With more than ten points of difference, “Against” has defeated “For” in the new Constitutional Plebiscite. The former won with 55.76% of the votes against 44.24% for the latter. With this vote, a constitutional cycle opened on November 15, 2019 with the Agreement for Peace, which proposed as a way out of the social crisis the realization of a Constituent Process that could generate a new “social pact.”
Without pretending to provide a complete analysis of the whole social process we have lived over the last four years since the revolutionary outbreak, we want to point out some elements to help interpret yesterday’s results.
Some Relevant Data
In 71% of the communes of the country, “Against” won. Out of the 16 regions, “For” won only in three: Ñuble, Maule and La Araucanía, southern regions where the large landowning agricultural businessmen have significant weight. In the Metropolitan Region (MR), the result of the plebiscite is very similar to that of the first constitutional plebiscite, which asked whether or not people wanted a new Constitution. In the current plebiscite, the “For” option won only in five communes, Vitacura, Lo Barnechea and Las Condes, San Pedro and Colina, among these are the three richest in Santiago and in the country, expressing a clear class division in the electorate. While we can explain the victory of the “For” in those communes from the class consciousness of the bourgeois families that this was their Constitution, we cannot do the same to explain the victory of the “Against” in most of the Capital, since the motives of the “Against” vote are more diffuse. In some of the poorest and most working class communes of Santiago, such as Lo Espejo, San Joaquín, La Pintana, La Granja, Puente Alto, San Ramón, Cerro Navia, Pudahuel, Maipú and others, the “Against” obtained more than 60% of the votes. The bourgeois press itself [1] draws attention to the fact that, in those communes, where the problems of “security” and “violence” are more acute, the “For” option did not obtain high results, which shows that the extreme right wing had great difficulty in connecting its discourse of security crisis to support for its Constitution.
In addition to these datapoints, it is worth mentioning that the electoral participation reached 84% (2% less than in the previous plebiscite). The reasons for not voting tripled and the null and blank votes more than doubled in relation to the last constitutional plebiscite, with the null and blank votes comprising 5% of those cast.
How to interpret the results?
Many bourgeois “analysts” say that this process ends with two failures and no winners.[2] We do not share this opinion. Since the Peace Accord of 2019, we analyzed that the Constituent Process had a two-faced character. On the one hand, it was the product of a social conquest that allowed several of the historical demands of the social and workers’ movement to enter, with great difficulty, into the draft Constitution approved by the failed Constitutional Convention.[3] On the other hand, the real objective of the bourgeois and reformist parties that signed the Peace Accord was to use the Constituent Process to channel social discontent towards the institutions of bourgeois democracy, towards a new institutionality arising from a new “social pact”. Thus, they intended to close the process opened on October 18: to get the masses out of the streets, to put an end to revolutionary violence and to install the “peace of the cemeteries” of bourgeois democracy, where professional politicians negotiate agreements in luxurious air-conditioned rooms. This second objective was achieved [4].
For Chile’s landlords and their political representatives, it is not true that the failure of the two Constituents was a great defeat. The country is still today, from the point of view of its legal and economic structure, almost in the same place as before the revolutionary outbreak. We continue with the Constitution of 1980, which is totally pro-business, and the masses are no longer in the streets demanding social changes. Therefore, we believe that the Constituent Processes did fulfill, in part, their objective: to demobilize the mass movement and to demoralize a part of its vanguard.
However, this is only one aspect of the problem because one of the objectives of the Constituent Process, mainly raised by the parties that defended it, such as the socialists, the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party, was to create a new social pact that would give long-term stability to bourgeois domination in the country, with more concessions to the masses (public social security, right to abortion, more trade union rights, etc.). This was promised so that Chile would not explode again in violent demonstrations in the coming years or decades. In this aspect, the Constituent Process is again two-faced. While on the one hand it managed to close, in an immediate way, the revolutionary process, it did not manage to generate a stable and lasting “social pact” for the bourgeoisie. The social problems continue to increase, as we describe in other articles, and big business is not willing to make any concessions to the mass movement, as was demonstrated over the last four years.
The defeat of the current constitutional proposal supported by the right wing prevented a further setback in the field of social rights (although the attacks will continue through Parliament). But it remains to be seen if the masses will advance in new articulations to confront what is coming. Only time and the progression of class struggle will tell if this relative defeat of the right will be transformed into a relative victory of the masses, provoking positive consequences for the re-articulation of the mass movement.
