Chilean Stalinist backs capital

Workers Press no. 728, 1 April 1972 · scan page 3

Topics: Latin America, Communist Party and Stalinism, Spain, Portugal and Greece

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trade union organization.

Figueroa is Central Unica dores.

Figueroa backed Chilean President Allende's concept of the gradual development of a 'strong socially-owned area'.

Chilean Stalinism follows the path of Stalinism in Spain in 1936 which fought for the retention of private property and against socialist policies.

In Spain, the workers and peasants, faced • by General Franco's armies had taken over CHILEAN Stalinism's complicity in the mov wards counter-revolution was clearly revealed recent speech made by Luis Figueroa, leading munist Party member and head of the country's president of de TrabajaYes toComfactories and land, particularly Catalonia and Aragon.

The Spanish Communist Party, in accordance with Popular Front policy, destroyed these independent mass movements. Property was restored to its former owners and the independent militias and control committees were broken up.

The logic of Stalinism was that defence of bourgeois democracy must come first-socialism would come after the defeat of fascism. History shows bitter lessons: the mass movement was disorientated and Franco's dictatorship was established.

Figueroa states clearly that the predominant feature of the 'social area' must be worker participation: 'Participation must be expressed NOT in the ownership of the firms' property_by their workers, but in an eftective and active role in management and planning' Management councils would replace the shareholders and would become a form of revolutionary political power.

He described the growth of a voluntary work movement and increases in productivity under the democratic Allende regime.

He begged the middle class to persuade the right wing not to break out of this democratic institutional framework, because workers might take over factories and 'they will never return that "Those capitalists wh guaranteed by Popular Unity Programme had better think it over.' Workers' participation, according to Figueroa and Allende, is then a demagogic fraud used to defend the continued existence of so-called 'democratic' capitalism and block the development of socialist policies as Chile's 'democratic' capitalists prepare counter-revolution.

• Chile's main opposition party, the Christian Democrats, plan another mass demonstration against the Allende regime, following the banning of a women's street procession last week.

A pay claim made by workers at the giant El Teniente copper mine has been settled after a strike threat.

The workers were asking for a 50 per cent rise. The settlement provides for rises of between 30 and 40 per cent with an automatic 30 per cent increase every three years.