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From International Socialist Review, Vol.24 No.3, Summer 1964, pp.72-73.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
WORLD OUTLOOK, March 6 – The Movimiento Revolucionario Comunista together with the grouping associated around Polemica with the Trotskyists of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (FOR) united to form a new Chilean party February 1. The new organization decided to continue the name Movimiento Revolucionario Comunista (MRC).
The original MRC group was composed of young students, workers and employees, who were formerly members of the Communist party. With the development of the Chinese-Soviet conflict, they began to form a pro-China tendency about a year ago. Some of them broke with the CP; others were expelled; and others tried to stay in the CP to develop a left wing. The initial nucleus of the MRC was then formed. It published bulletins which attracted much attention in the bourgeois press and which were harshly attacked by the CP.
At the end of 1963, the MRC joined another pro-Chinese group, Espartaco (Spartacus), and the two groups staged a pro-Chinese meeting in the Teatro Baquedano which attracted a crowd of some 700 persons.
This meeting was supported by the Trotskyists of the FOR.
The two groups soon split, however. The reason for this was that the Espartaco group turned out to be both pro-Stalinist and pro-Chinese. Its membership was dominated by old bureaucrats, little interested in the national scene, who did not care to unite with other groups, who held anti-Trotskyist prejudices and whose main activity was the distribution of Chinese documents. The building of a revolutionary party was beyond them.
In view of this, the MRC broke with the Espartaco group and at the beginning of the year called for the unification of all revolutionary groups. The POR and Polemica accepted.
The Polemica group was made up of members who had left the organized Trotskyist movement for one reason or another and by others who had left the Communist and Socialist parties.
The POR was a Trotskyist group, linked to the working class, whose trade-union and political leaders are well known for their activities in defense of the Cuban Revolution. They have suffered police persecution for this in recent years. The Trotskyists joined the young Communists in their ideological struggle, offering them help in their meetings and publications. This greatly facilitated the unification.
The new party has now been joined by Clotario Blest and his group. This is of great significance. Clotario Blest is the outstanding leader of the Chilean working class. He served as president of the confederation of trade unions for nine years and has been hauled into court many times for participating in demonstrations in behalf of the Cuban Revolution. He had previously joined with the POR in common actions.
The Revolutionary Communist Movement is based on Marxist-Leninist principles: Struggle for the defeat of the bourgeoisie and installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a stage of transition in order to arrive at a classless society.
It rejects the Stalinist policy of class collaboration and supports the Cuban Revolution, attempting to draw the best lessons from it for the Chilean revolution.
The new party supports the most revolutionary and progressive Chinese positions in the Chinese-Soviet conflict (the problems of peaceful coexistence, support to the colonial revolutions, the revolutionary road versus the peaceful and parliamentary in order to achieve socialism, etc.).
This support to the Chinese revolutionary positions, appealing to the best militants who have appeared in the crisis of the Communist Party, does not constitute unconditional support to all the Chinese positions. In order to make this clear, the Unification Plenum of the new party adopted a resolution against Stalinism as a political and organizational concept, and opposed the mistaken positions of the Chinese with regard to the Indonesian Communist Party, and with regard to Yugoslavia which the Chinese contend is a capitalist state, etc.
As for national policy, the new Marxist-Leninist party is struggling for:
- widening of the process of unification to include other revolutionary groups;
- supporting with revolutionary methods the Allendista movement attempting to develop a revolutionary tendency within this movement through rank-and-file Allendista unions, CUT (trade-union confederation), peasants, poor people, pro-Cuba committee, etc.;
- improving already existing links with rank-and-file Communists and Socialists.
The newspaper of the MRC is El Gallo Rojo (The Red Rooster), a biweekly of which three numbers have already appeared.
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Last updated on 3 June 2009