The failure of the two Constituent Processes has most severely affected the reformist parties. Because both the Communist Party and the Frente Amplio were the primary defenders of a program that placed at the center the need for a “Constituent Assembly” to “put an end to neoliberalism.” Well, reality showed that this path failed. In the first place, because the Constitutional Convention’s own proposal for a Constitution, written and defended by those parties and by the left-wing independents, did not put an end to neoliberalism and instead preserved intact the semi-colonial structure of Chile, with the privatization of copper and the domination of ten families over the economy as a whole. Secondly, because neither the Convention, nor the Boric government, nor the last Constituent Process gave concrete answers to the problems most felt by the masses. Thus, we can say that broad sectors of the masses followed and supported the program of the CP/FA and saw that this program led to a dead end, to more of the same (which is not to say that these parties are dead socially and/or electorally).
The right wing, on the other hand, thought it had capitalized on the discontent against Boric and the “left” of the previous Constitutional Convention. While it is true that initially their discourse managed to connect with broad sectors of the masses, it is not true that all the “Rejection” in the previous Plebiscite was transformed into support for the right-wing proposals. This is evidently demonstrated by the result of the current Plebiscite, whose Constitution was written entirely by the right wing.
The rejections of the two constitutional proposals show that the crisis of the bourgeois-democratic regime continues. The social discontent against the institutions and political parties is still present and the social problems that generated the outbreak are still in force. To maintain itself in its decadence, the bourgeois democratic regime needed to “oxygenate” itself with two constituent processes and the total incorporation of the Frente Amplio, the Communist Party and also of the Republican far-right into the political regime of the country. Now the regime needed to incorporate these “new” actors to maintain “governability”.
To say that the crisis of the bourgeois-democratic regime is still present does not mean to say that it will disappear by itself or that it is doomed to certain failure. If there is no revolutionary alternative, things will remain as they are, with an increase of repression in response to social discontent.
Gabriel Boric’s speech, upon learning the result of the plebiscite, pointed out the path his government will follow. He called on the right wing to make new compromises, to “solve” the problems of security, pensions, and to reach a fiscal pact. As we have already seen in the last two years, the main objective of these compromises is to maintain the capitalist property of the big businessmen, with the preservation of the AFP, of the ISAPRES, and on the other hand, of starvation wages for workers. All this, while they approve more repressive laws such as the Anti-Squatting Law, the Critical Infrastructure Law, the States of Exception in Araucanía and the Leu Naín Retamal, among others.
The legacy of the CP: the fetish of the Constituent Assembly
In the sphere of the extra-parliamentary left and those more linked to social movements, the idea that Chile needs a “true” Constituent Assembly to solve the country’s problems, and that this is the most urgent task of the left, remains. This vision is expressed by groups from Stalinist organizations such as the CP(AP)[5] to groups claiming to be Trotskyist such as the PTR[6], passing through a wide range of social and “red-black” organizations.
This understanding has a central problem: it idealizes a supposed “free and sovereign Constituent Assembly” and does not grapple with the fact that in Chile there were two experiences in the last four years that failed to solve the problems of the masses.
The Constituent Assemblies in capitalism are always organisms of the bourgeoisie, however “free” and “sovereign” they may be. This is the case because their form of election, based on universal suffrage and with enormous campaigns financed by the big businessmen, leads to the bourgeoisie having a weight much greater than its real weight in society, at the same time in which the representatives of the working class always remain in the minority (if there are any). The Constituent Assemblies are not revolutionary organizations of the people or of the working class, they are Parliaments, where the different social classes come together to negotiate a new “social pact.” They are organizations of class collaboration [7]. And most of the time, the CAs do not have power in their hands either, since the other institutions remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie (Executive, Armed Forces, Justice, etc.). If at the time of the emergence of capitalism the Constituent Assemblies had a revolutionary character, this had to do with the role of the bourgeoisie in that historical period in its struggle against the monarchies. Nowadays they always have a very limited character and at most they manage to allow some partial democratic reforms.
Thus, we can affirm that no Constituent Assembly in Chile will be able to put an end to the AFPs, nationalize copper, expropriate the large estates, and the big fishing companies, etc. so long as the bourgeoisie is in the Assembly and continues to control the other institutions of the state. Before allowing this, those in power would carry out a new coup d’état and end the Constituent Assembly.
