WSWS: 53 years after the coup: US imperialism and the coming confrontation in Chile

wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/11/nxcm-s11.html

... The lesson of 1973 is not that the working class was weak or that imperialism was too powerful. The working class was more than capable of taking power, but it was betrayed, disarmed and demobilized by the very organizations that claimed to represent it, the Communist and Socialist Parties who insisted that the revolution could be made within the framework of the bourgeois state. The ICFI, in its statement of September 18, 1973, drew the conclusion that remains the only valid one: “Defend your democratic rights not through Popular Fronts and parliament, but through the overthrow of the capitalist state and the establishment of workers’ power. Place no confidence in Stalinism, social democracy, centrism, revisionism or the liberal bourgeoisie, but build a revolutionary party of the Fourth International.”

Fifty-three years later, under conditions in which the world capitalist system is entering its most profound crisis since the 1930s, the working class and youth of Chile must take stock of the situation and prepare accordingly. The anniversary is not an occasion for nostalgic tributes to a betrayed past, of the kind being organized around the mausoleum of Salvador Allende. It is an occasion for drawing the political conclusions that were written in blood in 1973. The ruling class is preparing a new assault. The Chilean “left” is preparing to chloroform the resistance. The task of the working class is to build its own independent organizations, rank-and-file committees against the trade-union bureaucracy, a party of its own against the “left,” and to unite internationally against the imperialist system that, in its death agony, is once again turning its most naked face toward Latin America.