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Title: Strange Defeat Author: Pointblank! Date: 1983/1973 Language: en Topics: Chile,social-democratic government,military coup Source: Scanned from original: No Middle Ground, Anti-Authoritarian Perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean, No. 2 Fall, 1983 Notes: The following article was originally published by the Situationist group Pointblank! in October 1973.
In the spectacular arena of current events recognized as "news," the
funeral of social democracy in Chile has been orchestrated as high drama
by those who understand the rise and fall of governments most
intuitively: other specialists of power. The last scenes in the Chilean
script have been written in various political camps in accordance with
the requirements of particular ideologies. Some have come to bury
Allende, some to praise him. Still others claim an ex post facto
knowledge of his errors. Whatever the sentiments expressed, these
obituaries have been written long in advance. The organizers of "public
opinion" can only react reflexively and with a characteristic distortion
of the events themselves.
As the respective blocs of world opinion "choose sides," the Chilean
tragedy is reproduced as farce on an international scale; the class
struggles in Chile are dissimulated as a pseudo-conflict between rival
ideologies. In the discussions of ideology nothing will be heard from
those for whom the "socialism" of the Allende regime was supposedly
intended: the Chilean workers and peasants. Their silence has been
ensured not only by those who machine-gunned them in their factories,
fields, and houses, but by those who claimed (and continue to claim) to
represent their "interests." In spite of a thousand misrepresentations,
however, the forces that were involved in the "Chilean experiment" have
not yet played themselves out. Their real content will be established
only when the forms of their interpretation have been demystified.
Above all else, Chile has fascinated the so-called Left in every
country. And in documenting the atrocities of the current junta, each
party and sect attempts to conceal the stupidities of its previous
analyses. From the bureaucrats-in-power in Moscow, Peking, and Havana to
the bureaucrats-in-exile of the Trotskyist movements, a liturgical
chorus of leftist pretenders offer their post-mortem assessments of
Chile, with conclusions as predictable as their rhetoric. The
differences between them are only ones of hierarchical nuance; they
share a Leninist terminology which expresses 50 years of
counterrevolution throughout the world.
The Stalinist parties of the West and the "socialist" states quite
rightly view the defeat of Allende as their defeat: he was one of their
own--a man of State. With the false logic which is an essential
mechanism of their power, those who know so much about State and (the
defeat of) Revolution decry the overthrow of a constitutional, bourgeois
regime. For their part, the "left" importers of Trotskyism and Maoism
can only lament the absence of a "vanguard party--the deus ex machina of
senile Bolshevism--in Chile. Those who have inherited the defeat of
revolutionary Kronstadt and Shanghai know whereof they speak: the
Leninist project requires the absolute imposition of a deformed "class
consciousness" (the consciousness of a bureaucratic ruling class) upon
those who in their designs are only "the masses."
The dimensions of the "Chilean Revolution" lie outside the constraints
of any particular doctrine. While the "anti-imperialists" of the world
denounce--from a safe distance--the all-too-convenient bogeyman of the
CIA, the real reasons for the defeat of the Chilean proletariat must be
sought elsewhere. Allende the martyr was the same Allende who disarmed
the workers' militias of Santiago and Valparaiso in the weeks before the
coup and left them defenseless before the military whose officers were
already in his cabinet. These actions cannot simply be explained as
"class-collaboration" or as a "sellout." The conditions for the strange
defeat of the Unidad Popular were prepared long in advance. The social
contradictions that emerged in the streets and fields of Chile during
August and September were not simply divisions between "Left" and
"Right" but involved a contradiction between the Chilean proletariat and
the politicians of all parties, including those that posed as the most
"revolutionary." In an "underdeveloped" country, a highly developed
class struggle had arisen which threatened the positions of all those
who wished to maintain underdevelopment, whether economically through
continued imperialist domination, or politically through the retardation
of an authentic proletarian power in Chile.
