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The Chilean Socialist Party: Prolegomena to its Ideology and Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Benny Pollack
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Extract

It is common knowledge that, prior to the military coup of 1973, Chile was the only Latin American country to have strong workers' political parties of the European type. Many reasons have been given for this phenomenon, but it is clear that Chile has been the only country in Latin-America to allow the development of Marxist parties with strong appeal and a strong following, within the framework of what could be called liberal, democratic processes. Up to 1970, the electoral force of the Socialist and Communist Parties in Chile oscillated between 20 and 30 per cent of the total national electorate. This rose to more than 40 per cent during 1975.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , May 1978 , pp. 117 - 152
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Halperin, Ernst, in Proletarian class parties in Europe and Latin-America: A Comparison (MIT, 1967), makes a strong argument of this issue.Google Scholar

2 Official Statistics of the Dirección Nacional del Registro Electoral, Santiago, Chile.Google Scholar

3 If the percentage obtained that year by the centre-left Radical Party, which was part of the governmental Popular Unity coalition, is added, the figure amounts to more than 50%.Google Scholar

4 From the Manifesto Socialista (first concrete available document on the foundation of the party); issued in 1934, the concept has been repeated, if not in form, at least in substance.Google Scholar

5 Again, this idea has been present in almost every socialist document available since the Manifesto Socialista.Google Scholar

6 Cheddi Jagan's accession to power in 1953, in Guyana, had similar features.Google Scholar

7 The following categories are here adopted: working class: all manual workers (industrial workers, peasants, wage-paid technicians, mainly). middle class: what in general Marxists call the ‘petty bourgeoisie ’ (employees, small entrepreneurs, small farmers, professionals and intellectuals, mainly). bourgeoisie: big entrepreneurs and landowners, mainly, employing a wage-paid labour force of more than 50 people. oligarchy: a socio-economic group monopolizing the use of political power, no matter whether it is industrial-oriented, agrarian-oriented, or both. dominant class or sector: those socio-economic groups which own the main means of production in a given society, and whose political, moral, religious and cultural aims normally prevail in that society.

8 Montero was elected President after Ibáãez fell, with 182, 177 votes against 99,075 for Alessandri, 1,263 for the leftist Manuel Hidalgo, and 2,434 for the communist leader Ella, Lafferte. See: Las grandes luchas reuolucionarias dcl proktariado chileno (Editorial Marx. Lenin, Santiago, Chile, 1932)Google Scholar and Necochea, Hernán Ramírez, Origenes y Fundacidn del Partido Comunista Chileno (Austral, Santiago, Chile, 1962) passim.Google Scholar The turbulent period 1933–1941 is well analyzed by Corkil, David R., in ‘The Chilean Socialist Party and the Popular Front, 1933–1941’, Journal of Contemporary History, 2 (1976) 261–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a detailed account of the anti-democratic behaviour of Ibáñez and other personalities, see Bicheno, H. E., ‘Anti-parliamentary themes in Chilean History: 1920–1970’ in Medhurst, K., Allende's Chile (London, Hart-Davies, MacGibbon,1972).Google Scholar

9 It had been founded originally in 1912, under the name Partido Obrero Socialista, but joined the Third International in 1922.Google Scholar

10 Jobet, Julio César, El Partido Socialista de Chile (2 vols, Santiago, 1975), I, 30–35.Google Scholar

11 Las grandes luchas revolucionarias dcl proletariado Chileno, op. cit., gives a dramatic account of the crisis affecting Chile's popular sectors in the 1930s. More than 50,000 miners were then at the point of being sacked.Google Scholar For interesting statistics on this subject see Jobet, J. C., El Partido Socialista de Chile, op. cit. 1, 35.Google Scholar See also Mamalakis, Markos J., Th Growth and Structure of the Chilean Economy, From Independence to Allende (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

12 In Jan. 1922 the Partido Obrero Socialista had ceased to exist, to give way to the Communist Party of Chile. It immediately affiliated itself to the Third International.Google Scholar

13 Rojas, Eugenio Gonzalez, socialist Senator, speech in the Chilean Senate, cited by Cheln, Alejandro, Trayectoria dcl Socialismo (Buenos Aires, 1957), p. 37.Google Scholar

14 Necochea, Hernán RamIrez, Origenes y fundación del Partido Corn unista de Chile, pp. 283–4. Socialist essayist Manuel Eduardo Hübner sustains a similar view (Manuel Eduardo Hübncr, Sobre el Comunismo, internal mimeographed pamphlet, Santiago, 1942). The Socialists violently fought the Nazis from 1933 onwards, but the Communists joined in only after Germany's invasion of Poland and the USSR.Google Scholar

15 Grove, Marmaduke, Senate speech on May 1934. Quoted by El Mercurio, 5 June 1934, p. 4.Google Scholar

16 Declaracin de Principios, party document, 1933. This paragraph was inserted in the first known public document of the new party.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 3.

