Pinochet's regime facing new crisis A NEW PHASE of political crisis is opening up today in Chile. This crisis is reflected in severe tensions within the regime; tensions within the army; a relative separation between the judiciary and the military rulers; disagreements with the Church and tensions between the dictatorship and the employers' organisations.
Among the most recent examples of this crisis is the resignation of General Mendoza, a member of the Junta and chief of police; the arrest of several police officers and the recent meeting, drawing together the whole spectrum of bourgeois opposition organised by the Church.
Despite the fact that the state of siege has been lifted, censorship has been lightened and Pinochet and the armed forces have been forced to retreat in the face of these internal tensions, nevertheless the chosen road of the dictatorship for dealing with the problems of
CHILE trying out the Kissinger strategy' in Chile. This involves the repayment of the debt through direct acquisition by the main world banks of the major wealth of the country. Thus the Chilean foreign debt would be paid off through American takeover of the Chilean copper mines. Such a takeover would be made possible through denationalisation of the copper industry which has still only partially been brought into force today.
Finally, Finance Minister Hernan Buchi's trips around the world have only one aim which is to open Chile up more to the world market. With this in view, the minister announced a lowering of customs duties from 35% to 30% from March 1, 1985, a systematic application of the Chicago Boys tactic.
These are just some of the factors which form the backdrop to the misery facing thousands upon thousands of Chileans today. This misery affects wide layers of the population. The number of unemployed and homeless is growing and the mere conditions of survival get worse every day. Those workers who are lucky' enough to have a job see their wages trailing right behind prices. Even certain layers of the petty bourgeoisie are getting poorer and are turning into a kind of sub-proletariat. All this has got much worse following the February 1985 earthquake which threw thousands of Chileans onto the streets, thus exacerbating an already very serious housing crisis.
There is one anecdote which illustrates the cynicism of the Chilean rulers in pursuing their policies. For a long time now it has been the custom in Chile to give free milk to new-born babies in the hospitals where they are delivered. The minister of health has recently declared that this milk must be replaced with rice and rice water. However, the scandal that developed around this was so enormous and the emotions provoked so intense that Pinochet himself had to intervene so that babies could be given their milk back.
1. Three leaders of the Communist Party of Chile were kidnapped and had their throats slit in February 1985. Fourteen police officers were found guilty of these murders on August 1. Following these findings, General Mendoza, a member of the junta, and other police officers resigned.
'Latin America Regional Reports' (Southern Cone), RS-84-0, London, June 29, 1984.
3. Supporters of the 'Chicago school of whom the founder is the American economist, Milton Friedman. This school links together fluctuations in economic activity with the money supply rather than with investment and it has develo. ped a monetarist theory of ultra-liberalism in economics, challenging state intervention in the mechanisms of the capitalist есопоту.
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Chilean society remains one of the mass movement. JAIR GIL
During the period of the state of siege from October 1984 to June 1985, more than 33,000 people were imprisoned and every week about one hundred people were expelled from the country. Censorship was extended to include the press and all meetings were banned. The regime also used paramilitary groups and CNI (National Information Centre -political police) groups. For such groups, selective assassination attempts and killings are the rule as was shown in the case of the three Degollados. (1) Moreover, inhabitants of the popular quarters have been terrorised by a policy of military-style occupation of these areas by the police and army.
However, just as the repression is a mark of the continuing dominance of the regime and shows that the relation of forces between the classes established by the 1973 coup d' etat has not been reversed so the struggle opened up by the mass movements of 1982-1983 shows that the overall pattern of resistance has not been interrupted by the state of siege and the repression. The situation is not the same as it was. We are entering the phase of the death agony of the dictatorship. The Chilean crisis runs so deep that the regime is more and more cracking
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985 repression and confrontation with under the pressure of its own contradictions and the pressure of the mass movement.
Chile is not at the centre of the world economic crisis but the situation in the country is no better for that. The country is falling deeper and deeper into crisis and misery. The rate of unemployment is 30% and remains so despite official statistics which attempt to show a decrease. The rate of inflation has been more than 200% since 1981 and 25% in the last six months. The average wage is between 8,000 and 10,000 pesos [forty to fifty dollars] per month. (2) Inflation has impoverished whole sections of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie.
