REVOLUTIONARY
CHILE INTERVIEW WITH A MARXIST We publish below on interview with a Chilean comrade of the Fourth International who was arrested two weeks after the September 1973 coup and managed to get out of Chile after eleven months* imprisonment. The interview deals primarily with two questions: the relationship between the workers mobilizations and the policy of the Unidod Popular, and the sort of preparetion that was made before the coup, which everyone expected after the June 29, 1973, attempted coup. Question. Could you tell us about the relationship between the workers mobilizations and the Unidad Popular parties during the three years of the Allende government? Answer. During the first period of the Unidad Popular, the workers, both industrial and agricultural, were permitted certain initiatives; they began at varying rates to make experiments in workers administration and control. Nevertheless, the leading group of the Unidad Popular had no clear vision of what the state or the relationship of forces would be. The control of the party and trade-union apparatuses could not have been manifested more clearly. During this first period, everyone, in all sectors, was trying to go through new experiences. Given the paralysis of the country, emergency measures had to be taken, This was a period of initiatives during which the worken were left alone. The workers upsurge was so strong that the political and trade-union bureaucracy could not control it and did not want to control it, or, in any case, But during the second year, the state apparatus (penetrated by the Unidod Popular) and the party bureaucrocies began to make their domination felt. The Socialist party, for example, was turned into a veritable employment agency. The so-called "Occupation Commission" of the SP Central Committee collected dossiers and the chiefs of the civil service were obliged to employ the people who were recommended. This procedure spread into all sectors of industry, construction, and so on. Later, when the sectors of the economy were being divided up, the political parties distributed the posts among their members. A bureaucratic layer violently imposed itself ogainst the initiatives of the masses during the second year. In the textile industry, for example, the leaders who hod first taken over this social sector were removed. They were replaced by a Textile Committee composed of representatives of all the UP parties. Little by little they managed to paralyze the textile industry. The same thing happened in the construction in dustry. The workers heading the industry were replaced by unconditional supporters of the SP, and that led to a gradual paralysis of the construction industry as well; nothing was being built. 30
In the textile industry, the benefits that were granted the worker -- in the form of yards of cloth given to each worker each week -- diverted the attention of people who thus did not seek to win other benefits. The CP and tha SP basically limited themselves to presenting demands similar to the ones they had put forward before (high economic demands, so that they could get what they wanted at the end of the negotiations). They presented a series of demands to their own goverment. The leaders of the UP parties vigorously encouraged the workers to raise only economic demands; nevertheless, in the construction industry, the Nueva Habana and Puente Alto work sites reacted against this, understanding the folly of the trode-union leaders and their tendency to try to buy off the worken. A left opposition developed among the construction workers at those two sites in order to avoid once again being turned toward exclusively economic problems and abandoning the political problems, which were more important. The majority of the workers were directed toward economic problems and not toward the problem that everyone saw, the problem of the incessant intensification of basic contradictions. This layer of bureaucrats that was sent into every industry did its best-to impose its own rules. Thus, the well known law on participation wes in practice a form of compromise of the workers with management, which was imposed from the top and wos generally a bod management. But the workers were beginning to replace this management with their own control. They had learned and understood that they could manage the industries themseives and soive their own problems. In certain industries there was a rather clear will to get rid of the political and trade-union bureaucrats. This phenomenon developed more slowly in agriculture. The agricultural workers also suffered the intervention of assessors and coordinators, but not at the same rate as the other workers. In the construction industry. for example, in the second year of the UP goverment there was already a general paralysis on the work sites. In the last few months, joblessness reached 70 percent, the number of workers who had nothing to do but come and pick up their wages was very high, and these workers were ashamed. Also, when these same burecucrats who had paralyzed the industries called for defense of the government (when parliamentary charges were brought against government ministers, for example), the workers mobilized less and less each time, because they didn't see why they should defend these bureaucrats who they had been boost their economic level very sharply. In just a few months they had been able to get hold of good cars, buy houses in the "good neighborhoods, " and ostentafiously live "lo dolce vita. " Such were the representatives of the parties. Not all of them were like that. Some really worked very honestly and developed ties with the workers; but these were very few and, in reality, the workers and peasants saw the growth of a bureaucratic layer that was paralyzing them.
