Fascism/Antifascism (4)
| CHILE |
| It is probably the example of Chile which has done the most to revitalize the false opposition democracy /fascism. This case illustrates all too well the mechanism of the triumph of dictatorship, involving in this instance the triple defeat of the proletariat. |
| Contemporary to the events in Europe, the Chilean Popular Front of the thirties had already designated its enemy as the "oligarchy." The struggle against oligarchic control of the legislature, presented as a stifling of the most conservative forces, facilitated the evolution towards a more centralized, presidential system with reinforced State power, capable of pushing reforms, i.e. industrial development. This Popular Front (which lasted essentially from 1936 to 1940) corresponded to the conjuncture of the rise of the urban middle classes (bourgeoisie and white collar workers) and working class struggles. The working class was organized by the socialist labour federation (decimated by repression); by the anarcho-syndicalist C.G.T., influenced by the I. W. W. and rather weak (20 to 30 thousand members out of a total of 200,000 unionized); and especially by the federation under Communist Party influence, The unions of white collar workers had carried on strikes in the twenties as fierce as those of the industrial workers excepting those two bastions of working class militancy: the nitrate (later, copper) and coal industries. Although insisting on agrarian reform the socialist-Stalinist-Radical coalition did not succeed in imposing it on the oligarchy. The coalition didn't do much to recover the wealth lost to foreign exploitation of natural resources (primarily nitrate), but engineered a jump in industrial production such as Chile has never known before or since. By means of institutions similar to those of the New Deal, the State secured the major portion of investments and introduced a State capitalist structure, concentrating on heavy industry and energy. Industrial production increased during this period by 10% per annum; from this period to 1960, by 4% per annum; and during the sixties, by 1 to 2% per annum. A re-unification of the socialist and Stalinist labour federations took place at the end of 1936 and weakened still more the C.G.T.; the Popular Front wiped out anything truly subversive. As a coalition this regime lasted until 1940 when the Socialist party withdrew. But the regime was able to continue until 1947 backed by Radicals and the Communist Party as well as the intermittent support of the fascist Phalange (rightist ancestor of Chilean Christian Democracy and the party of origin of Christian Democrat leader Eduardo Frei [9] ) . The Communist Party supported the regime until 1947 when it was outlawed by the Radicals. |
| As the leftists always tell us, Popular Fronts are also products of working class struggle, but of a struggle which remains within the framework of capitalism and pushes Capital to modernize itself. After 1970, the Unidad Popular gave itself as a goal the revitalizing of Chilean national Capital (which the P.D.C. had not known how to protect during the sixties), while integrating the workers. In the end the Chilean proletariat was defeated three times over. Firstly, by dropping their economic struggles to array themselves under the banner of the forces of the Left, accepting the new State because it was supported by the "workers'" organisations. Allende responded in 1971 to this question: |
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"Do you think it possible to avoid the dictatorship of the proletariat ?"
"I think so: it is to this end that we are working." [10] |
| Secondly, in suffering repression at the hands of the military after the coup d'état, contrary to what the leftist press said about "armed resistance." The proletarians had been disarmed materially and ideologically by the government of Allende, The latter had forced the workers to surrender their arms on numerous occasions. It had itself initiated the transition towards a military government by appointing a general as Minister of the Interior. In placing themselves under the protection of the democratic State, which was congenitally incapable of avoiding totalitarianism (because the State is above all for the State--democratic or dictatorial--before it is for either democracy or dictatorship), the proletarians condemned themselves in advance to paralysis in the face of a coup from the Right. An important accord between the U.P. and the P.D.C. affirmed: |
| "We desire that the police and the armed forces continue to guarantee our democratic order, which implies the respect of the organized and hierarchical structure of the army and the police." |
| However the most ignoble defeat of all was the third. Here one must bestow on the international extreme Left the medal which it deserves. After having supported the capitalist State in order to push it further, the Left and the extreme Left posed as prophets: "We warned you: the State is the repressive force of Capital." The same ones who six months earlier had stressed the entry of radical elements into the army or the infiltration of revolutionaries into the whole of political and social life, now repeated that the army had remained "the army of the bourgeoisie," and that they had known it all along... |
| Evidently searching first to justify their inextricable failure, they made use of the emotion and shock caused by the coup d'état in order to stifle the attempt by some proletarians (in Chile and elsewhere) to draw lessons from these events. Instead of showing what the U.P. did and what it could not do, these leftists revived the same old politics, giving it a left wing tinge. The photo of Allende grasping an automatic weapon during the coup became the symbol of left wing democracy, finally resolved to fight effectively against fascism. The ballot is O.K. , but it's not enough: guns are also necessary--that's the lesson the Left draws from Chile. The death of Allende himself, sufficient "physical" proof of the failure of democracy, is disguised as proof of his will to struggle. |
| "Now, if in the performance their interests prove to be uninteresting and their potency impotence, then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile camps, or the army was too brutalized and blinded to comprehend that the pure aims of democracy are the best thing for it itself .... In any case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went into it. " (Marx) [11] |
| As for inquiring into the nature of the U.P., into the content of this famous struggle (by ballots one day, by bullets the next), in short, into the nature of capitalism, communism, and the State, well that is another matter, a luxury one cannot afford when "fascism attacks." One could also ask why the industrial "cordons" scarcely budged. But now is a time for pulling together: defeat brings the antifascists together even more surely than victory. Conversely, regarding the Portuguese situation, one must avoid all criticism under the pretext of not doing anything to hinder the "movement." In fact one of the first declarations of the Portuguese Trotskyists after April 25, 1974, was to denounce the "ultra-leftists" who did not want to play the game of democracy. |
| In short, the international extreme Left was united in obstructing the decipherment of the Chilean events, in order to detach the proletarians still further from the communist perspective. In this way the Left is preparing the return of Chilean democracy on the day when Capital has need of it again. |
| [9] This support ranging from the extreme right to the left should not be surprising. It's common enough for Latin American Communist parties to support military or dictotorial regimes on the grounds they are "progressive" in the sense of supporting the Allies during World War II, developing national capitalism, or making concessions to the workers. Cf. Victor Alba, Politics & the Labor Movement in Latin America, Stanford (1968). Maoists and Trotskyists often behave the same way, e.g. in Bolivia. |
| [10] Le Monde, Feb. 7-8 (1971). |
| [11] Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, International, New York (1972), p. 54. |