Republic of Chile
Santiago is a city under perpetual observation. Closed-circuit cameras peek out from under the eaves of buildings, and cluster like one-eyed birds on the ledges of skyscrapers. Private automobiles have been banned in the city proper since 1995 as an anti-smog measure, and the raised light-rail lines form a spider-web of gray strands against the sky. The city’s streets are laid out in a grid, and I have no trouble finding my way to the large La Noche-style (an architectural school native to the universe’s Chile) building that houses the Department of Societal Affairs.
“Professor, it’s an honor.” Isabella Mendez is a handsome, aging woman of mixed Spanish and Mapuche descent. Her office is large and well appointed, the walls decorated with native-inspired geometric patterns. “I had the pleasure of reading your work on cultural diffusion in Information Age civilizations.”
I thank her politely and take my seat. Can she explain her government’s ideology? How would she respond to allegation from the right that Syntegration is just Marxism with the serial numbers filed off, or from the left that it represents a betrayal of leftist principles?
“Syntegration is to Marxism what Marxism was to the Bourgeoisie Liberalism of the 18th century that preceded it.” The General Secretary for Societal Affairs warms to the topic. “It is the natural progression from Socialism- a fundamentally 19th century ideology- to Syntegration which is a fundamentally 20th and 21st century approach to politics and economics. I could spend an hour talking about specific points of Syntegralist thought, but in short we reject the socio-communist concept of highly centralized political and economic control along a Soviet or Maoist model. That approach only results in powerful, corrupt bureaucrats making decisions in ignorance of local conditions to the detriment of local communities. We also seek technological and social solutions, instead of political ones imposed from above. Only Syntegration has successfully done away with the parasitic political class- we are unlike Marxism in that we have actually
delivered on leftist principles instead of just claiming to do so.”
But doesn’t the Synconet Computer System allow for just the kind of centralized economic control that Syntegration opposes?
“Not at all!” Mendez dismisses the possibility with a wave of her hand. “Synco allows us to take into consideration exactly the individual circumstances of specific locales, business operations, and communities- with input from the workers and citizens themselves! It is a fundamentally” (I began to realize that ‘fundamentally’ is one of her favorite words) “democratic approach to national economic planning.”
And not just economic planning any more.
“Oh, of course not. A society fundamentally functions as a whole- you can’t divorce economic issues from social issues, let alone issues of health and medicine or something like defense.”
We talk on.
The Republic of Chile has a history going back to its independence from Spain on February 12th, 1818. For well over a century it remained a fairly ordinary, at times somewhat corrupt, democratic republic. It would not head down the path to its current form of government until 1970, when the Popular Unity Coalition- an electoral alliance of Communists, Radicals, Social-Democrats, and dissident Christian Democrats- successfully elected Marxist Salvadore Allende to the Presidency of Chile. As he had come to power via an election instead of a revolution, Allende’s approach to Socialism was a much more democratic one than in most socialist countries in this world, and operated within the legal framework of the pre-existing Chilean system of government. His reforms included mass-nationalization of large scale industries, price-fixing, jobs programs, education programs, housing programs, and much, much more. What would become Allende’s most important and far-reaching program was the creation of Synco- a national network of computers that allowed for easy transmission of data between the national government and state-run enterprises. Data from the field was used in economic modeling software to predict the probable results of economic decisions by the state, allowing for simplified and decentralized economic planning.
In 1973 however, a constitutional crisis occurred when the Supreme Court denounced the Allende presidency and the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution condemning the president and calling on the armed forces to intervene. On September 11, 1973 elements of the army under the leadership of General Augusto Pinochet attempted to carry out a military coup. This failed- largely because Allende had reorganized the military and police and placed many people personally loyal to him in positions of authority. The president survived and fighting in the aftermath of the coup dissolved into the Second Chilean Civil War between the president on one side (backed by the Soviet Union and the communist bloc) and the Chamber of Deputies on the other (backed by the United States and the capitalist bloc). The war lasted until 1975, when the Allendist forces were finally victorious- thanks in no small part to the Synco Network which they used to effectively organize their logistical operations and even co-ordinate their forces in the field. Unfortunately for the president he was assassinated by what has long been rumored to be an American agent only days before the final ceasefire.
