(Translated from:www.accionproletaria.com)

We, communists, analyse the material reality based on dialectics, on the changes, the ebbs and flows that arise from the development of the class struggle. We use different tactics in the political struggle (depending on the corresponding period, with the object of gathering popular strength) to provide the proletariat class and oppressed sectors with class consciousness and party organization, necessary so that they can create important conditions; the taking of political power and the revolutionary overcoming of Chilean neoliberal capitalism, the installation of a higher society: Socialism.

The use of all spaces of struggle makes us act per reality, that is why we participate in elections – for a while – a space to make our project known in society and the necessary organisational forms, for example; through a correct policy of Approval without illusions, that was widely publicised and that confronted the betrayal of the neoliberal government of Boric, the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the “C”P (Chilean Communist Party-reformist) and their official agents, the social-democrat administrative block. They wanted to strip the prominence of the social mobilisation into structural changes; to take them to the parliament’s closed-door pact, to convene with the right – and in this manner – make all the popular aspirations of a new constitution fail.

We communists never use electoral spaces as an end in itself and thus, we did NOT feel disappointed with the voting results, that is given in the framework of capitalism (as it is impossible to obtain true revolutionary victories in favour of the proletariat class, the popular layers and the peoples of Chile), but rather – at the most – win little spaces and reforms, that are given in the short term, but that allows us to fight under better conditions, as the triumph of the Approval without illusions and the continuity of the struggle was. We are NOT naive, we do NOT cry over foreign defeats, a position from where they try to use and attract us to be part of agreements and ARRANGEMENTS, that only seek to delegitimize a true alternative to freedom and overcome the capitalist exploitation system.

We must value the untiring work of the Party in the streets, in events, meetings, in the extensive days of handing out flyers and propaganda, the closing event of the campaign to raise awareness in the masses of people, of the importance of an Approval without illusions, popular, strong, organised, so we can bang on the table, not only with this sell-out government but also the political class and the reactionary parliament. Also, those who at the last minute, in a populist and opportunist manner took positions with lukewarm statements. From the first day, the Party has indicated that the struggle continues after the plebiscite, that the neoliberal fence must be moved much more and that popular mobilization is the engine for social change. We indicated that the votes for the Approval would not be sold nor was it fertilizer for class reconciliation, or neoliberal pacts.

We must NOT devalue the proletariat class, the popular layers and the peoples of Chile because of the electoral results, as we understand that the causes of the defeat of the Approval are mainly due to the actions of the Boric government, the Broad Front and the “C”P and their official agents. These electoral results and the capture of refusal votes from popular layers, demand the necessity of our Communist Party of Chile (Proletariat Action) be much stronger, as the vanguard of the proletariat class. That can direct the popular struggles towards success, which can be present in all the spaces of the leadership of the popular struggle; the main union organizations, struggling against the petty bourgeois, liberal and liquidation thought in the heart of the people’s movement.

Our revolutionary party (that has a basis on the scientific ideas of marxism Leninism) has a mandatory task: all provisional and permanent members must honour the revolutionary organization with permanent cell work on all mass fronts. This means uniting our communist ideology with revolutionary practice, uniting the political line of the Party with the tasks of mass work plans, so that measurable, reachable objectives, defined commitments, and concrete results are obtained, allowing for the accumulation of forces. And from there, making quantitative to quality jumps, in the forms of struggle.

THE TIES OF THE NEOLIBERAL CLOSED-DOOR PACT OF THE 15TH OF NOVEMBER, ARE THE ORIGINS OF THE APPROVAL DEFEAT

The popular uprising opened a space to strengthen the need for a new constitution, through a true constituent assembly, but the same defenders of the model quickly came out to put cold dampers on it, to dismantle the popular discontent and tried to give it an institutional outlet – to all the social contradictions – manifested in the demonstration, and the historic daily popular protests.

The neoliberal ties of the 15N were not enough, they had to carry on bastardising the option of a new constitution. With convention assembly members giving themselves small personal preferences before adding the centre of the discussion essential elements such as the sovereignty of natural resources, a new productive model and the generation of added value to raw materials (to finance the biggest social demands) because statements and goodwill were not enough.

From the very start, Boric, the Broad Front, the “C” P and its official agents, did NOT want a great vote and triumph of the Approval, as that put them in a position to meet social demands and to confront the economic model, which they wanted so much to take care of in the drafting of a new constitution. Thus, from these sectors, they always worked for a small Approval, that did not create distance from one position to another, nearly to obtain a technical impasse or to win by a small margin (to carry on maintaining the neoliberal pact), but the result was the opposite. The Approval ended up being discredited before the eyes of the popular masses and the social mobilisation and their leading role was displaced by “new parliamentary agreements”.

