The MIT / LIT-CI, following in the footsteps of the "peaceful way to socialism" of the 1970s, proclaims the "democratization" of the Pinochetista regime at the hands of the fraudulent Constituent Assembly

Before the start of the Constitutional Convention that took place on July 4, the MIT / LIT-CI released a statement entitled "In defense of the Manifesto of the 34. For the Sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly!" (Dated 06/19), where they support the public declaration signed by 34 constituents (among them, María Rivera from the LIT-CI), calling themselves the “Spokesperson for the Peoples”.
As the MIT had been proposing, in this statement it continues to proclaim the need for "the Convention (to) be sovereign (...) to define its own operating rules, to be able to discuss and decide on everything," as if the former Concertacion, the CP and the Frente Amplio politicians were to break with the mechanisms of the Pact for Peace and the New Constitution.
But along with this, the MIT states: “the Constituent Assembly, after declaring itself sovereign, must take the following measures: 1 - Remove the Piñera government (and) Parliament and take on itself the legislative and executive power; 2 - Condemn the political and military responsible for the repression of the people; 3 - Free all political prisoners, both Chilean and Mapuche, from before and after the social outbreak; 4 - Remove the leadership of the Armed Forces, discuss mechanisms for the democratic participation of the troops in the Constituent Assembly and submit the control of the police and military forces to the organized population; 5 - Implement a series of democratic measures that allow broad and direct popular participation in the Constituent Process. These measures must go in the direction of democratizing the entire judicial system; 6 - Guarantee an emergency plan against the pandemic and for the lives of workers (...) Full financing for this plan must come from nationalization, without compensation and under the control of workers, of large mining companies, banks and other companies of the 10 richest families of the country; 7 - Immediately demilitarize Araucania and return the lands to the Mapuche people; 8 - Immediately re-discuss all the Free Trade Agreements signed in recent decades with the aim of guaranteeing national independence and sovereignty (...) ”(Our boldface)
The MIT proposes that the Constitutional Convention can become sovereign and if it takes full power Piñera can be thrown out, the leadership of the armed forces dismissed; it would be able to break with imperialism and recover the land. In this way, they want to make the workers believe that from the hand of this bourgeois institution of the Constituent Assembly the imperialism that oppresses and plunders the nation and its agents, such as the caste of Pinochet officers who guard their businesses and their property at the point of bayonets, can be defeated. In other words, they affirm that it is possible to expel the pirates from Wall Street by “peaceful means”.
USA organized the Pinochet coup and other genocidal dictatorships on the continent in the 1970s. Today USA commands the massacre by al-Assad and Putin against the Syrian masses. In Latin America, it has 9 military bases ready in Colombia, along with the NATO base installed in Malvinas Islands and the one installed in Con Con to drown the masses in a bloodbath in defense of their interests in Chile and the entire region, as it’s doing hand in hand with the Duque government against the Colombian workers and exploited. To this the MIT leaders oppose the vote of 155 “conventionists.” of the Constituent Assembly! On the other hand, this Convention will never confront imperialism, because it has arisen precisely to protect the interests and businesses of the transnational companies, diverting the revolutionary mass fighting that put the fall of the Piñera government and the entire civil-military regime of the Constitution of '80, servants of Wall Street on the order of the day.
Against the "peaceful way to break with imperialism and resolve the agrarian question" proclaimed by MIT, we revolutionaries reaffirm that national independence and the resolution of the land problem are the two structural democratic tasks of a semi-colonial country like Chile. And as the program of Trotskyism proposes, this cannot be achieved without the success of the socialist revolution, as part of a common fight with the working class of the entire Latin America and mainly, with its best allies, the American workers.
Along with this, the MIT, without blushing, affirms that the Constituent Convention can dismiss the leadership of the armed forces through a vote ... That is, according to the LIT-CI, it’s possible to end peacefully, through a constituent resolution, with the Pinochetista caste of officers who are the fundamental pillar of the bourgeois state, since they are the band of armed men of the bourgeoisie against the working class. In 1917 Lenin stated, arguing with the renegade Kautsky, the leader of the German Social Democracy: “the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power, which was created by the ruling class” (State and Revolution). However, at a 180 °anglefrom this, MIT doesn’t propose to destroy the pillar of power of the bourgeoisie with the triumph of the revolution of the armed workers and exploited, as Kautsky himself proclaimed.
