective elaboration of Chilean revolutionaries who have consciously lived through the tragic experiences of the past few years. Footnotes: 1. If the summary that we are in possession of is accurate (from the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, June 21), a critiicism of "manifestations of right-wing opportunism" was recently made by spokesmen for the Soviet bureaucracy (in an article published in the review Problems of the CPSU). In this article, Allende is accused notably of not having acted decisively in face of the bodies of the state apparatus that had undertaken obstructive actions, of "not having applied any exceptional measures against the Congress and the judicial bodies. " His defeat was allegedly due to "the absence of really revolutionary popular forces. " What the magazine seems to ignore is that these "deficiencies" were the logical consequence of a definition of the character of the Chilean revolution and a strategic orientation that the Soviet bureaucracy and the Communist parties under its influence have always defended (under Stalin and after Stalin). But this corresponds to an old tradition. When an orientation that the Soviet leaders have imposed or defended results in a defeat, the bureaucrats take their distance, criticize the practical application, look for scapegoats, and keep quiet about their own responsibilities. 2. Such maneuvers have already been denounced in a document circulated in Santiago by the Communist party in midJune 1974, a document that explains that the personalities of the Christian Democracy have already obtained important 3. The document also contains a unity overture to left organizations outside the Unidad Popular. In fact, it is clear that the CP and SP have every interest in including the MIR in an "antifascist front" in order to get some left cover. 4. At the time this article is being written we do not yet have information on the conditions under which the document was written and distributed. Some socialist groups in exile have expressed their disagreement with it. The MAPU exiles in Italy have alluded to a series of objections they had made to an earlier draft and affirmed that the MAPU would not sign a document like the one that was published. It must not be forgotten that on the eve of the coup differences within the Unidad Popular had become exacerbated and that things almost came to an open break. Nevertheless, the problem that is posed today is not so much debating particular tactical questions as reopening discussion on the basic orientation. Neither the MAPU nor Altamirano's tendency in the SP has done this in a consistent way. 5. At bottom, the document again takes up the whole series of problems that have dominated the Communist parties for forty years since the rejection of the conceptions of the "third period, " which were characterized by an aberrant schematism especially concerning the prediction of the inevitability of the victory of the proletariat after the overthrow of fascism.
Trotsky and the Left Opposition polemicized against such conceptions right from the beginning.