From the very start, there was conformism by the government block, at approval results of the first round (with more than 5 million 886 thousand votes) which made them think it was enough to win the next round of voting. But the erratic added calculations and unpopular measures, determined opposite results. A million votes were lost, and approval went down by 20%. Instead, the Rejection vote (that on the initial vote had 1 million 634 thousand votes), ended up capitalizing all the errors of government and measures by Boric, adding more than 6 million 245 thousand votes. Without a doubt the Rejection vote added mostly new voters, growing by nearly 500%.

The new composition of the electorate was systematically denied, a product of the introduction of the mandatory vote, by a government lacking concrete measures to work on the political and historical understanding of the plebiscite. Millions of popular masses did not vote due to discontentment, apathy and without any conviction that things would get better. On the contrary, an important addition of new voters depoliticised, full of prejudice, lacking in ideology, deniers, pessimists and with little political, social and movement participation, ended up being a fertile ground for a campaign of lies by the rejection camp.

Thus, Boric’s government, the Broad Front, the “C” P and its official agents ended up favouring the rejection votes, by conditioning the triumph of the Approval votes by the programme’s enforcement or its political evaluation, favouring the Rejection votes. This was after taking unpopular measures. Such as the refusal of ‘IFES’ (Covid family emergency benefits), refusing to allow the withdrawal of pension funds; not attend the urgent demands of the people, such as unemployment, drug trafficking and crime; that made the popular discontent even worse. In this manner, millions of new voters understood that by voting rejection (of the new constitution), they would punish Boric’s unpopular government. This situation was favourable for the reactionary and oligarchy sectors. Additionally, just before the plebiscite, tax reform was promoted by the government which they never managed to explain or to get people behind. This injected more fuel for the Rejection than for the Approval. The call for the closures of CODELCO divisions (state copper mines), affecting an important sector of workers, while at the same time offering mining projects to Canadian companies, and squandering our national sovereignty and riches, made the popular discontent grow even more.

From the government block they worked for the Rejection, and from the official forces they called for the demobilization of the popular movement (with the effort they co-opted social leaders) they neutralised and isolated those leaders who understood the importance of the popular movement as a motor or social change, excluding social leaders critical of the government, to distance them from the popular masses who needed information, participation and organization. This was reflected in the CONFECH (Chilean Student’s Confederation), the movement of secondary students, the CUT (who on the act of the 1st of May, instead of taking that opportunity to lift with strength the labour rights demands and the advances on collective negotiation, instead being co-opted and transformed into a government act), amongst other actions.

The government, the Broad Front, the “C”P and their official agents favoured and worked for the Rejection, when these right-wing reactionary forces – having been cornered and with a lack of proposals – together with desperate concertation neoliberals, when they saw that they would lose their privileges (such as water quotas o their Senatorial posts), and having to recur to the shame of paying for false surveys to consider the Rejection votes won, Boric ends up saying that a “Rejection to reform” was viable, giving this option oxygen and legitimacy that hardly had any coherency, making the Approval illegitimate.

From Boric’s government block they worked for the Refusal and when the fake news, the financing companies’ Refusal campaign lies started the alarms, they began questioning the text, from their prejudices and baseless lies. The government, instead of strengthening the plebiscite and its result, called for a small pact to reform the constitutional text, signing an agreement behind closed doors. And, instead of giving certainty and calm, it was without a doubt an accelerator for a right-wing terror campaign, that re-enforced the idea that the new constitution was bad and that the best idea was a Refusal.

It was well known that the Rejection millionaire campaign was always present to spread blatant lies, falsehoods, the disinformation with empty phrases and without any real proposals. These are the same ones who control the private means of communication. Pessimism was used as a campaign: ‘nothing works, nothing works’ was repeated on each paid publicity on the social networks. In the face of the conscious “errors” of the government, the new electorate without much political insight ended up accepting the deceptive publicity, instead of reading and understanding the constitutional text.

The oligarchy’s and the dominant classes’ organisations and parties – grouped for the Refusal – united, and confronted the plebiscite’s second round. This was very different from the plebiscite’s first round, where many of the refusal’s neoliberals camouflaged themselves on the Approval option, to show themselves as white doves and to be elected as constituents, to put obstacles later and never give any solutions. On the other hand, from the Approval organisations (by order of the government forces) there was less coordination and unity on the plebiscite’s second round. There were contradictory gestures to the feeling of the popular uprising; the political prisoners were not freed, and there was no justice nor reparation for the victims of Human Rights violations. Sebastián Piñera was never judged as directly responsible; they tried to include Concertation political “corpses” and defenders of the model in activities and political time-zone (such as the discredited Lagos, Frei and Bachelet) who distorted the Approval campaign.

