Finnish Bolshevik: What liberals need to understand (Response to Jimmy Dore)
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The Finnish Bolshevik
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The Finnish Bolshevik’s critique of Richard Wolff (Marxist economist)
By The Finnish Bolshevik
Thoughts on Richard Wolff (Marxist economist)
With select comments
Hakim's interview with prof. Wolff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpKz...
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
Lenin, What is to be done? https://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...
My patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheFinnishBol...
My blog https://mltheory.wordpress.com/
Select comments
9 months ago (edited) This guy has a lot of "waking up" to do. Why would anyone identify themselves as a 'Libertarian Socialist.' This reeks of Synthetic Leftism. Anarchists need to understand that, in the long run, WE (themselves and Communists) all want the same thing - a classless, cashless, and stateless society. They just don't understand historical and material development and seem to think that we can just jump to this type of society immediately. This is a form of Left Adventurism.
2 weeks ago it's time to stop fucking capitulating in front of the capitalists by trying to appear unradical. To overcome their cultural hegemony we need to face it straight on and smash through it with a hammer of populism. people love audacity. if you're not going to show them communism is acceptable who the fuck will?
La Rose Blanche 1 month ago I think he tailors his message to the audience, so that it's simple and palatable to people that don't know of any existing socialism, and those that do are full of anti-socialist propaganda or aren't someone he needs to persuade.
TheFinnishBolshevik 1 month ago His message becomes counter-productive when he starts acting like Mondragon Corporation represents socialism and the USSR didn't.
1 month ago @TheFinnishBolshevik I don't know man, he was asked about USSR, and he has all ways pointed that it was the fastest-growing economy in the world
1 month ago Very good critique comrade. I saw the Hakim interview with Prof Wolffe and my comment then was, "Too much confused waffle."
1 month ago I love Wolff despite all of his flaws (which are well pointed out in this video)....he had helped normalize socialistic ideas here in the US, especially in a post Cold War era....
2 weeks ago The fetishization of coops is a mistake tbh. Having worked myself in a coop, I can tell from experience they are just as likely to become corrupt and fall into the trappings of your regular private corporations.
5 months ago The anarchist worldview is petulant in my view — they don’t understand circumstance, context, why democratic centralism is necessary, all they care about is BOOM revolution straight to communism — anarchism is perfect for American liberals it’s hyper-individualistic, it’s all about getting what you want right away it doesn’t understand power or how to manage complex systems, it’s as bizarre in its conception of individuals and freedom as ancaps.
2 years ago (edited) I'm always surprised at the naive view that so many anarchists have towards human instincts. In empirical terms of history, there is no way you can avoid power vacuums in rapid removal of state power, and a real stateless society would take generations to achieve.
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Apartheid Does Not Have the Right To Defend Itself, Or To Exist
Jim Kavanagh
THE POLEMICIST
Israel is a colonial-settler enterprise. Israel is an ethno-religious (Jewish) supremacist enterprise. Ipso facto, Israel is an apartheid enterprise.
BELOW: Video report produced by DW, Germany's official tv/press channel, usually very much pro-Israel. The images cannot be denied.
I hope that everyone, or at least an increasing number of Americans, can finally acknowledge what they are seeing, what Israel is, and that they will then reject the fables and excuses they are being constantly fed.
Israel is a colonial-settler enterprise. Israel is an ethno-religious (Jewish) supremacist enterprise. Ipso facto, Israel is an apartheid enterprise.
It is that kind of enterprise by virtue of its ongoing conspicuous actions and by virtue of its own self-definition as a “Jewish State.”
As British activist Haim Bresheeth-Žabner says “From a de facto racist state, Israel has become an Apartheid state de jure.” Per Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem, Israel is “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.”
Even Human Rights Watch agrees that Israel is guilty of the “crime” of apartheid. It is indisputable, as B’Tselem’s executive director. Hagai El-Ad, says, that: “Apartheid is the organizing principle that connects all these forms of colonization and transfer, disenfranchisement and oppression, domination and supremacy. …All Palestinians living under Israeli rule are treated as inferior in rights and status to Jews who live in the same area.”
As I’ve said in a previous article regarding the Zionist colonial, intrinsically apartheid, enterprise: “That’s what has to be named and opposed. Every other problem in the context is a derivative of that.”
And that is indefensible. Colonialist apartheid is a crime—in terms of both internationally-accepted political ethics and the norms of international law. Colonialism and apartheid are crimes under jus cogens—the preemptory, compelling norms of international law “from which no derogation is ever permitted.” The perpetrators of such crimes are considered hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind.