Everywhere, the expansion of capital creates its apparent opposite in
the form of nationalist movements which seek to appropriate the means of
production "on behalf" of the exploited and thereby appropriate social
and political power for themselves. Imperialism's extraction of surplus
has its political and social consequences, not only in enforced poverty
of those who must become its workers, but in the secondary role allotted
to the local bourgeoisie, which is incapable of establishing its
complete hegemony over society. It is precisely this vacuum which the
"national liberation" movements seek to occupy, thereby assuming the
managerial role unfulfilled by the dependent bourgeoisie. This process
has taken many forms--from the religious xenophobia of Khadafi to the
bureaucratic religion of Mao--but in each instance, the marching orders
of "anti-imperialism" are the same, and those who give them are in
identical positions of command.
The imperialist distortion of the Chilean economy provided an opening
for a popular movement which aimed at establishing a national capital
base. However, Chile's relatively advanced economic status precluded the
kind of bureaucratic development which has come to power by force of
arms in other areas of the "Third World" (a term which has been used to
conceal the real class divisions in those countries). The fact that the
"progressive" Unidad Popular was able to achieve an electoral victory as
a reformist coalition was a reflection of the peculiar social structure
in Chile, which was in many respects similar to those in advanced
capitalist countries. At the same time, capitalist industrialization
created the conditions for the possible supersession of this
bureaucratic alternative in the form of a rural and urban proletariat
which emerged as the most important class and one with revolutionary
aspirations. In Chile, both Christian and Social Democrats were to prove
to be the opponents of any radical solution to existing problems.
Until the advent of the UP coalition, the contradictions on the Chilean
Left between a radical base of workers and peasants and its so-called
political "representatives" remained to a large extent latent
antagonisms. The leftist parties were able to organize a popular
movement solely on the basis of the foreign threat posed by American
capital. The Communists and Socialists were able to sustain their image
as authentic nationalists under Christian Democratic rule because Frei's
"Chileanization" program (which included a policy of agrarian reform
that Allende was later to consciously emulate) was explicitly connected
to the American-sponsored "Alliance for Progress." The official Left was
able to construct its own alliance within Chile in opposing, not
reformism itself, but a reformism with external ties. Even given its
moderate nature, the opposition program of the Chilean Left was only
adopted after the militant strike activity of the 1960s--organized
independently of the parties--threatened the existence of the Frei
regime.
The succeeding UP was to move into a space opened up by the radical
actions of the Chilean workers and peasants; it imposed itself as an
institutionalized representation of proletarian causes to the extent
that it was able to recuperate them. In spite of the extremely radical
nature of many of the earlier strike actions (which included factory
occupations and the workers' administration of several industrial
plants, most notably at COOTRALACO), the practice of the Chilean
proletariat lacked a corresponding theoretical or organizational
expression, and this failure to affirm its autonomy left it open to the
manipulations of the politicians. Despite this, the battle between
reform and revolution was far from having been decided.
The election of the freemason Allende, although it in no way meant that
the workers and peasants had established their own power, nonetheless
intensified the class struggle occurring throughout Chile. Contrary to
the UP's assertions that the working class had won a major "victory,"
both the proletariat and its enemies were to continue their battle
outside conventional parliamentary channels. Although Allende constantly
assured the workers that they were both engaged in a "common struggle,"
he revealed the true nature of his socialism-by-decree at the beginning
of his tenure when he signed the Estatuto, which formally guaranteed
that he would faithfully respect the bourgeois constitution. Having come
to power on the basis of a "radical" program, the UP was to come into
conflict with a growing revolutionary current at its base. When the
Chilean proletariat showed that it was prepared to take the slogans of
the UP program literally--slogans that amounted only to empty rhetoric
and unfulfilled promises on the part of the bureaucratic coalition--and
put them into practice, the contradictions between the content and form
of the Chilean revolution became apparent. The workers and peasants of
Chile were beginning to speak and act for themselves.
