23 years on from the fascist military coup of 1973, it seems to us that is more than necessary to continue to unravel, from a correct marxist-leninist point of view, the elements which made it possible. Not to do this would not only deny us the future advance and victory, but also would mean that the blood shed by the heroes of the people before, during and after the coup d'etat of 1973 would have been wasted.
The dark beast came out of the barracks and extended its activity and its domination over the whole of society. The "democratic" bourgeois institutional framework that existed at that time could no longer regulate and safeguard national and social domination and exploitation of the people and the workers. The later were advancing on many fronts, after the aspirations for the conquest of political power. The petty-bourgeois and reformist illusions about the peaceful evolution from the state of the exploiters and imperialism to an independent workers state, spread by the revisionists and opportunists from the very heart of "Popular Unity", died quickly despite the ideological and organic confusion that reined, thus announcing the masses breaking with the political institutional framework and taking the road to revolutionary struggle.
Local reaction and their Yankee bosses had received many blows through nationalisations, agrarian reforms, state take-overs (although with heavy compensation, in many over valued) and other measures taken by the progressive government headed by Salvador Allende, in agreement with the pressure of the masses which had elected it. The masses, with their mobilisation and the gains they had won, were growing in terms of their objectives and their determination to fight.
Organising a coup d'etat, in order to re-establish the state, was a vital necessity for Yankee imperialism and internal reaction, and there was no indecision on their part in this respect, and nor did they overlook any area or task. Marx and his scientific warning that the reactionary classes will never give up power of their own free will, were brought out fully. In the first place, the price paid for denying this truth was, and still is, very high. This is not only in terms of actual victims who were assassinated, tortures, sent into exile, thrown into jail etc., which threw the world into consternation, both through the scale and the cruelty of what was carried out. It is also true in terms of development and social gains. In fact we can say, without exaggeration, that we are starting from scratch in some respects, of course, as is logical, on a new basis created by the experience in the time and the events that have taken place. Nothing goes back exactly to its starting point - this is the mark of the defeat by reaction!
The overt and covert actions of the anti-popular, anti-national reactionary forces were given a clear and unified direction under the wing of Yankee imperialism, which knew how to use for their own benefit the confusion, the eclecticism, the factionalism, the vacillations and all the rest that followed from a "popular" political leadership which, independently of the honesty and courage of some of its members - which they certainly had - was steeped in petty bourgeois reformism and peaceful legalism, which was given spiritual nourishment by the revisionists at the head of the Khrushchevite ex-USSR.
While the reactionaries from "Fatherland and Freedom", the "National Party", the rightwing of "Christian Democracy" and other fascist paramilitary groups were marching in the streets calling on their political and armed forces to carry out a coup d'etat, the government side was insisting on the non-interventionist character of the armed forces, regarding them as the "people in uniform", calling on the masses to chant "Soldier, our friend, the people are with you". When the fascists were blowing up bridges and assassinated people, paralysing hospitals and transport with the employers associations, developing monopolisation and the black market in food stuffs, medicines, spare parts etc., when Channel 13 TV and the entire Mercurio press chain were inciting people and calling on them to take part in civil disobedience, the leadership of Popular Unity (UP) insisted on slogans like "the process is irreversible", "stay calm, these are only the tantrums of those who have been defeated," and making appeals to "increase production", "sow seeds in Spring", "voluntary labour" etc., creating a false idea about who held political power, as if this question had been resolved in favour of the people.
From the leftwing of UP and outside of it, actions were carried out which, although they claimed to be the use of revolutionary violence, in fact worsened the situation of the workers and people's movement, because lacking a just policy, in the majority of cases they made errors and the blows fell on the small and middle bourgeoisie. This being the case, the nerve and the dishonesty of the revisionists are even less acceptable, covering up their criminal responsibility (in sustaining the idea of a "peaceful road"), trying to get hold of the chestnut using the cat's paw, putting the blame on those they called "ultraleft" - the old MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) and PCR (Revolutionary Communist Party), for the military coup.
Once the coup had taken place, with all its consequences in terms of workers and people's deaths, with the brave ones who did not surrender and who took up resistance from the first day, one of the most heroic pages in the history of the Chilean people began to be written, which can only be surpassed by one written in the future revolutionary storms which leads to political power.
