How people’s power is created
In the 20th century, different conceptions of the forms of struggle were debated, but all of them, in one way or another, were synthesised in “the seizure of power”. Whether it is taken by nonviolent means or by armed means, that was the great debate.
In general, the seizure of power was the seizure of executive power, to reach the Presidency of the Republic in the first place. There was, also the legislative and judicial powers, but in most countries the executive was the most important, unless there was a parliamentary system.
So, taking power means taking La Moneda, the Casa Rosada, the Oval Office or the Kremlin? Yes, but that would be taking only executive power. It has already been proven that the real control of a country does not lie there.
And so, the question arises with greater force: where is the real power?
Returning to Chile, it is easy to understand that taking power is not just taking the executive branch, taking La Moneda, as a kind of taking of the Bastille by means of elections (although the Bastille was not the seat of government but a prison). Power is a little in La Moneda, a little in Congress and in the Courts; a lot more in the Armed Forces and a lot more in those who own the means of production, land, factories, mines and others and who manage everything. And it is also in the press and in the right-wing mass media, almost the only ones that survive.
But taking over all these forms of political power is almost impossible by any means. Even triumphant armed revolutions have often been reversed or subsequently defeated. There are many well-known examples.
In 1970 the people of Chile believed that they had seized power because they had gained control of the Executive, they had brought comrade Salvador Allende to La Moneda. He himself also believed this, albeit with a number of limitations. But let us not lay the blame entirely on Allende because almost all of us spilled out into that error.
Now, this capitalism in crisis, which is nonetheless very aggressive, must be replaced by a different system. A government and a democratic, participatory system, without great inequalities, with dignity for all, respectful of human rights, of the rights of nature, with an educated, empowered and conscious people. A country where there is no exclusion or discrimination on any grounds. Absolute equality is difficult to achieve, but we will all be “fairly” equal: there will be no privileged neighbourhoods or differentiated schools, no well-paid jobs and low-paid jobs. All work must be enough to live decently and with dignity.
But what the people in power will do is the next stage. The first is to see how to come to power.
As there are currently no major revolutionary parties in Chile and the people are still very demobilised and depoliticised, the method of taking the sky by storm does not seem likely to work, at least for the time being.
Well, all the difficulties and obligations pointed out are showing us the way: power must not be seized, it must be built, it must be created.
And how do you take power from below, how do you create popular power?
This alternative power is already in germ in small struggles, sometimes isolated, separate organisations and actions, but which weave a network and after converge in a single course. In this way, the people are becoming empowered. But be careful! We must not only consider the battles taking place in Chile, we must also look towards neighbouring countries and even those far away, because if there is one thing that is certain, it is that this fight will not take place in just one country but in a group of countries.
The battles that take place in the neighbourhood, in the factory, in the school, in the provinces, in the towns; the struggles for education, for health, for land, for work, are creating an unstoppable torrent, forming rivers and flowing into the whole.
And there is also something important to consider: in Chile there were many experiences of self-management and control of factories and estates by the workers. The factories expropriated or intervened by the popular government were run democratically and efficiently by the workers. The peasants on expropriated or intervened land started up farms that had been dismantled by the landowners. And they did it efficiently, democratically and collectively, without any work equipment, without money, almost with their fingernails because they needed it to eat. It was a period when the people were empowered and learned. These experiences are buried but not forgotten, they are preserved in the depths of collective memory.
One of the most important experiences in this area was that of the industrial cordons. Much has been written about them, but here I will try to explain it quickly, otherwise a book would have to be written about it.
First of all, we have to be clear that the industrial cordons, created in the time of Popular Unity, that is, in the government of Salvador Allende, were a Chilean invention. Do you see that here there are antecedents and capacities to create popular power?
And what, in synthesis, were these cordons? They were groups of companies or factories that worked in the same geographical area, and that had been intervened or expropriated by the government or taken over by the workers. The first and the main ones were in Santiago, but there were also some in the provinces. The workers were in permanent contact and coordinated to support each other in their demands and struggles. But as they directly managed the company, they also preoccupied themselves with making sure that it functioned perfectly and exchanged raw materials, transport and everything else that was needed. This implied support for the government and the country’s wellbeing.
Among these industrial cordons, we can mention the Cerrillos Cordon, which was an example for its form of organisation, and among the most important in Santiago, the San Joaquín Cordon; the Vicuña Mackenna Cordon; the Estación Central Cordon, the O’Higgins Cordon, the Macul Cordon, the Recoleta Cordon, the Mapocho Cordon, etc.
Their organisation and form of work became quite common, as they communicated with each other. The way assemblies were held, the election of leaders and so on. Here we also see the germ of what can be the creation of popular power.
This Chilean conception was one of the first objectives of the dictatorship in its actions against the people: they bombed the factories, arrested and assassinated the leaders or disappeared them. But the industrial cordons were an admirable experience, an example for other countries, which should be one of the pillars for the creation of popular power.
In the countryside, in the farms, there were also very significant advances. I will tell you something about the Panguipulli Forestry and Timber Complex. Its leader, the forestry worker José Bravo Aguilera – a happy survivor – wrote a book about it, entitled “De Caranco a Carrán”, after the names of some of the estates that made up the complex. This book was prefaced by comrade Franck Gaudichaud, in the following terms:
“The wood workers transformed and self-built themselves into such a powerful class force, so “disruptive”, that they destabilised and ended up literally displacing the colossal hegemony accumulated by a few large landowning families over a set of several thousand forestry workers, a territory representing more than 350 thousand hectares, including an exceptional native forest reserve and ancestral lands of the Mapuche-nation people.”
And how is the people’s power going to deal with national problems, the great issues of the country, for example, taxes, the recovery of our raw materials and so many others that are proper to a centralised power?
It is clear that these issues cannot be raised, analysed or decided in a factory assembly, in a meeting of a peasants’ council or in an industrial cordon. Therefore, they will always have to be delegated to a centralised executive, legislature and judiciary. There could be other forms of state organisation, but this seems to me to be the most practical.
And how is it going to be guaranteed that these leaders do not waver, do not sell out, do not betray? Because all these people will be elected by the people, including the judges, according to their records and programmes. And those who do not comply, turn their jackets inside out or prove inept, will be recalled in accordance with appropriate procedures to be laid down in the constitution to be drawn up.
And so, as people’s power is built from the grassroots up, a new culture will be created that includes solidarity, respect for the community and for each other, and a desire for a simpler and more nature-friendly life. Not because human beings are always good, generous and creative, but because this is the only way to survive in the new world that will have to be built.
The author of this article is Margarita Labarca Goddard, Chilean lawyer and writer specialised in Human Rights who lives in exile in Mexico.
This article has been published here on the independent international news agency Pressenza under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Cover photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash.