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Student protests called the Chilean Winter of 2011 had set off a whirlwind of change in the tiny South American country, known as the ‘birthplace of neoliberalism’. Over the last decade, what began as student protests against fee hikes, transformed into a national uprising against skyrocketing social inequality and, in 2021, led to the election of a new Constituent Assembly. The previous document had been drafted in 1973, after a US-backed coup in Chile murdered and toppled the elected socialist government of Salvedor Allende and installed the brutal corporate-military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet which implemented economic ‘reforms’ prescribed by the IMF and World Bank. President Gabriel Boric, a socialist and former student leader now leading the Apruebo Dignida coalition, put the new draft Constitution to vote in September this year. The new draft was widely hailed for enshrining universal primary education and healthcare as rights, declared Chile a ‘plurinationalist’ state and protected the ‘rights of Nature’. In an outcome equal parts puzzling as it is disheartening, the draft was rejected.
Dr. René Rojas from Binghamton University, New York (USA) analyses what went wrong.
Most explanations of the September 4th defeat of the proposed constitution point to either the engrained conservatism of ordinary Chileans or the effects of elite and Right-wing propaganda. The former contend that average Chileans could not accept progressive measures included in the draft like gender freedom and indigenous autonomy; the latter claim that fake news and disinformation promoted by social and traditional media confused or outright misled Chileans and prevented them from evaluating that the new constitution was beneficial. In my opinion, both views are wrong. In significant ways, both blame ordinary, working Chileans—for being backward, or for not being able to confidently discern their interests, respectively.
Instead, I think that a troubling, but unequivocal, 62 percent voted rejection in the exit plebiscite because the Constituent convention and the draft itself exacerbated the disaffection and mistrust of working-class Chileans who have been beset by insecurity for over thirty years of savage neoliberalism. This occurred for two key reasons, one directly related to the politics of the country’s New Left, the other brought upon by institutional changes, specifically changes in electoral rules. I will work backward. In the spirit of the great 2019 rebellion, delegates decided to expand the electorate significantly, by adopting automatic registration and mandatory voting. This meant that for the first time since the early post-dictatorship years, turnout was bound to be very high, reversing low participation rates which had fallen to under fifty percent. It also meant that layers of the most disengaged and detached Chileans would be casting a vote for the first time in decades. On the Left, we typically believe that reaching the most disaffected, the disproportionately poor and marginalised sectors without connections to organised politics or activism and who tend to stay home for elections, enhances our chances at the polls since these are people who stand to benefit the most from our reforms. This was an expectation in Chile, although, again, we are talking with the most alienated and atomized sections of the working class.
This had crucial consequences when ordinary Chileans had to evaluate the new Constitution. This is where the New Left’s politics and discourse came into play. Rather than reassure broad layers of working people, who already distrust and resent political parties, that the Left was working to advance their interests and give them the security and protections they long for, radicals in charge of drafting the constitution and then campaigning for it antagonised and alienated them further. Chile’s new Leftists did this by prioritising special identity-based rights and adopting a moralising attitude. In 2019, and in the years leading up the uprising, Chileans mobilised for core material guarantees in terms of pensions, healthcare, education, wages and labour protections, and education. In other words, ordinary Chileans have spent a decade demanding class-wide, universal rights and public services.
Much of this universalist social provision made it into the draft, but it was drowned out by a far more vaunted and strident defense of more particularistic defenses of marginalized groups suffering special forms of oppression, like sexual and gender disidencias (dissidents) and indigenous communities. Ample evidence shows that ordinary Chileans are not opposed to rights and justice for oppressed identity-based groups. But the histrionic behaviour of the radicals in the convention and overwhelming particularistic language in the draft failed to persuade masses frustrated by decades of social exclusion and insecurity that the new Constitution and the entire reform process would promote their wellbeing. In many ways, because they eclipsed universal rights and protections, these ended up adding to their uncertainty and discontent.
In the end, the pro-reform vote declined, but only slightly. Overall, almost the same number of Chileans who voted for a new Constitution in the 2020 opening plebiscite voted in favour this time. The big shift came from the nearly 6 million new voters, enfranchised by changes in electoral rules, the vast majority of whom voted against the proposal. In other words, Chile’s new radicals failed to engage and win over the millions of working Chileans who are disconnected from organised politics or social movements. In fact, their moralising identitarianism did the exact opposite.
Fight again tomorrow
The first task is to recognize and take stock of the magnitude of the defeat. The plebiscite did not only reject what would have been a very progressive charter, replacing a privatising, commodifying and anti-labor constitution imposed under Pinochet’s dictatorship. It amounts to a defeat of the recently elected New Left government of Gabriel Boric and a massive setback for the broader reform process underway. Since the 2019 uprising [Ed.: Estallido Social, a series of protests in 2019-20 in major cities around Chile, sparked by students’ civil disobedience to metro fare hikes finished with the ousting of billionaire-politician President Sebastián Piñera]. Chile has undergone a veritable political revolution that essentially toppled the democratic neoliberal regime in place since the 1990 transition [after the end of General Pinochet’s junta rule]. Importantly, it carried the potential to adopt anti-neoliberal reforms that not only would have improved the material well being of Chile’s popular sectors, they also stood to enhance their power vis-à-vis the ruling class. The government is close to being dead in the water, just months after its inauguration; radicals and social movements are demoralised and disoriented; and new forces on the Right, including pragmatic populists and reactionary revanchists, are emboldened and making inroads into popular sectors. In short, the plebiscite is not a one-time, momentary defeat after which we just have to regroup. It has wiped out years of growth and achievements.
President Boric and the ‘democratic socialist’ Left now faces some very hard questions.
But of course, it is not a permanent defeat. Chilean neoliberalism will continue to cause havoc in the lives of working people, intensifying their insecurity and throwing the country into turmoil. Leftists must oppose the restoration of progressive neoliberalism, not via performative obstructionism but rather through a steadfast defence of vigorous state regulation of markets and public social provision. The Left must use the positions in power it has painstakingly won since 2013 to relentlessly press for this policy agenda. At the same time and crucially, radical reformers must dispense with narrow social justice orientations in favour of universalist politics and protections. This does not mean abandoning the rights and equality of groups suffering particular forms of oppression. It entails placing class-wide demands at the forefront and demonstrating that, rather than competing with sectoral injustices, the fulfilment of the former provides the strongest foundation for addressing the latter. If the New Left does not lead with universalism, it will aggravate the resentment of masses of working Chileans who, denied basic rights under three decades of progressive neoliberalism, will rationally conclude that prioritisation of identitarian causes comes at the expense of their security and wellbeing. Nothing will promote the rise of Chile’s new revanchist Right as effectively as this.
While the plebiscite tells us what went wrong, it also offers glimmers of where to press forward. In spite of the confusion and resentment, the neighbourhoods and worksites where the most advanced sections of Chile’s working sectors live and toil upheld their votes for reform. Santiago’s large working-class townships delivered massive support. The same goes for Valparaiso, and San Antonio, Chile’s largest ports, as well as key industrial and mining centres in the North and Central regions. These sites represent the millions of workers—women and men, indigenous and non-indigenous—who more than any other reason voted to approve the Constitution in pursuit of universal social provision and systemic change. Relative to the elevated hopes nursed by the rebellion and rapid ascent of Boric’s Apruebo Dignidad coalition, these outcomes offer scant consolation. But they represent a solid foundation on which Chile’s Left must reorganise into a universalist, democratic socialist movement. Not only will these sections fight for class-wide reforms, when organizationally connected to New Left parties and movements, they will discipline it so that increasing layers of working Chileans are drawn to, rather than alienated, by radical politics.
