One of the most horrific photos from the terrible day of the fascist coup in Chile
There is a large section of the western liberal or "libertarian" "left" that likes to throw around the term "tankie" but today -- the 50th anniversary of the US backed fascist military coup in Chile -- is truly a reminder of the kind of horror that can and usually does occur if an actually leftist government does not control the "tanks" i.e. the military.
For any serious anti-capitalist or socialist/communist movement or party the maintaining of power in the event that a revolution/potentially revolutionary election result of whatever type succeeds is a fundamental question of importance as was learned by a generation of left thinkers (including Lenin) from the bloodbath at the end of the Paris Commune. Any actually left workers' regime will be under constant siege and attack from its very first day in power and how to hold power for the workers is a critical issue for a revolutionary moment.
Comrade Salvador Allende was serious, but Fidel Castro warned him about the extreme danger of the military and the oncoming onslaught by imperialism and tragically Castro was proven correct.
All too many of the left thinkers in the west seem very utopian or romantic...they love the idea in theory of a revolution taking power but have no time at all and give zero thought to what would have to happen for it to hold on to it.
This excellent statement by the Comrades in the Communist Party of Greece reflects on that:
KKE Statement: CP of Greece, on the 50th anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile and the assassination of Salvador Allende
On 11 September 1973, a military coup d’état took place in Chile, led by General Pinochet, who, with the support of the USA, overthrew the Popular Unity government.
The Chilean experience tragically confirmed the basic lesson drawn from the experience of the Paris Commune, which Marx and Engels also stressed in the Communist Manifesto, that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery and wield for its own purposes”. It must, as Lenin stressed, “smash the ‘ready-made state machinery’ and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it”.
The government of the Popular Unity and President Allende, who fell heroically, has since then dispelled once and for all the illusions of a “peaceful parliamentary path towards socialism”, which had been the banner of the Eurocommunist and other opportunist parties in the International Communist Movement.
The 50th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on issues of the strategy of the revolutionary movement regarding the state, power and the stance towards social democracy in order to reject once and for all the bankrupt theories of “the socialism of the 21st century”, the advocates of “transitional programmes”, the “left governments” within capitalism, the “intermediate” goal of power, the so-called anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly power, etc.
We honour the heroic struggle of the communists and the popular forces in Chile, of all the victims of the US-led coup d’état, as well as the struggles of the working class and the peoples against the monopolies and capitalism that continue to this day, which raise the main question for the communist movement: The formulation of a revolutionary strategy for the overthrow of capitalism, for the socialization of the means of production, for central planning, for workers’ power, for the construction of socialism–communism.