The confusion, the social democratic, social-christian and revisionist hybrid ideology left the people disarmed in every sense in the fact of criminal fascism, that historical curse. This confusion continued to lead the popular movement, having as its basis its widespread presence among the masses, such that many of the victims of fascism came from its ranks or were said to have done, which, as is natural, led to solidarity and support from the popular masses, who were indignant about the bloodthirsty and criminal fascism. The comparison between a past where the were some social gains and public liberty, and the fascist present with its generalised hunger and terror, were elements which help explain the ease with which the old petty-bourgeois opportunism placed itself at the head of the anti-fascist movement, especially if the absence of a real communist party is remembered. The Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) [PC(AP)] was born as a movement for the rebuilding of the Party on 8 November 1979, starting from a very small handful of revolutionary communists. In addition, there were enormous difficulties and struggles which they had to face, both from the side of fascism and from within the ranks of the people themselves, with the presence of a rejuvenated revisionism with mass support. If we add to this our own political misunderstanding derived from insufficient development, all together these factors did not allow us to occupy the position of the real vanguard in the anti-fascist struggle. However, from the time that the project for building the party was launched, the role of the PC(AP) is the essential basis for the development of the revolutionary movement in Chile today and above all of the future victory of the people.
It is worth remembering that the brutality of fascism meant that from within the centres of the imperialist powers themselves, including the then Russian social-imperialism, the old European Social-Democracy and Liberalism including the liberal sector of Yankee imperialism, unleashed an open intervention into the anti-fascist resistance movement, which was expressed in multifaceted support (particularly economic support) for the revisionist "Communist" Party, the now rejuvenated and neoliberal "Socialist" Party, the Christian-Democrat Party and other opportunist and social democratic variants. There was a dual objective: on the one hand, to bring an end to the burden of having a partner like Pinochet, and, principally, to make possible a way out of the dictatorship which would remain within the framework of capitalist domination and exploitation, preventing the anti-fascist fight from leading to the social and national liberation of Chile.
When the form of the struggle and the programmatic objectives of the movement against the dictatorship are examined, it is impossible not to notice the ideology which was at its head, which directed the anti-fascist fight and its economic and political demands towards the mere removal of Pinochet, covering up and denying the creation of a new, People's Democratic Chile, on the path towards socialism, which was and is the demand of the epoch.
On few occasions in the history of Chile - and international history - has there been such a level of interest in popular participation in the struggle against a governing regime, and the days of National Protest so lively. But once more like many times in history the agreements and the deals for the "transition" from open and criminal dictatorship to the disguised "democratic" dictatorship of capital were carried out behind the backs of the people. The activities of the armed struggle did not go beyond actions by the units, and were not mass actions, all, of course, under an amorphous "line of popular rebellion," whose foundations were affirmed in a United Nations Declaration on the right to rebellion and in phrases of St Thomas Aquinas. In summary, it was never intended to go beyond the removal of Pinochet and his fascist clique of a government. The rest is already known and is part of everyday life: the installation of the current "democracy of agreements" between the fascist bourgeoisie headed by Pinochet and the "democratic" bourgeoisie, which spans the "Concertacion" and its two governments and parties to the leadership of the revisionist CP.
The workers and people's struggle remained truncated. The depression, the apathy, the resignation, the going over to openly capitalist positions, in general terms seized hold of the massive anti-fascist movement which arose in the years of the dictatorship. It is due to the internal cause of this situation, that is to say, the lack of a leadership which was truly healthy, popular, and focused on the revolutionary transformation of society, that there was a growth of ideological dependence on foreign imperialism, particularly on Russian revisionism and social democracy which at that time supported the renegade Gorbachov and his perestroika. Only the PC(AP) fought and made clear the significance and dimensions of the bourgeois trick, the fall of the Berlin Wall, of the countries of Eastern Europe and of the revisionist USSR itself were the finishing touch for the open renunciation of the struggle for the revolutionary change of society.
With the advent of "protected democracy" or the "democracy of the agreements", the old bourgeois opposition to the dictatorship moved on to become a direct part of the neoliberal system of exploitation, installing themselves in parliament and in government. The "Socialist" Party (PS), the Party for democracy (PPD), Christian-Democracy (DC), the Radicals and Social Democrats not only produced agreements in order to "make possible the transition" from fascism to "democracy", but fully and completely adopted the constitutional, juridical, economic, military and police structure of fascism, to the point of competing with each other in its defence and application. The contradiction between them passed automatically to the symbolic level. The leadership of the revisionist "Communist" Party, be they more confused or less, more leftist or less, slogged away to get a place inside the "Concertacion", even at the price of indignity on many occasions.
