Tragedy of the Chilean 'experiment'

Scan page 10

latter course, the so-called popular front (an electoral coalition of workers parties and capitalist parties), is, in our view, the formula for defeat.

Classic popular front

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Marxist method is its ability to learn from history. Judged from this standpoint alone, the record of the Trotskyists in the United States, at that time organized in the Socialist Workers Party, stands up remarkably well. Every other tendency on the left, either by conscious design or blind innocence, misread or otherwise failed to understand the direction of the Allende government.

Chief among these was the Communist Party USA, which stated in an editorial in the December 1970 issue of its theoretical magazine, Political Affairs, that Chile under Allende had undergone a revolutionary trans -formation. The CP wrote:

"This was no ordinary electoral victory, no mere victory of a Socialist over the other candidates. Rather in the words of the Basic Program of the six-party coalition which backed Allende, it represents a 'transfer of power from the old ruling groups to the workers, to the peasantry and to the progressive sections of the middle class of the city and country."

There was not a grain of truth to this assertion. The six-party coalition which constituted Allende's Popular Unity government was committed to the maintenance of capitalist rule from the beginning. This was a classic popular-front government in the tradition of the Stalinist and Socialist Party-led coalition-capitalist governments of the 1930s in Spain and France.

The Popular Unity coalition, which included the bourgeois Radical Party, had won only a plurality (34 percent) of the votes in the September 1970 elections. It therefore needed the support of the major capitalist parties (the Christian Democrats and Nationalists) in the following month's runoff elections in the Chilean Congress to convert the plurality into a majority.

But the capitalist parties demanded that Allende sign the "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees" as a condition for their support. These guarantees, which Allende signed, included leaving the military and police intact, maintaining the size of the army and the basic composition of the officer corps, and banning the formation of independent workers' militias.

Allende and his cohorts in the SP and CP thus pledged to maintain the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state and to ensure that there would be no "transfer of power" to the working class.

While this seems obvious today, in retrospect, it was not so at the time. Those Marxists in the United States who criticized the course of the Allende government were often subjected to severe ridicule and political abuse.

The Trotskyists of the U.S. SWP nevertheless held firm to their positions. The Aug. 6, 1971, Militant had this to say about the Chilean events:

"The politics of the Allende regime are by nature forced into a balancing act between the oppressed and oppressor classes. While his regime began with the enthusiastic support of the masses, and the grudging support of the ruling class, it is bound to end, after a period of vacillation, by satisfying neither the rulers nor the ruled...

"Undoubtedly the masses will press for more meaningful social reforms; the bourgeoisie will await the moment to stifle and then, through murders and imprisonment, behead the workers' movement.

"While the bourgeois armed forces remain intact, organized, disciplined and centralized, the workers and peasants have no organization, no arms and no leadership. They have only numbers and a willingness to sacrifice.

"For the present experience to end in a better way than the previous one [the popular-front governments in Chile from 1938 to 1952], a leadership willing to struggle against the opportunist and corrupt Communist and Socialist parties is necessary. If such a leadership does not develop, the results might even be worse than in the 1940s."

These paragraphs captured precisely the dilemma of the Chilean revolution. They predicted the inevitable result of Allende's policies in the absence of a revolutionary leadership capable of charting an independent political course for the working class and the oppressed.

ER 1986 The reforms of the Allende regime were significant. They reflected the deep radicalization of the Chilean working class. They included the diplomatic recognition of Cuba in the face of U.S. hostility, the nationalization of a major portion of imperialist investment, a sweeping land reform, substantial wage increases averaging 35 percent and the granting of political asylum to left-wing exiles all over the Latin American continent.

The Allende government initiated a program to distribute free milk to the children of the poor. It freed political prisoners from past regimes on condition that they cease their practice of robbing the imperialist banks to support the revolutionary cause.

Limited intentions

While these reforms had the wholehearted support of the masses, Allende's central aim was to win the support of the national capitalist class against imperialism. He banked on the view that a series of anti-imperialist nationalizations would strengthen the economic position of Chile's capitalist class against its imperialist rivals, thereby impelling the capitalists to support his gov -ernment against imperialism.

In fact, there is no such thing as a truly national capitalist class in the colonial world. This has been demonstrated time and again. The local capitalists among Allende's Christian Democratic friends were well aware that whatever benefits they might derive from Chilean takeovers of U.S. industries would be cancelled with the consequent loss of protection from U.S. imperialism at a time of rising working-class radicalization.

The bourgeoisie are not easily fooled when their fundamental class interests, their prerogatives to rule, are at stake. They fear the masses more than they do the economic insults of their capitalist superiors in the imperialist nations. The national capitalists prefer to bow down before the imperialists, rather than lose all to the oppressed.

Allende expressed unlimited faith that his local capitalists would respect the principles of bourgeois democracy, including the Chilean constitution and the electoral process. He agreed to abide by the rules of capitalist society, in particular to the rule of private profit, in return for which he expected the local ruling rich to accept and respect his regime.

The Popular Unity government nationalized the U.S.owned copper mines of Anaconda and Kennicott. By the time Allende took office, the previous Christian Democratic regime of Eduardo Frei had nationalized 51 percent of Chile's copper mines. The Frei government had agreed to pay full compensation on the takeovers.

Allende's plan was to nationalize the remaining 49 percent, and like Frei, pay the capitalists for their property.

Under mass pressure, Allende retreated from his initial offer to pay. Allende effectively demonstrated that U.S. corporations had made $770 million in "superprofits" since 1954. These were defined as profits in excess of the 10 percent considered reasonable by Chilean standards. These and other arguments were presented to justify the change in position regarding compensation.

Nevertheless, Allende remained committed to pay the full amount on the original 51 percent as well as the considerable interest on the loans taken out to repay the U.S. capitalists. At the same time, the $377 million in U.S. interests in the non-mining sector remain untouched.

Of the 30,500 businesses in Chile in 1970, less than one percent (or 150) fell into Allende's category of government purchase or "nationalization."

As a further guarantee of his limited intentions, Allende promised the imperialists full payment on Chile's $2-billion debt and full compensation for any state intervention into the banks.

In a Sept. 26, 1970, Washington Post interview, Allende made his views on Chile's future course clear. "The future government of Chile will not be a Socialist government. It is unscientific to maintain the contrary...The area of private property will be numerically the biggest."

Nothing The top leaders of the Chilean Communist Party wasted no time in giving the imperialists the same assurances. Pablo Neruda, the poet and best-known Chilean Stalinist stated: "There's no reason at all to be uneasy. We have never claimed that we would form a socialist government on November 4 [election day]. Allende himself has said: Popular Unity is composed of six different groups including the Radicals who have largely dominated Chilean political life for the last 30 years." (Oct. 23, 1970, Le Monde.)

These were not exceptional statements. At every opportunity, by word and by deed, the Allende