SANTIAGO, Chile -- The arrest of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in London a year ago has opened a
quiet and long-postponed reckoning in Chile over its years of dictatorship that is finally
bringing former military officers to task for the deaths or disappearances of thousands of
political opponents.
Since the arrest of General Pinochet, the former dictator, 25 officers have been arrested
on charges of murder, torture and kidnapping, including a member of one of the juntas that
helped rule the country for 17 years after 1973. And Government officials privately
predict that a long list of generals and other officers once thought untouchable will be
arrested during the next year.

The above is from an article by Richard Krauss published in the New York Times.

Many people are deceived by this new found ethical politics in which dictators, military
leaders etc. are tried for past acts of violence. This ethical politics is an ideological
device designed to deceive the masses into believing that the current political regime is
humanitarian and caring. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This ethical stratagem is merely a bourgeois device designed to undermine the conditions
necessary for the self-radicalisation and even self-revolutionary transformation of the
masses. It is a device, the purpose of which is the ideological disarming of the working
class.

The trial and conviction of Pinochet and many involved in the execution and torture of
people by the Pinochet regime  does  nothing to redress the specific oppressive regime
that existed in Chile then. The trial and other such hegemonic devices merely create the
illusion that the current regimes are of a qualitatively different kind designed to
promote the interests of the masses. The trials are designed to promote image
politics --to create the image that there obtains a qualitative discontinuity between the
dominant politics today and the dominant politics of yesterday. The trials and the
politics on which they are based are designed to distract attention away from the
essential nature of the current regimes. The trials can never redress the defeat of the
masses suffered at the hands of these bourgeois regimes. The defeat of the Chilean working
class and the crushing of its organised opposition to many aspects of capitalism is an
objective historical fact that permits the current regime to engage in this current
political theatre of political trials. No amount of trials can erase this concrete fact.
Consequently there is nothing to be gained politically for the working class by the
existence of such trials. They are mere gestures that mean nothing. They are, at most,
rhetoric designed to fool the masses into believing there is retribution and that at the
end of the day these transgressions were not a success. They are designed  to discourage
the masses from supporting more radical politics. They are designed to disarm the masses.
They are also being staged as a means through which the current Chilean regime can rally
popular support around itself --a new populism. The point is that the imprisoning of
individual members who participated in the brutal  defeat  of the masses were not the
source of the problem. The problem was capitalism and the corresponding character of the
regime that was specifically needed at the time to crush the radicalised masses. However
underlying that regime was Washington and its CIA who promoted Pinochet and sought the
overthrow of the Allende government. Washington, significantly, is not on trial and is not
clearly viewed as the source of the brutal offensive on the Chilean masses. Indeed these
show trials are designed to conceal this fact and thereby whitewash Washington.

These show trials  are also staged because the political conditions that now obtain
are qualitatively different to the ones that existed then. The Pinochet regime has served
its purpose and Pinochet, himself, and his henchmen have served their purpose for the
imperialist bourgeoisie. They can now be disposed of.

The same situation applies to the hunting down of German Nazis together with their trial,
imprisonment and execution. There is nothing to be gained by the working class by the
staging of such theatrical exercises. Indeed this politics of the gesture or the theatre
is merely a spectacle in which the working class is reduced to serving as the passive
audience. It is a soap opera designed to entertain us: a substitute for the  revolutionary
self-activity of the working class.

Again it generates the false perception that justice is being done and that the current
system is good and not like that evil system of the past. It creates a smugness and
thereby disarms the working class from discovering the real nature of capitalism. It
suggests that a distinct continuity obtains between German fascism and modern bourgeois
imperialist democracy. It conceals the fact that the only reason this bourgeois democracy
exists is because a group of imperialist powers were defeated by another group and that
much of the more advanced section of the working class was defeated. In short democracy
exists on the basis of the victory of one bourgeois group over another and over the
working class. No matter how many former Nazi leaders are arrested, imprisoned and
executed this historical fact cannot be negated or redressed. To engage in these gestures
merely conceals this fact and serves as distraction.

Show trails also create the illusion that in some way the past can be restructured or
changed. It is an ideology and politics that generates a misunderstanding as to the nature
of history. It obscures the fact that history is a concrete objective process. These
trials seek to ideologically transform history into fantasy, image, show --a spectacle.

Equally all this hype about bringing Milosevic to trial is a similar politics. Whether
Milosevic is brought to trial or not is historically and politically not significant.
What's done is done. Imprisoning Milosevic serves no useful purpose in terms of the way
things turned out except as a distraction and a means to deceive the masses. To suggest
that the threat of being declared a war criminal etc can serve as a device to discourage
political and military leaders from engaging in certain actions is the politics of
illusion. It falsely suggests that politics is a voluntarist subjectivist process. The
source of the conduct of Milosevic is a product of the character of the specific
conditions that prevailed at a time. In short a specific combination of historical factors
led to the emergence of the Milosevic regime and the kind of conduct engaged in by that
regime.

Again its aim is to give the false impression that by trying and convicting a political or
military leader the opposition is being defeated. The result of this is designed to disarm
the opposition into believing that the imperialist bourgeoisie is all powerful and can
take out any leader and humiliate him.The same device has been used in the case of Sadaam
Hussein. It is designed to frighten and humiliate the masses of the people in which he, in
a sense, bases his power. It is designed to make the Arab masses feel vulnerable and
humiliated. It is designed to undermine their confidence by giving them to believe that
their leaders can be subjected to show trial and humiliated. Turkey has been doing this in
the case of the Kurdish leader Ocalan. It is akin to the practice of Antiquity when it
captured the leader of the enemy and dragged him true the streets. It a means of saying
that national sovereignty is not a valid political category anymore when the interests of
imperialism are involved. It is an acknowledgement that the imperialist bourgeoisie do not
recognise national sovereignty. Never before since the second world war has this been
stated by the bourgeoisie in terms as clear as this. It is however a fact that national
sovereignty has never been accepted as a real fact except only in so far as it suited the
class interests of the bourgeoisie or a particular bourgeoisie.

Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/





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