Capitalism fears the Chilean Miners.

Chilean Miners Rescued.

The Wall Street Journal, the mouthpiece of US capitalism continues to show its fear of the Chilean miners. This is shown again in today's issue. On its front page it has a photograph of some of the miners with the mining capitalist, the right wing President of Chile Pinera. This dirty hypocrite supported the entire trajectory of Chilean politics for the past decades, including the murderous actions of the Pinochet dictatorship. Now he is posing as the friend of the miners. The miners should shun him at every turn.

He and his class were the base of the Pinochet dictatorship which slaughtered tens of thousands of worker activists and left wing people. They destroyed the living conditions of the working class and peasantry and as part of this dismantled the laws that tried to impose some sort of regulation on the mine owners to make the mines safer. They were responsible for trapping the miners in the first place.

The strategy of the Wall Street Journal and the capitalists internationally is to defang the heroic miners who have been rescued. These miners are heroes world aide. They represent a great potential danger for capitalism. They could spearhead a movement to organize the unorganized in Chile, Latin America and worldwide. Just imagine if one of them came to your city or town to call for the workers to organize and such a rally and campaign was organized and backed by the local trade union movement. Imagine the affect it would have if a miner arrived in France and Greece to help the big union battles that are going on there at present. The international trade union movement should be organizing all its resources to set such a tour in motion and to take the miners round the world to help other workers in struggle and organize the unorganized.

But instead what are these union leaders doing. It is almost enough to make you despair. They are allowing the right wing President and his dirty capitalist crooks with their military dictatorship background and history of workers' slaughter to monopolize the miners. They are allowing the miners to be wooed with talk of visits to the Presidential palace, TV and Radio interviews, book deals and on and on. The union leaders internationally are allowing this to happen. It is an absolute scandal.

Why is this? Are these union leaders completely stupid? No it is not this. It is that they are completely cowed by capitalism and its offensive against working class people. They think there is no other system but capitalism and so they think they have to go along and bend the knee. These leaders have forfeited the right to lead. Not to see the potential with the Chilean miners, not to take action to help them lead a world wide movement, this is just about the final straw. These leaders are as close to useless as can be imagined.

The struggles that are taking place at the moment such as in France and Greece should immediately reach out and bring over miners to assist them. This should not only be left to the the union leaders who are so cowed they seem incapable of acting. All left activists and groups should come together on a united front basis and organize a tour of a miner in their city and country. This can break down the miners isolation and give them a way to use their fame in a way that helps all workers. And we would like to add, it would be the most effective way to help the miners overcome the trauma they endured underground. Participation in great struggles, leading great struggles, nothing could be better to put their struggle underground in perspective and help them see the role they can play.

sean.