This planned visit to Algeria next Monday. Had he gone, there was good reason to doubt whether he could seriously have expected to return.
The armed forces now threaten Allende with two possible altematives: either to renounce the whole programme of the three year-old Popular Unity government, or to step down from the Presidency. Either road amounts to the establishment of a military dictatorship. Allende has been forced into retreat after retreat. The coalition government of the military and the Popular Unity parties, described by Allende as 'the last resort against civil war' has fallen apart after only two weeks. General Carlos Prats and the other military ministers all withdrew from the Cabinet on 23 August. This step had been demanded for days by the fascists, by the right wing National Party, and by the demonstrations of middle-class housewives and professionals last week. every concession, far from appeasing them, merely encourages them to make further demands. The lorry-owners' boycott, which sparked off the present crisis, shows no signs of ending after over a month. Economic life has now been brought virtually to a standstill. A further encouragement to the right has been the appointment of General Torres de la Cruz as military governor of the capital, Santiago. Torres de la Cruz was responsible for the shooting of a worker during recent arms searches of factories. Similarly, left wing sailors arrested after planning a mutiny against their right wing officers are said to have been tortured. As the battles between left and right continue on the streets of the capital, the counter-revolutionaries are taking the offensive. The responsibility for this situation lies clearly with the Popular Unity leaders. It is they who have allowed the working class to be disarmed, exhorting them to trust in the very army which has been routing out their limited stocks of empty declarations of solidarity. It is true that on Tuesday, 21 August, Mascarello of the Communist Party-led CGT and Maire of the Socialist inclined CFDT issued a joint statement which 'invited the regional organisations to take all such initiatives as will permit the development of action at places of work and in the localities'., But British workers will remember a similar "invitation' from the TUC for May Day this year. Such statements are nothing but an abdication of leadership - they 'invite' workers to take actions while offering them no perspective for organising to make them effective.
A third session of talks was due to take place on Thursday, 30 August. But it is already clear where all this is leading. The real questions will not be resolved at the negotiating table but by events outside - why else did the Government send the police in? Any settlement will only ratify a relationship of forces achieved in the class struggle itself. To emphasise the negotiations is to blur this fact, by suggesting that a solution can be reached through 'rational discussion without the necessity of mobilising the forces of the working class.
This may fit in with the electoral ambitions of the reformist leaders and their "peaceful road", but it could spell disaster for the Lip workers and for the large sections of the working class which now identify with their struggle. As the holiday period comes to an end, and the factories begin to reopen, everything will depend on the ability of local militants to initiate actions at the base which can begin to turn the tide.
In fact, the reformist leaders do have a perspective - but one which comes out in rather a different way. Thus Raymond Gelly wrote in the Communist Party newspaper L 'Humanite last week: It is necessary to act, without losing an instant. It is a question of negotiating. Nothing more, nothing less.' The implications of this have become clear in the course of talks last week between the Government's negotiator, Giraud, and the Lip workers' representatives.
Allende has always had a policy of wooing the military. He brought the army commander, Prats, into the Government last October to deal with the first lorry-owners' boycott. After the abortive coup at the end of June, he appealed to the thousands of workers who had come out onto the streets to entrust matters of law and order to the Government and the army.
was the constant theme of the leaders of Allende's Socialist Party, and of the Communist Party which has unswervingly supported every retreat in the last few weeks.
But now Prats has deserted them. He made his position quite clear when he first entered the Government last year: such a post, he said, was fitting for an army leader because 'national security' encompassed the defence not only of Chile's borders but also of 'the social order and pintua ana malena wearin or me country Yet still Allende and the Communist Part fostered the illusion that the commander of the capitalists' army was committed to their The Lip workers broke with 'legality' by selling watches to pay themselves The first session took place on Tuesday, 21 August. The local CFDT delegates walked out before the end, complaining that: "There was nothing new. They presented us once more with the Charbonnel plan' (which involves at least 300 redundancies, division of the firm into three separate companies, etc.). Next day, they told the general assembly of Lip workers that *we will only send an observer' to the next session, But the line of the CGT delegates was complete by the measures taken by the Government. In response to this, a Committee Against the Deportations has been setup in Paris. Among the groups so far supporting it are the Paris federation of the Socialist Party, the newspaper Rouge (formerly published by the banned Communist League), the Unified Socialist Party, and the Workers Struggle group. Its first act has been to issue the following stateNICHL.
