Chile: Constituent Assembly and Workers Power

Aerial bombardment of La Moneda Palace, 11 September 1973, during the military coup that brought down the Popular Unity government headed by Salvador Allende. To think that the military’s oversight and the “supervised democracy” constitution written by the Military Junta could be overthrown with a simple plebiscite, or a vote in a constituent assembly, is pure illusion. A workers revolution will be necessary. (Photo: AP)

The following article is translated from a special issue of El Internacionalista (October 2011).

Ever since the University Reform movement was born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1918, student struggles in Latin America have been closely linked to social movements for general emancipation, and to working-class struggles. The students of Córdoba were influenced in part by the liberating winds blowing from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and they only gained university autonomy and co-participation in institutional governance by means of a local general strike. But the rebellious youth put their trust in Radical Party president Hipólito Yrigoyen, and when bourgeois reaction peaked after the “Tragic Week” in January of 1919, when Yrigoyen’s army shot down more than a thousand revolutionary workers, the students’ conquests were undermined. Various founders of the Latin American Communist movement, such as José Carlos Mariátegui in Peru and Julio Antonio Mella in Cuba, began their political careers fighting for university reform. They argued that in order to realize the principles of 1918, the working class would have to take the power, and that a socialist revolution was necessary to lay the economic and social foundations for a real democratization of education.

In Chile, students have allied with Concertación (a coalition of the Christian Democracy [DC], the Socialist Party [PS] and their satellites), which only pretends to support the movement. The Communist Party (PCCh) and other leftist groups (Movement of the Revolutionary Left [MIR], Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front [FPMR], Communist Party-Proletarian Action [PC-AP]) compete in the elections under another rubric, the “Together We Can Do More” (Juntos Podemos Más) coalition, which is just a mini-popular front with minority bourgeois sectors like the Radical Party and the Christian Left, which were also part of Popular Unity (UP) under Allende. In fact, the axis of a revolutionary program to win the present struggle for free public education is to draw the lessons of the UP and the Allende government, in the previous Battle of Chile.

The most important of the factors that led to defeat at the hands of Pinochet’s henchmen was not that the working people were not armed, although this had terrible consequences, but that the workers were politically disarmed. Not only the PS and the PCCh, but also the MIR, the MAPU (Popular Unity Action Movement), and leftist sectors of the PS which were influential in the cordones industriales, workers’ council-like organizations that developed in the final year of Allende’s government, bound themselves to the end to the politics of the popular front. They thereby chained the workers movement (along with peasants, the urban poor, students etc.) to alliances with capitalist sectors, either directly, or by voting for the constituent parties of the UP, as did the MIR in the elections of March 1973. In order to triumph over the counterrevolution fostered (and financed) by Yankee imperialism, it was essential to make a clear break with all the parties of the UP and their deceptive promise of “people’s power,” and fight directly for workers revolution.

One Chilean group that criticizes popular-frontism is the PTR (Partido de Trabajadores Revolucionarios – Revolutionary Workers Party), which is part of the Trotskyist Fraction (FT) led by the PTS (Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas – Socialist Workers Party) of Argentina, and publishes the journal Clase contra Clase. The PTR has criticized the PCCh for its capitulations, notably for its not insisting that the call for free public education should be the absolute “bottom floor” demand, rather than a far-off “perspective.” In contrast to the vituperations in the bourgeois press about the “hoodies” (lower-class high school students) and the complaints of the PC and Concertación “moderates” against rock-throwing, the PTR defends the youth who have fought in the streets against the attempts by the carabineros to brutally stop “unauthorized” marches. However, in broader terms, the PTR shares the reformists’ “democratist” focus. In the latest issue of its newspaper Clase contra Clase (No. 168, 28 August) and in various articles appearing in the newspaper of the PTS, La Verdad Obrera, they put forward the slogan of “a Free and Sovereign Constituent Assembly,” to replace the Pinochetist constitution, as their “maximum program” for this struggle.

