50 years of the coup d’état in Chile (1973 – 2023) It is right to rebel!
We publish an unofficial translation of the article of Prensa Chiripilko found on their wepbage.
This September 11th marks 50 years of the coup d’état led by Yankee imperialism through the fascist military regime. It seems like a long time, but even in multiple towns throughout Chile, year after year young people and masses gather to protest every September 11th.
The reactionaries sarcastically say: Why are they protesting if they were not even born on that date? It is true, our young people were not born in 1973. But the popular youth do not fight for Allende or the UP, but rather they fight against injustices and to put an end to the suffering that they experience firsthand every day.
LONG LIVE THE HEROIC RESISTANCE OF THE MASSES!
Class character of the old Chilean State
Chile is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. Imperialist oppression, mainly Yankee, oppress our country, allows only formal independence and develops a backward capitalism called Bureaucratic Capitalism, tied to the interests of the great powers, typical of semi-feudal countries.
The imperialists are the ventriloquist or puppeteer and the “presidents” are their puppets and they do not decide anything, but rather act and move as their masters command.
Currently, Chile is oppressed by imperialism, mainly Yankee, which acts through the ruling classes of our country, which are the big bourgeoisie and the big landlords. That is why it is correct to say that the Chilean State is a State that represents the old, the rotten, it is a bourgeois-landowner State.
The factions of the big bourgeoisie
In semi-feudal countries the bourgeoisie is divided into two factions: the bureaucratic faction and the comprador faction.
The bureaucratic faction: It is the one that tends to use the State apparatus the most and takes profit of it for its businesses. The old State has a class character, it is a bourgeois big landlord State, therefore, “nationalization” also has that class character.
The bureaucratic faction tries to lie to us, it wants to make us believe that “nationalization” is not monopolistic and that it benefits all Chileans. But in reality State monopoly capital only serves imperialism and its lackeys. Doesn’t Banco Estado suck the blood of all Chileans? Don’t “State” universities charge fees as high as non-State ones? Isn’t CODELCO one of the “State” mining companies that subcontracts the most?
The comprador faction: It is represented by the sector of the big bourgeoisie that is committed today to strengthening non-State monopoly capital, which is erroneously called “private” to differentiate it from State monopoly capital [1]
These two factions of the big bourgeoisie (bureaucratic and comprador) are in collusion and conflict. They collude to oppress the people and at the same time fight to reach La Moneda (presidential palace). To do so, they must do a transparency test in front of imperialism and both have as their main task to maintain and evolve bureaucratic capitalism.
False agrarian reform: bureaucratic capitalism evolves
By 1973 there were two imperialist superpowers: Yankee imperialism and Russian social imperialism [2]. Both superpowers were fighting to take control of the rest of the world, country by country.
In Chile, the presidency of Eduardo Frei Montalva who was the president from 1964 to 1970 (Christian Democrat – CD), representative of the bureaucratic faction and an important sector of big landlords, knelt down to Yankee imperialism and in accordance with its orders applied measures to evolve semi-feudality and penetrate bureaucratic capitalism in the countryside. The main point was to try to stop the struggle for land of the poor peasantry through the “agrarian reform” that Yankee imperialism, with its Alliance for Progress plan, initiated under the presidency of Alessandri. This false agrarian reform was nothing more than a purchase and sale of land that maintained an important part of the big landlord property. (For more information you can see our article “La falsa reforma agraria” available in our blog [Translator’s note: Only in Spanish])
Salvador Allende’s presidency also represented the bureaucratic faction, so he continued with the plans to evolve semi-feudality and with the goal of containing the class struggle.
Although he wanted to disguise himself as a socialist, within the parties that made up the Popular Unity (UP) were the Socialist Party, the Radical Party and some sectors unrelated to the Christian Democracy, three bourgeois parties that were not going to act against their own interests. In addition to them is the disastrous role of revisionism that the false “Communist” Party had that tried to pass off its counterrevolutionary policy as Marxism.
The UP government’s tactic was to stop the revolution by disguising itself as a revolutionary. For example, where the peasants struggled for the land, the officials of the UP arrived with their false agrarian reform; where the workers struggled to expel the big bourgeoisie, the UP management compensated the exploiters millions and bought their companies paying a huge amount of money to declare them “nationalized”; the residents’ struggles were diverted by the UP leadership towards bureaucratization, controlling the residents’ commands; universities were free, but the poor masses did not have access to them. The academic aptitude test, implemented by Yankee order, was maintained during Allende’s administration to deny the access to higher education for popular youth.
The imperialist crisis and the presidency of the UP
By the beginning of 1970 the imperialist powers and imperialist superpowers had received severe blows and great defeats. The Socialist Republic of China gave a new impetus to the peoples of the world; the triumph of the people of Vietnam showed that the people from a small country can defeat imperialism; the uprisings of the people in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as in the imperialist countries themselves, accounted for the acute crisis that was sharpening.
The Russian social imperialists were trying to get out of the situation by directing the guerrilla movements to surrender and capitulate by supporting the bureaucratic faction of each country. At the same time, they invaded (as in Afghanistan) and made coups d’état in the colonies and semi-colonies to bring them under their control.
Yankee imperialism, hit by the crisis of the ‘early 70s’, became more aggressive. Showing that the Russians were generally trying to maintain their control using the bureaucratic faction, Yankee imperialism used the comprador faction for its imperialist plans, through which it also carried out a wave of coups d’état.