The foreign debt is increasing in all the countries of Latin America and in particular in Chile where a more and more marked dependence on imperialism is developing. It has gone from nine billion dollars in 1973 to twenty billion dollars in 1985. Also this year Chile has just got further into debt to the tune of 850 million dollars, not counting investments made by the Interamerican Development Bank (BID) which exceed the 400 million dollar mark.
After the ultra-monetarist Chicago Boys experiment, (3) imperialism is
A tank in front of the presidential palace in Santiago — September 11 1973 (DR)
The economic and social crisis runs very deep but it is the element of political decomposition now affecting the regime which is the really destabilising factor in the situation. Since 1982-1983 the rule of the dictatorship has become extremely unstable. It was at this time that the mass movement erupted onto the political scene. (4) Pinochet reacted to this in August 1983 by appointing Onofre Jarpa to head the government and the Ministry of the Interior. Jarpa was the expresident of the extreme right organisation, the National Party, which had supported the 1973 coup d' etat. The floodgates were opened and the regime appeared to be vacillating. But in reality by pretending to share power with Jarpa, and to be in dialogue with the bourgeois opposition, Pinochet was trying to win time. He was trying to paralyse the bourgeois parties in a pretence at negotiation and also wear out the masses through a series of mobilisations leading nowhere. Pinochet manoeuvres to stay in power
However, this dialogue with the military got everyone embroiled in endless discussions on the possibility of reforming the regime whilst the mass movement was becoming more and more threatening. In particular the centre of gravity of the movement shifted from the bourgeois opposition forces to the forces of the left and above all towards the Chilean Communist Party (PCC). Pinochet wanted to show up the weaknesses of the bourgeois political forces and the fact that they did not control the mass movement and that there was even a risk that they would be bypassed by it. In fact he was able to demonstrate this to great effect in the 12
October 30, 1984 general strike when the entire Chilean bourgeoisie were terrified at the spectre of the mass movement. Thus despite the acute crisis of the regime, such factors helped to make Pinochet appear as, in some way, the saviour of a bourgeoisie who would breathe more easily if the movement were contained.
Once again, after manoevres and counter-manoeuvres, Pinochet was able to demonstrate and assert that, when confronted with the Chilean people, the only effective policy for the bourgeoisie was his and this despite the fact that the regime no longer has a real substantial social base of its own. This is what has allowed Pinochet to start negotiations recently on the basis of his maintaining power until 1989, the date set by the Chilean constitution of 1980. Such a thing was unthinkable around 1982-1983. This is the meaning, moreover, of the speculations about the various forms of the transition. They are currently discussing the possibility of an assembly appointed either wholly or in part by the junta and alongside that how to integrate bourgeois political forces in this process. The dietatorship is putting extra pressure on all political forces in order to exclude the PCC from the transition.
All these plans are very fragile and all these structures could come crashing down, but they do reflect the political situation in Chile today. The economic, social and political crisis is deepening, but the weakness of any bourgeois or working class political alternatives to the dictatorship for the moment gives Pinochet, who has kept control of the army, a fundamental institution of the regime, some room to manoeuvre.
This situation makes it difficult to put forward predictions about what will happen in the short term. Because if the deepening crisis were to go in the direction of some kind of 'opening up' of the regime whatever form that might take (for example a coup within a coup, whereby Pinochet is overthrown by a section of the armed forces), and then towards the overthrow of the dictatorship, the crisis of leadership and organisation of the bourgeois parties and of the mass movement would still give the dictatorship a wide margin of manoeuvre.
This is the framework in which the Christian Democracy (DC), the main bourgeois opposition party must be viewed. If elections were held today in Chile, the DC would undoubtedly, and by a long way, be the first party in the country. The university elections which have always constituted a kind of sounding board in Chile for the general elections demonstrate this tendency by showing 30% of the votes for the DC. This party is not just an electoral machine but a bourgeois party with a popular base. This is a key factor. Even if it does not retain the same direct links with the masses which it had in the past, it is still capable of mobilising. The rebuilding of this party has given rise to the emergence of a whole series of currents within it which are evolving to the left especially among trade unionists and in the Christianbase communities. However, its apparatus and leadership are in the hands of bourgeois politicians who are looking for an agreement with the military.
This is the significance of the recent letter by Gabriel Valdes, general secretary of the DC, which spells out the key aspects of the party's line, notably;
- the construction of a civil front made up of all social forces in the country except the PCC.
