Origins of the state
The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." (Manifesto of the Communist Party)
Since the state first appeared as a necessary institution, it has given its services to a particular class, the exploiting class which, in appropriating the product of social labour, transforms it into capital, produced from the surplus value of the exploited class. Thus, born from the necessity of managing these capitals on the one hand, and of preserving its interests opposed to those of the majority on the other, the state created organs including an armed "public force" at the service of the administration itself to be directed against the people, against the majority. In antiquity, this force came to usurp the place of the true "people in arms" which had been created in the first place for the self-defence of the ancient tribes, which were not yet divided into social classes. This usurpation gave rise to the creation and consolidation of bourgeois armed forces which Lenin called the "fundamental pillar of the capitalist system and the guardian of the sacrosanct private property."
The ancient relations of production based on collective ownership of the land, whose management was in the hands of a simple tribal confederation, were progressively replaced. This was principally due to two essential conditions: the first was the substitution of the administration of the "gens" or to be more exact the chiefs of the latter (as has been well described by Engels in his book, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State) by the division of labour and the division into social classes; the second was the multiplication of the means of exchange of commodities in general, in the development of which elements of other tribes were increasingly involved. These latter demanded greater profits, all the more as the gains from transactions rose, institutionalising private property. This is the reason why this represents the first attempt at the formation of the state, which had of necessity to destroy the old relations of tribe and gens, dividing the members of each tribe into privileged and non-privileged, opposing, by virtue of this same division, one tribe against another.
The principle means which the exploiters always used in order to strangle the freedom to enjoy the fruits of social labour collectively were usury and corruption, products of private property. In this way, cheating, blackmail, and finally what is called "unwarranted appropriation" appeared at the dawn of civilisation and represent the genesis of those from whom the modern bourgeois exploiters are the direct descendants. The appropriation of private property, Engels points out, led ultimately to the transformation of products into commodities.
The rapid development of wealth, commerce and industry and the benefits which a particular class in society was able to exclusively draw from them to the detriment of others, rendered necessary the creation of the state, assembled by the representatives of this class. As we have seen, the state arose, when all is said and done, from corruption and exploitation through the means of armed force at the orders, henceforth, of the dominant class. The state is based on the antagonism between classes.

Imperialism, responsible for corruption
Corruption is a practice which has always been used by those individuals interested in appropriating a good or a service which does not belong to them, using to this end blackmail, extortion or usury, and it has been used by imperialism in order to accumulate profits across the globe. As Lenin teaches us, imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, constitutes the culmination of the decomposition and the degeneration of this system of production. Because of this fact, this class and its agents, including fascist, social-democratic and revisionist elements, cannot escape from this practice, this being the principle means for maintaining and extending capitalism, based on the exploitation of man by man.
Corrupt and degenerated elements took - or rather usurped - power in the USSR after the death of J. Stalin, launching all sorts of calumnies against him and the foundations of the socialist state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Similarly, elements were corrupted through getting benefits and administrative posts in the social democratic bourgeois state, as was the case with the revisionists in Chile who put into practice the theses of collaboration with imperialism such as "the peaceful road to socialism", "socialism in Chilean colours", "the armed forces of the people" etc.
The present day bourgeois state, in accord with the necessary reorientation in a unipolar world, finds that it has to implement neoliberal plans, dictated to it by US imperialism, obliging the state to shed all its public duties. This is due principally to the fact that the number of commercial competitors of the USA has risen after the collapse of the revisionist camp which was headed by Soviet social imperialism. This forces the international consortia, which are true administrators of imperialism, to appropriate the greatest quantity of wealth in the shortest possible time, making it impossible or at least difficult to maintain the "social mask". Currently, the leaders of US imperialism's "Democratic" party have trampled underfoot many of the Democratic party's demands, taking on board a large part of the Republican party's programme, heralding the end of the "welfare state". The capitalist system is the product of private initiative to the profit of private interests; as we said above, it is the appropriation by whatever means of the product of social labour and of surplus value in private hands; this contradiction grows sharper, all the more so since every day so-called "virgin" markets become more and more difficult to conquer. The voracity of imperialism and its associates, of the multinational enterprises and their agents, including the clique of social democratic, socialist and revisionist parties scattered throughout the world, pushes them into deploying all sorts of tricks, utilising all forms of corruption in order to appropriate national resources, markets, labour-value ... This corruption is nothing other than the faithful reflection of the practices used in the handling and the appropriation of capital in the hands of the private sector.

