ON THE morning of 11 September 1973, almost exactly three years after the Popular Unity (UP) coalition had come to power, the Mòneda palace in Santiago, the residence of social democratic president Salvador Allende, came under attack from tanks and aircraft. The left's nightmare — a military coup — was coming true.
Allende and his bodyguard came out of the palace with machine guns, scanning the sky for the attacking planes. Within hours Allende was dead. The 'peaceful road' to socialism in Chile had come to an end.
On the seventh anniversary of the coup, PHIL HEARSE looks at the reasons for the failure of Chilean reformism and its lessons for us.
IN THE days that followed the coup, the right wing and the army took revenge against the left. In three days 30,000 socialists, communists and trade unionists were killed by the military forces. Thousands of workers who had been told by the Communist and Socialist parties to assemble in their factories were cut down unarmed when the army attacked.
A reign of terror followed which has not been ended to this day. The shadow of the torturer hung over Chile as the experiment with a 'peaceful road to socialism' was dismantled. To understand why, we have to look at what the Popular Unity coalition was trying to do, and how it went wrong.
In September 1970, Popular Unity's candidate, Allende, won the presidential elections. The right wing made the mistake of standing two candidates; Allende received the highest number of votes (36 per cent) but not an overall majority.
Right from the start Allende tried to make concessions to the right wing; his cabinet contained as many members of the declining and right-wing Radical Party as of the much bigger Communist Party. The strategy of the Popular Unity government was gradually to carry out reforms in the interests of the working class, but not to go too quickly, for fear of alienating the middle class.
Instead of the nationalisation of all the basic means of production only partial nationalisation took place. Instead of mass workers' mobilisations, during the first year of Allende's rule the hundreds of local Popular Unity committees which had been set up during the election campaign were disbanded.
Nonetheless the Popular Unity government did take many steps in the interests of the working class. The number of nationalisations was much greater than the top 25 companies envisaged for Britain by Tony Benn. Wages and salaries were substantially increased.
Free milk was distributed to the poor, and money for public housing was greatly increased. Unemployment fell as the economy grew. Popular support for the government also grew — in the 1971 local elections Popular Unity got a clear majority of the votes.
But the successes of Popular Unity were purchased at a high price. Because the big financial institutions and banks were not taken over, the government had to borrow huge amounts. Inflation began to increase alarmingly.
Ironically, the whole strategy of Popular Unity was to go slowly in order to win over the middle class. But because the gradual approach allowed economic chaos to develop, the middle class went over to the right-wing parties.
Bankruptcy
The destabilisation of the government by the right wing took many forms. Economically, there was an investment strike by the Chilean bosses. Wealthy farmers took their cattle over the Andes into Argentina, rather than sell them in Chile. The press carried out a slander campaign against the government and the left.
As the economy got in worse trouble, foreign companies refused to invest in Chile. The United States organised an international campaign against Chile — all credit to Chile was ended. The US stepped up its contacts with the Chilean military forces.
In 1972 the political strategy of Popular Unity went into bankruptcy. The determination of imperialism and local reaction to wreck the economy made it impossible to win over the middle class.
The whole process of destabilisation reached a head in the autumn of 1972 when a bosses' strike was organised. Factories closed down; the middle class truck owners went on strike, leaving transport paralysed. The country ground to a halt.
Popular Unity was itself divided. The right wing, led by Allende and the Communist Party, advocated a continued 'go slow' policy — what they called 'consolidation'.
The left wing — the left of the Socialist Party and their allies — put forward a policy of 'advance without compromise', to push forward to socialism by mobilising the workers. They were supported by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) outside the government.
The workers had something to say about this situation. Against the hoarding of vital necessities, they organised local committees of supply and distribution to try to break the stranglehold of the black market. The supply committees organised by Popular Unity were revitalised.
[illegible] started to fight for control of the land through a series of land seizures. [illegible] important of all, when the bosses' str[illegible]rred, workers in the industrial zones — the cordones industriales — set up factory and area committees.
Factory and neighbourhood committees constituted embryonic organisations of workers' power; the workers were beginning to take their affairs into their own hands. Popular power was emerging in Chile.
[illegible] Popular Unity government op[illegible]elf-organisation of the masses. [illegible]' strike developed, the govern[illegible]nced the cordones industriales [illegible]as illegal.
[illegible] of mobilising the masses, in[illegible] support the actions of the [illegible]selves, Popular Unity called [illegible]o break the strike. Trade union [illegible]ed the factories telling the [illegible]ly on 'legality'; to leave it to [illegible]nment to overcome the crisis.
[illegible]
[illegible]ut the period of Popular [illegible]ment the armed forces of the [illegible]mained intact. Allende con[illegible]d his faith in the 'constitu[illegible] of the army. No attempt [illegible]ndermine the armed forces; [illegible] made to win rank-and-file [illegible] side of the government. [illegible] military retained their links [illegible] States.
[illegible]tion revealed the whole [illegible]pular Unity. In the name of [illegible]ss they had captured the [illegible]us of the government. But [illegible]ate, and its apparatus of [illegible]d intact.
[illegible]mained the final guarantor [illegible] of the right wing and the [illegible] tolerated the Allende [illegible] while; but when it looked as if the working class was getting out of control, they moved in for the kill.