La social pact which would create a consensus for adhering to the diktats of the IMF especially with regard to the foreign debt.
- finally to create a dialogue with the PCC, on condition that it breaks with its policy of popular revolt.
This is also the meaning behind the initiative, in August, of Monsignor Fresno, the archbishop of Santiago, who organised a round table of all the bourgeois opposition forces which, in their vast majority steer clear of the PCC. All these manoeuvres are aimed to marginalise the PCC and force them to accept any eventual accord between the military dictatorship and the bourgeois opposition.
What is happening is therefon an attempt by the DC to establish a policy which guarantees to the militar a certain continuity and assures
4. See International Viewpo
36, September 19, 1983 and No ember 28, '983.
International Viewpoint 28 October 19E
Chilean bourgeoisie of its ability to control the PCC and the mass movement. The main drawback to this policy is the lack of any partners to share it. The problem is that the PCC is still representative enough to be difficult to go around. But the DC rejects them for the moment and yet on the other hand the partners it really wants, that is the military, will not listen to any appeal from the DC, at least, again, not at the moment. As for the policy of the social pact, it is not only very much at the level of theory, but the economie crisis and the diktats of the IMF will make it very difficult to put
So although Christian Democracy remains the main bourgeois party and constitutes for the bourgeoisie the main instrument for any political alternative to the military regime, the depth of the social and political crisis has not allowed it the space to demonstrate its policies. In fact, on the contrary, the manoeuvres of Pinochet and the military dictatorship have succeeded, to some extent, in undermining part of the political credibility of Christian Democracy.
One of the most fundamental changes in the last decade, compared to the historical pattern from the 1930s until the 1970s, is the complete disappearance of the Socialist Party (PS). This party was a mass workers party with centrist tendencies, vacillating between reform and revolution. The demise of the Socialist Party
The SP, which was more vulnerable to repression than the PCC has not been able to rise above the changes which the country has gone through. It has undergone a process of disintegration into several different currents and groupings; the Socialist Bloc, the PS-Briones, a member of the Democratic Alliance (5), the PS-Almeyda, a satellite of the PCC and now divided into three factions, and numerous others. With the end of Chilean socialism, all these currents coming out of the PS have moved towards the right.
This evolution to the right is largely illustrated in the multiplication of references to European social democracy, whereas Chilean socialism always used to have a separate identity. Furthermore, with the exception of the Almeyda factions, in the name of 'democracy' ', all these currents have abandoned any, even formal, reference to Marxism and anticapitalism. Thus in the name of democratic socialism and 'socialism at the base' as against Stalinism in particular,
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985 democracy and bourgeois democratic institutions are upheld and an orientation towards reforms of the state and of the capitalist economy have been adopted. In the name of abandoning a militaristic strategy of armed struggle, which these 'new socialists in the past defended, they have also abandoned any perspective of dismantling the bourgeois state. This is the logical result of an orientation which is now linking up with the most classic of all social-democratic reformism.
On the question of political tactics, the socialists are divided on several counts. Firstly, on the question of participation in coalitions initiated by Christian Democracy, where the Socialist Bloc, for example, wants to create a better relation of forces before defining its tactic vis-a-vis DC. Also on the attitude to the PCC, some currents like the PS-Almeyda are linked to it while others reject any prospect of an alliance. And lastly, the socialists are divided on the question of the trade unions, the majority of the currents favouring pluralism supposedly in order to build "ideological union federations' but in reality in order that each party and each current of opinion can build its own union.
Today, it is the Communist Party which has most successfully rebuilt itself. The PCC is dominant amongst the youth, in the communities and in certain trade unions. It is the party most able to mobilise people within the country and especially amongst the youth, even if it has not re-established organic links with the working class as strong as were achieved in the past. This can be explained as much by objective reasons, including the general weakening of the structures of the workers movement, as by subjective reasons rooted in the class collaborationism which, in the current political conditions in Chile, limits the structuring of the Party and its periphery organisations. This is shown clearly in the experience of the MDP (People's Democratic Movement): in order to provide a counter-weight to the Democratic Alliance, the PPC launched the MDP in 1983. It was made up of the PCC, the PS-Almeyda and the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left). Despite the programmatic limitations and its platform and statements representing class collaborationist positions, the MDP quickly became a pole of attraction for the popular masses which first challenged and later took away from the Democratic Alliance the leadership of the most recent protestas and finally of the October 1984 general strike. However, the PCC deliberately chose not to set up rank and file committees of the MDP. This is a
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Poster outside PCC headquarters (DR) task which revolutionaries should have taken up and which would have been a qualitative step forward. The PCC's policy also had repercussions in the trade unions. Basically, their social pact strategy prevented the PCC from rebuilding the trade union movement. Moreover, Christian Democracy is trying at the moment to obtain, in exchange for certain political deals, the dissolution of the Workers Metropolitan Command (CMT), an organisation which groups together the most combative unions in Santiago.