For all his "Marxism," Allende was never more than an administrator of
state intervention in a capitalist economy. Allende's etatisme--a form
of state capitalism that has accompanied the rise of all administrators
of underdevelopment--was itself not more than a quantitative extension
of Christian Democratic policies. In nationalizing the copper mines and
other industrial sectors, Allende continued the centralization initiated
under the control of the Chilean state apparatus--a centralization
initiated by the Left's "archenemy" Frei. Allende, in fact, was forced
into nationalizing certain concerns because they had been spontaneously
occupied by their workers. In forestalling the workers' self-management
of industry by defusing these occupations, Allende actively opposed the
establishment of socialist relations of production. As a result of his
actions, the Chilean workers only exchanged one set of bosses for
another: the government bureaucracy, instead of Kennecott or Anaconda,
directed their alienated labor. This change in appearances could not
conceal the fact that Chilean capitalism was perpetuating itself. From
the profits extracted by multinational corporations to the "five-year
plans" of international Stalinism, the accumulation of capital is an
accumulation always made at the expense of the proletariat.
That governments and social revolutions have nothing in common was
demonstrated in rural areas as well. In contrast to the bureaucratic
administration of "agrarian reform" which was inherited and continued by
the Allende regime, the spontaneous armed seizures of large estates
offered a revolutionary answer to the "land question." For all the
efforts of the CORA (the central agrarian reform agency) to prevent
these expropriations through the mediation of "peasant cooperatives"
(asentamientos), the peasants' direct action went beyond such illusory
forms of "participation." Many of the fundo takeovers were legitimized
by the government only after pressure from the campesinos made it
impossible to do otherwise. Recognizing that such actions called into
question its own authority as well as that of the landowners, the UP
never missed an opportunity to denounce "indiscriminate" expropriations
and to call for a "slow-down."
The autonomous actions of the rural and urban proletariat formed the
basis for the development of a movement significantly to the left of the
Allende government. At the same time, this movement provided yet another
occasion for a political representation to impose itself on the
realities of the Chilean class struggle. This role was assumed by the
Guevarist militants of the MIR [Left Revolutionary Movement] and its
rural counterpart, the MCR, both of which succeeded in recuperating many
of the radical achievements of the workers and peasants. The Miristas
slogan of "armed struggle" and their obligatory refusal of electoral
politics were merely pro forma gestures: shortly after the 1970
election, an elite corps of the ex-urban guerrillas of MIR became
Allende's personally selected palace guard. The ties that bound the
MIR-MCR to the UP went beyond purely tactical considerations--both had
common interests to defend. Despite MIR's revolutionary posturing, it
acted according to the UP's bureaucratic exigencies: whenever the
government was in trouble, the adjutants of MIR would rally its
militants around the UP banner. If the MIR failed to be the "vanguard"
of the Chilean proletariat, it was not because it wasn't enough of a
vanguard, but because its strategy was resisted by those whom it tried
to manipulate.
Right-wing activity in Chile increased, not in response to any
governmental decrees, but because of the direct threat posed by the
independence of the proletariat. In the face of mounting economic
difficulties, the UP could only talk of "rightist sabotage" and the
obstinacy of a "workers' aristocracy." For all the impotent
denunciations of the government, these "difficulties" were social
problems that could only be solved in a radical way through the
establishment of a revolutionary power in Chile. In spite of its claim
to "defend the rights of the workers," the Allende government proved to
be an impotent bystander in the class struggle unfolding outside of
formal political structures. It was the workers and peasants themselves
who took the initiative against the reaction and in so doing created new
and radical forms of social organization, forms which expressed a
highly-developed class consciousness. After the bosses' strike in
October 1972, the workers did not wait for the UP to intervene, but
actively occupied the factories and started up production on their own,
without state or trade union "assistance." Cordones industriales, which
controlled and coordinated the distribution of products and organized
armed defense against the employers, were formed in the factory
complexes. Unlike the "popular assemblies" promised by the UP, which
only existed on paper, the cordones were set up by the workers
themselves. In their structure and functioning, these committees--along
with the rural consejos--were the first manifestations of a councilist
tendency and as such constituted the most important contribution to the
development of a revolutionary situation in Chile.
