[The following article appeared in the May 8 issue of Perspectiva Mundial, a Spanish-language socialist news magazine published fortnightly in New York. The translation is by Intercontinental Press /Inprecor.]
The military coup that brought down the Unidad Popular (UP-Popular Unity) government on September 11, 1973, was a terrible blow to working people in Chile and throughout the world. This experience underlined once again the fact that popular frontism and the effort to find a peaceful road to socialism through an alliance with a sector of the nationalist, patriotic, or progressive bourgeoisie always results in bloody defeats for working people.
A number of comrades in the Chilean left from the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria-Movement of the Revolutionary Left, MAPU (Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria-Movement for United People's Action) and sectors of the Socialist Party have begun the process of drawing out the lessons of this defeat.
For example, Pedro Vuskovic analyzed some of the problems of the Chilean revolution in an interview that appeared in the January 1978 issue of the newspaper Combate. Vuskovie was the minister of the economy in the UP government and is now living in exile in Mexico. A leader of the Socialist Party, he was bureaucratically expelled by the SP leadership in exile. However, the ranks of the SP, both within Chile and abroad, refused to recognize this expulsion.
The Popular Unity
"I think that the UP's problem, as a bloc of organizations," Vuskovic says, "lies in its whole strategy for the struggle against fascist? dictatorship. ... This has led,
Solidaridad
PEDRO VUSKOVIC
particularly within the Socialist Party, to a growing divergence between two different lines for the struggle against dictatorship."
These two lines consist on the one hand of the reformist perspective of the Popular Unity and on the other of the revolutionary perspective that is now taking shape.
According to Vuskovic, the perspective of the UP "starts from the premise that the repressive strength of fascism is so great that it is extremely difficult to begin rebuilding revolutionary organizations within Chile itself. The result is a perspective of increasingly looking to external forces, rather than to the Chilean people themselves, to bring pressure on the dictatorship to make changes."
This preoccupation, Vuskovic says, "leads to defining the antifascist front very broadly, and trying to build it that way; it leads to trying to draw in and incorporate the Christian Democrats ... which would be the one thing that would really strenghen their bargaining position with the external forces. Then the UP could say, look, we have a real coalition here, we have a broad political pact. If you just help us out we will represent a viable alternative, but you must bring real pressure on the dictatorship.""
A second result is that the UP puts forward "a very limited political perspective, with very minimum goals, basically for regaining bourgeois democracy. And any plans to win socialism... are put off to another stage and another day."
"There is a third conclusion the UP draws from this," Vuskovic added. "If there is going to be a whole period when the struggle depends on alien forces rather than on the Chileans themselves, then the extent to which we are able to build a revolutionary party is not the decisive question."
Vuskovic correctly judges the UP to be at fault for not attempting to link the Chilean struggle up with other struggles in Latin America-something that must be done to counter the aggressive international stance of U.S. imperialism. He also attacks the UP for its sectarian attitude toward "very advanced elements... that call for revolutionary violence" in the struggle to overthrow the Chilean dictatorship.
Vuskovic notes that military dictatorships in colonial and semicolonial contries are a characteristic of the period in which we live:
"The capitalism of the dependent coun tries has reached the point of exhaustion. It tries to increase its ability to accumulate wealth through superexploitation of the workers. It must try to overcome the destabilizing impact of moves made abroad by surrendering completely before the interests of American imperialism. All this naturally requires a strong regime, a brutally repressive regime."
This crisis of capitalism in the dependent countries makes nonsense of the UP's perspective because, according to Vuskovic, the UP is searching for support from precisely "the external forces that are responsible for this domination...."
Vuskovic points out: "It seems necessary to repeat a very basic truth-that only the Chilean people, the development of the forces of the Chilean people, can provide a way out of this situation."
Criticizing "any political program that is limited to rebuilding bourgeois democracy," Vuskovic comes to a clear conclusion:
• Only an openly and explicitly socialist program and the goal of a socialist future can inspire a struggle as difficult as that the Chilean people must undertake. And for this reason there can be no programmatic concessions for the sake of with the Christian Democalliances
"
racy...
Comrade Vuskovic's positions undoubtedly represent a step forward in clarifying the issues facing the Chilean revolution. His views arise from a crisis in the Chilean SP and from the development of the Coordinadora Nacional de Regionales del Partido Socialista (CNR-National Coordinating Body of SP Regional Committees). In the same interview, Vuskovic explains what the Coordinadora is:
"The CNR arose inside Chile, basically in response to organizational problemsthe absence of a party leadership; the exile, disappearance, or death of many of the comrades who had made up the Central Committee of the party. All this created a situation where there was really no leadership within the country."
To deal with this problem, some SP members "began to carry out activity designed to rebuild the party.. • primarily among the ranks of the party.... And this led to the creation of the CNR."
The experiences of these militants were different from those of other sectors of the party, with the result, according to Vuskovic, that "the organizational differentiation eventually came to coincide with a political differentiation. This is what caused the crisis inside the party."