But the weakness of the PCC's organic links with the masses should not mask the fact of its enormous growth on the basis of an orientation of popular revolt. In fact, this orientation has given the PCC one great advantage; it allows them to cover the whole spectrum of political activity from armed struggle to agreements with Christian Democracy. With the FPMR (Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front), the PCC can, on the one hand, control all the military activity of members of the Communist Youth or the MIR, activities which once escaped their control, and, on the other hand, strengthen their political popularity, especially amongst the youth. Among the latter there are thousands who support this line of popular revolt, giving it not only an anti-dictatorial character but a revolutionary one. For instance they compare their struggle to that of the FSLN in Nicaragua.
These young people give a revolutionary content to the line for popular
5. The Democratic Alliance groups together Christian Democracy, the PSBriones, the Republican Right, the Liberal Movement, the Radical Party, the Social Democracy and the People's Socialist Union.
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revolt, through demonstrations, assasthe PCC. This is shown in agreements sination attempts, armed action etc, reached on certain international queswhilst for the PCC this line is merely a way of putting pressure on the dictatorship and the bourgeois parties. The PCC may sometimes present armed struggle as a strategic goal but their real line is simply to use it as a means of applying pressure. In fact the strategy itself is still one of reaching agreement with Christian Democracy and for the democratisation of the armed forces. This explains the response of the PCC to the Gabriel Valdes letter cited above. The PCC declared itself ready to support a bourgeois government which represented a break with military rule. So a strategic agreement with the bourgeoisie, within the framework of the classic Stalinist schema of the 'revolution in stages' is still the line of the PCC. It also explains the recent alliance that the PCC has made, called the Democratic Intransigence. We must also add that this strategy is accompanied by a total allegiance to the USSR.
Revealing these perspectives in their true light is very important since they are creating disagreement amongst the ranks of the communists themselves. Thus Communist Party militants did not understand why the leadership did not react when three of their number [the Degollados] were assassinated. There was no military response and no mass mobilisations.
But despite all this, it is important to underline that the disastrous consequences of this policy still tend to be underestimated. In fact, the lesson drawn today by many hundreds of communist cadres and thousands of young people is critical of the Popular Unity (UP) (6) because it was unarmed and because the arms were left in the hands of the military. *If the Party arms itself and if the Party builds an army and a popular revolt, it will avoid a further defeat like in September 1973, is what many communists are saying. Anything concerning the policy of class collaboration or the problem of alliances with the bourgeoisie tends therefore to be overlooked in any balance sheet of the 1970-1973 period. The balance sheet drawn by communists today is that young an armed UP government would not have been defeated. In response to this we have to underline that at the root of the UP's failure to deal with the armed forces lay the whole reformist strategy of its leadership and above all of the PCC.
It is in this context that we have to look at the current policy of the MIR and its adaptation to the PCC within the MDP. The MIR has suffered a loss of identity vis-a-vis 14 tions and a tail-endism in national politics, with a complete absence of a critique of the policies of class collaboration. This loss of strategic identity which began to occur in the mid-1970s was, until the last few months, compensated through military initiatives. But now that the MIR have reduced their military activity and the PCC control the FPMR and its activities, the MIR has found itself totally aligned with the PCC. This rapprochement is supported by the Cubans, however the process is not irreversible. The current orientation of the MIR is in contradiction with the place which it occupies in the history of the Chilean workers movement and especially with its traditional opposition to collaboration with bourgeois forces. Sharp changes in the situation could therefore accentuate the internal crisis that this organisation is going through and modify its policy.
