Chile 1973

’Latin America’s 9/11’

www.socialistworld.net, 11/09/2009
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

Tragic anniversary of military coup

John Reid, Socialist Party (CWI England and Wales)

Salvador Allende was narrowly elected President of Chile on 4 September 1970, receiving 36.3% of the vote. He defeated the conservative Christian Democrat government which had been discredited in the eyes of workers and peasants by its failure to implement social reforms.

Troops had been used against workers and peasants who had moved into action in an attempt to realise their demands. The radicalised workers and peasants elected a Popular Unity (UP) government, made up of Socialists, Communists and smaller middle class parties. They hoped capitalism could be eradicated by peaceful constitutional means, a parliamentary road to socialism.

Reforms

The UP government introduced free school meals and milk within weeks of the election, wages were increased and the living standards of the poorest in society were raised by 20%. Near full employment was achieved in the three years of this government.

Land occupations by peasant groups speeded up land reforms. Nine million acres of land was distributed to the poor peasants. These reforms increased the popularity of the government whose share of the vote went up to 51% in the mayoral elections in May 1971.

Workers and peasants pressed for further reforms. In many cases workers occupied factories and peasants took over the land of the big landowners. Despite measures to curb these movements by the government and the CUT (Chile’s TUC) who told workers not to occupy the factories for fear of provoking reaction, the attitude of workers hardened.

In a brilliant scene from Patricio Guzman’s documentary film The battle of Chile, filmed between 1970 and 1973, a worker answers a CUT official saying: "The plants do not belong to Switzerland or Queen Elizabeth of England but to the workers, we should stand up to the rightists and nationalise the plants"

US outrage

The Chilean capitalists and American imperialism were appalled at the election victory. The American ambassador cabled Washington: "Chile voted calmly to have a Marxist-Leninist state, the first nation in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly." America feared another Cuba on its doorstep and feared the end of capitalism in Chile.

The huge US-owned copper industry was nationalised with little compensation paid to the capitalist owners. Other large industries too were nationalised or partially nationalised. But large areas of the economy were left untouched as was the judiciary, media, education and, most importantly, the armed forces.

The UP promised not to curtail the powers and privileges of the armed forces, nor the rule of the officer caste. The armed forces were regarded by UP leaders as constitutionally loyal and neutral, rather than as Karl Marx had explained 100 years earlier, the armed defenders of capitalist property.

Popular Unity even allowed them to carry out joint manoeuvres with the US military. The only area where the US did not employ an embargo of goods into Chile was in military supplies. Even simple reforms such as a trade union rights for members of the armed forces, the freedom of political association and the free circulation of political material were prohibited.

At first the Chilean ruling class did not move to crush Allende fearing a back lash from workers and peasants who overwhelmingly supported UP. Only the right wing National Party, who had a fascist military wing - ’Fatherland and Freedom’, wanted to organise a coup before Allende assumed the presidency.

The ruling class bided its time and used the press, television and judiciary to stir up unrest. The US spy agency, the CIA, financed reactionary forces to destabilise the economy.

Henry Kissinger, US secretary of state in the Nixon administration, cabled the local CIA chief: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup." Nixon’s orders were "to make the economy scream". Following the 1970 election new investment and loans to Chile were stopped by the US. There was a flight of capital engineered by the US which caused economic instability.

Reaction gathers pace

The bosses went on the offensive in August 1972 by organising a national business strike. But this angered the workers and peasants and made them even more militant. The government called a demonstration to celebrate two years of power and one million people, 10% of the population, marched in the biggest demonstration in Chilean history.

Sabotage of the economy led to 200% inflation. This particularly affected the middle classes whose savings become worthless. This insecurity pushed them away from support for UP and towards the side of reaction.

Egged on by the press and financed by the bosses and the CIA, strikes of the middle classes were organised in October 1972. These strikes involved teachers, airline pilots, shop keepers, bank employees, lawyers and most damagingly lorry owners. This action crippled the economy and led to huge shortages. The price of copper, Chile’s largest export, fell by 33% on the world market, which cost Chile $200 million in 1971 prices.

All over Chile Los Cordones Industriales (elected workers’ co-ordinating committees) were set up. The cordones demanded the nationalisation of big firms, workers’ control over all production in all industries, farming and the mines through delegate councils. They also agreed that all delegates should be recallable and that a popular assembly be established to replace Parliament. Workers also demanded arms to defend themselves against the growing reaction.

In the shanty towns ’people’s supply committees’, JAP’s, were set up to ensure food distribution, to deal with the shortages caused by the boss’s strikes. They organised food distribution to 300,000 families, half the population of the capital, Santiago. These organisations were embryonic soviets or workers’ councils; they had a revolutionary outlook but lacked a revolutionary party that would have been able to lead the working class to seize power.

A situation of ’dual power’ existed in Chile where the workers had large elements of power and control but the capitalist class still controlled the levers of state power.

Popular Unity had a choice; either they lean on these workers’ organisations and end the rule of capital or eventually, as we warned at the time, the ruling class would move to overthrow Allende’s government.

