Groucho Marxism

Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the overthrow of Chile’s left-wing Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende, who had been elected President of Chile just three years earlier. Popular Unity had defeated the conservative Christian Democrat government which had been discredited in the eyes of workers by its failure to implement social reforms. These workers elected Popular Unity in the hope that socialism could be introduced in Chile through peaceful constitutional means. Things began well for the new government: free school meals were introduced within weeks of the election, wages were increased, living standards were raised, and the economy reached close to full employment.

However, Chilean capitalists and American imperialists were enraged by Popular Unity’s election victory. They were particularly aggrieved that the huge US-owned copper industry and other key industries were nationalized with little compensation paid to the capitalist owners. At first, the Chilean ruling class did not move to crush the movement, fearing a backlash from workers who overwhelmingly supported Popular Unity. Instead, the ruling class bided its time and used the media and judiciary to stir up unrest. In addition, the CIA financed reactionary forces to destabilize the economy, with Richard Nixon’s specific orders being to ‘make the economy scream’. This economic sabotage eventually led to 200% inflation, which began to push people away from Popular Unity.

Egged on by the press, and financed by Chilean capitalists and the CIA, reactionary forces organised strikes in October 1972, two years into the new government’s reign. These strikes crippled the economy further and led to huge shortages. In response, workers set up committees to ensure food distribution in areas most affected by these shortages. These committees represented embryonic soviets or workers’ councils. However, instead of supporting these organisations, the Popular Unity leadership distanced themselves from them, arguing that workers were moving ‘too fast’, in a vain attempt to placate the capitalist class. This emboldened the reactionary forces, who began to assassinate workers’ leaders and trade unionists.

At this point, Allende should have moved decisively to mobilize an armed movement of workers. Instead, he brought three members of the military into his cabinet, including one General Pinochet. Many of the rank and file in the army and navy warned against this move, fearing it would lead to a coup, but Allende and his government refused to listen. On 11^th September 1973, the army rank and file was proved right when the reactionary forces in the military, led by Pinochet, launched a coup. This culminated with the Presidential Palace, with Allende inside it, being bombed using British-supplied jets. Allende chose to die in the palace rather than seek refuge in a friendly embassy. Popular Unity’s short reign was over.

The downfall of Popular Unity can be attributed to a number of factors, but by far the most significant was the leadership’s quixotic attempt at a gradual, ‘reformist’ road to socialism. The idea that the existing state machine can be used to gradually end capitalism not only flies in the face of Marxist theory; it has been proved time and again not to work in practice. The defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, for example, proved that workers cannot simply lay hold of the capitalist state machinery and wield it for its own class interests. On the contrary: the capitalist state must be destroyed and replaced with a democratic workers’ state. This cannot be done gradually; it can only be done through a socialist revolution led by the working class.

A key lesson of the Chilean experience is that once in power, a socialist government must act quickly to remove any reactionary tendencies, particularly in the military. Reactionary forces ultimately prevailed because Allende failed to deliver a decisive blow to them at a point when he had the majority of Chilean society behind him. Had he done this, Popular Unity could have finished the job they started by taking power completely out of the hands of the ruling class and introducing democratic workers’ control, management, and ownership of the economy. Chile would then have stood as a beacon of hope to the masses of Latin America and also to workers elsewhere in the world – even the US, where workers were become radicalized in response to the Vietnam war.

Instead, Chilean workers were left disarmed, both literally and metaphorically. On the eve of the coup, when they could have come out and defended the government, most stayed at home on the advice of their leaders who believed the military would stay loyal, and in the end Pinochet was able to seize power without any great struggle. Under Pinochet, Chile became a laboratory for neoliberal policies that were used to uproot the social reforms implemented by Popular Unity. These policies would later be adopted by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, with disastrous consequences. The Chilean coup of 1973 should serve as both a lesson and a warning to workers around the world: once in power, we must act quickly to destroy the capitalist state machinery, before it destroys us.