Against the plebiscitary farce and against price increases: promote and develop popular protest
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Against the plebiscitary farce and against price increases: promote and develop popular protest
The international economic crisis has worsened again this year. There was no substantial recovery from the 2008 crisis, when another one already began in 2018. Today there is already talk of a recession in the US, and in Europe, contraction and recession in China, as in Japan. The global price increases shows no signs of stopping. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is blamed for this. However, they are nothing more than manifestations of the greatest monopolism, parasitism, decomposition and agony of imperialism, all of this generates a sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions, collusion and struggle for a new division of the world, and of course wars, wars of all kinds in the which it will eventually sink. Each imperialism struggles for a bigger slice of the world’s economic territory. It also undoubtedly provokes a flaring up of the main contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism. All this is accompanied by a rampant reaction and militarisation of the situation. There is no doubt: We live in war times!
In this world scenario, as always and acutely it is on the masses of the oppressed nations in the first place and also on the peoples of the imperialist countries that the weight of economic crises falls. Inflation, in this sense, is nothing more than the transfer of resources from one part of the population (the vast majority) to another (the small minority); it is the blatant robbery of the working classes through the impudent rise in the prices of basic goods for their subsistence. In this way, the blood of the working class, of the poor peasantry, flows through the main arteries of the national economy to the imperialist and Creole leeches to sustain their deficits, maintain their enormous accumulation of capital and their wars of aggression. At the same time, this process of concentration and centralisation of capital, the fruit of the work and wealth of oppressed nations and peoples, exhibits on its other side a greater impoverishment of the popular masses, unemployment, hunger and a long list of social scourges.
The revolutionary conditions are fully ripe. Since the 1980s we have lived the strategic offensive of the world proletarian revolution. In response to this, imperialism has developed a general counter-revolutionary offensive that is currently weakening day after day and that, on the contrary, has been generating a growing and combative rebellion in the popular masses around the world. This mass violence has taken the form of people’s wars, armed struggles and popular uprisings. Moreover, in recent years the popular protests have not stopped, neither in intensity, nor in quantity, nor in extension. This is one of the characteristics of the international situation of the last four years. Big protests in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc., just to mention Latin America, but there are big events that are also taking place in the rest of the world. However, it should be noted that Latin America has become the weak link in the chain of world imperialist domination, the peasant masses have been a front-line protagonist in all this rebellion that lights the flame of new people’s wars.
Chile has not been oblivious to this great process that the continent and the world are experiencing. The economic crisis and the recession that the country is experiencing is also an expression of the general crisis that bureaucratic capitalism is experiencing, a clear sign of the collapse of the old society, but that will not fall by itself, rather, only with the revolutionary blows of the armed people we will be able to bury the old and build the new – the new society.
The ruling classes are not monolithic, they have internal contradictions, factions and multiple fractures. Under the current spurious representative regime, they seek to articulate a so-called “political system”, with right, centre and “left”, outside of which another political force is inadmissible that is not finally integrated into its rules of the game, they call this democracy. With different masks and flags and false flags they intend to drag the people behind them towards that rotten “system”, offering it as the only one possible today, within which even, they claim, it is possible to make changes, even “revolutionary” changes and of the political constitution itself. This is their hoax. It is the fig leaf with which they seek to cover their true class interests, it is the fig leaf with which they seek to cover their true political nature, that of being a joint dictatorship of big bourgeoisie and landowners at the service of mainly Yankee imperialism, a dictatorship over the people. Therefore, they are interests that are different and opposed to those of the proletariat and the whole of the popular masses. Emphasizing Yankee imperialism, under no argument excludes the role that Chinese and Russian imperialism, German, French or English imperialism also play in our country. All of these are in struggle and collusion to exploit and oppress us. We must fight all this handful of parasitic countries; Yankee imperialism, we insist, being the greatest enemy of the peoples of the world.
We must not allow the people’s struggle to be subjected to any of these rotten interests. The revolutionaries, the worker’s and people’s movement, the heroic struggle of the Mapuche people, cannot be placed at the tail of any sector or faction of the ruling classes or of imperialism, nor hold on to any baton of command, doing so means bringing the popular movement to its knees and prolong the suffering of the people, means stopping the class struggle that is becoming more acute day by day. Nor obviously subordinate to any faction of the Creole ruling classes.
