FROM 1970 UNTIL 1973 a in Chile led by Salvador Allende was conducting 'the great experiment democratic socialism.' Chile was going to be the supreme example of how a peaceful non-violent road to socialism could succeed. By September 1973 'the parliamentary road socialism' lay in ruins.
Allende himself had been killed defending the Presidential Palace. The Santiago Football Stadium had been turned into concentration camp for the left: many of whom were to disappear for ever - their bodies broken and crushed by torture.
Capitalism in Chile like its counterpart in Germany 40 years before had shown that it would drown blood any attempt to wrest away its power and wealth. Once. . again the peaceful road to socialism had been shown as a one-way path to the graveyard for the working class.
This week Socialist Action begins a series of three articles on the Chilean events. The articles are written by Chilean revolutionary Marxists.
Chilean Christian Democrats won the presidential election getting 56 per cent of the vote. They had used an audacious gramme called Revolution in Liberty.
Their campaign called for the recuperation of the mining enterprises US hands, wide agrarian reform, an economic policy of import substitution which would create the conditions to further industrialise the country, and the national organisaof the 'marginals' such peasants, dwellers, women, youth etc.
Model This was a model Alliance-forProgress programme which had the full support of the American Government and was a means whereby this bourgeois reformist party was able to outflank the workers' parties.
This astute tactic by the capitalist momentarily held motor forces of the revolution but it did not mean their social defeat. Aided by the fact that the workers' parties had only come forward with a mild programme of reforms in the elecMONS - the programme of the united slate or tne socialist and communisi parties could hardly be described as being to the left of the Christian the ruling class had been able to retard the mass movement.
1970 none of the problems which the Christian Democrats had set inemselves une task or solving were anywhere near a solution. The country was even more deeply in debt. Inflation was higher. Industrial production had sharply declined.
Both unemployment underemployment had risen. country had a huge balance of payments problems and social inequalitie. had worsened mainly as a result of growing monopolisation and the increasing trend towards foreign ownership. The workers and peasants had pressed their demands harder than evere and social demands by strikes, land and factory occupations and by street demonstrations which invariably ended in clashes with the police. By 1970 the Government had logged In a climate of economic, social and political crisis the 1970 elections approached. The bourgeoisie and imperialism knew this was going to be a COLONIL Socialist Party, the Communist ParChristian Democrats -Party and two small parties, the AP! and the PSD, which were small and on bourgeoisie of the lesser provincial LOWIN.
Allende won the elections getting 36.2 per cent of the vote. Alessandri of the National Party got 34.9 and Tomic of the Christian Democrats got 27.8 per cent. Immediately a situation political lever of the capitalist state apparatus, the executive branch, was not under the workers' control. The workers and peasants attacked the property owners by taking over their landed or industrial possessions thus expressing this duality of power. But they did not set up organisations that gave material reality to this situation.
The ruling class meanwhile was in unable to hight back. I was also difided as to the best strategy and tactics to use in this new situation.
to stage a coup with the aim of Workers occupied factories demanding Allende's Government nationalised bosses' property.
movement - inpreventing Allende taking office. This ended disastrously for the plotters when the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces was killed resisting his kidnappers. The extreme right were then thrown into disarray and for the time Chilean society was in a period of major social confrontation and that a showdown between the classes was inevitable in the near future. They also knew that it was not Popular Unity led. They knew that they had to break up the mass movement and that the relationship of forces in Chile in 1970 whilst at the same time forcing the Government to limit the objectives of the mass movement and forcing it to restrict the extent and scope of the Everything was done to try and The Christian Democrats who led this section of the boureoisie did not have to press too hard to get the leaders of Popular Unity to the negotiating table to sign a Statute of Constitutional votes confirming Allende as PresiGovernment to maintain intact the civil service, parliament and especially would remain the dominant sector in the capitalists were not made because of the strength of the ruling class. They were made because the strategy Popular Unity's eyes was represented This strategy more than allowed disorientated forces in order to resist ELCUCIO the relentless thrusts of the masses.
for the masses could not wait to get their saW Mapuche Indians in the south began to occupy the land. From then on a pattern was established. The masses would press the Government to nacapitalist property which was already in ine nanos of the workers atter an occupation. Time and time again the DEVOLU Popular Unity's economic and social ment had no difficulty carrying out popular measures like the nationalisa. tion of all the copper mines in US the private banks and the sales of copper abroad. They eliminated the big the latifundia system. Wages were increased by 100 per cent and at the same time prices were frozen. The standard of living improved as never April 1971 Popular Unity won 50.9 per cent of the vote. This showed that the fractures inflicted on the workers movement by the previous administration were being healed. Later that month 80 priests from working class of the Nation' address promised to lay the basis for the transition to framework. In August that year the movement of the Christian Left split from the Christian Democracy and workers had reasserted themselves as everyone had to take into account. The same applied to the peasants who did not wait for Presidential decrees before taking over the land and expelling the landowners.
developments by sanctioning the de facto take-overs and making them legal. In the south the landowners responded by setting armed vigilante groups. It was becoming obsocialism' did not include using the power of the masses as the strength of Their Christian Democrats meant just the dissolved thousands of Popular Unity Committees which had been set up for the 1970 election campaign. When the President of the Supreme Court attacked a proposal to set up popular Popular Unity's tactic concerning the army was to try and buy over the officer class which simply increased the power of the officers and increas ed their hold and influence over the preted as a vindication of the cautious gradualisuic pall. pledges to change the two chamber Assembly of the People and to formulate a new Socialist Constitution The bourgeoisie knew by the mid. die of 1971 the electoral results were not in their favour. They proceeded to reorganise their forces knowing too well that the government was unwilling to go beyond bourgeois legality decisive political confrontations the class struggle between 1970-1971 despite all the advantages it then had.
Besides, the capitalists knew they form of foreign credit restrictions and the economic blockade that Chile was subject to from the moment Allende came to office; aiong with covert actions and activities. Not surprising, a scarcity of essential consumer goods and the black market made its ap. beginnings of economic difficulties allowed the ruling classes to stage an impressive march of the empty pots which coincided with Fidel Castro's one month visit to Chile on December Chilean masses who strongly tified themselves with revolutionary hundreds of thousands; the Chilean defending itself tooth and nail against became evident almost to everyone that the class struggle had taken an unusual turn, it had become class war. A decisive social test of strength of historic significance was on the democratic legality would become an Either of them had to impose its will on the other and to do that they had set bi ties were the products of that very form of bourgeois rule, and therefore as far as their political programmes, psychology, methods of struggle and perception was concerned could not lead to its overcoming unless they transformed themselves into revoluor une quesuon.
ships would be much less scrupulous with political forms which no longer guaranteed the capitalists way of ruling and would therefore
No sexual innuendo!
SO A BIT of sexual order to brighten up an Socialist Action 18 August 1983 SOCIALIST ACTION should be more careful
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