Following the death of Allende a power struggle in the new (and formally Marxist) Chilean government resulted in Fernando Flores- the former president’s Secretary of Finance- coming to power. Flores was a popular, respected figure who had been captured and tortured by Conservative forces during the war. Project Synco had been his idea (in conjunction with the British consultant Stafford Beer) and for much of the fighting he had been responsible for overseeing the network’s operation. This apparently inspired Flores and left him thinking about what other applications the network could be put to. As president he greatly expanded Synco’s reach, regularly upgrading the network and vastly expanding the number of terminals connected to it across the country. In the face of embargo by the United States and its allies and economic chaos in the Soviet Union and
its allies going into the 80s Crisis, Synco was used to organize the Chilean economy and keep it functioning- ensuring 98% employment at the cost of steady inflation and generally low living standards.
It was following the 1990 civil war in the Soviet Union that Fernando Flores- now operating effectively a dictator- unveiled the ideology of Syntegration. The product primarily of Flores and his close friend Beer, Syntegration built on Allende’s “Chilean Path to Socialism”, but offered a much more technologically focused solution for the problems that Socialism and Communism identified. Syntegration called for most of the national economy to be under the control of state-owned companies (by that point this was already the case in Chile) however with a great deal of autonomy for individual enterprises within the companies, and tolerated capitalism within certain economic sectors (namely entertainment and the media). Socialism, the Syntegralists argued, had become outdated and did not account for modern technological improvements such as computers that Syntegration embraced and considered vital to national planning.
Key to the new ideology was Flores’ identification of “the parasitic political class” as Mendez put it, as one of the key causes of the failure of communism and the destruction of the USSR. Communist politicians had used their influence to acquire powerful positions that they were totally unqualified for, with predictably negative consequences. A Syntegralist state should (he said) be a pure meritocracy without career politicians of any kind, and the 1991 Chilean Constitution did away with traditional political offices and elections. Flores himself resigned as President and became Chairman of the Strategic Long Range Planning Committee- a mere civil servant. In keeping with Syntegration’s democratic ideals however, the people of Chile are now represented by the National Population Sample, a body of one hundred eligible citizens chosen at random from the population to serve one-year terms. The NPS is the highest organ of the state, with power over the Strategic Long Range Planning Committee (the highest bureaucratic body) and can even, in theory, dismiss and appoint that committee’s chairman.
Since 1991 Syntegration has gained a minor worldwide following, with supporters in Latin America and Africa- particularly in former Communist states. Venezuela has been under an elected Syntegralist government since 1998, and formally changed its name to the “Syntegralist Republic of Venezuela” in 1999. Benin elected a formally Syntegralist President in 1996 and 2001, and there is currently a Syntegralist party in the governing coalition of Angola.
“There is nothing special,” Arturo Zenteno informs me “about the government of Chile.”
Zenteno is an activist within Chile, the head of the Chilean Democratic Movement. His group’s platform calls for an end to the Syntegrationist state and free elections to a conventional national legislature.
“Flores didn’t have some kind of epiphany or come up with some new political idea because he wanted to build a Utopia. He realized that Socialism was no longer going to work as a justification for his dictatorship and so he came up with something to replace it.”
What about Syntegration’s democratic elements?
The opposition leader makes a derisive sound. “The NPS is a joke. Yes, it has members who are non-Syntegralists and who are in opposition to the state. But if you think that they accurately reflect the political make-up of the country then you’re gullible. Since the Sample Members are ordinary people they have no political training or experience in governing, and because their term in office only lasts a year they have no chance to acquire any. Meanwhile Flores remains Chairman of the Committee, and the Committee doesn’t go anywhere- they hang around year after year as the true power in the country.”
What does he mean that there’s nothing special about the government of Chile?
“It’s like this;” Zenteno explains “you have the dictator who rules the country- that’s Flores. You have his oligarchs getting rich running the state-owned companies that own the economy. You have suppression of dissent- over 90% of the workforce is employed by the state or state enterprises and anyone too critical of the system will lose their job. You have censorship- in theory we have freedom of speech and private production of media, but what good is that when all the publishers, the newspapers, the radio stations, and the television channels are state owned and Socials Affairs decides what they can print, say, or show? We even have our own little “Syncoweb” that doesn’t connect to the World Wide Web! You can find the same thing in any dictatorship, anywhere on Earth.”
And Synco?
At that he laughs.
“Doesn’t work!” The activist shrugs. “Their great innovation and it
doesn’t work. We have employment sure, but high inflation, and there’s nothing to buy with your money. We’re even worse than Venezuela, we’ve got shortages of everything! And the directives from Synco ignore local conditions as much as they always did- their goal is to make more money for the oligarchs.”
He flashes a crooked smile.
“But it won’t last forever- Synco is the past and
we the people are the future.”