A similar situation existed in the neighborhoods, where the inefficient,
government-controlled "supply boards" (JAPs) were bypassed in the
proclamations of "self-governing neighborhoods" and the organization of
commandos comunales by the residents. Despite their infiltration by the
fidelistas of MIR, these armed expropriations of social space formed the
point of departure for an authentic proletarian power. For the first
time, people who had previously been excluded from participation in
social life were able to make decisions concerning the most basic
realities of their daily lives. The men, women, and youth of the
poblaciones discovered that revolution was not a matter for the ballot
box; whatever the quarters were called--New Havana, Heroic Vietnam--what
went on inside them had nothing to do with the alienated landscapes of
their namesakes.
Although the achievements that were realized by popular initiative were
considerable, a third force capable of posing a revolutionary
alternative to the government and the reactionaries never fully emerged.
The workers and peasants failed to extend their conquests to the point
of replacing the Allende regime with their own power. Their supposed
"ally," the MIR, used its talk of opposing burocratismo with the "armed
masses" as a mask for its own intrigues. In its Leninist scheme, the
cordones were seen as "forms of struggle" that would prepare the way for
future, less "restricted" organizational models, whose leadership would
be supplied by the MIR, no doubt.
For all its concern over the right-wing plots that menaced its
existence, the government restrained the workers from taking positive
action to resolve the class struggle in Chile. In so doing, the
initiative passed from the workers' hands into the government's, and in
allowing itself to be out-maneuvered, the Chilean proletariat paved the
way for its future defeat. In response to Allende's pleas after the
abortive coup of June 29, the workers occupied additional factories,
only to close ranks behind the forces that would disarm them a month
later. These occupations remained defined by the UP and its
intermediaries in the national trade union, the CUT, who kept the
workers isolated from each other by barricading them inside the
factories. In such a situation, the proletariat was powerless to carry
on any independent struggle, and once the Weapons Act had been signed,
its fate was sealed. Like the Spanish Republicans who denied arms to the
anarchist militias on the Aragon front, Allende was not prepared to
tolerate the existence of an armed proletarian force outside his own
regime. All the conspiracies of the Right would not have lasted a day if
the Chilean workers and peasants had been armed and had organized their
own militias. Although the MIR protested against the entry of the
military into the government, they, like their predecessors in Uruguay,
the Tupamaros, only talked of arming the workers and had little to do
with the resistance that took place. The workers' slogan, "A disarmed
people is a defeated people" was to find its bitter truth in the
slaughter of workers and peasants that followed the military coup.
Allende was overthrown, not because of his reforms, but because he was
unable to control the revolutionary movement which spontaneously
developed at the base of the UP. The junta which installed itself in his
position clearly perceived the threat of revolution and set about
eliminating it with all the means at its disposal. It was no accident
that the strongest resistance to the dictatorship occurred in those
areas where the power of the workers had advanced the furthest. In the
Sumar Textile Plant and in Concepcion, for instance, the junta was
forced to liquidate this power by means of air strikes. As a result of
Allende's policies, the military was able to have a free hand in
finishing what it had begun under the UP government: Allende was as
responsible as Pinochet for the mass murders of workers and peasants in
Santiago, Valparaiso, Antofogasta and the provinces. Perhaps the most
revealing of all the ironies inherent in the UP's downfall is that while
many of Allende's supporters did not survive the coup, many of his
reforms did. So little meaning was left to political categories that the
junta's new Foreign Minister could describe himself as a "socialist."