A colonial apartheid regime has no “right of self-defense” against the resistance of the people it is attempting to exterminate, expel, or force into submission. Those people the colonial regime is trying to subjugate do have every right to fight for “liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” Individual people and organized groups—whether kids throwing rocks or Hamas throwing missiles—have every right, with any means necessary, to resist, fight, and defeat the occupying colonial power.
Nine years ago, in an essay I recommend to everyone, Noura Erakat demolished Israel’s claims to have a right to self-defense under international law in occupied Palestinian territory—and Gaza is “still considered to be occupied by Israel by the United Nations”:
the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population. … This is not to say that Israel cannot defend itself—but those defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defense in international law….
An occupying power cannot justify military force as self-defense in territory for which it is responsible as the occupant….Israel is distorting/reinterpreting international law to justify its use of militarized force in order to protect its colonial authority. Although it rebuffs the de jure application of Occupation Law, Israel exercises effective control over the West Bank and Gaza and therefore has recourse to police powers. It uses those police powers to continue its colonial expansion and apartheid rule and then in defiance of international law cites its right to self-defense in international law to wage war against the population, which it has a duty to protect.
We’re now beyond the “occupied territory” issue and Israel’s game of denying it “occupies” the various geographical prisons whose every facet of life it controls. It is clear now that all Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza, or the Green Line, “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”—a majority of the population—are under the single apartheid “regime of Jewish supremacy,” and have the full right of resistance thereto. It’s important that everyone recognize, as Joseph Massad points out, that “Israel’s leaders now accept that Jewish colonists and their descendants will forever be a minority in historic Palestine,” in “their own settler-colonial state.”
That regime not only does not have the “right” to defend itself against its subjugated population, it does not—and we should have no compunction to say so—have the “right” to exist. Per Sharmine Narwani, also nine years ago, the Zionist enterprise is “the last modern-day colonial-settler experiment, conducted at a time when these projects were being unraveled globally.” I reprised that point in my aforementioned article, where I said it was possible in the few years after WWII “because racism and ethno-supremacist colonialism were still integral parts of the Western worldview. The great world powers could still blithely dismiss the lives, land, and humanity of an Arab population as dispensable—secondary both to the aspirations of the largely European Jews who formed the Zionist vanguard and to the guilty consciences of European gentiles. It was compensatory colonialism, with the compensation paid by an expendable third(world) people.”
AndLittle Ulster,” and all.
So it is good, finally, to see “apartheid” and the “colonization of Palestine” being named and opposed by Democratic activists and prominent politicians, including Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, on the floor of the Congress, and AOC and her squaddies tweet-storming “Apartheid states aren’t democracies.”. And it’s good to see legislation introduced by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, with “more than a dozen” supporters, to prevent U.S. aid to Israel from “paying for the military detention and abuse of Palestinian children, the demolition of Palestinian homes, or the annexation of Palestinian land.”
Though I find too much of it—AOC and Bernie in particular—about whether we can get our politicians to speak in really neutral terms. Let’s recognize everyone’s humanity. Palestinian lives matter, too. This isn’t about finding a way for the victims and opponents of Zionist apartheid to get along peaceably with its enforcers and proponents. It’s about finding a way to defeat them.
There is definitely a new trend. The Zionist narrative is losing—among large sectors of younger adults (Jewish and Gentile) has, I would say, already and irretrievably lost—its air of legitimacy, virtue, and necessity. Nothing has done more to undermine that narrative than the open internet and social media (which is why no force is more interested in imposing controls on those channels than acolytes of Zionism). The scenes of Palestinian dispossession and Israeli rampage are just too blatant to ignore. A divide is opening up in the country over Palestine-Israel, and it is reflected in the Democratic Party, a majority of whose constituency understands that you can’t claim to be anti-racist and continue to support the US being the indispensable enabler of Israel’s Mohammed Crow apartheid. There is no such thing as Progressive Except Palestine.
It also remains the case that both political parties and the entire media, academic, and cultural apparatus—none of which is controlled by popular will—are firmly committed to Zionism and the unconditional support of Israel in ways that will be extremely difficult to reverse. We still live in a polity where Israeli-spy producer many of them work for, the crème de la Hollywood crème shows up dutifully twice a year to raisedescribed as “a Zionist institution”; and on and on.
In a deep sense, America has become a Zionist country. There is a lot of Zionist-committed money and power controlling the institutions that make policy and manufacture consent and that have made Zionism into a core component of American ideology and politics. They will have to be forthrightly and fearlessly named, opposed, and defeated to change the way the United States enables the apartheid “regime of Jewish supremacy.” There will be a lot of hemming and hawing to avoid doing that.