The class struggle in our country has been developing auspiciously. Faced with this extraordinary and luminous panorama, the reactionary classes tremble and run in disarray to offer all kinds of electoral and constitutional lies, to save their rotten regime of oppression and exploitation and to divert the proletariat and the people from their true democratic path, a path that only can be traversed with People’s War. A war of the whole people against their enemies.
Almost three years ago, in November 2019, the “Agreement for social peace and the new constitution” was signed between the main representatives of the different factions of the ruling classes. Based on that agreement, an electoral schedule was outlined that laid the foundations for the initiation of a new restructuring of the old state. This as an important measure to contain the growing popular protest that began in October, but also and fundamentally to face the armed struggle that the poor Mapuche peasantry has been developing.
Also, and almost unnoticed, in December 2019 a sector of the comprador faction of the big bourgeoisie with Bernardo Larraín Matte at the head (representative of the Matte clan) has promoted a proposal to create an “Economic and Social Council” for the corporativisation of the society, a reactionary plan presented as “a possible path”. This Council promotes the participation of cretins, mercenary intellectuals, creeping academics, “entrepreneurs” and “workers”, it is the old illusion of the 20th century of this faction. Its fundamental task is to avert the revolution.
In a few more days, on September 4, the so-called exit plebiscite will be held for the approval or rejection of the new constitution project. This continues, at the point of states of emergency, growing militarisation and repression, with the counterinsurgency schedule at the service of fulfilling the three counter-revolutionary tasks promoted by the reaction.
There is consensus in the dominant classes on the need to restructure the state, but they differ a little in the form of this restructuring; however, fascist and corporatist traits appear in the different proposals. And it is that they fear that the example of the Mapuche struggle will migrate to the rest of the countryside in the country, they fear this because the harsh situation of hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers subjected to starvation and miserable wages (despite their great contribution to GDP), that the critical situation of the poor peasantry (without land or with little land), ignites like a spark in the dry prairie. The landowners, under threat or by making empty promises, seek to drag these poor masses from the countryside to vote. But many landowners have nothing to fear from the new constitution project, private property remains practically unchanged, colliding with the yearning of the popular masses of the countryside for land to the tiller.
It is clear that the different factions of the ruling classes seek to ride on the longing for deep changes that are behind many who believe that these can be produced by changing the constitution. Opportunism (among them revisionists) and reaction seek to traffic with this. Also, an important part of the bureaucratic faction of the big bourgeoisie and its representatives (social-corporativists or “left” demo-liberals) seek to mobilize the mainly urban intelligentsia and petty bourgeoisie in an extensive door-to-door campaign of two million. There are desires for real changes put forward by sectors of the masses in the draft of the new constitution, but they are nothing more than illusions. The defence of private property has been in all the constitutions that the country has adopted and it is not an exception in this project that will be voted on. This defence ultimately translates into the defence of large property, therefore, the factors that dislocate, distort and impede the development of the national economy will not be eliminated. In the end, everything moves towards a greater sharpening of the class struggle, in other words: the true polarization towards which society is heading. No constitution drafted under the auspices of the old state will represent the wishes of the people, because the interests and property of the big bourgeoisie, big landowners and imperialism are not reconcilable with the interests of the people.
On the other hand, this is the first election with automatic registration and mandatory voting. Evidence of the desperation of those classes. The true contradiction or true polarisation seeks to be eclipsed with the false contradiction or false polarization using even the confrontation of masses against masses. Ultimately, approval or rejection hides contradictions between different sectors of the ruling classes in how to carry out counter-revolutionary tasks. Compulsory voting is nothing more than a desperate act to plaster rotten foundations.
Faced with this situation, the path of the people opens impetuously and it is necessary for communists and revolutionaries to clearly define their position, since their orientation and political activity in the coming years will depend on it.
The democratic path of the people, the revolutionary path calls us to go live, struggle and work among the poor masses of the countryside and the city, go to them to forge their revolutionary militancy in this hour, go to them to build the highest forms of organisation and struggle following the path of Recabarren, of the red sowing and reconstitute the Party of the great proletarian leader, reconstitute it as a militarized Communist Party under the guidance of the sharp spears of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism and the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo.
Boycott the electoral farce!
Neither approve, nor reject! Down with the electoral farce!
Don’t vote, fight the price increases!
Do not vote, nor vote blank, take to the street to protest!
Against constitutional illusions, against the plebiscitary farce, against price increases: promote and develop popular protest!
Red faction of the Communist Party of Chile
August 2022