Chile's Presidential Primaries: The Spectre of Communism

CHILE - In Brief 29 Jun 2025 by Robert Funk

---

In the introduction to the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx announced that “a spectre is haunting Europe”. Marx had designed Communism to be a threat to the established order, and by the time he wrote his treatise, the established order was worried. Because early Communism stuck to its revolutionary, violent rhetoric, it was clear that the only way it would gain power was by force. Today, however, democracy demands that Communism tone down the hard language. The world’s experience with Communism over the last 175 years makes it a tough sell. But in an age of marketing, everything can be sold if packaged correctly. Enter Jeannette Jara, who won Sunday’s primaries with over 60% of the vote at the time of writing. The runner up, Carolina Tohá, achieved about 27% of the vote, with the rest divided among the two remaining candidates. Jara’s win was widely expected, thanks to polling in the late stages of the campaign which indicated her momentum. However, for the governing coalition to field a candidate representing the Communist Party of Chile is a first, and tremendously risky, as Chile’s broader electorate remains -- one assumes -- weary of Communism. So why did Jara win, and what happens next? The ruling left-wing coalition in Chile is made up of roughly four main groups or parties, from the Communist Party on the far left, to Socialismo Democrático (what’s left of the former Concertación, minus the Christian Democrats) on the center-left. As we’ve discussed many times here, as Gabriel Boric and his Frente Amplio confronted the realities of governing, including a Congress controlled by the opposition and losing the two constitutional referendums, the president brought in ...