History
The lessons of the coup in Chile in 1973
December 1998
General Pinochet's arrest in Britain has sparked much more than just a legal controversy. In Chile it has blown apart the rotten "consensus" that was established when the dictator ceded power to a new "democratic" regime.
In the late 1980s, the regime and the open ruling class parties, principally the Christian Democrats, conspired with the reformists to cover up the murderous legacy of Pinochet's regime. This deal, which effectively gave Pinochet and his henchmen immunity for life, was framed in order to block any class polarisation and class struggle in the aftermath of the dictatorship.
The deal, which made Pinochet a senator and guaranteed his control over the armed forces, was sold to the masses as the necessary price to pay for the restoration of democracy. This was a lie.
The dictatorship was reeling from crisis to crisis after 1983. It faced a working class that was recovering from the terrible defeat it suffered after the original coup by Pinochet in September 1973. It could have been overthrown, but the reformists, in exchange for influence in the new regime, helped block a revolution and saved Pinochet from destruction.
Today the consensus is visibly breaking down. Masses of workers and youth have come out onto the streets of Chile's cities demanding justice for the victims of the military junta. They have been met with water cannon and baton charges, but their struggle will not go away. The forces of progress, the working class, which Pinochet believed he had eradicated during his reign of terror, are fighting back.
In Europe Chilean exiles have taken to the streets. The posh clinic where Pinochet has been "under arrest" has been picketed day and night. Chilean embassies have been beset by anti-Pinochet protests. These actions have found support from the workers and youth in Europe, and especially in Britain.
It is vital that this opportunity for renewed struggle in Chile and around the question of justice for the victims of the Chilean dictatorship, is taken up. But it is equally vital that the lessons of the struggle that led to Pinochet's bloody coup in 1973 are learnt by everyone. They are amongst the most important lessons for the international working class in the twentieth century.
The "Chilean experiment" of introducing socialism according to the reformist model - within the framework of capitalist legality and through the vehicle of parliamentary institutions - was hailed by social democratic and Stalinist reformists across the world as the new model for workers to follow. The peaceful road to socialism worked and Chile proved it, they claimed.
Within three years of travelling only a few yards along that road it was brutally exposed as a dead end for the working class. The experiment by the Chilean reformists cost the lives of thousands. The flower of the Chilean proletariat was ruthlessly murdered, tortured and imprisoned. The defeat encouraged aspiring dictators across Latin America, and beyond, to launch their own attacks on the workers' movements. Chile was plunged into the long, dark night of Pinochet's dictatorship.
Today the apologists for Pinochet - the Tory Party foremost among them - claim that Pinochet did a lot of good for Chile, that he introduced economic stability and that he saved the country from civil war and a left wing dictatorship. For good measure that grotesque gargoyle, Thatcher, added that he helped Britain kill lots of Argentinians during the Falklands/Malvinas war and deserved not only freedom but tea, sympathy and a hamper full of luxuries.
Not only do these hypocrites merrily gloss over his human rights record - a record that disgusts every genuine democrat - they lie about what he really did for the Chilean economy and the Chilean people. During his rule he followed Thatcherite monetarist dogma to the letter, certainly for the first ten years. Under the influence of the "Chicago boys", devout followers of the guru of monetarism, Milton Friedman, Pinochet turned Chile into what one of the monetarist economists in the US called "a showcase of what supply-side economics can do." Too true.
In those ten years, with lashings of aid from the US, who had helped Pinochet seize power in the first place, the economic stability that was promised after the downfall of Allende, never came. Unemployment, 4.3 per cent in 1973, rose to 22 per cent by 1983. The number of Chileans living in absolute poverty, according to official figures, rose from 20 per cent in 1970 to 40 per cent at the end of his reign in 1990.
This economic chaos and misery for millions was the real consequence of letting the market rip, and by 1982/83 Chile was experiencing a far worse economic crisis than at the time of the coup, with GDP falling by 19 per cent. And the working class - who had been legally robbed of union negotiating rights and minimum wage protection by the dictator - showed that his "final solution" of 1973 had failed. They took to the streets and fought his troops, actually winning back the minimum wage and some bargaining rights.
Chile wasn't an economic miracle under Pinochet. It was an economic disaster zone, underwritten by US imperialism and Britain in return for the lucrative favours that it bestowed on their multinational corporations operating in the country.
The workers paid twofold for the failed experiment of the reformists: they paid with their lives and lost freedom and they paid with their jobs and living standards. This was the fate of a powerful working class with a rich tradition in struggle. How could it have happened?
Without in any way trying to deflect blame from Pinochet and his junta for the crimes they committed against the Chilean people we have to say that he was able to get away with those crimes because the reformist experiment in Chile was actually a betrayal of the working class, one that delivered them, bound hand and foot, into the hands of reaction. By learning the lessons of the disaster in Chile we can arm a new generation of militants and prevent any repetition of that disaster.