The mass movement in Chile, with all its ups and downs, is characterised by a tension between, on the one hand, its explosive nature, and on the other, its weaknesses in organisation and the crisis of its leadership. The situation in the trade union movement illustrates this very clearly. The trade union movement began to get active again at the beginning of the 1980s but it went through a fragmentation, a division, and a split between the different organisations. This can be explained by the structural weakening of the working class and, in particular, by a decline in the main concentrations of workers as well as by the political divisions that are characteristic of the Chilean trade union movement. The movement is divided between the MSU (Unified Union Movement) set up by the social democrats; the Workers National Command - CNT, led by the Christian Democracy; the CMT activated by the PCC and class struggle militants; plus a certain number of corporatist unions.
With the exception of the copper mining sector which is dominated by the powerful Confederation of Copper-workers (CTC), the trade union movement is dogged by this structural weakness. Nevertheless despite the current limitations trade unions and in particular those grouped around action like the CMT or in the framework of joint plenary assemblies of trade unionists such as the one which called the October 30 general strike last year, have played a key role in the lead up to protestas and in partial or general strikes. It has been initiatives from the trade unions that have sparked off the main days
September 5, 1983. A student is arrested F of action and political mobilisations. Because of its history and traditions, also, the trade union movement must take its place in the unfolding struggles. The roots of the mass movement are in the poblaciones
If, from the point of view of centralisation of activities and struggles, the trade unions play a decisive role, it is in the poblaciones (shantytowns) that the mass movement has its deepest roots. Through initiatives such as land occupations, ollas comunes (soup kitchens), mobilisations of the homeless, demonstrations against repression a real movement of pobladores has developed in the last few months. Given the fundamental social changes that Chile has gone through in the last few years, this movement is constantly fed by thousands and thousands of unemployed and homeless, shoved into the poblaciones as a result of the crisis. It is also the strongest movement against repression and the best suited to the explosive character of the mass mobilisations.
The student movement has always been a sensitive spot in the political situation. Today this movement has reached boiling point. The university elections have excited huge debates and have strengthened political awareness. In the schools, not a week now goes by without
The Popular Unity governmen headed by Salvador Allende comprises the Socialist and Communist Partin and some small bourgeois and petty bour geois groups. International Viewpoint 28 October 1985
pR) strikes and occupations. Groups of school-students from several schools get together to occupy such and such an educational establishment, putting forward their demands for more school materials and more democracy and waiting for the police to intervene. This scenario has been repeated several times in the last few weeks. The student mobilisations in particular have turned towards the demand for democratisation of the universities, pinpointing especially the demand for the sacking of civil or military directors of education appointed by the dictatorship and for the election by the students of their own administration.
These few examples show the dynamism of the mass movement. Of course, the state of siege announced in 1984 and the accompanying repression have set back the popular mobilisations which exploded during the October 30 general strike, but this is only temporary. Today, following, the lifting of the state of siege, fresh mobilisations of students and the beginnings of new protestas show a new rise in the mass movement which demonstrates that the cycle of activity opened up in 1982-83 is far from over.
It is difficult to make predictions but it is clear that a new phase of the political crisis has opened up in Chile. The events of 1982-1983 gave
La glimpse of the unfolding of the crisis of the dictatorship in the wake of the examples of Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, that is within the framework of a political 'opening up' It is true that the rhythm of events has been shown to be slower and that the development of the situation has
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985 not confirmed all hypotheses, but the current situation does show that none of the bitter contradictions of Chilean society have been resolved. On the contrary, it shows that accelerations or sharp turns in the situation, which will only aggravate the crisis, are to be expected. That is why an analysis, going above and beyond the ins and outs of the conjuncture, and looking at a whole series of strategic questions, has become necessary.
First we must look back at the strength of the revolutionary uprising in 1970-1973 and at the breadth of the defeat in September 1973.
The revolution, whose momentum built up under the Popular Unity government, was crushed by a political, social and economic counterrevolution. The present regime, the product of a military coup and of bloody repression against workers has subsequently destroyed Chilean society and interrupted the process of national development begun in the 1940s.
The combination of the dictatorship's economic policy, and especially its neo-liberal expression under the
, and the world economic crisis have destroyed the national economy of Chile. This combination has led to the dismantling of a whole series of productive national activities and allowed the denationalisation of key sectors of national industry. The industrial bourgeoisie has been marginalised, for the benefit of the speculators and the main sections of the financial bourgeoisie. The size of the working population has been drastically reduced by massive unemployment. Whole layers of society have been impoverished. In short, the traditional structures of society have been broken up by the dictatorship.