At the beginning of 1973 pressure from the right wing built up. Middle class students from the Catholic University demonstrated against the government.
The whole of the bourgeoisie clamoured for the army to intervene and overthrow the 'Marxist' government. The military carried out hundreds of raids against left-wing strongholds — factories, shanty towns where the poor and unemployed lived, left-wing political offices. The whole situation was one of crisis.
On 29 June 1973 a section of the army led by Colonel Roberto Souper attempted a coup. Tanks from the Second Armoured Regiment attacked the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defence. But only a small part of the armed forces joined the coup — it was easily put down by forces who remained 'loyal' to Allende. It seemed that Souper had jumped the gun.
The reaction of the workers to the attempted coup was speedy. During the day, as the fighting went on in Santiago's streets, the parties of Popular Unity met and decided to distribute arms to the workers. On the evening of 29 June more than a million workers demonstrated in the streets of Santiago against the reactionaries.
When Allende addressed them they demanded that he 'hit the reactionaries hard' and execute the plotters. The left demanded that the decision to distribute guns to the workers that had been taken earlier should be carried out.
Repression
For Allende and his government this was the last chance. The defeated coup put the right wing on the spot. The workers were infuriated. They wanted guns. During the day many workers had occupied their factories and they wanted to keep them. It was the decisive moment.
But Allende and Popular Unity acted in precisely the opposite way. Instead of taking the opportunity to strike hard at the right wing, the government decided that the only way out was to make further concessions.
Allende invited a wide range of right-wing figures to join his cabinet, in particular the Christian Democrats. When they demanded that the military also be brought in, Allende agreed on 10 August.
By these hasty and desperate concessions, Allende only signalled his weakness to the right. The military became convinced that they could overthrow him without too much of a struggle. On 11 September the blow was struck. Chile went into the darkness of military dictatorship and repression.
While there are many lessons for British socialists in the Chile experience, it would be foolish to pretend that we are likely to face exactly the same position if a left-wing government is elected. For one thing the policies associated with Tony Benn and the mainstream of the so-called 'Alternative economic strategy' are a good deal less radical than those pursued by Allende. But we can draw out certain lessons.
The initial steps of Popular Unity — the reflation of the economy and the increase in wages and living conditions, the nationalisation of some large firms, including the American-owned copper companies — were all in the interests of the working class.
But because of the limitations on the economic power of the government — above all the fact that they didn't completely take over all the major firms and the financial institutions — it was possible for the bosses and the middle class to begin to sabotage the economy.
With much more extensive nationalisations it would have been possible, with a state monopoly of foreign trade, to guard the economy against the sabotage of imperialism.
But these economic policies were just part of the much more fundamental problem of Allende and Popular Unity. At each decisive turn, they put their faith not in mass mobilisation and the self-organisation of the working class, but in constitutionalism.
They relied on the 'good will' of the reactionary parliament and the 'neutrality' of the army — neither of which was forthcoming.
In their overwhelming majority, despite the comparative strength of the revolutionary left, the workers stayed loyal to their traditional reformist parties, which told them repeatedly to rely on constitutional manoeuvres and not on mass action.
Reformists of every type like to parade their 'realism'. This consists, apparently, in eschewing such fantasies as 'mass mobilisation', 'revolution', and 'workers' power'.
According to them, such things are Trotskyist day dreams. They argue instead that it is possible to create socialism by fundamentally peaceful, constitutional means.
Chile shows, however, who are the realists. To attempt to advance towards socialism without the preconditions of mass mobilisation existing, and without preparing for an inevitable confrontation with the repressive forces of the state, is not just unrealistic. It is an exercise in monstrous irresponsibility and adventurism.
For this stupidity more than thirty thousand Chilean workers died. In saluting their memory on the seventh anniversary of the coup, we have to prepare the conditions for avoiding a repeat of the Chilean experience.
Quotes from 'Chile's Days of Terror' (Pathfinder Press)
'Well, we Chileans had a chance to get a sort of preview in the attempted coup of 29 June.... We knew that much of what we did was in vain, that it took us nowhere, that we were part of the pattern of this horrible wasted jumble.... The peaceful road, our famous road. Where did it lead us?'
'THEN... it came. You could see the activity. It was like the 29 June attempt had been a little joke. Here was the real thing.
'You saw the Hawker Hunter jets circling and bombing the presidential palace. You saw them streaking out to the working class areas to bomb factories and working class neighbourhoods...
'I watched the army deploying itself in total military fashion, then a curtain of machine-gun fire opened up — for about ten minutes, a sheer curtain of sound and smoke arising from the intense fire into this one building.
'It finally ended by someone throwing a grenade in. There was a huge explosion and then silence. This was happening building by building all over the city.'
'I remember going on the 4 September march, celebrating the third anniversary of Allende's election. There were more than one million people in the streets of Santiago. A very moving sight.
'I brought my little son with me because I knew in a sense that it was going to be the last march, that something was soon going to happen. We were marching down the street, talking to the people on the march — the workers, and so on. I realised that they also felt the way I did.
'They also knew this was one of the last times that they would be allowed to go on the street. They were conscious of what was coming and they were prepared to defend the government. There was no mincing words; they were expecting a fascist-type situation to develop and they were going to fight it.'