With different formulations, the constituent assembly slogan is also taken up by the PCCh, the MIR and almost all the “far left” groups. Among these is the Revolutionary Party of the Workers (PRT – Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores), a sympathizing section of the International Workers League (LIT), representing the main body of the political current led for years by the late pseudo-Trotskyist leader Nahuel Moreno. The FT also has its roots in Morenoism, even though it grew critical of its mentor after breaking away from the LIT in 1989, shortly after Moreno died. But fundamentally, and in practice, the LIT/PRT and the FT/PTR have the same “democratic” program of chasing after non-proletarian leaders. This has been shown in recent months when both organizations threw their support behind the “rebels” in Libya who were calling for Western imperialists to intervene to bring down the nationalist-bonapartist Qaddafi regime. They thereby did their part in paving the way for the NATO bombing, which they later criticized without noting their own responsibility. It’s also worth noting that after the earthquake of January 2010 in Haiti, the PTR called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Caribbean island, but not for the withdrawal of the Chilean contingent of nearly 500 soldiers who were part of the imperialist mercenary occupation under the U.N. flag.

In many Latin American countries, a limited bourgeois “democracy” has held sway for some time, in which elected positions are put on the market every few years, to be sold to the highest bidder in voting dominated by money (for television ads, vote-buying, etc.) In Chile, even though the dictatorship ended when Pinochet stepped down in 1990, capitalist democracy continues to be “watched over” by the generals. Military commanders, free of any effective civilian oversight, exercise a formidable tutelage over the actions of the elected authorities. Their privileged position is expressed in the constitution promulgated by the dictator in 1980 and amended in 1990 and 2005. To put an end to this bonapartist framework will take much more than a referendum or the election of a constituent assembly, free and sovereign as it may claim to be. Overcoming this “democracy” under military supervision demands nothing less than a social revolution that expropriates capital and destroys the power of its armed forces. The PTR doesn’t say this, even if sometimes it talks about basing the Constituent Assembly on the movement. Neither do the PRT, the PCCh or the “hardline” Stalinists who also call for a Constituent Assembly.

In the midst of a struggle for democratic rights, like free public education open to all, the call for a revolutionary constituent assembly could serve as a subordinate element of the program for the seizure of power by the proletariat in Chile, by means of its own organs of class power, that is, worker councils like the soviets in Russia, and for the extension of the socialist revolution to the rest of the Southern Cone and the entire hemisphere, into the heart of U.S. imperialism. To call instead for a constituent assembly as if it were an exercise in electoral democracy, as do the reformists of the PC and the pseudo-Trotskyist centrists of the PTR/FT, feeds the same illusions as Allende and his comrades of the PCCh and PS did with their imaginary “parliamentary road” to revolution, with the same deadly consequences that we know all too well. To visualize this in more detail, it suffices to consider just which clauses of the current Pinochetist constitution would have to be thrown out.

First we have the National Security Council (Cosena), created by the 1980 constitution to watch over the president, the legislature and the courts. Even though it no longer has an automatic majority of military men (from the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and carabineros), and though its role is now described as “advising” the president on matters of national security, it is also charged with “carrying out the other functions accorded to it by the Constitution.” And according to Organic Constitutional Law No. 18.415, one of said functions of the Cosena is to authorize the declaration of martial law by the president without the approval of Congress – a point of no small importance. Next there’s the great autonomy of the armed forces from civilian control. Uniquely in the Western Hemisphere, the president of Chile is not the commander in chief of the armed forces, except in times of war. The president may nominate the chiefs of the four armed forces and of internal security, but only by choosing among the five highest-ranking generals. The incorporation of personnel into the military hierarchy “may only be done through its own institutes.” And according to the same Organic Constitutional Law, appointments, promotions and dismissals can only be made by the Ministry of Defense according to its own internal rules.