I’ll point out, for example, that if Betty and other tweet-storming “left-wing” progressive legislators really want to disrupt the military aid to Israel that is right now enabling the killing of children in Gaza, they have no need for new legislation to do so. All aid to Israel—every dollar—is already illegal under the terms of the Symington and Glenn Amendments, which prohibit aid to any country acquiring nuclear weapons. The latter came about because Sen. John Glenn was concerned specifically about “diversion [of weapons-grade uranium] from U.S. nuclear contractor NUMEC to Israel’s nuclear program”—an act of nuclear espionage and theft abetted by that Hollywood spy-producer, which, for some reason, didn’t subject him and his confreres to the same fate as Julius and Ethel.
Every single US president and the entire US "intelligence community" blatantly lie, and every single member of Congress knows they are lying, about the (per Schumer!) “well-known fact” of Israel’s nuclear weapons in order to disburse aid to Israel. All any member of Congress who is serious about “conditioning” aid to Israel has to do is point this out, publicly and consistently, on the floor of the Congress and in every media interview. All Betty has to do is join Desmond Tutu, tell the truth and demand that her colleagues and the president follow the law. That would simply and immediately disrupt the discourse of Israeli “self-defense” exceptionalism, the blathering about dangerous Palestinian rockets and Iranian nuclear programs, etc., and create new kinds of pressure for American politicians to explain themselves—much more than concerned tweeting and submitting bills they know Nancy Pelosi and Chuck (“Guardian of Israel”) Schumer are going to bury.
Which is why nobody does it.
There is no chance that a group of people who unanimously lie all the time to give Israel tons of public money in contravention of U.S. law will pass Betty's law, or any like it—and Betty knows it. If Betty and her co-signers are serious about “conditioning” aid, they will bring up Israeli
So it is good, finally, to see “apartheid” and the “colonization of Palestine” being named and opposed by Democratic activists and prominent politicians, including Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, on the floor of the Congress, and AOC and her squaddies tweet-storming “Apartheid states aren’t democracies.”. And it’s good to see legislation introduced by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, with “more than a dozen” supporters, to prevent U.S. aid to Israel from “paying for the military detention and abuse of Palestinian children, the demolition of Palestinian homes, or the annexation of Palestinian land.”
It took a long time to turn the Democratic Party away from its long-standing alliance with Jim Crow apartheid in America. It took a lot of images like those of Emmet Till, and Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and Bull Connor’s cops and dogs, and the taking up of arms by black groups, and burning of American cities, broadcast on the media of the day, to help make that happen—to get the Democratic Party and the political and media elite to see that it was just plain wrong, and there could be no more asking black people to be patient and wait—just a little more, until we figure out all the complications, hem, haw—for the end of American apartheid.
Now take the difficulty of that transformation and multiply it. Keep going.
I hope I’m wrong, but I will use the “n”-word we should always avoid: The Democratic and Republican parties will never abjure their commitment to Zionism. As in: "If Washington D.C. crumbled to the ground, the last thing that would remain is our support for Israel."
"If Washington D.C. crumbled to the ground, the last thing that would remain is our support for Israel."
-Nancy Pelosi at AIPAC
Yet @IlhanMN is smeared for even mentioning the idea that Israel has a grip on US policy? ???? pic.twitter.com/hZg9MuPt7F
— Going Underground on RT (@Underground_RT) May 29, 2019
There is a lot more lopsided money and power behind that proclamation today than was behind George Wallace’s “Segregation forever!” in 1963. Those political parties will die, and should be killed, as the parties they are—and as one of their presidents, without objection, said he would—fighting for Israeli apartheid. The political and media elites, and George Wallace himself, came to see American Jim Crow apartheid as not just wrong, but impossible: they could not not significantly re-calibrate in the face of armed black militancy and burning American cities. They do not care a whit how many Palestinian (or Syrian, or Iranian) towers, towns, and children burn. There is no limit.
If “left-wing” legislators and activists aren’t going to go right at it, and, as unflinchingly as they would have against George Wallace, fight the fight to the political death of any agent or institution that wants to die on the crumbling hill of Zionism, then…well, there’s no such thing as Progressive Except Apartheid Zionism Forever.
Because time is way past up for hemming and hawing. It always comes too late in systems of apartheid. It came very late for African-Americans. It has been way too long for Palestinian Arabs.
