The International Marxist Group pledges all its energies to the carrying out of these tasks and Red Weekly will treat them as a top priority. The bloody tragedy that has overtaken the Chilean working cass offers only one compensa mense impact on the political thinking of the tion: at least the lessons of this experience can be studied and taken to heart by the workers" movement everywhere, so that such a disaster need never again take place.
The events in Chile have shown that a working. class movement that fails to develop its own political institutions, that taus to challenge the ruling class monopoly of violence, that fails to break up and smash the instruments of capitalist maus expectations without satisfying them. rule, remains completely at the mercy of the forces of reaction and can take only the most limited steps in the direction of socialism. A working class movement which, from the seat of government, calls for the expropriation of one sector of the ruling class aftor another, yet utterly tail to develop the political and military means necessary to carry these expropriations out, places itself in a death-trap, In such a situation the only alternatives are permanent revolutionor millary dictatorship: either the workers movement resolutely tackles tho question of the 'armed bodies of men controlled by the ruling class, or it will be massacred by them.
Familiar though these lessons may seem, they are now expressed in a way which enables us to see conctetely the alternative road, the road to ectonous workers power which is, in the end, much less bloody than the peaceful road' to military dictatorship.
ELECTION OF ALLENDE The background to the election of Allende in 1970 was one of rising class struggle and a greatly weakened capitalist order. The victory of the Cuban revolution, the strengthening of revolutionary currents on the Latin American left, the defeats inflicted on US imperialism in Vietnam, all helped to give the workers' movement in Chile a new strength. Above all the guerrilla campaign of Che Guevara had an immasses in Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America. Allende himself was very aware of this factor in the political situation and sought to identily with the Cuban revolution whenever possible Allende became President in a country which had already experienced six years of half-bearted reforms under Eduardo Frei's Christian Democrats. Both Frei's nationalisation measures and his agragian reform programme had aroused They had been carried out entirely within the framework of capitalism and imperialism. Yet at the same time they had helped to spark off bitter social strugeles such as the long strike at Puerto Montl in which two dozen workers were shot, There was also a prowing movement of land seizures by peasants, especially in the south. Chilean workers and peasants were beginning to demand a fundamontal transformation that woald go beyond piecemeal retorms. Partly in response to this, the programme of the Socialist Party took a charp turn to the Left. It was able to insist, against the wishes of its Communist allies, that the clection platform would announce the goal of suppressing capitalism and installing socialism. Since the programme failed to tackle the question of the class character of the state it was not a revolutionary programme but neither was it a classical Popular Front' progamme.
WORKERS GOVERNMENT The election of Allende could have been a great step forward for the Chilean working class. Revolutionary Marxists oppose the myth of the "peaceful" or parliamentary road to socialism, hut that does not mean that we relect the possibility of workers organisations forining the government within the framework of the capitalist state.
The formation of such a government can powerfully assist the development of the workers movement, so long as the centrad objective of this government is to promote mass mobilisations outside of the framework of parliament and the state machine, to encourage the growth of organs of workers power, and to prepare the ground for the inevitable showdown with the capitalist state machine.
However, Allende and the Popular Unity coalition, rather than adopting this approach, time and again chose to try and deal with the probleis facing them, not through the mobilisation of the masses, but by relying on their eventual executioners the cupitalist police und military. The first coonomic measures of Allende improved the material position of the masses, restrained inflation and Jed to the expropriation of a number of enterprises and the beginnings of a scrious land reform. Support for Allende grew, and in the April 1971 elections for Congreas the Popular Unity received just over 50% of the wore. This growth of electoral strengtli however, was not in any way matchod by a erowing working class mobiliation. During the 1970 presidential elections, almost 15,000 Popular Unity Committees had been established thoughout the country. However these committees were limited almost exclusively to electoral ends. They were created from top down as bodies appointed by, and accountable to, the Party buresucrats and not directly to the masses. Instead of being used to mobilise mass backing for Government measures, the Popular Unity Committees were put into cold storage to await the next election.
HANGMAN'S NOOSE By embarking on something approaching an anti- ruling class in the low-abiding' intentions of capitalist cconomic programme without any attempt to back it up through organs of popular power, the Government wus putting its head in the hangman's noose.
Inevitably, economic problens beset the economy, aggravaled by the sabotaging opera tions of both Chilean and international capitalists. Sales of Chilean copper were boycotted in the United States and ebewhere, while the US goveriment insisted on the repayment of immense debts incurred by the previous Frei Government. A Government firmly on the revolutionary path would have been able lo repudiate these debts. As it was, rapid inflation began to develop, shortages of spare parts began to appear, foreign reserves dried up and the middle sectors of the population becime alienated from a Government thut did not seem to have a clear solution.
These strata provided fertile ground for the growin of a rightist counter attack to the Government, including the development of fascist currents around a group called Father land and Freedom'. In September 1972 the counter revolutionary mohilisition against the regime acquired a new strength: there was a strike against the Governent by many profes Sunab and by the Jorry owners, The lorry owners were both numerous and important, since they were mainly self employed drivers owning only a single vehicle. The country relied beavily on transport, so this strike seriously damaged the economy and threatened the trove meut of essential food atuffs.
Tens of thousands of lorry owners, along with their families, camped outside the capital city of Santiago. The Government sought to deal with this threat through a combination of concessions to the Jorry dumers and attempts to end the dependence on the lorry owners through the development of the state transport system, To restore the confidence of the the Government, three top-ranking military bfficors were brought into the cahinet. This did not stop the lorry owners challenging the Government again when they ran into further difficulties. The Government then sent in the
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bloody military dictatorship, and to learn from the Chilean catastrophe