The People United will Never be Defeated? This slogan of the Popular Front was false to the core. The workers, “united” with their class enemies, were defeated in Chile. Right: General Augusto Pinochet together with President Salvador Allende, 23 August 1973. Pinochet, a respected “constitutionalist” officer, orchestrated the coup using the authority given to him by the Popular Unity government. (Photo: AP)

The funding of the military is another aspect. Under Pinochet, almost all the state-owned companies were privatized, except for one: CODELCO. The nationalization of the copper mines, carried out by the Popular Unity government in 1971, was maintained, although concessions were granted to private subcontractors for production. Why this exception? Could it be because according the Reserve Law on Copper, 10 percent of copper sales are set aside for the arms budget? These are not questions of secondary importance. The constitutional clauses on the regulation of the armed forces are almost identical to those contained in the Statute of Constitutional Guarantees that Allende was obliged to sign in October of 1970 as a condition for his confirmation as President. As this pledge itself indicated, these stipulations guaranteed the independence of the military and police forces, the backbone of the capitalist state, against all “interference” from elected officials.[1] This was essential to the future preparation of the coup d’état of 1973. Today as well, the generals would defend their privileges and their immunity with tooth and nail (and machine guns and tanks) against any attempt to touch them, no matter how democratic it may be.

There are many other anti-democratic aspects of the present constitution: it bans strikes by national and local government workers, and by workers who “provide services of public utility.” It prohibits associations, movements, organizations or groups that carry out the activities of political parties without conforming to the regulations on the latter, which include the requirement to hand over membership lists to government agencies. It prohibits “associations contrary to morality, public order, and state security.” It prohibits unions from taking part in “partisan political activities,” and does not allow union officials to hold leading positions in political parties. A constitutional article against terrorism has been used against indigenous Mapuche people who are fighting for their land. Not only can the president declare a “state of exception,” he can also proclaim “decrees with the force of law” on a great variety of matters, education for example, without congressional approval. Without a doubt, a struggle for democratic rights would have to throw this authoritarian constitution in the garbage. But how?

In recent years, many currents on the left have substituted a democratic program for their former socialist and communist pretensions. Social democrats, ex-Stalinists, and small groups claiming to be Trotskyist have all made the call for a constituent assembly their calling card. In many cases, such as in Oaxaca in 2006, they put forward such calls in conditions where they only served to derail the masses from the struggle for workers revolution. At the same time, bourgeois politicians like Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador claim to “re-found” their countries via constituent assemblies, all while they are cracking down on the workers, peasants and indigenous people who elected them (see “Trotskyism vs. Constituent Assembly Mania,” The Internationalist No. 27, May-June 2008). In the case of Chile, where the state institutions still retain important features of the bonapartist regime, of military-police rule, the slogan for a constituent assembly could be tactically useful, but only in the framework of a struggle for socialist revolution.[2]

If a constituent assembly is to be an effective instrument for the struggle for free public education, and for the raising of the revolutionary consciousness of the movement, it is necessary to explain why the constituent assembly is needed and what tasks it must carry out. Neither the PC, nor the PTR, PRT, or any other leftist group that raises the constituent assembly slogan, does this. First of all, it will be necessary to eliminate the constitutional article that under the deceptive heading of “freedom of instruction” establishes the “freedom” of capitalist enterprises to found schools and lays the foundation for the General Law on Education and the Decree with the Force of Law No. 2 of 2010 which prohibits the participation of students in the governance of educational institutions. In its place should be the expropriation of private universities, schools and institutes, and control by councils of students, teachers and workers at all levels of education. Likewise, it will be necessary to abolish all prohibitions and regulations of political activity by workers unions, and all state control over political associations.

In military affairs, clearly the National Security Council will have to be abolished along with any obstacle to civilian control over military institutions. But what should take their place? The typical arrangement of civilian-military relations in western “democracies”? That would be a betrayal of every principle of socialism: we are dealing with the repressive organs of the capitalist state here. No, revolutionaries would call for the dissolving of all the armed forces and police, and their replacement by a popular militia based on the mass organizations of the workers, the poor people, and the indigenous peoples. Simply to list the elementary measures that a genuine constituent assembly would have to implement should make it obvious that the military would never accept them. And we haven’t yet mentioned the formation of workers militias, or of popular tribunals to pass judgment on the officers, fascists and bourgeois politicians for their crimes in the coup d’état of 11 September 1973 and during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship. It’s plain to see that to put in place a democratic constituent assembly what’s needed is a revolution that brings down the rule of capital and sweeps away its guard dogs. ■

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