Combined with the structural modifications which Chilean society was going through, the repression crushed not only the popular masses and their organisations but it also changed the traditional relationship of the bourgeois parties, especially of Christian Democracy, to the masses, as it did that of the parties of the working class themselves. It is the depth of the repression and the weight of the defeat which explain the difference between Chile and the other countries of the Southern Cone today. It also explains the slowness of the process of recomposition and reorganisation of the mass movement, the backwardness in consciousness and the difficulties of organising the trade unions and political parties.
It is undeniably true that Christian Democracy, among the bourgeois parties, and the Communist Party, in the working class camp, have rebuilt themselves and that the PCC, in particular, has gone through a tremendous evolution. But these parties, which do not have a real capacity to mobilise, have not been able to reconstruct those organic links with the masses that they had built up over decades. It is fundamentally for reasons of structural weakness of organisation especially in the trade union movement that they have been unable to rebuild the networks they had before 1973.
The mass movement in Chile today is going through a crisis not only of leadership but also of organisation. The problem is not only one of a leadership which wants to lead the mass movement into a bourgeois and reformist impasse. It is also a matter of the fundamental problem of rudimentary organisation. This situation is in marked contrast to that of the workers movement in
Argentina or Bolivia where the overwhelming power of the main union federations, the CGT and the COB is typical of the position of their respective mass movements and where that was true even before the democratic openings developed.
This crisis of organisation and leadership of the mass movement explains the limits on the emergence of any jointly coordinated mobilisation of the working class and its allies to overthrow the dictatorship. Also the difficulties which the Christian Democracy have had in channelling the mass movement limits the confidence that the bourgeoisie might have in any democratic opening controlled by them.
It is these factors and especially the absence of a viable bourgeois alternative which gives the army a central role in the maintenance of capitalist rule even though a series of bourgeois forces and the Church are working towards the creation of such an alternative. It is this weakness which makes it difficult for the tensions inside the army to find political expression as was shown in the recent crisis over Dicomcar (Head of police Communications and Information) which was closely linked in with the assassination of the three Degollados. In fact these tensions might still be very much alive but they do not prevent Pinochet from playing a bonapartist role, nor do they prevent the maintenance of a military-police dictatorship. The claims by Pinochet, explaining that he alone can lift Chile out of the mire are based not only on the strength of the hierarchical and selected military built by him, but also on the weakness of his adversaries.
Under these conditions it is dif. ficult to make predictions. If international pressures and the relations between the classes make it difficult
15
Constian I
DEMDERPrICIUDAN:
'Democracy now' - demonstrators take to to envisage continuing military repression of the type of September 1973, all sorts of other variants are possible. These could include the maintenance in power of Pinochet until 1989 combined with concessions to the bourgeois opposition; a 'coup d' etat within the coup d' etat' by a section of the military; a greater or lesser degree of 'opening up' of the regime; or lastly, an 'opening up' based on mass popular explosion. But rather than make predictions the most important thing is to indicate the main tactical and strategic tasks for the Chilean revolution.
In the debates currently taking place within the Chilean left, any schematic repetition of the Nicaraguan or Salvadoran models must be rejected for several reasons. We are a long way from seeing the Pinochetisation' of Chilean society like we saw the 'Somozisation' of Nicaraguan society. The geo-political situation of Chile does not lend itself to a strategy of prolonged popular warfare. And also, Chile is not yet in a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation, even from an objective point of view. But we cannot continue to content ourselves with general formulas borrowed from the traditional arsenal of the workers movement in Chile, and especially from its socialist left-wing. The traditional model of Chilean development has been broken up and that has certain consequences for the dynamic of the mass movement. Chile's dependence on imperialism has grown considerably and the relations between the traditional 16 the streets of Santiago. (DR) parties and the masses have changed. The fissure created by the counterrevolution was such that it must modify our approach to a whole series of revolutionary tasks.
