The Chilean Lessons

During its three stormy years Chile’s Allende regime was often described as “a decisive test case,” though there was some confusion about what precisely was being tested. Salvador Allende Gossens was a professed “revolutionary Marxist.” His avowed objective was the revolutionary transformation of his nation according to the Marxist prescription: the elimination of private property in the means of production—mines, factories, transport, banks, land holdings of any size, etc. He sometimes declared himself to be a “Communist,” but he was not an avowed member of the Communist Party, and his exact relation to the Party is a matter of dispute. In economic and social policy, Allende was well to the left of social democracy, but he nevertheless insisted that he was a democrat, and that he aimed to bring about the Marxist revolution through the democratic process.

Allende was chosen president in 1970 by a process that was peaceful and in accord with Chile’s constitution, though flawed from the standpoint of democratic legitimacy by the fact that he had won only 34 per cent of the popular vote. His government was based politically on a “popular union” of his own small revolutionary socialist party, the official (Moscow) Communist Party, the leftist faction of the Christian Democrats and fringe groups. This coalition failed to win a majority in the 1972 legislative election.

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James Burnham

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During its three stormy years Chile’s Allende regime was often described as “a decisive test case,” though there was some confusion about what precisely was being tested. Salvador Allende Gossens was a professed “revolutionary Marxist.” His avowed objective was the revolutionary transformation of his nation according to the Marxist prescription: the elimination of private property in the means of production—mines, factories, transport, banks, land holdings of any size, etc. He sometimes declared himself to be a “Communist,” but he was not an avowed member of the Communist Party, and his exact relation to the Party is a matter of dispute. In economic and social policy, Allende was well to the left of social democracy, but he nevertheless insisted that he was a democrat, and that he aimed to bring about the Marxist revolution through the democratic process.

Allende was chosen president in 1970 by a process that was peaceful and in accord with Chile’s constitution, though flawed from the standpoint of democratic legitimacy by the fact that he had won only 34 per cent of the popular vote. His government was based politically on a “popular union” of his own small revolutionary socialist party, the official (Moscow) Communist Party, the leftist faction of the Christian Democrats and fringe groups. This coalition failed to win a majority in the 1972 legislative election.