Thus, due to the above, the defeat of the Approval option is not coincidental, nor can anyone who does a serious national political analysis be surprised, because there were many events (from the neoliberal government of Boric, the Broad Front and the “C”P and their official agents) gave oxygen to the Refusal option. Day by day, the right wing forced their demands, a right-wing that has never been up for dialogue, nor tolerance, far from democratic with the social demands, the proletariat class, and the oppressed peoples.

THE CURRENT SITUATION AFTER THE ELECTORAL RESULTS

The results confirm the total failure of the actions of a reformist social democracy, to carry out changes to the economic, political and social model, whenever possible. Likewise, they generated a backdrop for the strengthening of the most reactionary and fascist positions, that had been lurking for a long while but that now had their due deserves; they sought to set the terms, to urgently demand the resignation of ministers and put instead those with pro-rejection tendencies.

 This reactionary and dying right-wing proclaims itself as the policeman of democracy, and institutional legality, it demands that the Rejection results be an expression that Chile does not want a new convention nor a constitution, passing over the lies of “reject to reform”. From now on, they will try to take the political discussion to parliament, enclose it within four walls, behind the people’s backs but at the feet of the dominant classes.

The neoliberal government of Boric, the Broad Front, the “C”P and its official agents have finished as they arrived and as we knew them; from left-wing turn-coats to true and unashamed neoliberals. Now they will be conveniently forced to move aside for the “experimented” ones from the Concertation, to give the government continuity. The new ministers will excuse themselves from whenever making changes, for not having the necessary votes in parliament, for not being able to reach agreements with a reactionary right, that today slams the table.

There will be a continuation of police brutal and criminal repression, constantly against all those who mobilise for social demands, against the Mapuche communities, selective trumped-up charges and detentions, and to carry on disarticulating all that has any form of popular opposition.

As a consequence of all the work of dismembering the social movements, today the people and workers of Chile have no truly left-wing movement, articulated with a mass organisation that can sustain a patriotic project, that takes all the just reinvindicative banners, and lays them before an objective that has a socialist perspective.

We re-affirm that the defeat of the Approval was not a defeat of the left wing, but rather it is a defeat for social democracy, of those sectors that camouflage themselves as left-wing, but they are functional to capitalism; with a way of doing politics that is very warlordism, self-fish and lazy, getting together with Boric’s neoliberal government for the same reason. It is the defeat of those who walked away from the banners of popular dignity and national sovereignty.

THE PATH TO FOLLOW

From the Party forces and its allied organisations, we must build a true left-wing movement. Therefore, we must come up with proposals, and ideas and take root in the general worker organisations, townspeople, students, peasants, native peoples, etc., so that they can understand, and sustain a patriotic, popular and revolutionary project. We must win the respect of a broad social sector, through accustomed and consequent work. We must unmask those neoliberal parties and leaders who carry on working to divide the proletariat class and the people of Chile, who carry on striking defeats, to exploit and oppress them.

It is well-known that the neo-liberals of the old Pinochet right and the new Concertation right are rubbing their hands and are preparing to refuse a new participative constitutional process. They shall even try to impose their option of a commission of experts, handpicked by them. They shall exclude any people’s protagonism; which in practice will be a new pact, deepening the neoliberal economy even more, as a guiding principle of the national Carta Magna.

In the face of this new situation, it is very necessary to redouble and raise all the popular forces of correct policies of a TRUE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, promoted and sustained from a people’s protagonism, from a constant mobilisation of the people, so that this is truly a mechanism of freedom of national and popular sovereignty. This is the only path that can take us to a progressive satisfaction of so many outstanding demands, and even with the constitutional draft voted at this plebiscite, total sovereignty and the strategic use of natural resources, and national industrialisation, was ignored.

We communists must understand that only a POPULAR PATRIOTIC GOVERNMENT will ensure that a true process of Constituent Assembly will be carried out for a new Constitution, that puts the demands at the heart of a new Fatherland, that will have as its objective the overcoming of the current economic model and their supporters. We will never win a new constitution under an unpopular neoliberal government, cowardly reformist and pro-imperialist.

The path is clearer and the challenges are many. The communists grouped in the Chilean Communist Party (Proletariat Action), when carrying out a scientific analysis, must not demoralise and become faint; typical of an individualist tantrum that won’t pass a hard test or a bitter drink. On the contrary, we must re-affirm our commitment, that the proletariat class shall take political power, overcome neoliberal capitalism in Chile, and the installation of higher society: Socialism.

The struggle for the Refounding of Chile continues and is still more current than ever!

For a New, Sovereign, Popular and Socialist Fatherland.

Constituent Assembly for a new constitution!

Political Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletariat Action) PC(AP)

5th September 2022