1. The political situation in the country turns essentially around the search for a definitive solution to the problem of power. The need to put an end to the period of instability is producing important changes in the overall political co-ordinates, and thus modifying the relation of forces between the antagonistic classes; it is also bringing about changes within the latter. The result is to precipitate a confrontation in the short term.
2. The UP (Popular Unity) Government, such as it emerged in September/November 1970, has exhausted its potential. Today, it suits neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie. In spite of its obvious evolution to the right and the concessions it has made, it is unable to satisfy the requirements of imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, which, encouraged by those concessions, are now seeking the total capitulation of the UP —as a first alternative— while simultaneously organizing with a view to overthrowing it by force.
3. To this end, the exploiters are utilizing all means, both legal and illegal. Their various sectors divide up the work. Naked terrorism is complemented by political pressure via the opposition parties, with massive mobilizations, strikes of their trade-union sections, attempts to split the workers’ movement itself with the aim of weakening its social base. At the same time they are speeding up their work within the Armed Forces, to push them into a coup d'état.
4. The bourgeois class is at present on the offensive politically, and in its aggressivity it is ahead of its own parties. This reality is an expression of the crisis of bourgeois leadership. The bourgeoisie finds itself hemmed in on the one hand by the absolute necessity of combating and crushing the workers’ movement and on the other by the inadequacy of its traditional political structures. This contradiction accelerates its restructuring on a new class basis, intensifies political, economic and social instability, and thus lays the foundations for the predominance of the Armed Forces, which are perceived as the only solution to this crisis of leadership.
5. Pushed by this offensive from concession to concession, the government has transformed its character. Swinging to the right, it blocks off its progressive potential and separates itself objectively from the masses who support it. Its gestures of sui generis Bonapartism increase, giving it the physiognomy of a bureaucratic-military government. Its detachment from the ensemble of worker and peasant forces is thus accentuated.
6. The worker and peasant movement is going through a phase of exceptional development, showing all its real, fundamental power at the base. Important sectors of the national industry, the most decisive ones, contribute to this power. By the most diverse means it is carrying out expropriations of private property, exercising both in manufacturing industry and in agricultural concerns combined forms of workers’ control of production and of direct self-management, fired by the firm decision not to hand them back to their previous owners.
7. This reality shows the strength of the workers’ offensive, which puts its stamp on this whole period. If up to now there has not yet been an effective general political mobilization, it is quite clear that this is being prepared from the material levels already attained. We are passing through a stage of accumulation of forces within the class movement, and one of its dominant characteristics is the military preparation which is spontaneously rising from the base, from the very bowels of the class, from the factories, the peasant committees and from the cordones industriales. The will to go forward to the socialist revolution is raising the level of consciousness of the workers, who are preparing to stop the bourgeois counter-offensive arms in hand.
8. The continuing radicalization, the maturing of a political consciousness as the direct product of their own activity, is opening a daily-widening rift between the masses in struggle and their reformist leaderships. Broad vanguards, linked to the working class as a whole, are rapidly coming to understand both the need to destroy imperialism and the national bourgeoisie and the urgency of building an authentic revolutionary leadership. The reformist leaderships, making every effort to obstruct this positive development, are temporarily preventing the unleashing of a clear anti-bourgeois offensive — whose dynamic would also put an end to the illusions which the present government is still able to awaken.
9. The possibilities for political control of the masses on the part of the reformist leaderships are visibly diminishing. The bases of the workers’ parties are strongly affected: an integral and decisive part of the workers’ movement, they cannot now reconcile its activity with that of their own leaderships and are getting ready to give battle within their own parties. Healthy revolutionary currents are searching for the appropriate form of organization, auguring political shifts which will create the preconditions for the formation of the revolutionary party.
10. It is the ensemble of these phenomena, their interaction, which thrusts inevitably towards an ever more imminent class confrontation. For imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, it is a matter of life or death to first contain — and subsequently crush — this workers’ movement, which is actually engaged in expropriating them. The bourgeoisie clearly understands that even the capitulation of the government is not enough, if this does not mean the latter's collaboration in a line of offensive against the workers’ movement. It is this decision which conditions the time which the bourgeoisie will concede to the present government, before pouring all its forces into an attempt to overthrow it.