Corruption in Chile
Corruption in Chile is not an isolated phenomenon, contrary to what the heads of enterprises and the government would like us to believe. From the least well known cases, for reasons that are obvious (under the dictatorship, the contradictions within the bourgeoisie and consequently conflicts between leaders become, as it were, of a secondary importance, faced with the perspective of managing the bourgeois state as the dictatorship's spare card) such as those of CUTUFA (the Military Investment Funds Society), and the "pinocheques" (a fraud carried out at the expense of the army by Pinochet's son), up to the most famous cases, such as the DAVILA (the executive of Codelco, accused of embezzling funds) and ESVAL (Valparaiso Sanitary Enterprise) cases, are an inherent product of the neoliberal system, of disloyal competition, of monopolisation and at the same time of the anarchy of production.
Corruption in Chile, as in Latin America and the rest of the capitalist world, is a social phenomenon. On this question, we are going to analyse some of the indicators used by neoliberalism in order to ask the real nature of the pillage of its policies, where the biggest eats the smallest. These indicators are equally used by the multinationals through the lies they put out about "competitiveness", "sustained development" and "substantial macro-economic growth" etc..
It is totally false that the redistribution of state enterprises (this supposedly means enterprises owned by all Chileans) into private hands would result in a reduction of costs and an increase in the quality of goods and service. This is because the enterprises returned to private hands do not have the dynamism of small and medium enterprises, but fall into the grip of the monopolies which are formed on their acquisition. Let's take the case in Chile of the enterprises of CHILESTRA (electricity companies) which were acquired by the ENERSIS consortium and managed by the YURASCECK group, the most important foreign group in the country. This acquisition was contested by the Control Commission as contravening the anti-monopoly laws and the inquiry was in the end closed. This consortium transformed itself completely thanks to the acquisition of ESVAL and EMOS (the drinking water company) as monopoly enterprises without any competition, because it is only a concentration of capital which, accumulated in this manner, becomes a brake on development since their domination is absolute and because it is they who dictate the norms for quality and price according to their own interests. It is for this reason that it is impossible to carry out a genuine distribution of state assets between competitive agents through private enterprise, while improving the supposed quality of the services and proceeding to a reduction in products, if the appropriation of the principal markets is placed in the hands of a group of entrepreneurs who are in a position to dictate prices and quality at their own convenience and who have as their only guide their ties to the multinationals and to Yankee imperialism.
What we have just said is corroborated by the association of the Luksic group with the American South Western Bell company, with the sale of 40% of VTR - investments with a value of $316 million - and which permits it to create at the time a wide ranging associate which can aid it in its plans for expansion within Chile and abroad. Similarly, in the financial sector, we have the association and the internationalisation of capital with the purchase by the Argentinean subsidiary of Credit Lyonnais which has mounted a joint venture with the Spanish central bank with the aim of acting jointly in external investments, and particularly in Latin America. For this group, this means putting into practice its dream of becoming the most important financial holding in the region.
Another expanding group is today setting about business centred on insurance: it's the Cruzat group through its consortium, Cruz Blanca, through investments in Colombia, Argentina, and Peru, regrouped in CB International. On the other hand, the family group Angelini concentrated almost the entirety of its investments; among the most important are the investments to the sum of 85.56% in SOCOROMA, 50% in Andes Investments and Developments which controls 60.1% of COPEC (Petrol and Fuel Corporation), Angelini's main enterprise. The latest figures available indicated an increase of 43% in profits for the COPEC concern alone, while the Celarauco affiliate has experienced an increase in its profits of 130%. Other family groups like Said and Abumohor, through the Andina bottling company, have launched themselves on a frantic race for control of the Latin American market, trying to impose their points of view on the discussions of Mercosur. Said took control of Mendozo Refrescos and Rosario Refrescos in Argentina. Similarly in this country, Parque Arauco (enormous retail shops), jointly with the Masu and Sumar families (its associates in the BHIF bank), has created an interbank and has bought the Bolivian American Bank. In the insurance sector, the Abumohor family is rivalling this in the internationalisation of its capital, being present on the insurance markets of Peru and Colombia.
Linked to what we have just said, these families are preparing the total pillage of the national wealth, not only of Chile but of the whole of Latin America, giving thanks to the new policies of capitalism, neoliberalism, imposing their own unique vision of development whether through the "democratic path" (bourgeois elections) or through blood and fire as occurred in Chile in 1973. This policy of the pillage of the exploited classes is presented as a model of efficiency and modernity. That means the total privatisation of the banking sector, less state, the disappearance of social security, the privatisation of health, of education, of housing etc. in addition to import controls which will bring about the destruction of small and medium enterprises. These veritable modern commercial nomads set up shop nests in different countries, extracting or rather stealing the national wealth, fruit of the efforts of generations of workers and labourers, to the point of exhausting the resources and filling up their coffers through terror and corruption.
The concentration of wealth is accompanied by the concentration in a few hands of the different monopolistic possessions, turning the phrases that are banded about such as "competitiveness" and "the development of Chile" into vulgar lies and charlatanry. For example, there are three groups of enterprises which own incalculable wealth and which control key sectors of production and trade in an absolute way. We have the following schema:
The table above shows firstly the ineffectiveness of anti-monopoly control, but what is more important and which is clearly apparent here, is the exclusive control that a handful of families exercise on the market at both the national and the international level (in association with the multinationals, principally the American ones, through holdings and joint ventures). This has as a consequence the concentration of wealth in private hands, the total control of investments (what they are invested in and how), which products will be developed and which won't be, tariff policies, control of the state, the creation of a cheap labour force, the imposition of a reform concerning work, the imposition of a country's policies, which bosses will fix wages, etc. All this is to the profit of a few of the richest families in the country, and with the sole aim of satisfying their ambitions, with these families themselves being used by the American multinationals as an iron lance in the opening and pillaging of markets. This is the reality which is masked by a bourgeois democracy whose electoral antics are nothing more than a theatrical illusion of representation in order to send to sleep the masses, who they would have believe that when they exercise the right to vote they are exercising control over the state, when in reality it is the economic groups who do this. The latter not only do not respect the environment, natural resources, wildlife and nature, the quality of life, and display the most complete scorn for the working class, but seek to strangle the exploited class through debts, by robbing them of the gains they have won through the struggle and the blood of whole generations, making them fall under the control of the capitalism of these few families who, united with others on an international level, jointly exercise their total, obscurantist and reactionary control along with the military castes.
In the Communist Manifesto we read that under capitalism, bourgeois society can only exist on the condition that it constantly develops the means of production; that if it doesn't, it becomes reactionary and disappears. A long time ago capitalism transformed itself into its opposite. Far from developing the means of production to the benefit of society as a whole, it has been converted into a reactionary and decadent force. Capitalism cannot develop the means of production and the quality of services for the simple reason that it does not want to be superseded. Today, we note that there are ingenious inventions that are capable of transforming solar energy into mechanical, electrical and atomic energy, and so on, and that these are used solely for belligerent purposes. All that they have which is of benefit to the masses is bought up and obscured in order that these inventions to not prejudice already established interests.
Another example which it is interesting to analyse is that of transport, whose energy comes from oil or petrol, and which finds itself precisely in the hands of these commercial groups. Today we see how through corruption they bought off union leaders to wage a struggle, which is beneficial to their enterprises, against electrical and state transport, which have now disappeared, alleging loss of passengers, unfair competition and the laying off of drivers which would follow from it, which is completely untrue since lay-offs are the product of capitalism and the concentration of profits in the hands of a handful of millionaires. On the contrary, the planning and the use of non-polluting methods permits a rational use of resources, a better quality of life, and the elimination of unemployment thanks to centralised state planning associated with genuine workers control.