18 This contention would be modified later on, when the party would stress its proletarian oriented ideology and goals.Google Scholar

19 First Declaración de Principios, p. 3.Google Scholar

20 Specially relevant to this aspect of the Socialist Party's ideology are: Acta de Deposicion del senor Juan Esteban Montero (mimeographed document, Santiago, Chile, June 1932); Acta de Ia fundacio'n del Partido Sociabsta (mimeographed document, Santiago, Chile, April, 1933); I Congreso General Ordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1933); II Con greso General Ordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1934); III Con greso General Ordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1936); IV Congreso General Ordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1937); I Con greso General Extraordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1937), V Con greso General Ordinario (resolutions), (internal document, Santiago, Chile, 1938).Google Scholar

21 Very illustrative in this respect are, among others: Raynor, John, The Middle Classes (London, 1969);Google ScholarLa Clase Media (in Latin America), special studies on several Latin-American countries, prepared by Theo Crevenna (Unión Pan-Americana, Washington, 1950);Google ScholarLebovics, Herman, Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany (1914–1933) (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Unofficial party statistics put the following average type of membership during the 1930s: Working class (peasants, workers, miners) – 55%; Middle class (professionals, employees. small industrialists and farmers) – 45%. Official statistics are not available and the estimated percentages were given to the author by reliable old party leaders. The situation then looked different from the situation as it looked from 1940 on, when a distinct proletarization of the party membership began to take place. Last statistics (official, 1973) put membership as follows: Working class – 75%; Middle class – 24%; Bourgeoisie – 1%. (Information given to the writer by Manuel Eduardo Hübner, Central Committee member in the 1930s).Google Scholar

23 Hübner, M. E., loc. Cit.Google Scholar

24 Jobet, Julio César, op. Cit., I, 79.Google Scholar

25 Declaración de Principios, internal document, op. cit. This idea remained up to the late 1950s and early 1960s, but was overshadowed afterwards by the emergence of the Cuban revolution as a main ideological source in the Continent. Only in the 1930s was the concept of Latin Americanism so well developed and fought for.Google Scholar

26 Declaracidn de Principios, op. cit., p. I.Google Scholar

27 This Contention must be understood as including both working and middle classes, at least in the decade of the thirties.Google Scholar

28 They publicly repudiated the Second International as ‘ conciliatory and reformist’ and the Third International as ‘sectarian ’.Google Scholar

29 Rojas, Alejandro Chelén, op. cit., pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

30 The change of the Communist Party's position later on lessened the then tense relationships between the two parties in Chile.Google Scholar

31 Jobet, op. cit. I, 95.Google Scholar

32 In 1937, two years before the accession to the government of the Popular Front alliance, Socialists, Communists and Radicals polled together 37.4% in the parliamentary elections of that year, while the Right (Liberals, Conservatives, Nationalists and others) polled 47.9%. In the first parliamentary elections held after the Popular Front was formed (1941), the Left obtained an impressive 56.9%, a fact which should have enabled the governmental coalition to move further and faster in its reforms. The Radical party's overall control of the administrative structure, a clever co-option policy on the part of the traditional Chilean oligarchy and the Right's own 36.9% in the 1941 elections combined to persuade the Socialists not to push their allies too much and to accept their middle-of-the-road, mildly socialistic approach to political and social reform. This trend was favoured by the stand on the part of the Communist International, which also aimed at supporting class alliances for rather mild social reforms. In Chile, these policies were aimed primarily to produce industrialization and a mild redistribution of GNP, but were deliberately aimed to leave untouched the agrarian structure and not to disturb the development of private ownership. The Socialist and to a Certain extent Communist attempts also to produce reforms in those areas were decisively overcome by the Radicals, which relied on these issues upon unconditional support of the Right-wing Liberal and Conservative parties. See Hübner, op. cit. and Jobet, op. cit. I, passim.Google Scholar

33 jobet, op. cit., I, 53.Google Scholar

34 Urrutia, César Godoy, Berman, Natalio, Waiss, Oscar, Herrera, Ernesto, Morales, Prudencia and Pérez, Vicente, Porqué fundamos el Partido Socialista de Trabajadores (mimeographed document, Santiago, Chile, 1940), p. 3.Google Scholar