The coup d’état of Yankee imperialism
Allende’s presidency tried to be with both superpowers. On the one hand, “nationalize” the mining industry, through millionaire compensations to Yankee imperialism and thus position itself as a servant of Russian social imperialism.
At the national level, the UP was trying to stop the revolutionary struggle. How? Presenting the false theory of the “Chilean path”, which is nothing more than Khrushchev’s revisionist thesis on the peaceful path to socialism. It is the rotten thesis of class conciliation that denies the class struggle. In the end this was to present themselves in front of imperialism not as a threat, but as obedient country sellers, to maintain the support of the big landlords parties and to manipulate the demands of the masses so that they would not rebel.
As doubts grew among the people, demagoguery and repression by the UP grew. By the end of Allende’s presidency, the UP openly called to stop the confrontations. Not being enough the calls, he issued the gun control law (1972), which gave the monopoly of violence to the armed forces and disarmed the people. Immediately afterwards, factories, meeting places and the homes of the masses in rebellion were raided.
The fact that the UP presidency wanted to support both factions, opening the doors to Russian social imperialism, was not understood as good by Yankee imperialism, which was not willing to share the loot. This is how Yankee imperialism led the coup d’état that removed the UP and Allende, putting the Fascist Military Regime (JMF) in their place. The objective was to restructure the old bourgeois-big landlord State and evolve bureaucratic capitalism, reinforcing the non-State monopoly capital.
The balance of the left
Those who suffered the worse part of the coup were the working class, peasants and the poor masses, who were disarmed by Allende and the UP. They were also lied by revisionism and fell into disorganization, due to a lack of plan or program to organize the resistance and transformed it into a national liberation struggle.
It is true that there were organizations that carried out armed actions and there is no doubt about the heroism of their combatants and the masses who gave their blood against the repressive forces during the decades of the 70s, 80s and early 90s. However, these organizations, instead of reject the rotten politics of the UP and look forward learning from their mistakes, they looked back with nostalgia. They thought that the fight against fascism was to defeat the JMF led by Augusto Pinochet and returning to UP politics.
The Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) considered that during the UP, “People’s Power” was being created without seeing that it was a mirage of false popular power because a true revolution had not been carried out.
The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (MRPF), as the armed wing of revisionism, hoped to execute Pinochet and call a Constituent Assembly, which would be led by the Concertación parties [Translator’s note: Parties that pacted how the transition to bourgeois democracy would be], which would only have slightly shorted the time to Patricio Aylwin to take La Moneda.
The Lautaro Youth Movement (MJL), according to the testimonies of its own militants, did not have a clear perspective. They claimed the figure of Allende, they signed joint Statements with revisionism, in their press they wrote about the “conciliation tables” and at the international level, they supported the genocidal of the Peruvian people, Alan García, to confront imperialism.
Despite this panorama of left-wing armed organizations that did not have as their objective the conquer of Power, the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) was the only organization that made a correct assessment of the UP. However, the PCR did not assume its role, capitulated and was liquidated in 1980, which was much worser.
Withdrawal and disband
In the 20s of the 20th century, Carlos Ibañez applied a fascist plan that claimed to take care of the economic demands of the masses. This led to organizations that raised only immediate demands with no prospects of conquer the power to join fascism. This is how Alejandro Escobar y Carvallo, one of the founders of anarchism in Chile, became Governor of Pisagua.
Something similar happened with the victory of the “NO” in the 1988 plebiscite and the subsequent arrival agreed upon by Aylwin to La Moneda.
For Yankee imperialism, Chile could not maintain the governance under the fascist military regime that, after the shock doctrine consisting of severe repression, torture, kidnappings, executions and disappearances, faced vast rejection by the masses and was increasingly growing the tendency to rebellion. This is how the United States government directed the departure of Pinochet and his lackeys and put in their place their “democratic” puppet Patricio Aylwin.
The armed leftist organizations that as the anarchists of the 1920s who did not have the conquer of Power as their perspective, were left without ground, fell into desperation and launched their decisive actions almost to prove that they still existed. As if that were not enough, some of its members changed sides, becoming informers of the CNI (secret repressive police of the JMF) which was renamed as ANI.
The disbanding of these organizations was not mainly due to the blows of reaction but to their own errors, which were mainly ideological.
Revolution is unstoppable
Despite everything, the masses joined these left-wing armed organizations. Why? Because they looked for solutions against the fascist military regime in protests and violence. Solutions that were also sought by those who participated in the struggle without belonging to any organization. But even by instinct, they had clear that it is right to rebel.
After the leadership of the Concertación, the masses continued to struggle. The problem was that there was no organization that would lead this struggle to conquer the Power.
This September 11th, 50 years after the coup, we pay tribute to all the martyrs who gave their lives fighting against the fascist military regime and its imperialist masters.
Despite the repression and betrayals, the class and the people are generous and will never stop giving birth, by thousands, to their best children.
Notes
[1] State monopoly capital is also private.
[2] Lenin uses the concept social-imperialism to refer to those who are socialists in words, but in fact, they are imperialists. It is correct to use this concept to refer to the State of the Soviet Union (USSR), which after the death of J. Stalin abandons socialism and, after a coup d’état led by Khrushchev, becomes imperialist.