Private enterprise, the manager of corruption
Private enterprise dominates the state, whose only goal is to shed all its public duties which, through history, it has been obliged to assume, both through the pressure of the struggles of the exploited class and through the interest it had in dominating these demands and divert them to its own profit. This is why we have social security, health, education etc. Other parameters used for the corruption of the state include: according to the facts related by FLASCO (Latin American Foundations of Social Commerce), because of the inefficiency of state enterprises, which are now privatised, we know that their profitability reached $1,500 million. In an equal period of operation in private hands we know that the taxes paid to the treasury reported by the enterprises was barely $170 million. We are not talking here of enterprises at the service of a proletarian state subject to a centralised plan, but simply of bourgeois state enterprises, which overturns all the theories which argue that private enterprise is more profitable. It would be more correct to say that it is, but not to the benefit of the state or the people, to the extent that it invests, through taxation, this quantity of capital in the amelioration of the lives of the poor. The truth is that private enterprises obtain greater profitability for a handful of exploiters, who pay back a tiny proportion to the state so that the latter can meet its bureaucratic expenses and maintain the armed forces and the police in order to drown in blood the social explosions which accompany, inevitably increasing in number, the concentration of wealth in the hands of private capital.
Private capital, with its ideology of "the end of the world" eliminates little by little, and each time more rapidly, the perspective of going back at a certain moment to the production of its own national wealth. In the near future, all that will remain in the hands of the state will be an enormous quantity of offices and public institutions passed down to the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. For example, the municipalisation of education: under the cover of a false decentralisation, ministerial control of education was reduced, passing the control of education down to the municipalities. There already exists in each municipality an office designated for this purpose. This, multiplied by all the municipal offices in the country has not only increased bureaucratisation to the point of absurdity, but has equally given rise to even greater possibilities of corruption of the municipalities which extends to functionaries of all grades. This is due principally to the relaxation of state control and centralisation.
How is the Chilean bourgeois state carrying out the sale of Chile?
Through the transfer to private enterprise, and consequently to the multinationals. Let us remember the recent agreement in the framework of the Mercosur negotiations between Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. This agreement imposed on Chile a reduction of between 35% and 20% in its tariff levels, and was signed with pleasure by the representatives responsible for finance and the economy, as faithful guardians of the bosses interests, because this will considerably increase the profits of the big national enterprises which have large scale interests in the energy sources such as gas, electricity and drinking water services or in imported goods as is the case with the economic groups which appear in the table above in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. These capitals, as Lenin said, transcend national frontiers in order to install themselves in other countries, forming transnational monopolies, in this case precisely a monopoly within another which is even bigger, which will allow their products to re-enter with a lower level of taxes than in our own country, thus tilting the balance of prices in their favour. Because even if it is a matter of capitals whose origin is national which are putting pressure on for a lowering of prices in order to increase their competitiveness, they will make large gains by importing products which they produce externally, thanks to the reduction in tariff barriers. Those who are in debt and are not in a position to compete are the small and medium producers - who today are already finding themselves up to their necks in debt - the reduction in tariffs will not allow them to maintain their competitiveness.
The bourgeois state, having resort to all kinds of tricks, to the most shameless corruption, is shedding all enterprises which represent a social burden, and which, not being in private hands, put a brake on competitiveness. besides, this means that this policy, at the end of the day, does not make any sense: without planning for the future, how much time will it take to exhaust the nation's underground and undersea resources, its nature and wildlife, as well as the Chilean people? Without a doubt, less than a generation. A tiny example among the infinite number that one could cite, is that of the cutting down of the forests in the south of our country which is advancing at a daily rate of seven football fields, causing natural disasters in these zones due to the break up of the ecosystem. In summary, neoliberalism is the modern and savage tendency of capitalism. Imperialism, in the final analysis, is imposing its diktats on whatever country and whatever economic grouping of the "Third World", no matter how crafty or base it is, as is the case with national groups who, in their mad rush to get their hands on everything, will end up with a triumphant revolution exploding in their faces, a revolution led by the party which clearly analyses the situation and leads the working class and all the sectors which feel the oppression of imperialism.