•The immigrant workers Larbi. Boudianana. Mohamer Laribi, Maurice Courbage, and Mohamed Najeh Salim, have had deportation orders served on them. Maurice Courbage was taken straignt trom work and pur on an aeroplane.
The Ministry of the Interior has announced other deportations during the holiday period.
particular the Ford's Broadmeadows strike, Ali's description and analysis or workers struggles it Britain, France, etc., was especially valuable. He ported out me growing mterventon or the curopear sections of the Fourth International in the class strug gle, and explained the banning of the French Communist League in this context A united front meeting at which every working class organisation was represented was held in Sydney to defend the Communist League, at which 300 dollars (about £175) was collected. Thus the tour gave an tu portant snot e we arm to the uternanonal cam paign. In Queensland, the Communist Party of Australia requested Ali to address its State Committee 'peaceful road' to socialism.
There are few who still share this illusion tod:
The Communist Party, in particular, is increasingly hard put to conceal the disastrous failure of the 'peaceful road' in Chile and its lessons for Britain.
Writing in a book on Chile published last year (Kate Clark, Chile: Reality and Prospects of Popular Unity), Jack Woddis, 'theoretician' ol the Communist Party, had this to say:
"What is now being attempted is the carrying throug of deep-going social and economic changes which wil open up the possibilities of a transition to socialism without an armed uprising against the existing state AHO COnSEO *... it is of immense interest to progressive people everywhere who see in this heroic effort by the Popular Unity government and its supporters a testir ground of the possibility, even under different condi tions, of a similar path to socialism "by other means that is to say, other than civil war.
The results of the test are now apparent. Class violence and civil war cannot be avoided in the struggle for power. Three years of governmen by reformists advocating the peaceful road" in Chile have only produced a situation in which the offensive in class violence is now taken by the bourgeoisie, against the working class movement Jane Fraz ly different. Their leader, Mercet, told the assembly that: "The CT delegation will go to this meeting. The negotiations are like a bone We must chew it over for as long as necessary Even if it is a question of six months, we will g on to the end. And when the second session did take place, the CFDT sent a normal delegation. Obviously under pressure from their own national leaders, as well as the CGT, they shametacedly announced that: We don't want it to be said that the CFDT prevented the success of the negotiations' These workers have been struggling: - for the withdrawal of the Fontanet-Marcellin circulars (Marcellin is the Minister of the Interior), which tie them to their bosses; - for the right to accommodation;
- against the racism which has led to the deaths o Ben Ali at Barbes, Mohamed Diab at Versailles Malika at Fresnes, and Fernando Ramos at Ivry; - for freedom of expression.
We condemn the measures by which the Ministry of the Interior is trying to suence the immigrant workers in their fight for recognition that they have the same rights as other workers.
By defending freedom of expression for immigrant workers, you defend your own.
The Committee can be contacted at: 71 rue Louis-Blanc, Paris 10, France.
and then donated 50 dollars for the defence of the rrenen rotskyists. Iney aiso agreed to circulate further appeals to their membership.
It may be recalled that the previous Australian government had banned Ernest Mandel from visiting Australia, It was made clear during the course of Ali's tour, however, that Mandel, too, would be given a visa to enter the country to speak at public meetings (The newspaper of the Australian Communist League, Militant, which has carried detailed coverage of the recent wave of strikes in Australia, can be obtaine from: MILITANT, P.O. Box 16, Westgate, Sydney Red Weekly. 31 August 1973 Page