Popular Unity argued that the workers were moving "too fast", and in an attempt to placate big business, troops and police were used to break occupations of factories, arms were seized from workers who had acquired them to defend themselves from armed fascist gangs. Of course many of these attacks on workers were initiated by army and police chiefs.

Coup d’état

The capitalist class hoped the Congressional elections in March 1973 would act as a ’white coup’ to bring down the government. If the bosses’ parties received 66% of the vote they could have constitutionally removed Allende. But despite of the chaos in the economy UP still received 44% of the vote. Reaction now accelerated. The fascist ’Fatherland and Liberty’ thugs now began to assassinate workers’ leaders and trade unionists.

In June 1973 a pre-emptive coup organised by a small section of the military was quashed by armed forces led by general Pratts (who was assassinated by the military after the coup) and backed by general Pinochet. Allende should have moved decisively to mobilise an armed movement of the workers to end the rule of capital. Instead, three members of the military were brought into the cabinet including Pinochet! One month before the coup the Communist Party praised the "professionalism and neutrality of the armed forces".

This was not the view of the rank and file of the army and navy some of whom warned the UP about preparations for a new coup. Many of these sailors and soldiers were disciplined by their officers for taking this action; hundreds were killed after the coup. Allende backed the officers believing the soldiers or sailors were scaremongering and slandering the loyal heads of the armed forces.

On the third anniversary of the election of Popular Unity, 800,000 workers marched through Santiago chanting, "Allende, Allende, the people will defend you". In vain they also demanded arms to defend the government.

The right wing were terrified by this show of strength, and even given Allende’s failure to move decisively, feared that the workers would independently seize control of society. A week later on 11 September 1973, they struck. The Presidential palace was bombed by British supplied jets and Allende decided to die in the palace rather than seek refuge in a friendly embassy.

Stages theory

Trajically, THE policies of Popular Unity disarmed the working class, politically. Firstly, the right wing of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party believed in a gradual and ’reformist’ road to socialism, ie first of all there would be a capitalist ’democratic revolution’ that would develop local industry by protecting it from imperialist control and end the semi-feudal ownership of land etc. Only at an unspecified later stage there would be a transition to socialism.

In contrast the forerunners of the Socialist Party argued, at the time, that the experience of the Russian revolution of 1917 had shown the democratic revolution in a colonial or neo-colonial country can only be completed by the working class in the course of making its own socialist revolution - this, in essence, is Trotsky’s theory of the ’permanent revolution’. If the Bolshevik-led revolution had not removed the Kerensky government then reaction in the form of a military coup would have succeded.

Secondly, they believed the state was neutral; that the working class could achieve a degree of state power through an electoral path and could use this path to gradually transform society.

That the existing state machine could be used to gradually end capitalism flew in the face of Marxism. The defeat of the workers’ Paris Commune in 1871, proved that the workers cannot readily lay hold of the capitalist state machinery and wield it for its own class interests. On the contrary, it must be destroyed and replaced with a democratic workers’ state.

This lesson is vitally important in relation to the role of the armed forces. A relatively peaceful socialist revolution is possible but only if the reactionary officer caste is removed. UP leaders should have clearly explained this task and taken practical steps to carry this through.

Policies should have been put in place to split the armed forces along class lines. Armed workers’ militias should have been set up to defend the gains of the workers and peasants.

Popular Unity was overthrown because there existed a threat that the working class would make a socialist revolution in spite of the restraining policies and holding back of the revolution by both the right wing in the Socialist Party (of which Allende was a member) and by the Communist Party in the government.

Reaction succeeded ultimately because Allende failed to deal a decisive blow against capitalism at a time when he had the majority of society behind him. He had just won 51% in the mayoral elections, workers and peasants supported him as did large sections of rank and file in the armed forces and members of the middle class.

Part of the Christian Democratic Party split away into the Christian Left, calling for the construction of socialism. Even large sections of the Catholic Church supported the Government. Over 70% of priests saw Christianity and the construction of socialism as compatible.

If UP had finished the job and taken the levers of power out of the hands of the ruling class, nationalised the land and the 270 or so companies which controlled the bulk of the economy, and introduced democratic workers control, management and ownership with a central plan of production, the bosses would have been rendered impotent.

It would have also shone as a beacon to the masses of Latin America and to the workers of the US, who were already radicalised by the huge anti-Vietnam War movements.

The Chilean workers had the combativity to carry out ten revolutions. Tragically, they were left politically disarmed as well as not being armed with weapons to defend themselves.

Although small numbers of socialists and communist activists fought bravely, on the eve of the coup most stayed at home on the advice of their leaders who believed a section of the military would stay loyal and defend the government. The brutal military dictator Pinochet came to power without a great struggle, but with terrrible and lasting consequences for the working class in Chile and internationally.

Under Pinochet’s dictatorship Chile became a laboratory for ’neo-liberal’ policies which were used uproot to all the social reforms won under Popular Unity. Later, these measures of curtailing the welfare state and privatising industry would by adopted by US president Ronald Reagan and by Tory premier, Margaret Thatcher.

The 1973 Chile coup serves as a warning to workers everywhere. Without a thoroughgoing socialist programme for the transformation of society the capitalist class will violently resist any attempt to curtail their power.

From The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party, CWI England and Wales