If you don’t see the connection, you’re just wrong. Here’s an eloquent voice on that for African-Americans, which also absolutely is a voice for Palestinians, about whose predicament he wrote with equal urgency and eloquence:
What is it that you expect Palestinians to reconcile themselves to? There comes a time when even the most stubborn have to recognize that appeals to colonized people for peace and patience are nothing more than demands to surrender and accept their subjugation.
I hope that an increasing number of Americans see Israel’s latest blatant program of ethnic cleansing and its vicious attack on Gaza as instances of colonialist violence that has never and will never stop within the Zionist project.
I hope they see that it is simply wrong to expect, let alone demand, that Palestinians wait any longer to overturn, by any means necessary, the system of apartheid in which their homes, lands, hopes, and lives are just not as important as those of Jewish settlers. I hope, and think, they understand that the time for hemming and hawing is over. Way over.
This is not a conflict between Israel and Hamas, but between the whole Zionist movement—which includes all the forces mentioned above—and the whole Palestinian people. It is a fight that pits enormous, well-coordinated, military, financial, and political power against the enormous, but still ill-organized, power of millions of people.
I know it seems impossible to imagine the defeat of Zionism, but we have to recognize both the reality and fragility of Zionist power.
Yes, Israel has the fourth-largest army in the world, with nuclear weapons, and the support of the Imperial High Command in Washington. Yes, per Bresheeth-Žabner, “Israelis, of left, right and center, do not doubt that they can continue to oppress and suppress Palestinians with impunity.” Yes, “Palestinians have been abandoned by the west, by the Arabs, by Israeli liberals, and by liberals the world over.” And, yes, after securing the betrayal of a few Arab monarchies, Jared Kushner crowed, "We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict.” So, Mission Accomplished?
Problem is, there’s those seven million Palestinians whose lives Israel must control, and who, despite being betrayed by Arab countries, ignored by Western liberals, and crushed again and again by arrogant Israelis armed with American-supplied weapons and impunity, just won’t stop rebelling against their subjugation. The impossible-to-ignore breadth of betrayal itself, capped off by the accelerated ethnic cleansing that, it is now evident, none of them can escape, has only created unprecedented Palestinian unity and solidarity. Even the streets of ‘48 Israel are burning with rage. Israel has erased the Green Line, and the Palestinian General Strike has forgotten it.
As David Hearst says, the Abraham Accords—Netanyahu and Trump’s gambit “that opening relations with Arab states was the means by which he could bypass a Palestinian state and ignore Palestinian rights”—have been revealed as a “delusion,” and the Arab signatories to be fools as well as traitors. Add to that the always-obvious but always-ignored fact that, as Sharmine Narwani put it: “Strip away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn’t even have the basics of a normal state. After 64 [now 73] years, it doesn’t have borders. … and it needs a gargantuan military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.” Add to that the fact that the deceptive historical and ethical narrative of Zionism has been exposed and discredited for everyone who peers outside the mainstream media Overton window—and that’s too many people. Israel’s feared “de-legitimization” has already left the barn; Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah are just sealing the door.
All of which makes it possible for Hearst to say: “The project to establish Israel as a Jewish state has never been in more peril than it is now, when it thinks it is on the cusp of victory.” After all, Israel, as the “regime of Jewish supremacy,” depends on a program of brutally colonizing seven million people forever, with the necessary acceptance and approval of the rest of the world. History has some lessons about that. “No justice, no peace” isn’t just a slogan; it’s political analysis. Given who has what to lose in the actual context, if those seven million Palestinians continually rile things up and make life uncomfortable for their colonial masters, there’ll be a lot of the latter re-settling on the East Bank. Of the Hudson.
Like Hearst, I have favored words like “project” and “enterprise” over “state” because I also see an Israeli state as the unfinished project of the Zionist enterprise. As I’ve remarked before, the question: “Does Israel have a right to exist?”—which we rightfully deconstruct as demanding our ratification of the colonial ethnic cleansing whereby Zionists have established 1948 Israel, should really be deconstructed further. It is not about the past, but the present and the future. It is actually asking—and that is why Zionists are so insistent on getting our answer—“Will Israel exist?” It is asking: “Do you accept the legitimacy of Zionists to be establishing a colonial-settler Jewish State, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, brutally enforced submission, and all?” The settlers’ motto is “Finish ’48!” Because the Nakba isn’t over, and never will be. Just look.
Israel does not yet exist, because seven million Palestinians still do. And we have to be aware, as Bresheeth-Žabner warns us, that: “Israel has been preparing for many years for a window of political opportunity – a historical juncture which will enable it to vacate Palestine of most of its remaining indigenous population.” We cannot let this uprising or the next become Zionism’s next big opportunity.
