MASSIVE LEFTWARD GROUNDSWELL IN CHILE
In the recent presidential elections in Chile, Alessandri, candidate of the consolidated right, squeezed out a victory over Allende, representing a coalition of the Socialist and Communist Parties plus other small popular forces, by about
. to 354,000, i e, less than 30,000 votes. leftward-moving middle-class vote not been split by the Radical candidacy of (250,000) and the candidacy of Bossay (190,000), Allende would have been swept up into power.
From the Santiago Mercurio to the New York Times, the conservative bourgeois press, though thankful for Alessandri's election, showed itself thoroughly alarmed by the strength behind Allende. And well it might be. The vote for the socialist candidate, rallying almost the entire working class, newly large sectors of the peasantry, and the more advanced strata of the urban middle class, constituted the greatest leftist concentration in the history of Chilean politics, and gave a resounding demonstration of the polarization of class forces in Chile. Particularly significant was the fact that in farming regions such as Talca, Chillán, and Molina, once bastions of the right, a very large number of poor peasants and rural proletarians swung over to back Allende.
The degree and speed of the politicization of the Chilean masses is shown by a simple confrontation of figures : only one-and-a-half years ago, the combined vote of the CP and the S P was only 160,000, less than half Allende's 354,000. The principal factor in this rapid and widespread trend was that Allende ran on an openly socialist ticket, with a programme which, though reformist rather than revolutionary in nature, was a progressive and a class one. As has been seen recently time and again all over the world, the vacillating middle class, seeking a new way out of its hopeless and confusing difficulties, is never won over by wishy-washy watered-down programmes; it seeks and will follow only a clear strong lead. And the lead that Allende gave was a stronger one than had been given in late years by the workers' parties, which had aroused distrust among the urban middle class on a consistent and decisive anticapitalist anti-imperialist programme.
The factor of next importance to the programme was the extraordinary drive and energy displayed by the workers in the campaign. Throughout the country there were created of Allendist united-front committees, proportion of which did not dissolve after the elections. the heartening groundswell that gave renewed confidence to the forces of the left, thousands of former members rejoined the workers' parties; and, what is more important, eager and enthusiastic youth made its entrance on the political scene. Perhaps most important of all was the considerable regions toward the Workers' Front, showing that the awakening peasantry is beginning to realize that its natural allies are the urban workers with their socialist programme.
It must not be forgotten that these Chilean developments are taking place, not in a vacuum, but on a continent in increasing ferment, where in the limitrophe country of Bolivia the revolutionary situation has reached an explosive pitch at which, if the workers still lack the organizations to lead them to the seizure of power, the capitalist state is in a condition of such chaos and weakness that it cannot even crush the organs of virtual dual power which have spontaneously arisen in several large areas.
The next period in Chile will be a critical one. Alessandri, with a mere 30% of the votes, has obviously only a weak and shaky base, and faces a majority of the Chilean people who are determined to fight against unemployment, rising prices and poverty, who clamor for decent housing, who will not swallow any more of imperialism's Klein-Sachs Plans. As Alessandri tries to apply the Klein-Sachs Plan with ever greater rigor, to narrow down democratic rights, and even to reintroduce the outrageous Ley de Defensa de la Democracia outlawing various workers' parties, he will run up against strong spontaneous resistance.
The question is whether that resistance will be, as in the past, scattered and ill-organized by a left whose leadership is wholly occupied in internecine conflicts, class collaborationism, and various kinds of shady deals, or whether the Workers' United Front established for the elections will be continued, strengthened, and extended, with a continuance of the existing committees on a national scale, and the adoption of a more revolutionary class programme.
In the former case, the immensely encouraging groundswell shown in these elections can spend its force ineffectively, with little gained. To realize how real this danger is, it suffices to recall how, after the March 1957 elections, with their 160,000 votes, the sole reaction of the bureaucratic CP and SP leaderships was to try to make opportunistic deals with the Radicals, Christian-Democrats, and others of that ilk, in order, they alleged, to extend the movement to broader popular sectors; or to see that already this time the CP leadership's first reaction was to complain that it had been criticized for trying to make a deal with the Radicals and Christian-Democrats for a coalition (and of course class-collaborationist ) government, while within the S Ps also right-wing voices are increasingly heard calling for various opportunist tricks.
But if the second course is followed, a new and promising period opens in Chile. As a first stage, it is necessary for the parties to show the masses appealed to on a mere temporary electioneering basis, that programmes are not just talk but action, and that the workers' parties are capable in practice of waging the struggle for: completing the unionization of the urban and rural workers to make the CUT into a genuine mass labor federation on a basis of nationwide and. vertical unionism ; nationalizing the giant imperialist corporations without in demnization and under workers' control; establishing a real American countries; establishing the sliding scale of wage and hours; expropriating without indemnization the great landed estates and distributing them to the landless peasants drawing up and putting into effect a plan for worker housing to be financed by special taxes on the rich; an nulling constitutional provisions which deny voting rights to those who have never had the chance to learn to read and write, and lowering the voting age to 18; and driving for the constitution of a CP - SP - CUT government. Such a peasantry to the side of the ever more self-confident workers
It is such a programme, as a first step, that the Chilean Trotskyists fought for during the Allende campaign, and that they propose to continue and extend in the period ahead.