Letter: Chile and Parliament (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chile and Parliament

I have for a year subscribed to the Socialist Standard. I intend to continue to do so because it is the most informative by far of all the left wing papers. I found also that I could agree with more of the Declared Principles than I could with those of any other group. However, in the “Parliament and Private Armies” essay in the November 1974 issue there is a sentence which highlights a basic disagreement over what Socialist principles are:

Socialism can be achieved only by parliamentary means; once the working class understands and wants Socialism it will send its elected representatives to take control of the governmental machinery . . .

In a socialist society there can be no parliament. “Representative” democracy is the form currently dominating the ideology of the British people and most of the world. I would argue that the basic socialist principle is “direct” democracy; the common decision. The existence of parliament and of the parties within it does nothing towards instilling in the people a sense of direct responsibility.

“I give you the authority to act on my behalf so that I need do nothing to affect my own condition.” 

The battle Socialism is fighting is against false-consciousness. Concurrently with an understanding of pure Socialism, a very simple concept, comes firstly; the realisation of what parliament really is, and secondly the working class organisation capable of the necessary transformation of society.

Remember Chile:

The “democratically” elected Communist and Socialist Party coalition entered the institution of parliament and respected the “right” of the bourgeoisie to limit the UP government’s already reformist measures. The very nature of that UP party determined the coup d'état of 1973.

The parties even went as far as to suppress the Chilean people’s attempt to organise themselves and insisted that they alone were to impose and dictate the form of organisations the people would have.

For such an important case-study as Chile there is a serious lack of any reference to it in the whole of this year’s Socialist Standards.

Anyway I ask the SPGB to explain why you are a Parliamentary party?

G. L. Youldon

Woodford Green

Reply:

In Britain it is Parliament that makes the laws and provides for their enforcement. Parliament controls the armed forces and the police — two instruments of class oppression. It can therefore crush any attempt at the seizure of power by a minority. It will be able to continue doing so as long as the working class votes into power its economic and political enemies. The capture of political power and the machinery of government (Parliament) by a Socialist working class is necessary for the successful carrying through of the Socialist revolution. Before abolishing the need for Parliament it must first be captured.

Using Chile as an example of the “failure” of parliamentary action is mistaken. We think you already half-recognize this. You admit that Allende’s government was “reformist” (i.e. it did not have Socialism as its objective), and that they were undemocratic with dictatorial tendencies. What you do not mention is that the Allende government was also a minority government. It therefore lacked the majority necessary to carry through its reformist programme of nationalization and land reform. One final point — we are not “left-wing”: we are revolutionary.

Editors.