The MIT "proposal" is the old recipe of "peaceful way to socialism" from Castro and Allende that ended up being the "bloody way" to the genocidal military coup that the Chilean working class paid so dearly. 50 years later, in a senile gesture, the MIT leadership is in the footsteps of Corvalan's Communist Party, which with this policy betrayed the revolution of the Industrial Cordons in the 1970s.
They are so stunned with the Constituent Convention that they give it limitless value. But unlike the MIT, revolutionary Marxism never proposed that a Constituent Assembly assume power, because this means supporting a power of the bourgeoisie and imperialism such as the Convention that has begun to session in Chile. This policy is a true confession: if by the hand of a bourgeois power, the working class and the exploited masses can achieve a break with imperialism and conquer land, work, decent wages and pensions, free education and health quality, why would you fight for the socialist revolution? Evidently, for MIT it isn’t necessary.
Actually, the LIT has long ago broken with Trotskyism. Their strategy in semi-colonial countries is that it’s first necessary to expel imperialism by expanding bourgeois democracy, that is, by making the Constituent Assembly sovereign, and thus it’s possible to advance to socialism. A reactionary pseudo-theory, continuation of social democracy and Stalinism.
What the MIT is really saying, in a clear policy of class collaboration, is that a sector of the bourgeoisie can break with the pact for Peace and the New Constitution and thus conquer a sovereign Constituent at the service of the workers and the people.
Does MIT seriously believe that the majority of the Constituent Assembly, which are the politicians of the former Concertación, the CP and the Frente Amplio, are going to promote this Constituent Assembly to be a sovereign one and are going to grant all the demands of the workers and the exploited? To create illusions in this Constituent scam as MIT does means to deceive and dupe the working class and the masses.
But these vulgar democrats, they are not even coherent. They seek to “democratize” a rigged Constituent Assembly, totally undemocratic, which was inaugurated by repressing the relatives of political prisoners, demonstrating the true character of the Pinochetista bourgeois democracy that reigns in Chile.
This farce of the Constitutional Convention is not going to guarantee even the slightest democratic demand to the masses, because it’s an appendage of the Pinochet regime and is under the control of that caste of counterrevolutionary officers of the armed forces that at the point of rifles guard the private property of the capitalists and imperialism.
The MIT asks this rigged Convention to break with the "pre-established agreements", when its majority, the Pinochetista Right, the Concertación, the Frente Amplio and the CP defend that pact to the letter. And if they did, the generals would come out to prevent them in the name of "law" and in "defense of democracy." There is no possibility of conquering the slightest of democratic demands without crushing that caste of Pinochet officers!
To fight for democracy all the way, MIT would have had to call for the mobilization and arming of the workers to defeat the repressive forces of the state and its murderous generals. But MIT fell silent rather than calling on the working class and the masses to arm themselves, to set up their self-defense committees, to form the worker and peasant militia, to go looking for the rank and file soldiers to disown the Pinochetista officers and go with their weapons over to the side of the masses. As the Transitional Program says: "Engels defined the state as bodies of “armed men.” The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle”. But what MIT instills is the "peaceful way" to "democratize" a regime that imposed itself by massacring the revolutionary workers of the Industrial Cordons and bombing La Moneda. Once again, "the reformists systematically implant in the minds of the workers the notion that the sacredness of democracy is best guaranteed when the bourgeoisie is armed to the teeth and the workers are unarmed." (Transitional Program)

Therefore, the MIT strategy is not to call the working class, the rebellious youth and the exploited masses to retake and deepen the path of the revolutionary combat opened in October 2019, but to demand the Constituent Assembly to expand democracy and even advance to socialism. Thus they continue to embellish this trap for the rescue of Piñera and the survival of this damned civil-military regime, servants of imperialism.

Partido Obrero Internacionalista – Fourth International (POI-CI),
adherent to the FLTI