Every American is engaged in this fight now, and must make a choice—because their government has already made one for them, the choice for Zionism, which silence and inaction ratify. The clear and simple choice we all make is either to continue to support Israeli Zionism, which is colonialism, ethno-religious supremacy, and apartheid, or to oppose and defeat it.
Don’t overcomplicate it. It really is a simple choice. This is Zionism:
These settlers taking over Palestinian homes are exactly right: This is the essential activity of Zionism: Taking other people's homes. This is how the unfinished project of Israel was started, what it still is, and always will be, "at the expense of the Arabs who lived here." This is what Palestinians are being asked to reconcile themselves to.
This is colonialism, ethno-religious supremacism, ethnic cleansing—intrinsically, apartheid. The notion that the historical burden of one people is to surrender their land and homes to, and be subjugated by, another. There is no defense of it.
This is what one supports if one supports Israel and Zionism. This is what one accepts if one accepts Zionism.
This is what every major US politician, every media institution, and every major academic institution support when they support Israel.
This—which is only possible because of US military, political, diplomatic, and financial support—is what you abet when you ignore and stay silent about it. This, and all the past (Iraq, Libya), ongoing (Syria), and future (Iran) wars and aggressions in support of it
This is just wrong.
How much longer?
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Chile. The peaceful road to slaughter
M. Hickey
Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line
Chile. The peaceful road to slaughter
First Published: The Marxist, No. 24 [n.d., 1974?].
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
To attempt to analyse the events in Chile over the last three years must present a daunting task to a communist living in Britain, One must try and avoid the traps into which the revisionists and trotskyists have plunged.
THE C.P.G.B. LINE. (Communist Party / Great Britain)
On the one hand, the Communist Party offers no criticism of the strategy used by Allende’s Popular Unity Coalition, Its commentary is limited to recounting the bravery of Allende in his final hours and in attacking U.S. imperialism’ and its machinations within Chile, It stresses first, that the ’parliamentary road’ was the right one for Chile, Any attempt to mobilise the people militarily would have precipitated the coup at an earlier date. Hence the compromises made by Allende were “essentially tactical, because the armed forces were in the last analysis determined to prevent him [from honoring his programmatic goals] and he knew it.”
Secondly, the C.P. says that Allende was on the right road. The general secretary of the Chilean C.P., Corvalan, said in 1970:
What we have started is not irreversible, we must make it so.
The progressive forces lost when the balance was overturned by the reactionaries at home in league with imperialism. But as this was expected, why was so little done to prepare for it? As one can see, its a case of ’the chicken or the egg?’. The events in Chile have made a nonsense of the “peaceful transition to Socialism” theory, and the revisionists have, by their own analysis, tacitly accepted that their programme for conquest of power is unworkable.
THE TROTSKYIST LINE.
The Trotskyists, on the other hand, stress quite correctly that the Allende regime should have armed the workers. But they fail to answer the C.P.’s bone of contention that this would have triggered the coup. They add that the independent workers’ and peasants organisations should have been encouraged, not dismantled. But in fact it was not the central, but the municipal and provincial authorities, (evidently having some administrative power within the state), which were responsible for prohibiting privately held arms.
And the provincial authorities were represented in the congress, which soon after the nationalisation of the copper resources proved itself hostile to almost every measure proposed by Popular Unity.
Finally, the Trotskyists declare that they would have sacked the generals and called upon the rank and file in the army to arrest their officers. But this would almost certainly have been a disastrous move. Nowhere within the armed services were the cadres who had infiltrated, in a strong enough position to make such a challenge. A general can be sacked – but who is to remove him from his post? If the rank and file had not responded, what then? Generally, the Trotskyists have confined their analysis to attacking Allende for “Stalinism”. In their final analysis Allende was effectively an agent of the ruling class. To quote from the Manifesto of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League:
The purpose of the Stalinist Popular Front is to virtually tie the hands of the working class behind its back and physically disarm it while the ruling class prepares the real conspiracies against it.
The conclusion that Allende was no Marxist-Leninist is a fair one. But to infer that he connived with the ruling class is plainly absurd. It denies that there were other contradictions within the Chilean State other than that between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. As such it must be rejected.
It is in submitting proposals – which might have been attainable within Chile – that one must take caution not to be presumptive. Only the Chilean comrades can decide tactics for their struggle. However, one must be just as cautious not to mouth rhetorical slogans.