All the currently legal parties are parties of the neo-liberal system and are for the neoliberal system. They only compete among themselves for the administration of existing institutional spaces. None of them aim to use them to the benefit of the people's fight for a new Chile, but, with more reforms or less, in order to get a slice of the cake of exploitation of the people, above all of the workers.
For a better understanding of reality, of the integration of numerous legal political parties into the capitalist system in its neoliberal form, let us think about a few examples, which will show even the most noble causes are today used by imperialism and the capitalists in order to continue their domination and exploitation of the workers and the people.
a) The struggles of the masses which have been unleashed through pressure from the base or through their own initiative, in order to make possible this or that electoral option (in this case local elections) have had only partial or immediate demands as their focus, which has meant that the strike movements end with the taste of defeat. This is how the coal miners, the health workers and the teachers strikes ended up.
b) Support and applause, from the "Concertation" to the "Communist" Party, for Chile's entry into MERCOSUR [regional common market in South America - transl.] which was imposed by capitalist and imperialist interests. In order to disguise this capitulation to imperialism, they speak of a certain degree of Latin American integration which will come from MERCOSUR in the margins of Yankee domination.
c) The use of real problems which urgently need to be solved in hygiene and environmental and ecological health, in order to destroy the small and medium sized Chilean firms, which use backward technology which in addition gives of pollution, thus leaving a free space for the imperialist transnationals who can count on up to date technology. The most conspicuous forces of "progress" (PS - PPD - PC - PH) have demanded the closure to this or that small factory for pollution, but have not once raised their voice to demand state loans so that the small firms and the small transport businesses can modernise their means of production with up to date technology and thereby reduce pollution, without destroying the little that remains of national industry or raising workers unemployment.
d) In the symbolic struggle between bourgeois forces, between the fascists and the Concertation-Communist Party, the latter have sided with the forces of imperialism, which, following on from privatisation, have demanded the reduction in the size of the armed forces, which could, through its size or its potential, within various reactionary options (such as fascist chauvinism) block some interest of Yankee imperialism. The problem is not the size of the armed forces, but their reactionary character, which is at the service of oppression and exploitation of the workers and the people. To obscure the fundamental problem and to remain at the level of form, is another sign that they have no alternative strategy to that of the current neoliberal order.
It is clear also that other positions have developed, which although they also say they are struggling against the system, in fact create confusion, disunity and backwardness in the popular movement. But since they are so undeveloped and extremely small without organic links to the masses, cannot be assimilated directly into one of the four parties. We are referring here to anti-party autonomism, anarchism, and indigenous fundamentalism. All of these are, however, a by-product of the confusing actions of the bourgeoisie.
Comrades and Friends,
We communist do not exist only to interpret reality. This is only one part of our functions, and once which besides loses its importance if it does not prepare us to intervene for the revolutionary transformation of society.
Both historical experience and the current situation show us that social change is a question which demands a solution, and for this we need a correct and scientific ideology, marxism-leninism, a political programme in line with the current social requirements, the People's Democratic Alternative, and adequate organisational expressions: the Communist Party of Chile (Proletarian Action) and the People's Democratic Assembly (ADP) and their specific levers, and healthy and combative social organisations.
Today is the time to reflect, to draw out the lessons, to throw of the ballast of opportunism, to dare to live out. From the workers and the people, from the revolutionary dignity of People's Democracy, we invite you to adopt, with courage and commitment, our Alternative, to put things in their place, to tell the truth and to prevent the workers and people's movement being led again towards defeat into a cul-de-sac, so that instead all its struggles will be crowned with triumph, with the taking of political power, with the creation of a new society. You decide: whether you remain in confusion with failed and false policies, or whether you unite with those who are building the project of victory, for a new People's Democratic Chile, focused on and at the service of the people. We have already decided!
History does not wait. The workers and the people, overcoming the errors and fetters of the past, are marching towards final victory over the exploitation and oppression of capitalism and imperialism!