Republic of Chile

The Republic of Chile (often known simply as Chile) is a bourgeois state in South America. It has a history of both potent socialist movements and dictatorships of the bourgeoisie.

History

Chile was formerly a Spanish colony valued for its copper, but later became a client state of the USA. As early as 1872 socialists would establish the Chilean Section of the International Working Men's Association in Valparaiso. In 1909 labor groups would form a federation (GFOC) to consolidate the workers’ cooperatives, and Chilean anarcho-syndicalists would form a branch of the IWW in Valparaiso a decade later. The more revolutionary tendency became dominant and replaced the more conservative faction in the GFOC's congress of 1917; subsequently they renamed the organization as the briefer Chilean Workers Federation (FOCH). Their goal was the complete abolition of capitalism and its replacement by the workers’ union federation which would control industry. However, in the 1920s the growing popularity of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics lead to disputes over whether they should favor federalism or centralism, and the federation split in 1925. In 1927 a new anticommunist dictatorship came to power, destroying many workers’ organizations, including the Chilean IWW, and almost annihilated the FOCH.

After the decline of the anticommunist dictatorship in 1931, the workers’ movement entered a period of reorganization as the country passeed through a period of institutional crisis. Chilean anarcho-syndicalists, partially inspired by the IWW, created the General Confederation of Workers (CGT). Throughout the early 1930s the unions involved themselves in strikes and movement-building. On June 4 an alliance of politicians and militants carried out a coup d’état and established a new administration that Marmaduke Grove categorized as a socialist republic, although it is said that the workers and unions had no avenue for participation. After only twelve days the ruling class's military replaced the republic.

In 1946 the ruling class propagated a ‘law of the defense of democracy’ which it used to outlaw the Communist Party, and the anticommunists launched a wave of repression against the Chilean labor movement. Throughout the 1950s the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie continued to repress strikes. In the 1960s, the Republic of Chile's social and economic situation was disastrous: workers’ struggles were growing in intensity, and strikes increased in number, two thirds of which were outright illegal. A much more frontal, collective occupation movement (the tomas) was emerging in the countryside, replacing the discreet and gradual reclaiming of land. Similarly, in poor neighborhoods (poblaciones) where huge shantytowns had been built on the sly, a more politicized, organized form (the campamentos) now predominated. While this form was often connected to one party or another, it did genuinely tend to self-organize nonetheless.

In the 1964 presidential elections, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei bet on a specifically Chilean model of Keynesianism to pacify the tense social climate, and he gained the support of both American diplomatic interests and the right-wing parties, who withdrew their candidate in his favor, allowing him to win the elections easily. He set up grassroots organizations designed to contain the growing discontent on all fronts: greater union freedom, creation of cooperatives and welfare structures, institutionalization of already existing local associations such as the ‘neighborhood committees’ or the ‘mothers’ centers’, land reform, and nationalization of mining resources (buyout of 51% of total assets). None of this was at all successful in calming the surge of social struggles during his term though, and the structures set up precisely for that purpose in fact had the opposite effect of anchoring the struggles in time and space and providing continuity for them to grow and intensify. In 1966 the bourgeoisie massacred eight Chilean workers at the El Salvador mine.

Allende and Unidad Popular

In 1970 the Republic of Chile elected Salvador Allende as their new president, exciting much of the Chilean lower classes but upsetting the upper classes and the ultranationalists, including those in North America. From 1971 to 1972 the Republic of Chile's beef and bread consumption increased by 15%, and they initiated a programme to provide every Chilean child with a half-litre of milk daily. For almost three years President Allende presided over a republic whose citizens enjoyed a wide range of civil liberties, the absence of capital punishment, and liberty for all political organizations including the antisocialist ones. Although one state-owned television station supported the president's policies, the opposition controlled the other television stations, some two-thirds of the republic's radio stations, and all of the privately owned newspapers. It was also during this period that more workers were assuming control of their worksteads. However, some socialists also criticized the Allende administration for disarming workers’ militias, often citing this as the primary factor for the success of the 1973 coup, and for sending out observers to certain factories that laborers overtook.

In the 1970s the republic nationalized copper, and the American ruling class retaliated by imposing embargoes on them, and Chilean shop owners started hoarding goods in the name of speculation. The CIA also bribed forty thousand truckers to simply stop laboring, but the distributed decision support system Cybersyn in conjunction with the support of Chilean socialists lessened the potential damage of this strike. The socialists went out on the street, loading goods with their bare hands, and struggled so that the their towns did not go short on food. Some of the carriers (who supported President Allende) organized convoys to distribute food in the provinces. The population also developed a family supply system that they called ‘the people’s basket’.

Pinochet

Unable to dislodge the popular support of the government through coercive measures, the upper classes overthrew the Allende administration on September 11, 1973, and appointed Augusto Pinochet, a former military advisor to Allende, as the new head of state. In the days following the coup, the anticommunists massacred many of the remaining insurgents in Chile, and shops that had previously been empty were immediately restocked. The new anticommunist dictatorship imposed a massive privatization programme headed by Chicago economists, and impoverished the Chilean lower classes severely. The dictatorship also committed detainment and torture of about forty thousand dissidents, and official Chilean figures give the death toll as being slightly over 3,000, but it is possible that the actual number is as high as 11,000 or even 20,000. Finally in 1990, the régime converted back into a bourgeois democracy, but none of the anticommunists was harshly reprimanded for their atrocities. For example, Augusto Pinochet was supposed to be transferred to a British court for crimes against humanity, but the Blair cabinet was afraid to even put him on trial, so they sent him back home and forgot the issue.