(The following article, the third in a series of four, appeared in the May 23 issue of the French
Trotskyist weekly, Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Economic crisis; the impoverishment of an entire people; a working class that more than ever must pay the cost of the September 11, 1973, coup; repression; big and small maneuvers by a bourgeois opposition looking toward the Christian Democracy-the left seems to have little place in the tableau of the Chilean situation we have drawn so far.
In reality, in spite of the numerous declarations made abroad by the "leaders" or "representatives" of the parties that made up the Popular Unity, it is an unfortunate fact that these parties, with the exception of the Communist party, are too weak-sometimes so weak as to be nonexistent-and too divided to play any role whatsoever in the present circumstances.
The situation is almost identical for the Christian Left, the Radical party, or the two MAPUs [Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria-Movement for United People's Action, and Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria-Obrero y Campesino-Workers and Peasants Movement for United People's Action]. Here and there isolated militants who belonged to one or another of these groups continue to participate in individual discussions or small meetings. By means of fleeting contacts that are often broken off by the repression, plans for reorganizing are sketched out without anything very concrete coming of them.
As for the Socialist party, without being qualitatively different, it is in a situation of another sort. First, those who to any degree claim to be SP supporters are clearly more numerous than the adherents of the Christian Left, MAPU, or the Radical party. To be sure, that merely reflects the previous situation in the Unidad Popular, where the SP was a mass party with forces that were infinitely superior to those of these organizations. And in fact the SP's incredible political heterogeneity before the coup is now accentuated, sharpened, and made more sectarian among the survivors. The most elaborate form of centralization that a part of these SP militants are equipped with is a "coordination" of several regional 1078
'Our immediate concern is eliminating, uh, social problems
Christian Science Monitor leaderships, a coordination lacking any political homogeneity.
For the Communist party, it is quite a different matter. Greatly weakened, and encompassing a small number of forces compared with what it had two years ago, it has been able to rebuild a genuine national structure in spite of the death or dispersion of a large number of its secondary cadres. Evidence of this is its monthly publication, which, although mimeographed and poorly distributed, is the best source of information on the concrete situation of the working class in a number of plants throughout the country. In spite of its weaknesses, its influence and its audience remain large thanks to the daily broadcasts from Radio Moscow, the most listened-to station in Chile, in which its exiled leaders are regularly heard.
What lessons do these organizations draw from the historical events in which they were the protagonists and the victims? Basically, none.
Apart from their respective organizational difficulties, that is where their essential weakness lies.
The immediate tasks for the Chilean workers movement can be none other than the realignment and reorganization of the workers movement, starting from the experience accumulated during the three years of the UP and from a comprehensive balance sheet of the defeat that resulted. But the remnants of the SP continue to tear themselves apart in confused debates that often degenerate into personal conflicts or squabbles over authority.
The representatives of the "coordination" inside the country claim to be in the "left" of the SP. They are reportedly critical of General Secretary Altamirano, judging his activity in exile to be opportunist. But that does not go very far. They view concessions and tactical regroupments as necessary to maintain the unity of a party whose overall strategy of the past years-within the framework and bosom of the UP-they accepted unquestioningly. According to these comrades, they should have gone further in 1973 and made fewer concessions. As for the independent organization of the workers and arming them on a massive scale, they say they are in agreement, but it is clear they are not. "The problem was elsewhere," they say. "It was in the CP's reformist orientation and the weight this party had in the working class."
For its part the CP carries out its line with a wonderful perseverance, almost as though nothing had happened. Its orientation is to regroup all the antifascists, whatever the price. From which flows its barely disguised support to the activities of the Christian Democrats, and the instruetions given to militants here and there to back concretely the Christian Democrats' efforts to reorganize among working-class circles.
For the CP leadership, the defeat of the UP was due primarily to the action of ultralefts, both outside the UP (certainly the MIR [Movimiento de Izquierda
Revolucionaria-Movement of the Revolutionary Left]) and inside (a large part of the SP).
In tossing the ball up to each other like this again, the CP and the so-called left sectors of the SP continue to play an old game, useful to both. In the framework of the UP, to say that one was too reformist and the other was too "impatient" is to avoid posing the fundamental questionthe strategy of the UP, that is, the peaceful and gradual road to socialism.
Hearing representatives of these parties speak-or rather in the case of the SP the representatives of the remnants, the ghosts, of the party-one cannot help experiencing a feeling of unreality. The defeat, the tears and blood shed by the Chilean workers since September 11, 1973, the repression they have to face each day, has done little or nothing to open their eyes.
They continue down the same road, down the same dead end, more concerned with justifying themselves in the eyes of their followers and preserving a clear conscience than in beginning to draw the lessons of a reality that they helped create and of which they are the victims.
In this situation the responsibilities and tasks of revolutionary militants are more immense than ever. Not because they can pose an alternative to the junta's regime in the short or medium term, but because the possibility of successful struggles by the Chilean workers will depend—in the long term, unfortunately-on their role and the part they will play in the process of rebuilding the workers movement.
The junta has understood that well. The political police, the spearhead of the repres sion, concentrates its attack against the revolutionists, and above all against the MIR, its bête noire. This has had serious consequences. The loss of militants and political cadres, including some of the best, has been considerable. To a large extent the organization is mobilized to preserve its own continued existence, its own survival, which reduces its capacity for intervention accordingly. All these factors have created a situation that makes it particularly difficult to work out precise orientations, which is a necessary condition for an effective political intervention to reorganize the workers movement.
[Next: Pinochet's Campaign to Crush the MIRJ