The phenomena of bureaucratization and degeneration cropped up in the sector of production and the public administration. Given the legal regulations (the law on the irremovability of governmen unctionaries, passed during the Frei government), the UP could not appoint more than 2 percent of the functionaries without dismantling the whole apparatus. It would simply appoint functionaries close to the president, people who held his confidence, elements that hod integrated themselves into the previsus bureaucratic apparatus and were already entrenched and would create new difficulties. The bureaucrecy, which was already large numerically, increased still more during the second year of the UP government. Nothing could be done without prior consultation with the political commissions of the various parties; a director of some public institution could not resolve anything without first going to Morande (the street of the Moneda palace, the presidential residence) or to San Martin or Teatinos (locatiors of the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist and Socialist parties, respectively). During the first period, you could get away with violating the rules of the old bureaucracy, but later the new bureaucrats decided everything and thus paralyzed practically every social sector. The relations between the workers, the pablodores (inhabitants of the poblaciones, the poor neighborhoods) and the governments became more difficult. Several times the Ministry of Labor was occupied by the workers to make the government pay attention to their demands, something that never happened during the first year. There was a sharp change in the relations between the workers, the parties, and the state. There was the development of a phase of decomposition that was very obvious to the workers in all industries and which led to their demobilization. The number of times the workers were called upon to march to the center of the city in pilgrimages -- that's what they were called -- to parade before "San Chico" (Allende) and chant "Viva el Chico" and then immediotely turn around and go home eventually led to a certain weariness. Q. After the abortive tancazo at the end of June 1973 everyone wor talking about the possibility of a coup. What did the UP parties and the other left organizations do to prepare the masses for this possibility? A. After the fancozo, it was clear to everyone that a coup was on the way and the problem was to prepare for it. But during this period there wos an even greater division between the parties leaders and the rank and file. There were discussions at the top between the government and the Christian Democracy to try to find a solution. There were also discussions with the generals, at least during this period. The MIR did this too. The workers were conscious of the need to do something; they formed vigilence committees in the factories and on the work sites, but because of the weapons-control law, the best they could do was to try to get organized. They succeeded, for example, in repelling some assaults by the Rolando Matul Commando, which was acting with complete impunity. The leaders of the parties and the trode unions were continually repeafing to the workers that there was no reason to be concerned, that "the generals are asleep, the officers are democrats, sure, there are some fascist-like sectors, but they are under control, the party will organize defense when the time comes." For the worken, this was a period of intense agitation. The cordones industriales pressed for a certain mobilization, but not a very large one, because they were already headed by a bureaucratic layer of the parties and the CUT (Confederación Unica de los Trabajadores - United Workers Confederation). Nevertheless, the cordones tried. Q. How did the workers ond the various political organizafions react when the coup broke out on September 112 A lot of controdictory things have been written about the resistance to the coup. Could you teil us concretely what was the reality and the strength of the resistance? A. According to the information from those who participated in them, it was in the cordones (in particular Cerrillos and Vicuña Mackenna) and in the agricultural zones around Santiago that the main resistance occurred. The workers organized resistance wherever they could. Thus, in Cordon Cerrillos they blocked the streets, distributed arms, and confronted the milifary. But the workers acted by themselves, without any coordination or leadership. For the most part it was young workers, members of all the parties and those that were in no party at all, not just, the militants of the MIR and the revolutionary organizations. In the center of the city the resistance developed only around the Ministry of Public Works, the headquarters of the parties were destroyed early in the morning. The workers did not abandon their work places, despite the order for a "strategic retreat" that came down on the night of September 11. Many of them could not believe that order and waited two or three days for their leaders to call them to oction. Then the military took over the factories and transferred the people they found there to concentration camps. Wherever the workers resisted, they were massacred. Among those held in the National Stadium, nearly 90 percent were young workers, less than thirty years old. The constant question every time a new group of prisoners orrived was, What factory are you from? As for the participation of the MIR In the resistance, one can say that these militants participated in the textile industry and in Cordon Cerrillos, but more through individual initiative than by centralized leadership. Apparently, no system of liaison had been developed. According to the information of the MIR militants who were taken prisoner, there was no real planning, nor defense, nor counteroffensive. It was the rank and file militonts that acted. The MIR leadership did not come forward and there was no concerted action. The MIR militants also participated in the resistance in the agricultural zone around Santiago, but in the same way as in the cityIn Santiago, the encampments and poblaciones that could be said to be controlled by the MIR did not react either. This was not a partial phenomenon; it occurred in all sectors. It did not affect only certain parties; it was general. Everywhere there was a certain fatalism; it was proctically a surrender. The city of Santiago, that is, greater Santiago, has a population of around 3 million. In the construction industry alone, there were 40,000 workers. Nevertheless, a total of not more than 20,000 troops were able to take control of the city in a few hours. The workers were in their work places, where they went when they heard the news of the military uprising in Valparaiso. They were all prepared to respond to the call of the leaders of their unions and parties. But they waited in vain. The conditions for resistance to the coup existed. First of all, the workers had the will to defend themselves, os they did in fact on their own initiative in the rare places where they hod
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Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 - Bruxelles Imprimerie spéciale de l'editeur.
the means with which to confront the military. And up to a rather late hour of the morning of September 11 there were also means of communication; proof of this is that Allende himself twice spoke to the country on the radio, but not to issue the orders that the workers and pesants of Santiago were waiting for. Instead, he appealed for calm and told the workers not to launch any action that would lead to a massacre; a massacre that was not averted on any case. No leader of the UP or the other movements used these means of communication to call on the workers to struggle. Nor did the armed apparatuses of the parties and movements give the workers the arms they hod, except in very rare cases. The inability of the leadership to accomplish its task must be traced to the old reformist trodition, a decades-old tradition of entrenched distrust of the working class and distrust of the initiative of the workers on the part of these leaders, who for a long time had managed the proletariat in their own interests. FRANCE The last meeting of the National Council of the PSU (Parti Socialiste Unifié-- United Socialist party, a centrist formation) led to a change in the leadership of the party. The debate af the meeting was exclusively about whether or not to Fuse with the new Socialist party led by François Mitterrand after the Assembly For Sociolism called by the SP for October 12-13. The SP is making use of its success in the presidential election campaign to try to draw into its ranks both a section of the CFDT (Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail--French Democratic Confederation of Labor) and the PSU. For several months, the old leodership of the PSU had alreody been working with the leodership of the SP, especially the Mauray majority tendency, behind the back of the party. Three tendencies clashed af the National Council. There was the old majority, led by Rocard and Chapuis, which accepted the entry into the SP and got about 35% of the votes; the left tendency, led by the federations of Paris (Mousel) and Besancon (Piaget), which rejected entry into the 5P on the basis of a perspective of self-managed socialism to be achieved through the destruction of bourgeois institutions. Their intervention was rather confused on various points, notably on the role and nature of the revolutionary party. This left tendency, mare and more influenced by former Communist militants who have rallied to the PSU, got about 40% of the votes, which represents a gain of about 10% compared to the vote it got during the fight around the question of whether to run Piage! as o candidate in the presidential elections last May. Finally, there was a third tendency, much more heterogeneous politically, which was closer to the general lines of the 32