By Joaquín Araneda and Francisca Barbosa, Movimiento Anticapitalista
On Monday, Piñera made a “call to all sectors that are willing to discuss, to collaborate and to make agreements”. The call was answered by all from DC to the FA. In this context of crisis, traditional parties join to make working people pay for it.
Pacts, Their players and Agreements on the Fringe of Pinochetism
“I want to make a call to all sectors, many of them have stated their ideas and proposals and we have listened carefully. A call to all the sectors that are willing to discuss to collaborate and to make agreements which can allow us to move ahead in a fast, safe and resistant way, also being more responsible towards serious challenges such as fighting the Covid-19 pandemic”. In this way, Piñera laid out his offer. The background of this offer lays in the opposition´s willingness to collaborate when it signed the “Pact for peace and the New Constitution” a few months ago.
That pact allowed Piñera, responsible for the systemic violation of human rights since the 18th of December, to remain in power and lead the health and economic crisis of today. We must not forget that, amid the rebellion and development of a general strike on November 12,the overthrowing of the government through mobilization and the key role of the working class was on the table, “out with Piñera” was being heard everywhere. However, opposite to what people screamed in the streets and demanded in their strikes, the “opposition” understood that overthrowing Piñera implied the complete weakening of an entire political regime, which they are also part of and defend. That is how the ex-Concertación and a majority of the Frente Amplio proudly stated their pact with the right, thereby confirming their willingness to make changes only to the extent of what is considered possible.
The Communist Party, which brags about its leftist phraseology and about not having been part of the table at which the pact had been negotiated, was a key element in the plans of the political arc to finally seal Pïñera’s continuity. This orientation led it to dismantle the preparations for a new strike, since the CUT (led by the Communist Party) played a role of containment in order to prevent a new demonstration of strength by the working class. This whole dynamic gave place to the complete impunity of this criminal government and to the strengthening of the antidemocratic limits advocated by the far right for the constitutional reform.
The Regime Unites
We are in the midst of uncontrolled Covid-19 contagions as a result of the government refusing to establish a full lockdown when it was appropriate. Likewise, the lack of medical resources and massive testing in a mixed health system which is completely commercialized and under the leadership of an incompetent and dishonest minister has resulted in the impossibility of implementing effective measures to deal with the pandemic. This dramatic scenario intensifies due to the worsening of the economic crisis that is now being managed by the government through a set of measures and legislation that attack the working class.
This situation strains the political contradictions and makes each position more evident. One of the debates that raises the need to take a position is to reduce the problem simply as an issue of the model. That is to say, opposing neoliberalism to the possibility of building a more “human” capitalism. That is how the Communist Party and sectors of the Frente Amplio have signed statements of good intentions without any actual plan to establish how to reach a society in which the demands of the working class are met in a capitalist framework. The truth is that time and experience have already proved that these so called “leftist” sectors play a role in updating the effects of the pact and, instead of trying to “humanize it”, they stand with the government.
The Communist Party promotes neither mobilizations nor the response of unions against the virus of lay-offs. In addition, it shamelessly votes in Congress acts such as the Employment Protection Act which allows employers to suspend wages during the pandemic.
On the other hand, the Frente Amplio more blatently positions itself with Piñera, under the “agreement”. Gael Yeomans, president of Convergencia Social (FA) answered the call for unity through the newspaper La Tercera as follows: “We have always been willing to discuss the measures needed to face the pandemic (…) Nowadays we require a broad discussion in the social and political pheres in order to face it”. The FA representative has also been expressing their willingness to collaborate. He recently stated in a TV interview: “The opposition has a key role in building the cooperation needed for the country to overcome this crisis without coming out of it more socially broken then it was previously”. These words illustrate an orientation aimed at keeping the social majorities from expressing themselves against the belt-tightening measures and from continuing last year´s open process of popular uprising.
This is the orientation of a diluted opposition which expresses de relation of interests defended by the parties that build the FA. Regarding this, Catalina Perez, president of Revolución Democratica clearly states: “We are going to continue insisting on what is important, to ensure economic stability and health securities to the people. If the government´s call is sincere this time, of course we are available”.
For the Capitalists to Pay for the Crisis, We Need Another Kind of Unity
We are about to enter a much more complex economic and social context. New record numbers of Covid-19 cases appear each day and scarcity is increasingly. The October Rebellion provided collective learning, it was a response to years of capitalist hoarding at the expense of the privatization of basic and fundamental rights such as access to health care. However, the challenge that made us take the streets is much deeper and more complex than the critique of the Pinochetist inheritance. Today, it is the whole system, now in its neoliberal phase, that is preventing us from stopping the pandemic and living with dignity.
The set of demands democratically expressed by the social majorities during the rebellion that are aimed at changing everything must function as a unifying engine and also as a mechanism to close the spaces to the sectors that protect the interests of the minority in power. The Frente Amplio and the Partido Comunista have nothing new to offer. Even less so the ex-Concertacion, which governed protecting the limits of the Pinochetist constitution. This is the reason why we have to build something entirely different and promote the unity of the revolutionary left, activists and social movements based on points of agreement in order to democratically advance the building of a proposal for the capitalists to pay for the crisis. We defend this position as the Anticapitalist Movement and we propose the need to articulate a great campaign for a Single Health System, for the prohibition of lay-offs, for the abolition of all debts and for a minimum wage of no less than 500 thousand pesos for all, funded by a tax on wealth. On the basis of these emergency propositions, we can discuss and promote the unity that we need, a unity of anticapitalists to stop the government and its allies.