A Clarification of "Historical Positions"
Along with raising a series of sharp fundamental criticisms of the UP and of the traditional leadership of the SP, Vuskovie says that the Coordinadora "draws on all the thinking of the SP throughout its history."
It is important to remember that part of the historical heritage of the SP is that it supported the Popular Unity program and participated in the UP government. This program and this government were founded on collaboration between hostile classes, and therefore they did not challenge the continuation of capitalism in Chile.
Suffice it to note, for example, that the UP program called for "strengthening the national character of all branches of the Armed Forces." This position led the UP government to place blind faith in the "patriotic" military forces that ended up carrying out the coup in Chile with imperialism's backing.
Two years after the coup, an editorial in Resistencia, an SP organ published clandestinely in Chile, still maintained that in the struggle against the dictatorship "it is important to seek alliances with the lowerlevel bourgeoisie and with the petty bourgeoisie. ..." In other words, there was still an insistence that it was possible to make alliances with some sectors of the ruling class: "In the struggle against fascism, we have to build a broad front on the basis of a minimum program, without giving up our socialist strategy."
And how would this broad front be built?
Two years after the coup, the SP was saying that "agitation around a democratic people's program will be the basis for strengthening the proletarian forces in relationship to the rest of the population, and will also be the basis for a tactical alliance with sectors that express themselves through the Christian Democracy [a bourgeois party]"
In the interest of clarity, we must ask Vuskovic and the militants of the CNR to explain some of these questions.
Given their current positions, how do they now evaluate the role played by the SP in forming the UP government?
Despite Threat of Deportation
Undocumented Workers in
A New York Times article of April 16 describes the new militancy of a section of the working class that has more to gain than most, but also more to lose. It describes a strike by several hundred fruit pickers in Arizona-all of them undocumented Mexican nationals.
The strike was partially successful in correcting some of the inhuman and unsafe conditions in the fields, and the workers were not deported. Mike Hawkins, in Phoenix,
United States attorney claimed that it would have been physically impossible to round up and expel all of the strikers, in addition to which, the growers simply "had to have the bodies."
Times reporter John Crewdson says this is only one example of the way undocumented workers are becoming bolder about demanding some of the benefits and privileges that until now only legal citizenship has conferred."
Another example he cites is the struggle of undocumented workers for their children's right to an education. Eight families without immigration papers have filed suit in Houston against a Texas law that says "illegal" children must pay $90 a month to attend public school. The parents did this even though they were afraid the Immigration and Naturalization Service would move against them as soon as they identified themselves in public court records.
Other Houston parents have been sending their children to a special school for immigrants without papers, even though, according to the minister who runs the school, "everybody was afraid that the spectacle of 300 children attending the same school each day would prove an irresistible prospect for deportation proceedings."
What is their present-day understanding of the building of a broad front for fighting against the dictatorship?
What is their attitude toward those sections of the Christian Democracy and the Radical Party that are calling for democin ratization of the capitalist system Chile?
these far do they think an alliance with
How far do they think an alliance with an alliance work?
The answers to these questions will be key to their ability to take further steps forward in clarifying the tasks facing Chilean revolutionists.
U.S. Fight for Rights
The Times article does not mention any trade-union support for what it calls "the new migrant militancy." American tradeunion leaders are unfortunately more likely to call for the deportation of "illegal aliens" than to jump into these workers' struggle for some basic rights.
One union, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Los Angeles, has set a good example for the labor movement on this question.
In February, the ILGWU filed suit against the INS to force it to halt its illegal, racist, and often union-busting raids on the garment shops. The union is trying to organize Los Angeles' 78,000 garment workers, an estimated four-fifths of whom are in the U.S. without the INS stamp of approval.
As an ILGWU official told a reporter, "They're garment workers and they have a right to union representation. I think every union has a legal, as well as a moral, obligation to represent their members without regard to what the legal status of particular workers may be." (Quoted in the April 14 Militant.)
The same unionist had an explanation for the "new migrant militancy" observed by Times reporter Crewdson:
"When these workers arrive here, the only question for them is job or no job. But once they get a job, they begin to realize this isn't the land of opportunity they were told it is. Then the question is, are they going to take the abuse? Is it worth it? The answer is that they're better off putting up a fight, even to the point where they might be picked up and sent back.
"We get a better response from them than from other workers," he continued. "More enthusiasm, more willingness, more militancy"
Notes
1. Spanish-language newspaper of Kommunistiska Arbetarförbundet (Communist Workers League), Swedish section of the Fourth International)..
2. Comrade Vuskovic's use of the term "fascist" here and in other parts of the interview is incorrect. For an analysis that goes to the heart of what fascism really is, see the articles by Leon Trotsky in the pamphlet Fescism: What It Is and How to Fight It, available from Pathfinder Press, 410 West Street, New York, N.Y. 10014 for $.60.