The theory of permanent revolution implies a combination of democratic, anti-imperialist and socialist tasks the articulation of which will depend strictly on the characteristics of each social formation. In Chile, democratic demands play a decisive role for several reasons. Firstly, the scope of Pinochet's counter-revolution wiped out a whole series of democratic gains by the Chilean people, on the institutional, as well as the social level. From the objective situation flows the need to fight for basic freedoms, for democratic rights for land and national independence. Link between democratic and socialist demands
Furthermore it is necessary to take into account the political developments in Chile, the consequences of the defeat on the delay in developing a socialist awareness amongst the masses, the relation of forces between workers organisations and those of the bourgeoisie, between reformists and revolutionaries. This all means that revolutionaries should place democratic demands at the centre of their struggle and not leave this to the bour geois or reformist parties, that they should fight to make the proletariat the 'caudillo of the nation In this way the theory of permanent revolution, rather than denying stages of development in a given political situation, takes into account the democratic phases, whilst at the same time advocating that the struggle for democracy be conducted through class struggle methods, linking tog. ether both democratic and anticapitalist demands.
The struggle to put democratic demands to the centrestage has important political and institutional consequences. The demand for the right to strike, for the right to demonstrate, for the right to freedom of expression today leads to the need to break with the dictatorship and to organise free elections to a constituent assembly. What should be put in the place of the Pinochet regime? The answer will be that the question is not even posed. But the need to find an answer to the question is being posed, in order to counter all those who are making plans for a transition period in continuity with the military dictatorship, no matter what the particular form of that transition. To those people, revolutionaries must reply with a radical democratic perspective, one for the overthrow of the dictatorship through mass mobilisation and the election of a free and sovereign constituent assembly excluding the military. These slogans serve a double function. They aid the politicisation of the masses by placing radical democracy to the forefront and also by highlighting the differences with the bourgeois and reformist projections.
On the political level, the fight for democracy implies a break with the military, but all popular mobilisations also pose straight away another question; 'Democracy yes; but we also have to eat!' This pinpoints the need to link the demand for a free and sovereign constituent assembly to other demands of the workers and peasants, to the anti-imperialist demand to refuse to pay the external debt, to the demand for the expropriation of the finance houses, to demands which raise the question of land. Also the extreme dependence of the country on imperialism means that the anti-imperialist axis and tasks play a much more important role than in the past. The anti-imperialist issue, especially in relation to the foreign debt could constitute, today, the transitional route linking up the democratic issues, the issues of national independence and the social, anticapitalist issues such as the expropriation of the finance houses.
In this way, the particular form of combined and uneven development imposed on Chile by the world crisis not only places democratic demands at the centre but ma the link between democratic, anti International Viewpoint 28 October 1985
imperialist and socialist demands all the more inextricable.
From the point of view of the motor forces of the Chilean revolution, the proletariat remains the key force in the revolutionary process. However, the position of the organised working class has been modified, not only for political reasons but also for structural reasons. There is no longer an equivalent organisation to the CUT [United Confederation of Workers]. Thus the copperworkers, with their unitary union, still play a central role. But although trade unions still remain an essential lever in all general mobilisations the workers, the unemployed, the informal sector (street vendors, moonlighters and so on), people organised and mobilised in the poblaciones, have seen their role considerably strengthened. This gives a much more important role to various regional organisations. Thus, the mobilisation in the poblaciaones and the pobladores' committees could become the backbone of the popular mobilisations.
The structural changes in Chile do not alter the central role of the fight for the workers' united front or of the battle for unity and class independence, even if the problems of class alliances and the development of political tactics to divide Christian Democracy and the other sections of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie take on a new dimension. It is this approach which dictates the need for a struggle for a constituent trade union assembly to create the pre-condition for one united trade union confederation and for a struggle for the coordination of the movement of the pobladores and for the unification of the student movement. This will also give meaning to the battle to set up committees of action, that is structures for self organisation aiming to achieve unity in action.
From the military point of view the current weaknesses of the mass movement combined with certain substitutionist actions by the FPMR or the MIR should not lead militants to leave this terrain to the PCC. First of all it is necessary to strengthen propaganda and actions of self defense of the mass movement. But also, at a certain stage of development of a revolutionary organisation, some thought must be given to the politicomilitary preparation of an insurrectional strategy.
Finally, from the point of view of the construction of a revolutionary party, the most important task is to regroup, on the basis of practical intervention in the class struggle, all those forces who are ready to be involved in the construction of a revolutionary alternative to the left of the bloc hegemonised by the PCC.
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985