WHAT’S LEFT! MONDAY - AUG 1ST 7:30 PM AT JUNNO’S 
 

COME JOIN US AT THE FIRST of a series of events on building a movement. WHAT CAN WE LEARN FOR TODAY? 'Allow me to take the floor' By Héctor Vega. like to convey you my own feeling when dictatorship was imposed in my country, totally spontaneous, free from all mental elaboration, my first feeling was humiliation. It was clear for everyone that we were deprived of the right to consider ourselves worthy of responsibility for our own life and destiny.

With the coup d'état we were defeated. We had the feeling of absolute failure, which is worst than be defeated, since in this latter case you can overtake, proceed in your own struggle being aware of the righteous of your decision, get rid of your fear. Defeat and failure are two entirely different notions. We were defeated but free of all doubt we were absolute right in the path we choose.

A very different affair is to abandon your political ideas and fully embrace those from your enemy – even worst – congratulate yourself by this outrageous decision. Specifically when this was against your own people, those who died, and were in gaol, and expected you defend their right to struggle. In this respect, when abroad you were lodge, and nourished by those who healed your wounds and your former struggle was validation of their own political stand, your new standard was a treacherous slap in the face of those who welcome you. Precisely this has occurred with Concertación in Chile, specifically with their leadership who has taken an ominous path: neoliberalism. They are shortsighted and confess no further interest in the kind of society that must be raised on the ashes of this one.

What to do?

Main tenets of social life and a new program are based upon political struggle. This requires new people for new ideas; people, specifically workers, which are the main social subject for building a new society, consciously making history in all phases of progress which is beyond any planned form of society, safe for the main principle of social justice which is again an empirical fact.

There is no proxy for the struggle of underdogs, because their own standard is the unfettered principle of life. Upon this we can state that market cannot rule our lives.

Before ending I would like to quote the Introduction of a most challenging book titled “Habermas” [Blackwell, 1999, p. 5]…“the possibility of human beings controlling their own historical destiny has not always existed, but rather has itself emerged historically, through the network of global interconnections which capitalism – as Marx predicted – has put in place. Hence there is no basis for projecting a permanent underlying ‘subject of history”, which should allow us to grasp history”…

Since a new social subject will stem from social struggle. Hence, our endeavour would be to build a new party. This will be the workers’ party. In this sense, a new social subject, with a new ethics based upon social work and in possession of a program, will be capable of laying the foundations of a new party.

Santiago de Chile, July 30, 2005