S I D E B A R Part 1 of The Battle of Chile, by Patricio Guzmán, one of the best political documentaries ever made. Indispensable to comprehend the Allende period and the Chilean counterrevolution. |
The Popular Unity Coalition was overthrown on September 11th, 1973, by a putsch carried out by the three armed services and much of the Civil Police. The formation of the Junta was announced immediately. The coup was the culmination of the policies pursued over three years by the monopoly capitalist and landowning class in Chile and financed covertly by U.S. imperialism. It was engineered at this time not only because of Allende’s economic policies; perhaps more importantly it was his inability to implement these policies constitutionally that triggered the coup. This failure was leading to the realisation by many working people in Chile that to advance at all they would have to be in effective power. The ruling class was witnessing this development, and its choice of action now limited. It was the growth of the independent organisations as a parallel power -still a weak one -to the bourgeois state, that prompted the army to step in.
There is strong evidence the U.S. imperialism had since the 1960’s noticed the development of political consciousness among the Chilean People. Under President Frei, Chile was receiving the most “aid” in Latin America from U.S. imperialism, yet this ’aid’ failed to stabilise the economy. When Frei left office there was 18% unemployment; the rate of inflation was second in the world only to South Vietnam; many foodstuffs were in short supply and the infant mortality rate stood at 40,000 a year.
When subversion undertaken by the C.I.A. directly on behalf of U.S. monopoly capital failed to prevent Allende from coming to power, the tactics changed.
Allende was elected in September 1970, but did not take office until November. In these two months, there was a crippling flight of capital from Chile. During the following years imperialist subversion of the economy intensified. The U.S. imposed a complete embargo on trade with Chile. Not only was all ’aid’ withdrawn but also all capital which they suspected would be nationalised.
But the subversion was not just in the economic field; the Allende regime at all times faced terrorism from armed fascist organisations within the country. In October 1970, General Schneider, Commander in Chief of the army, was murdered by a right-wing terrorist. The assassin received two years imprisonment.
Throughout a great part of his term of office there was incessant rioting from extremists. It remains a criticism of Allende that he failed to suppress such disturbances. During this summer, when the owners of transport and of the communications industry halted operations, all communications between the provinces cut, creating chaos within the country. It remains another criticism that Allende failed to halt this internal economic subversion. To enforce a socialist change on society, where one part of the population imposes its will by force on another part, authoritarian means are unavoidable.
It is too early to say whether the strikes that took place amongst Chile’s industrial working class represented mere sectional interests or were engineered and funded by foreign agents, (as Allende’s widow maintains). According to the revisionists, the Chilean miners formed the labour aristocracy; apart from the miners there existed the lumpenproletariat. But this definition would apply to many countries on the sub-continent. It is, I believe, an oversimplification. Miners have played a very positive part, on the whole in the armed struggles that have shaped recent Latin American history.
The declared task of the C.P. of Chile was to mobilise the masses, but politically, rather than militarily. Allende had been elected with 36% of the vote; in the mid-term elections this increased to 44%. How long would he have waited before mobilising the people for the coming armed struggle? The Chilean industrial working class is one of the most organised in the world, and the regime enjoyed its solid electoral support. The urban middle-classes – in particular the owners of small scale means of distribution – were not won over to Popular Unity’s policies. Neither were the middle strata of farmers and peasants in the countryside. It was precisely this that Allende set out to do but failed. The trotskyist approach is to ignore the middle strata in society. It states that, on the verge of civil war, the armed working class should say to all other classes, “You’re either with us or against us. You say join us, but if you stand in our way, you’ve had it”. But the Chilean working class was too small to win a revolution on its own. Whilst it must always lead the struggle, the working class must have the widest possible alliance of forces on its side. This is achieved by exploiting the antagonistic contradictions between these other classes and the owners of land and monopoly capital whilst weakening the ideology of these classes. It is not achieved by denying the nature of the coming struggle and renouncing the control that the industrial working class must have – as modern revisionism has done; nor is it done simply by issuing an ultimatum at the point of no return – as Trotskyism proposes.
To give a few examples where Popular Unity failed to achieve this alliance. Whilst the Government controlled the provision of food, there is evidence that a black market arose as some workers were retailing part of their rations back to the middle class at inflated prices. This created an antagonistic contradiction between the small owners of distribution and the working class. That it should have been rigorously controlled can be seen from the fact that the shop owners eventually joined the side of reaction when they closed down all their premises in Santiago this year, contributing to the existing chaos in the food supply.
In the countryside, only 7% of the land was distributed by the Government. This provided a situation where bands of peasants and farm labourers took the initiative. Seizing the land themselves in an uncoordinated manner, especially in the south, they seem to have left the wealthier peasant strata in doubt of its own security whilst the major landowners would be expropriated.