In pursuing this analysis of the transfer of national wealth into private hands and consequently to imperialism, we have the case of CORFO (Development Corporation), the state organ charged with the administration and the control of a series of enterprises which are key to national development and which will be totally privatised or just the best cases, reduced to their simplest expression after the accord signed with President Frei comes into effect, as with the sale of COLBUN (Mining Enterprise) and the sanitary enterprises, and this because they earn considerable profits since they represent 98% of the 80bn pesos generated by these enterprises in 1995. The transfer of state enterprises is being carried out in an indirect way as is the case with CODELCO (Copper Corporation), whose turnover surpasses $2,500 million, through multinationals taking out a stake in the company through holdings. These stakes permit the private sector to have some control over decisions and to gain a threefold advantage at the expense of the state sector and the wage earners:
a) In order to direct and enterprise and decide its activities, it is not necessary to buy in completely, because with a stake of 51% you can control two enterprises for the price of one.
b) The possible losses are cushioned and divided into two equal parts, one of which is the responsibility of the state, the other that of the smallest individual shareholders.
c) The profits are not reinvested at the same rate as the participation of the state and the treasury, as was foreseen at the time of the acquisition of the holding.
In this sense, we know for example that Frei announced in his last speech the opening of a process of incorporation of a strategic associate into COLBUN, apparently out of a concern to push forward and promote a greater degree of competition in this sector. The latter has to commit itself to immediately invest some $440 million in the enterprise, and to commit itself to a plan for $100 million annual investments, all this without a clear definition of how the state will exercise its control over this, because according to CORFU, it is impossible to establish in a way that is clear to see and as a function of the market value whether such an associate controls less than 50% of the shares in the enterprise. The only thing which is recognised is for the state to maintain an important percentage in the enterprise. The problem is knowing what the state and what CORFU consider as an important stake. A 49% stake could be considered important, but that would leave control in the hands of the associate. This shows that this speech on the control of the state is nothing but lies. Let us add in addition that state control means nothing unless an adequate and competent regulatory framework is established in this sector.
As regards payment of taxes to the treasury, private enterprise has woven an extended web of strategic investment aimed at buying the silence and the co-operation of the tax officials in their dealings with them. One buys professionals with qualifications, with superior courses abroad or specialist seminars, all this being accompanied by an increase in salaries. A professional with more than three years experience in an expert accountant's office could probably get a job in a private firm at twice the pay he receives in public service. The consequence: this leads to a considerable turnover of professionals in these sectors, around 13% per year on average as a proportion of the overall number of personnel.
Let's take one more example, that of a project which has made a great deal of noise. This affair overlaps so much with American capital and the World Bank that it is more convenient for the puppet government to co-operate in restricting the responsibility to within national organisations. This is because the World Bank, through its official responsible for credits, did not put the tender out for the construction of the project to other companies that might have won the contract. The Chilean government did not get involved in this affair, the World bank having granted Chile a total of 12 loans over the past five years which totalled $741.3 million. It is understandable for this reason, then, that all the claims that have been presented to this organisation have always been dealt with through friendly conversations and never in the entire history of the World Bank has it gone to arbitration. It is for this reason that the formalities with regard to the limitation of responsibility at the end of the day are subject to the orders of the World Bank. Let us remember here that the amount which the tax authorities were swindled out of is estimated at some $14 million.

Conclusion
The phenomenon of corruption is a social problem which cuts across the entire bourgeois state system and the capitalist system in general, based on private property. The expropriation of social production cannot escape private control. Through money and usury, capitalism built a new social power. On this subject, Marx and Engels argued that: "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation." (Manifesto of the Communist Party)
Currently, the spectre of corruption haunts the entire capitalist system and it is not a question of being content to think about it. From its very origin, since the emergence of democracy in Athens and the constitution of the first police state to protect the possessions of the rich and to carry out the crimes committed against the dispossessed with the aim of appropriating their goods, it has always been this way. Today in our country this social phenomenon which is present in the government, the municipalities, the private corporations, the state etc., and which gives a free hand to the laundering of money, the trafficking, to prostitution etc., is constantly present. We communists have not only to denounce this, but also to fight it to the finish, shoulder to shoulder with the mass organisations and fronts, with every conscious Chilean, with a genuinely revolutionary and popular alternative, to the point of conquering and redefining a state based on proletarian morality, whose functionaries will be at the service of the class and the future of national development.