35 Rojas, ChelCn, op. cit., p. 103.Google Scholar

36 The Partido Socialista de Trabajadores very soon became a full member of the Chilean Communist Party, a rather surprising end for a party that came into existence precisely as a critic of the Communist-oriented Popular Front policies.Google Scholar

37 Jobet, op. cit., I, 54. In the 1945 parliamentary elections, the Socialist Party polled a poor 7.2% of the vote, nearly losing all Parliamentary representation.Google Scholar

38 It was an accepted practice to perform duties as party officers, (i.e. Head of the Technical Department) and Governmental officials, (i.e. Under-Secretary of State). Such cases were common and led to conflict of interests.Google Scholar

39 Parliamentarians were in a special position to create factions; they travelled frequently to the provinces they represented, and had easy access to the higher party echelons.Google Scholar

40 The Secretary General, ‘On the use and abuse of Political power ’ (internal mimeographed document, Santiago, April 1942), p. 4.Google Scholar

41 Especially during Aguirre Cerda's and Ibáñez's administrations, in 1938–1940 and 1952–1953, respectively.Google Scholar

42 Beck, Carl, ‘Party Control and Bureaucratization in Czechoslovakia’, The Journal of Politics, 23 (1961), 289–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 A common practice was to offer him a senior civil service post, or even a position at ministerial level (according to his rank in the party apparatus).Google Scholar

44 julio César Jobet reports that during this period, the party ‘lost its massive support’ (an assertion which is supported by the poor 7·2% polled in 1945 against the 23·2% of 1941, even though this last percentage includes the small vote got by several unrepresentative leftist groups). Jobet, op. cit., I, 54.Google Scholar

45 The pressures arising from the leaving of five M.P.s in 1940 precipitated the Socialist Party's exodus from both the Popular Front and the Government.Google Scholar

46 Jobet, op. cit., I, 55.Google Scholar

47 Van guardia, the internal Socialist newspaper which had only two months of existence in 1946, stated that he was doing well, but that something more should be done to stop the party being pushed into collaboration with González Videla's presidential candidature that year. González Videla was then supported by his own party (the Radical) and by the Communists.Google Scholar

48 The expulsion meant an actual division of the party, again. Three deputies out of six and tvo Senators left with the faction.Google Scholar

49 This can be inferred from the 1949 and 1953 parliamentary elections results, in which they nearly disappeared from the political scene. In the extraordinary senatorial election of 1949 in which the PSP managed to get its candidate elected, the Partido Socialista de Chile did not even dare to present a candidate. The election of Eugenio Gonzalez as Senator for Santiago and the ousting of Rosetti's socialists from González Videla's cabinet contributed, on the other hand, to strengthen the Partido Socialista Popular and, on the other, to weaken the Partido Sociali.cta de Chile.Google Scholar

50 The Frente de Trabajadores was officially adopted as party policy during the Sixteenth Ordinary Congress, in October, 1955.Google Scholar

51 Halperin, Ernst, in Nationalism and Communism in Chile (MIT Press, 1965), pp. 118–77, somehow sustains this belief. In fact, the Chilean Socialists were not as pro-Chinese as they were anti-Soviet. A dramatic need for differentiations from the Communist Party provided much, if not all, of the insight for adopting this stand. They have always had very friendly relations with both the Soviet and the Chinese Communist Parties. After the intervention of the Warsaw Pact countries in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the relationship of the Chilean Socialists was strained with the Czechoslovak Communist Party but not with the Soviet Communist Party.Google Scholar

52 Halperin, op. cit., p. 131.Google Scholar

53 This stand would lead them, later on, to continue a frank controversy with the Communist Party, over a variety of issues, including the Soviet Union's stand on proletarian revolution, the problem of class alliances or class confrontation in Chilean politics, the question of the Chinese and Yugoslav Coinmunisms, and other important issues. These matters are presented and analysed in this work when describing the last of the three periods of Socialist history.Google Scholar

54 Halperin, op. Cit., p. 145.Google Scholar

55 Footnote 4 provides the meanings I attach to social class, oligarchy and other concepts.Google Scholar

56 He decided to withdraw his candidacy and support the Popular Front candidate, Pedro Aguirre, after President Arturo Alessandri violently defeated a nazi attempt to disrupt the legal life of the country, an incident that was known as the ‘masacre del Seguro Obrero’ (the Massacre of the Social Security Building, naming the place where the actual event happened). See Olavarrfa, A., Chile cnn-c dos Alessandri (4 vols, Santiago, Orbe, 1964) passim.Google Scholar