So in the countryside, the regime faced opposition not only from the great landowners but from many small farmers, worried about the activities of revolutionary groups who lay often have proceeded in too undisciplined a fashion. It should be stressed that the fault lay chiefly with the regime in providing a vacuum where this could occur.
MARXISM REVISED, A FIELD DEMONSTRATION.
It is undeniable that to remain in power, Allende should have operated outside the constitution. Just by looking at the parliamentary set-up in Chile one can see this. Popular Unity was always in a minority, in the congress, which from 1971 exercised its right to veto almost every reform proposed by the coalition. The Chilean Communist Party, in its efforts to isolate its enemies, compromised with the Christian Democrats to a point where it was the most moderate faction in the coalition. But class struggle transcends all parliamentary manoeuvring. As Chou-en-lai said of Chile in 1970, socialism cannot be mid-wifed by parliament. This is accepted now by the Chilean C.P. On Oct 15th U. Teitelboim of the Central Committee recognised that the bourgeoisie ’to preserve their domination and their control of the leans of production do not hesitate to drown in blood every manifestation of democracy’. He admits that they controlled the Army, Parliament, the judiciary, the civil service, municipal administration, the Press, and moist of mass media.. Why then, if this was so obvious, did not the C.P. in power undertake the clandestine arms training of cadres in the countryside, and the arming and organising of cadres in the towns to prepare for such an emergency?
There is evidence that they began the latter only in his last month. The point is that, if it was possible in the last month, why not before? From news of the resistance it appears that some comrades retained possession of their arms. Yet Allende’s widow says that when the women approached her husband with requests to distribute arms, he refused. Without a peoples’ army, the people have nothing, and an army cannot be built in a short space of time.
THE BETRAYAL IS EVIDENT.
The coup was inevitable. This was plain to all. In the film “When the People Awake”, made in Chile in 1972, the workers and peasants interviewed, revealed their knowledge of what was to occur one year later. It is a tragic document.
Time and again they stressed that to build socialism they would have to control the state. Time and again they reject the notion of peaceful transition. One may accept that the pronouncements on “the professional and constitutionalist tradition of our armed forces” made by the C.P. leaders right until their fall were tactical denials of the real situation, in order to stall for time. But where were these denials counterbalanced by the creation of an armed force amongst the people who would remain loyal? They were followed through by the admission into the Cabinet of Generals from the Forces, whose underlings were already preventing factory occupations in the provinces, and conducting a purge of progressive elements of the rank and file in the armed services. And why was General Prats not given the necessary authority to commandeer the road transport vehicles during the Stoppage this summer? It would hardly have been a revolutionary act on Allende’s part, but it may well have split the army on the question of loyalty.
THE POSITIVE ASPECTS.
It is true however, that agitation within the armed forces was undertaken by a number of organisations, including the C.P., the Socialist Party and the M.I.R. There is also evidence that this propaganda, which is of tremendous importance in affecting the balance of forces, was taking effect. In the June revolt in the Navy, one regiment from Concepcion was decimated following a purge of elements sympathetic to the regime. In Santiago, at the time of the coup, regiments of civil police were fired on by the Putchists, when they refused to take part in the suppression of resistance. The work which had been done proved insufficient, although this is no attack on the comrades directly involved.
Now the Chilean people are faced with an immensely more difficult task. From a position of potential strength, from which, with the correct leadership they could have advanced, they have moved to one of weakness where their fight is one for survival. Yet the resistance continues and according to some reports is intensifying. We hear that the toughest fight occurred in Santiago’s suburbs, and in the south in Chillan and Puerte Alto, where a state of siege existed. In Valparaiso, in the provinces of Nuble and Antofagash, police stations and army installations have been attacked., That the struggle has been sustained in the face of the bestial cruelty of the Junta is a tribute not only to the heroism of the activists, but a tribute to their correct strategy, The Junta now has little political support within the country. By suspending Congress and dissolving all political parties, it has alienated much of its potential support among the Christian Democrats. Many have publicly dissociated themselves from the military authorities. If they are moved to a position of neutrality, this would represent an improvement in the relation of forces.
EXPERIENCES – LESSONS – FUTURE TACTICS.
Since the military have taken power, they have imposed an increase in many food prices of nearly 600%. The working week has been increased by 8 to 10 hours, Regiments stationed in areas of tension are moved frequently to prevent any communication with the people. Even tunic colours are regularly altered so that rebels will be identifiable when they do not report back for duty.
