This Time, Fight for Communism and Nothing Less!
“Soldier, don’t shoot at the workers!”
October 29—Workers in Chile are mobilizing massively and defiantly in Santiago and other parts of the country.
It started when Sebastián Piñera’s government increased fares for the Santiago subway. Thousands of students protested, refusing to pay. They faced repression from the Chilean police (Carabineros de Chile) and won the sympathy of the workers.
Large leftist groups and the main unions were silent. But workers began joining high school students and teachers in the streets.
The Carabineros and some army units brutally attacked them, too. That made thousands of workers even angrier. They organized into committees and street assemblies. They decided to occupy the streets and shopping malls.
This grew into a general strike – a political strike against State-sponsored violence. The port workers took the lead, motivating workers from the factories and even government workers to join.
With workers in the lead, the masses now took aim at the Piñera government’s neoliberal economic attacks. They denounced the degrading of public health and schools to benefit private enterprises. They protested the theft of workers’ wealth in the pension system.
The Chilean bosses watched similar mobilizations in Ecuador, Costa Rica and Haiti. They confronted the workers with inhuman repression reminiscent of the Pinochet dictatorship.
And the Chilean working class continues to fight back, to organize, and to mobilize! Some say they’ll keep going until Sebastián Piñera falls.
What Is to Be Done?
Chilean workers are already tired of the lies of every government that has ruled since Pinochet’s fall in 1990. Many reject the “constitutional way” of reforms proposed by the Socialist Party, the “Communist” Party, and now even by Piñera and right-wing parties.
Some workers’ groups hope to use these mobilizations to create pre-revolutionary conditions. They want to direct them towards seizing power and destroying the state apparatus inherited from the Pinochet military dictatorship. The songs of anti-fascist heroes like Victor Jara, Violeta Parra, and Los Prisioneros resound in the streets.
But we must not repeat the tragic errors of the past. It was left-wing President Salvador Allende’s refusal to arm the masses that paved the way for the 1973 CIA-backed Pinochet coup.
The continued world domination of capitalism-imperialism today is only possible because 20th century communists fought for democracy or socialism or national liberation but not for communism itself.
Because of this mistaken line, workers’ seizure of state power in Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere turned into its opposite: another form of capitalism.
Revolution is again in the sights of the Chilean working class. Their massive mobilizations are setting an example for the workers of the world. Even sections of the Chilean army have refused to repress their working-class family in the streets.
But this time the fight must be for communism and nothing less.
The International Communist Workers’ Party greets the insurgent working class of Chile with a comradely embrace. And we call on you to help build this organization into the force that will construct a new world on communist principles.
From each according to ability and commitment! To each according to need! Venceremos – we will win!
“We are the grandchildren of the workers you couldn’t kill”