57 ‘My candidature represents the violent antithesis to all that which the actual regime represents. It is a protest of public character against the scandals in the administration, the illegal dealings, the stealings. It is a vigorous reaction of the national ego against political corruption.’ Montcro, René, Con jesiones Politicas (Santiago, Orbe, 1938), p. 527 (quoting Ibáñez's proclamation speech).Google Scholar

58 Gonzáles Tlidcla ante Ia Historia (party document, mimeographed, Santiago, 1955), P. 4.Google Scholar

59 The pact established a close collaboration between the Chilean and North American Armed Forces. Among the main features adopted were the following: the common obligation to defend the Hemisphere from ‘ outside’ threats, the training of Chilean officers by American officers, technological assistance from the United States to the Chilean Armed Forces, periodical tactical exercises (notably of the two Navies); and, last but not least, the supply of armaments and equipment by the Americans to the Chileans. In the Cold War context which provided the framework in which the pact was agreed, many of its points appeared to most left-wing politicians as tantamount to surrendering Chilean sovereignty to the United States. This impression was further exacerbated when Chilean Officers began to be trained in the anti-subversion school created by the Pentagon in the Panama Canal Zone.Google Scholar

60 Chelén, Alejandro, op. cit., p. 129.Google Scholar

61 Among the documents of that time which more clearly provide the data on the Socialist programme for the Ibáñez Administration, the following can be cited: El Mercurio, from Jan. to Oct. 1953; Un Programa para Ibáñez (party document, mimeographed, Feb. 1953); Un Parlamento para Ibáñez (party. document, mimeographed, June. 1953).Google Scholar

62 Chelén, op. ci., p. 153.Google Scholar

63 A veteran sncialist leader, then member of the Central Committee, told me that a majority of the leadership then favoured a ‘firm intransigent stand against Ibán¯ez because he was beginning to show himself as the very sort of politician we, under his guidance, were sup. posed to eradicate from Chilean politics ’.Google Scholar

64 Fifteenth General Ordinary Congress, Partido Socialista Popular (mimeographed document, December 1953), p. 3.Google Scholar

65 The most important were adopted in 1959 and 1964, and were aimed at strengthening party discipline and command of the leadership over the lower party echelons. The same trend would find definitive sanction in 5967, when the last party organization scheme was adopted.Google Scholar

66 The composition of Regional and Section Committees as well as ofnsclcos remained the same as that adopted in the Sixth Ordinary Congress of 1940.Google Scholar

67 Halperin, op. ci., p. 142.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., p. 136.

69 The Nationalism of Peronism, its vociferous anti-imperialism, though not always matched by its practice, appealed greatly to the independent-minded Socialist Party.Google Scholar

70 Waiss, Oscar, Amenecer en Beigrado (Santiago, P.L.A., 1956), p. 158.Google Scholar

71 Principios (official organ of the Chilean Communist Party), July—Aug. 1958, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

72 For a further understanding of this issue, see Waiss, Oscar, Amenecer en Beigrado; Partido Comunista de Chile Documentos dcl Xl Con greso Nacional realizado en Noviembre de 1958 (Santiago, Lautaro, 1959);Google ScholarPrincipios, July—Aug. 1958;Google ScholarCorvalán, LuisChile y ci nuevo panorama mundial (Santiago, Lautaro, 1959);Google ScholarKardelj, Edvard, La Dernocracia Socialista cn Ia prdcsica yugoslava (Santiago, P.L.A., 1960).Google Scholar

73 Allende, Salvador, Cuba, an camino (Santiago, P.L.A., 1960), p. 55.Google Scholar

74 Ampuero, Raill, Boletin dcl Comité Central dcl Partido Socialista Popular, Aug. 1956, p. 5.Google Scholar

75 See Millas, Orlando, ‘El Senador Rail Ampucro y los tópicos anti-communistas’, in La Polérnica Socialista.Comunista (Santiago, Chile, P.L.A., 1962).Google Scholar

76 Injorine politico dcl Comité Central dcl Partido Socialista al Pleno Nacional de Diciembre de 1964 (internal and confidential document, Santiago, 1964), p. 2.Google Scholar

77 A good and comprehensive description of the theoretical aspects of the Chilean Socialist Party's ideology during the 1960s is provided by Ernst Halperin, Nationalism and Communism in Chile, op. cit.Google Scholar