To aggravate the contradiction between the military and the broad mass of the people the attacks must be maintained. The junta must be prevented from legalising itself by passing nominal reforms, as has happened after the countless coups that have taken place in Latin America and as happened in Greece. The interpretation of the struggle ahead is made purely as suggestion in the light of recent armed struggle on the continent and elsewhere and not as a solution to be posed from outside.
It is to be remembered that all the guiding principles of military operations grow out of the one basic principle; to strive to the utmost to preserve one’s strength and destroy that of the enemy. So it is not enough that the workers are in control of small arms; these present a weak answer to a central army, well equipped, well trained, and highly disciplined. One can look back to Bolivia, in 1970, where the industrial workers, large contingents of whom were armed, did not prevent General Banzer marching into La Paz with his troops. If the Trotskyists now call for Bolshevik-type insurrections within the cities under military control, the result will undoubtedly be a massacre of what popular forces exist. The Trotskyists believe that the development of a ’people’s war’, by organising armed insurrection in stages, is ’formalist, bureaucratic and militarist’. But the struggle undertaken by the people must now principally be waged in the countryside. It necessitates the creation of mobile strategic forces – the nuclei of a people’s army – which can work amongst the people, whilst at present retaining their organic and operational independence from them.
There are already, in the province of Arauco independent groups of guerrilla fighters in operation. It is up to the comrades in the towns to consolidate what little they have at present, undertaking actions which would keep the forces of repression occupied in guarding installations and suchlike.
We were not prepared for the bombings”, said Allende’s widow after the coup. It is precisely these well-defined areas, the cities, and especially the shanty towns outside the metropolitan areas, that would be the most vulnerable to heavy attacks, particularly from the air, resulting in slaughter suffered for no gain.
It is for this reason that, as a direct assault on power would be unsuccessful at this stage, the protracted nature of the struggle should become clear. The object must be the gradual encirclement of the cities from the countryside.
Any attempt, at present, at creating ’zones of self-defence’, outside which the Junta’s army would have freedom of action, would likewise prove disastrous. It is only as long as the struggle is extended beyond ’safe base areas’ as it was in China, and Cuba and as it is being done throughout Indo-china, that ’self-defence zones’ acquire significance.
Otherwise they will be crushed, as were the peasants in the Colombian province of Marquetalia in 1964, and the tin miners in Bolivia in the summer of 1965.
The necessity of a people’s army is plain, as is the inevitability of a people’s war. To build an army is a long process requiring people, ’armaments, training and discipline. But whatever military line will be taken will be the expression of a political line. If the political line is wrong; then the military line will fail. The success of the military strategy will depend upon whether the ideology is rooted in Marxism-Leninism. If the Chilean people can build a Marxist-Leninist party as the vanguard in their struggle, they will fight with history on their side. Without such a party, the present resistance will at best remain resistance. It will never be transformed into a successful revolutionary struggle.
SOME CONCLUSIONS FOR BRITAIN.
The chief lesson for us here in Britain is that there can be no peaceful road to Socialism. Given that the economics of Britain and Chile are far from identical, the main contradictions in both countries are the same. We should not be led to think that if a similar situation occurs here, the ruling class will “play the game” and behave more gentlemanly. For almost three years the C.P.G.B. pointed to similarities between Chile and Britain; constitutional government for over 100 years; a well organised industrial working class, etc. Chile was the shining example that vindicated their policy.
Now, following the coup, they maximise the differences. “Chile had an economy perverted by imperialism.” in other words, it would be different here.
If the theory does not fit historical experience, then the theory must be wrong. Do the revisionists accept this? Not at all. If the reality does not fit the theory, they distort the reality. A recent article by Jack Woddis, head of the C.P.G.B.’s International Department explains:
It is essential, now, to campaign for fundamental democratic changes in the State, and especially in the army in order to lessen the chances of the ruling class using the army against the people or a left wing Government...It is vital to campaign now, even before we have a Socialist Government for essential changes in the State.
This demonstrates more clearly than anything we can say, that the leaders of the C.P.G.B. are not capable of learning from history. They still think in terms of changing the state by peaceful pressures. Not only does Woddis tell us there can be fundamental changes in the state before we have a socialist government, but that if we obtain these democratic changes, there will be less chance of the ruling class using its own machine against us. As long as the C.P .G.B. peddles this lie, it will do nothing but sew confusion amongst the ranks.
As long as it puts ’Parliamentary Struggle’ first, it is weakening the working class by making concessions to the enemy. The ruling class will not make that same mistake. They know the meaning and value of State power based ultimately on force; and they will not hesitate to use it.
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