The rebellion continues. Self-organized assemblies and councils are multiplied throughout the country, discussing everything necessary. New social actors enter and the protest is continuous. A decisive process that came to dismantle the regime inherited from the dictatorship that the Concertación / Nueva Mayoría – PC (Communist Party), as well as the right, have since administered. A pact to maintain neoliberal capitalism, based on impunity for Pinochet’s crimes and perpetuating its repressive forces. Today´s rebellion is against them and against everything they represent.
General strike to oust Piñera or Plebiscite to save him?
It is clear that in these weeks of mobilization the people massively affirmed that “Piñera must go”. He is directly responsible for the rapes, torture and deaths in the streets. All the polls reveal the obvious: he is down and out, nobody wants him. He relies on brutal repression, while Congress continues to function as if nothing were happening in the country. The Frente Amplio and the Communist Party trust more in the current institutions than in the gigantic social force that has taken over the streets. They uphold a policy of rescuing Piñera by proposing a Plebiscite for a cosmetic, superficial change of the Constitution. Our people have already “voted” during weeks with millions in the streets: Piñera has to go, opening a constitutional process to reorganize Chile on new bases! We have already drawn collective lessons from the “democracy in the degree that is possible” that was born out of the transitional pact in the 90’s. The slogan “it´s not 30 pesos, it´s 30 years” is categorical: the political solution for a new country has to be based on the total dismantling of the political regime that arose from the pact of impunity and capitalism between the heirs of the dictatorship and the Concertación and its allies on the left.
Let´s follow the port workers´ lead: Territorial Strike Committees until we win!
As we can see, there are sectors that propose a negotiatied solution, like Pinochet´s plebiscite at the time of the transition. But our history is great and conveys lessons, not as recipes, but as accumulation of reserves and conclusions. The Industrial Cordones, truly democratic and fighting organizations of the working class in the 70´s are an example to vindicate. Those constituted an engine of real democracy that organized through grassroots committees and assembly mandates, the true kernel of workers and people´s power. They combined with the Boards of Supply that guaranteed the unity of workers and the people against the boss’s boycott, against the fascist right, and thus united the entire mobilized people.
Today, the ports and other sectors of the working class call to form Territorial Strike Committees to guarantee the success of the general strike of next Tuesday, November 12. That is the way! And we add: coordinate these committees with the neighborhood assemblies and councils, to ensure a powerful action next Tuesday, facing the government´s repressive threat with pickets, barricades, protests and a huge central mobilization that day, taking all the precautions for the legitimate self-defense of the people. At the same time, we insist on the port workers and the labor movement as a whole: it is essential that the strike program has as its starting point to oust Piñera and, with him, the entire old politics of the Concertación, until imposing a free, sovereign, democratic and plurinational Constituent Assembly, to transform all the demands for which our people mobilize into permanent rights:
- No more AFP, for a solidarity based social security system.
- Salary equal to the real cost of life.
- Public, free and non sexist health care system.
- Free education, with universal admission and quality.
- Re-nationalization with social control of workers and users of all public services.
- Decent housing, with universal access without negotiated real estate speculation.
- Forgiveness of all debts.
- For an integral economic reconversion, without corporations, without FTA, without neoliberal capitalism.
- Emergency budget against sexist violence and femicides.
- Legal, safe and free abortion in the health system for all gestating bodies.
- Recognition and socialization of unpaid domestic work with the right to retirement.
- Independent Investigative Commission for trial and punishment for the crimes of the dictatorship and these 30 years.
- For a real democracy, without a privileged political caste, with recallable mandates and salaries for all public office equivalent to that of a worker.
- Sovereignty and self-determination of peoples. Demilitarization of Wallmapu.
- For a Socialist, plurinational Chile and in favor of true Latin American integration.
These are the causes for a new country, of those from below, of the 99%. These are our fighting banners.
A government of those who never ruled: the workers and the people
The revolution continues and does not stop growing. We are not afraid of the police or Piñera´s chest beating. Therefore, our approach has a perspective: the constitutional process that reorganizes Chile on new bases in the economy and the political system, has to be the transition to a government of those who have never ruled in this country and yet are the ones who make everything work: the workers and the people as a whole, with their extraordinary and combative youth at the front.
That new government has to rely on the mobilized unions that are fighting to the end, on representatives with a mandates from their assemblies and councils. Those are the institutions that can actually renew Chile and open the way to a new history! To fight for this strategic perspective, the old parties are totally outdated. It is necessary to build a new political force, of the left, but anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, democratic without bureaucrats, and internationalist, because the cause of the working class and our people surpasses the artificial borders created by those who have ruled so far to divide us. Movimiento Anticapitalista, a young revolutionary organization that is part of the International Socialist League, with forces from 20 countries on 4 continents, fights for that horizon. We call on the honest fighters who share these causes to build this path together. Now is the time!
Movimiento Anticapitalista