For that reason, we have always said that the core of the problem to end bourgeois domination is not the realization of a Constituent Assembly but the seizure of power by the working class, through its mass organizations and with workers’ and popular self-defense. The “CA” slogan is a democratic demand that has importance in reality to the extent that the masses identify the need to change the Constitution to solve their problems, even if this is impossible to thoroughly accomplish this by such means. For this reason, revolutionaries accompany the masses in their experience to show them that no bourgeois Constituent Assembly will solve their problems. In the case of Chile, due to the continuation of the Pinochet-Lagos Constitution, the task of changing the Constitution in a democratic way has remained and still remains a pending task. Therefore, the slogan of a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly must remain on the agenda of the mass organizations. However, we cannot ignore that in the last three years two Assemblies were carried out (in a more or less democratic fashion) and that the masses no longer have the same expectations that a third one will solve their problems. The slogan of “Constituent Assembly” as a catalyst of the mass movement, at least for a period, has lost its vital force. Not to understand this is not to understand that the failure of the Constituent Assemblies has been the greatest example of the failure of the program of the CP and the Frente Amplio. This is a fundamental lesson to be learned by those of us who call ourselves revolutionaries. Otherwise, we will continue feeding illusions that a “true constituent assembly” will be able to solve the popular demands, when in the real world the masses have already experienced two constituent assemblies with different leadership (but both times bourgeois). That is why we say that the organizations that today continue to raise it as a central demand of the social movements and the workers’ movement do nothing more than continue the legacy of the Communist Party and the Frente Amplio, but now do so in a manner that is totally disconnected from the sentiment of the masses.
We revolutionaries must explain to the masses, with much patience, that the only way to solve the problems of Chile (and the world) is with a revolution that sweeps away all bourgeois democracy and puts power in the hands of the working class, organized in its own organs of power (councils, popular assemblies, unions, etc.). Only with the power of the working class will it be possible to realize a revolutionary Constituent Assembly that really responds to the social demands.
The current tasks
Finally, we invite everyone to review the last article we published on the present situation. In it we develop in a more systematized way what we believe to be the challenges and tasks of the moment.
Those of us who call ourselves revolutionaries must know how to explain to each and every worker why, after enormous struggles and mobilizations, we have not achieved any fundamental change. We must know how to explain why none of the Constituent Processes could solve the problems of our class and why in this democracy it will be impossible to do so.
It is necessary that we reconnect with the struggles of the working class, of the youth, of the squatters, and raise their immediate and historical demands, elaborating a list of demands at a national level and demanding from the leaderships of the trade union and social organizations (CUT, ANEF, CTC, CONFECH, etc.), to mobilize their bases for these demands, independently of Gabriel Boric’s government, which only seeks to co-opt the social and union leaderships, ridding them of their representative character and direct democracy, opening the way to depoliticization, apathy, and individualism.
Last but not least, it is fundamental that we build a revolutionary party that can lead the next social outburst, a political tool that will allow the workers to take power into their own hands and change the economic and social structure of Chile, nationalizing copper and lithium under workers’ control, expropriating the big landowners and the forestry companies, returning to the Mapuche people their historic lands, and carrying out a program to guarantee full employment and decent living conditions for all working people, making the capitalists pay for the current economic crisis. The construction of this revolutionary party must take place by participating in every student, labor, and social struggle. We want to invite the activists who today are alone or disappointed with the defeats we have suffered to join us in this reflection on the recent years.
Notes:
[1] See: https://digital.elmercurio.com/2023/12/18/C/4I4CCCHB#zoom=page-width
[2] See the columns by Fernando Atria (Frente Amplio), Cristián Warnken (Amarillos) and Paz Anastasiadis in today’s edition of El Mercurio, 18/12/23.
[3] In spite of having voted Approval in the previous draft of the New Constitution, we were always clear in saying that the New Constitution was, as a whole, bourgeois and would not solve the country’s problems, in spite of the juridical conquests that the social movement had managed to shape in the draft.
[4] The role of the reformist parties and left-wing independents in the Constitutional Convention was fundamental to allow the deviation of the social mobilizations towards bourgeois institutionality, as we have developed in other texts. See: https://www.vozdelostrabajadores.cl/a-3-anos-del-18-de-octubre-donde-estamos-como-seguimos
[5] See the position of its main public figure: https://twitter.com/artes_oficial/status/1736448839068893478
[6] In a note of polemic with us, the PTR proposes that the social struggles against the AFPs, for public education, etc., should be oriented towards the conquest of an “authentic” Constituent Assembly arising from the revolutionary fall of the bourgeois democratic regime. That Constituent Assembly would be a first step in the struggle for a working class government. See https://www.laizquierdadiario.cl/El-MIT-desde-el-Apruebo-hasta-el-En-Contra
[7] See Trotsky, Problems of the Italian revolution https://www.marxists.org/espanol//trotsky/ceip/permanente/p5.problemasdelarevolucionitaliana.htm