Radical movements are underdeveloped to the extent that they respect
alienation and surrender their power to external forces instead of
creating it for themselves. In Chile, the revolutionaries hastened the
day of their own Thermidor by letting "representatives" speak and act on
their behalf: although parliamentary authority had been effectively
replaced by the cordones, the workers did not go beyond these conditions
of dual power and abolish the bourgeois State and the parties that
maintained it. If the future struggles in Chile are to advance, the
enemies within the workers' movement must be overcome practically; the
councilist tendencies in the factories, neighborhoods, and fields will
be everything or nothing. All the vanguard parties that will continue to
pass themselves off as the "workers' leadership"--whether they be the
MIR, a clandestine CP, or any other underground splinter groups--can
only repeat the betrayals of the past. Ideological imperialism must be
confronted as radically as economic imperialism has been expropriated;
the workers and peasants can depend only on themselves to advance beyond
what the cordones industriales have already accomplished.
Comparisons between the Chilean experience and the 1936 Spanish
Revolution are already being made, and not only here--one finds strange
words coming from Trotskyists in praise of workers' militias which
fought against all forms of hierarchy. While it is true that a radical
third force did emerge in Chile, it did so only tentatively. Unlike the
Spanish proletariat, the Chilean revolutionaries never created an
entirely new kind of society on the basis of councilist organization,
and the Chilean Revolution will only succeed if these forms (cordones,
comandos) are capable of establishing their social hegemony. The
obstacles to their development are similar to those that were confronted
in Spain: the Spanish councils and militias faced two enemies in the
form of Fascism and the Republican government, while the Chilean workers
face international capitalism and the manipulators of social-democracy
and Leninism.
From the favellas of Brazil to the labor camps of Cuba, the proletariat
of the Caribbean, the proletariat of Latin America has maintained a
continual offensive against all those who seek to maintain present
conditions.
In its struggle, the proletariat is faced with various caricatures of
revolution which masquerade as its allies. These travesties have in turn
encountered a false movement of so-called "ultra-left" opposition. Thus,
the ex-fascist Peron prepares to construct a corporate state in
Argentina, this time in a leftist guise, while the Trotskyist commandos
of the ERP denounce him for not being "revolutionary" enough, and the
ex-guerrillero Castro berates all those who fail to meet the standards
of "communist" discipline. History will not fail to dissolve the power
of these idiots.
A conspiracy of tradition--with agents on both the Left and the
Right--ensures that existing reality is always presented in terms of
false alternatives. The only choices acceptable to Power are those
between competing hierarchies: the colonels of Peru or the generals of
Brazil, the armies of the Arab states or those of Israel. These
antagonisms only express divisions within global capitalism, and any
genuinely revolutionary alternative will have to be established since it
is nowhere in power in Latin America or anywhere else, and this
powerlessness constantly impels it to new actions. The Chilean workers
are not alone in their opposition to the forces of counter-revolution;
the revolutionary movement that began in Mexico with Villa's guerrilla
bands has not yet come to an end. In the armed workers' militias that
fought in the streets of Santo Domingo in 1965, the urban insurrection
in Cordoba, Argentina in 1969, and the recent strikes and occupations in
Bolivia and Uruguay, the spontaneous revolt of workers and students in
Trinidad in 1970, and the continuing revolutionary crisis is itself over
the ruins of these spectacular conflicts. The combined lies of bourgeois
and bureaucratic power must be confronted by a revolutionary truth in
arms, all over the world as in Chile. There can be no "socialism in one
country," or in one factory or district. Revolution is an international
task which can only be solved on an international level--it does not
recognize continental frontiers. Like any revolution, the Chilean
Revolution requires the success of similar movements in other areas.
Everywhere, in the wildcat strikes in the United States and West
Germany, the factory occupations in France, and in civil insurrections
in the USSR, the foundations for a new world are being laid. Those who
recognize themselves in this global movement must seize the opportunity
to extend it with all the subversive weapons at their disposal.