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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/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%