E Real Lessons the 1973 Coup

Scan page 6

Thirdly, :ause the : Popula • Mences 1 generals entered the cabinet, the army was able to dictate to the government what reforms it would accept and what it would not.

On the other side, the Popular Unity tried to avert the necessity of a military coup by combatting the "provocative" independent mobilisation of the working class. The leaders knew that, if they failed in their role as policemen of the working class, then the bourgeoisie would overthrow them in order to defeat the mass movement. In their effort to prevent this, the Popular Unity parties agreed in 1971 to abandon all their political activities in the army to which the generals objected.

In 1972 the Popular Unity deputies either abstained voted in favour of the control. law introduced by the bourgeois parties with the collaboration of the army, giving the military unrestricted powers to search for arms in factories and workers' homes. Under this law the army began its campaign of atrocities against the militant workers long before it overturned the Popular Unity government.

In these ways, the Popular Unity's attitude to the army was merely another part of its treacherous class collaborationist politics which were to bring such disaster for the working class. The policy on the military shows perhaps more clearly than anything how, through their acceptance of the inviolability of the bourgeois state, the Popular Unity leaders both politically and militarily disarmed the working class.

It is this which underlines the irony of Allende's last broadcast calling for armed workers' resistance to the coup - the arms with which this resistance could have been made had been taken by force from the workers with the knowledge and help of Allende's own government.

THE FALSE LESSONS OF THE POPULAR UNITY No political party of the working class can avoid at least appearing to draw the lessons of the Chilean catastrophe. But the Stalinist parties in particular have since September 1973 been conducting a worldwide campaign to suppress what they know to be the real lessons because they know that they would be a deathblow to their unchanged class collaborationist politics. There are many components in this campaign of political lies.

The first is to say that the situation in Chile was different from what it is now in, say, France or Italy. In those countries, they say, "pluralistic democracy" has deeper roots and the army would not exceed its alloted role. In other words, they use the same words as the Popular Unity leaders used in their effort to try to blind their working class supporters to the truth. The bourgeoisie is under no such illusion.

In its first comment on the coup in Chile that bastion of bourgeois democracy the London Times said that 'any reasonable military man' would have taken the same steps as did the Chilean military on September 11th 1973!

When the Popular Unity was first elected and when it survived its first year having launched a number of reforms, the similarities with Western Europe were emphasised by the Communist Parties. It was only after the defeat they have made an effort to present Chile as another world.

But nothing can hide the similarities between the politics of the Chilean CP in the Popular Unity and the same class collaborationist politics which every day lead the European working class into greater danger.

Secondly, the Stalinists and reformists say that the Popular Unity was not a "fair test" of popular front politics because the election of Allende was almost an accident, caused by the splitting of the right-wing vote in 1970 between two candidates. The Popular Unity, therefore, came to power before they were ready for it; before they had more than 50% backing from the population.

This argument is as fraudulent as the first. For one thing, the popular backing for reform grew at enormous speed and this was reflected in a more than 50% vote for the CP in the municipal elections of 1971. Yet, instead of building and mobilising the political support for reform, the Popular Unity leaders systematically tried to hold it back to avoid giving too great an offence to the bourgeoisie.

"ERRORS"

the Stalinists and reformists, are forced to t i to ‹plain why Unity had SUC dis trous con• the workino r ISK mit manage to discern these errors auring the three years that the Popular Front government held office.

This itself suggests the truth of the matter which is that the admission of "errors" is part of a cover-up operation to justify the Western European and other CPs preceding with exactly the same political line as that which led the Chilean working class into such appalling straits.

The Italian CP, for example, says that the "error" of the Chilean CP and the Popular Unity was in not making a closer alliance with the Christian Democrats which, by an amazing coincidence, is just what the Stalinists are falling over themselves to do in Italy!

We have already seen the example of the Portuguese Communist Party's creation of Illusions in the Armed Forces Movement. The Spanish Communist Party supports US bases in Spain and has proposed a *democratic alliance" between the people and the army. The French CP has opposed trade unions in the army and supported military discipline.

APPEASEMENT In Italy the CP attempts to appease the army by saying that it supports italian participation in the anti-communist military alliance NATO. None of these policies are. "errors"; they flow directly and inevitably from a line which politically ties the working class to the bourgeoisie.

It was not those things which in its own terms the Popular Unity did wrong which brought the Chilean working class to defeat in 1913, but precisely those things which in its own terms it did right.

A fourth way in which the Stalinists and reformists try to cover up the lessons is by attributing the defeat almost exclusively to the overwhelming power of United States imperialism. Of course, thère is not the slightest doubt at all that the international companies like ITT, the CIA and the Us State Department plotted continuously against the Popular Unity government and to prevent any real social change taking place in Chile.

But the Stalinists and reformists use these facts to try to give further support to their class collaborationist politics. They say that the struggle was basically one between imperialism and the Chilean "people'; in which they include the majority of the Chilean bourgeoisie.

They play down the fact that within Chile itself there was a powerful class which was utterly hostile to any increase in the power of the working class. But it was the capitalist class of Chile itself, along with its allies in the army and the Church, which (of course, with American imperialist support) overthrew the Popular Unity government as a step towards trying to crush the Chilean working class.

The argument that the principal villains were the "all-powerful" Americans is in any case exposed by the victorious struggles against US intervention in Vietnam and Angola.

The final item in the cover up operation which has been conducted by Stalinism and its witting and unwitting allies since the Chilean coup is the claim that the Popular Unity government only failed because of the "dangerous and provocative" actions of the "ultra-left" , and in particular the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left.

This was the way in which the British Communist Party leaped to 'explain' the catastrophe which its policy had led to in Chile:

"Whatever their intentions, the ultra-left groups outside the UP, such as the MIR, and those sections supporting them in the Socialst Party and MAPU, acted in such a way which played into the hands of reaction."

(Jack Woddis, Morning Star, September 22nd., 1973).

This slanderous and cowardly position has been the principal "lesson" that the Chilean Communist Party itself has drawn from the coup. One of its major recent political statements analysing the experience of the Popular Unity and attacking the MIR is in fact entitled Ultra-Leftism, Trojan Horse of Imperialism Stalinism has uttered slanderous filth of this kind on every occasion when its class collaborationist, anti-working class policies have directly led to defeat. The words are almost identical to those in which the Stalinists have 'explained' the defeat which took place in the Civil War in Spain in 1939. They are the same words which are used by Stalinicte thrunhait the word avan dav ta