11. These are the social and political conditions which make it certain that the resolution of the problem of power, the extension of the revolutionary process and the latter’s triumph, can only be accomplished on the terrain of armed struggle. It is the broad masses, industrial workers and peasants, who are now preparing for the struggle with this fundamental understanding. The class struggle is being extended within the Armed Forces: here too, a breach is opening between the base and the officer corps. The troops, conscious of their class origin, participate in the general spirit of the workers, and let loose contradictions within the repressive forces of the bourgeois state.
12. The Revolutionary Socialist Party places its integration into this process of armed struggle at the centre of its activity, and it does so unambiguously and with determination. To be a decisive nucleus in the formation of the Party of the socialist revolution, working for its triumph, is inconceivable if one does not integrate oneself into the preparation and development of the armed struggle. It is not a question of substituting ourselves for the class, but of participating unreservedly, united with the broad masses and ready to play a leading rôle, in the inevitable armed confrontation to which the most active sectors are already committed, in response to the initiative of the working class. Moreover, there has arisen a duality of power in the public-sector enterprises, between the working class and the bourgeois state apparatus as represented by the interventores. The workers who occupied the factories in July and August not only seized real power from the bosses of the private enterprises, but also in various public-sector industries overthrew the bureaucrats put in charge by the government (interventores). It is necessary to struggle for this dual power to express itself at the political level, in order to launch a struggle for the definitive conquest of power. Workers’ power in the present situation passes via the cordones industriales. As the 9 August proclamation of the Cordón Vicuña Mackenna said: ‘The Cordón is Popular Power.’ The most effective way to crush the bourgeoisie and go beyond reformism is for the proletariat to go over openly to the offensive, reinforcing working-class and popular power. We call for a struggle For All Local Power to the Cordones and the Comandos Comunales, which will have to requisition lorries, wipe out the fascists by means of People’s Tribunals, organize food supplies through the JAP and solve health problems in collaboration with the FENATS workers and the left-wing doctors. It is urgent to co-ordinate the embryos of local power, to convene as soon as possible a Popular Assembly, which does not merely discuss but prepares for the seizure of political power. For the important thing in the end is to let it be clearly established that (as with Kornilov in 1917 Russia), the struggle is not simply one to crush the fascists, but basically one of preparation to become an alternative power to the capitulating government. It is necessary to fix a clear strategy for power, without allowing oneself to be drawn off by minor conjunctural questions — which have tended to convert certain organizations of the revolutionary left into mere left-wing pressure groups on the traditional left. The workers cannot go further along the blind alley into which the capitulations of reformism have led them. They cannot simply remain on the defensive, waiting until either the bourgeoisie obliges Allende to resign or the military decides to launch a coup d’état. The question now posed is not one solely of preparing to counter the imminent coup, but of organizing to initiate a struggle to [illegible]. The proletariat and the organizations of the revolutionary left, the revolutionary sections of MAPU and of the Socialist Party, must take the political initiative, overcoming by means of a ‘Revolutionary Unity’ front the failure of revolutionary leadership, with the aim of establishing a strategy for power and preparing seriously and responsibly to initiate the armed struggle for the conquest of proletarian political power.
13. We reaffirm the tasks of the Political Committee resolution of 10 August:
(a) To crush the bourgeois counter-revolution, particularly its most active centre in the lorry-owners stoppage. Support for the initiative of the cordones industriales and comandos comunales to requisition the vehicles immobilized by their owners.
(b) To reject all dealings, all dialogue with the enemies of the workers.
(c) In order to crush the bourgeoisie and go beyond reformism, to strengthen the real bases of workers’ and popular power: the cordones industriales and the comandos comunales. No restriction of nationalized industry. Continue the expropriation of the national bourgeoisie.
(d) To construct a ‘Revolutionary Unity’, as an instrument for advancing the revolutionary process. To concretize this unity with the MIR, the MAPU(G) and the vanguard sectors of the Socialist Party at all levels.