Chile: A Way to Socialism?
Plastik, Stanley
It isn't Chile which is bound by the Andean Range, by the Desert of Saltpeter, by the Pacific Ocean, by the joining of the two oceans—the matter is quite the reverse. It is the Andean Range...
...We have waged this struggle for many years and always within democratic channels...
...Those concerned that the Revolution remain democratic and "Chilean" in spirit, know how important it is that the Christian Democrats remain strong and united...
...I have no other road...
...There is law...
...There is no question that a strong case can be made against the companies for milking the copper mines in the interest of profit-taking...
...The place of the worker, especially the organized union worker, in the Revolution is far from decided...
...It will not be easy...
...It isn't Chile which is bound by the Andean Range, by the Desert of Saltpeter, by the Pacific Ocean, by the joining of the two oceans—the matter is quite the reverse...
...Part of its membership is drawn from the country's poor (the subproletariat), but its leadership and activists come from the ranks of the professions, are technicians, teachers, and small business people...
...This leaves 800 (the Chile of the rich, and that of the poor) miles in the central region, containing 90 are gone forever...
...The Christian Democrats see the unicameral system as an end to the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and as the destruction of the independent judiciary—in other words, as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "socialist collectivism...
...The Chilean working class, which does not really possess a political party or movement of its own," risks absorption into new bureaucratic state forms before it can even arrive at a political and economic maturity of its own...
...I would only claim that the process of major economic and social change in Chilean society cannot be brought to a halt...
...I shall appeal to a plebiscite if the Congress rejects the new forms the Unidad Popular government proposes to establish...
...Evidently, the far Left in the Allende cabinet has had its way, at least for the moment...
...These words, spoken by Frei during his presidency, were meant to apply to the Right in its blind opposition to the reform program of the Christian Democrats, the great Chilean party led by Catholic intellectuals embracing the philosophy of Jacques Maritain...
...Nor is this a world of abundance, even for its more affluent citizens...
...But since CUT is dominated by Communists, Socialists, and independent radicals, all identified with the Popular Unity government, this moment -of reckoning may be politically cushioned...
...if so, we may expect a major showdown within the next year...
...Then there is the broad-based membership that acknowledges Allende as its leader, and, finally, a more Jauresian social democratic orthodox "right" wing, with a fringe of older political figures who once were responsible for the party's reputation of participating in military conspiracies...
...This loss has not been replaced by a forward spurt in productivity...
...One wonders whether Allende would submit to such an exchange today...
...Right now, the odds are running against Chile on the copper issue, and few Chileans believe that recovery of ownership is a sufficient answer...
...communications...
...This may become the central issue on which the fate of Chilean democracy will rest...
...Chile still is far from an economy of socialist abundance...
...Clearly, it would represent a fundamental change, and any effort by Allende to initiate it could set off an armed struggle...
...Relations at the "point of production" are in flux and will be a source of conflict and disagreement...
...N N ATIONALISM AND "JUSTICIALISM" (the latter the heady and demagogic doctrine of Juan Peron) stood at the cradle of Chile's Socialist party...
...Fourth, there is a strong element of nationalism, expressed in the conviction that for the first time since the Conquest the land's re sources belong to the country as a whole...
...We must have at least an acquaintance with the far Left tendencies if we are to understand why the President keeps a wary eye on them and why others, even more anxiously, watch his relations with them...
...cement production...
...He is not Communistled, but independent...
...Chile remains a class society, but the cutting edge of class has been dulled...
...13 Two essays dealing with the subject appeared in the March 1971 issue of Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional: "Reform Agraria: Historia y Perspectivas," by Solon Barraclough, and "Factores Determinantes en el Surgimiento de una Clasa Campesina," by Hugo Zemelman...
...The same report indicates that over the last half-century, all of Latin America lost 10 times as much through a drop in prices of raw materials exported as it received in credits from the United States and all international agencies combined...
...If a "showdown" crisis were to arise between Allende and the ultra-Left, it would probably originate within this faction...
...This hostility of Chilean women toward Allende continued in the 1970 election...
...As proposed by the left-Allendists, the single chamber would have a majority of elected deputies chosen from party slates, with a substantial minority of "institutional representatives" (trade unions, peasant organizations, cooperatives, etc...
...The state area will include—besides the whole financial system of the country through the nationalization of private banks and insurance—foreign trade, the great distributing corporations and monopolies both Chilean and foreign, the strategic industrial monopolies, and all activities that condition the economic development of the country...
...The Allende government, depending on the inner relation of forces within the cabinet and among the parties, will either propose a fraction of this sum (say, under $100 million), which is unacceptable to the companies, or it will propose, in effect, no payment...
...This Party is a product of the never-ceasing Stalinist gymnastics and it is probably the Communist party of Latin America which is the most unques CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...There is even more reason to believe that Allende found such advice unnecessary...
...even Peronism in a A sidelight in this election is the fact that the women's vote strongly favored the Christian Democrats...
...Third, the leadership is strongly motivated by a desire to create a steady momentum toward social equality...
...Allende is particularly sensitive to public opinion...
...4 At a recent press conference, President Allende exhibited only one moment of irritation...
...In its present phase, the Chilean Revolution must demand of the working class discipline, productivity, and sacrifice...
...and much of this unionism is craftunion in nature, and localized and isolated in the country...
...The most powerful of the insurrectionistoriented organizations is the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), basically a student group centered in the University of Chile but which has made some significant inroads among coal miners (the most exploited section of the Chilean working class), callampas dwellers around Santiago and Concepcion, and the poorest of the landless peasantry, the Mapuche Indians of the south...
...The city of Santiago has its morning and evening traffic jams...
...The peasant could not understand why his neighbor had become a small proprietor, or a privileged member of a new peasant settlement or cooperative, while he remained subject to the old system of exploitation...
...Spearheaded by the state, a basic redistribution of power was to take place in the rural areas...
...The total tonnage produced at the three great mines (Chuquicamata, El Teniente, and El Salvador) has barely held its own over the past seven years despite heavy investment by the previous North American ownership (Kennecot and Anaconda...
...The party's instinct to survive must also be taken into account...
...tionably faithful to Soviet foreign policy...
...What better evidence can there be of his new position, as he sees it, than to enjoy a day off, to spend some of his increased wages and, when claiming sickness, not to lose a day's pay...
...The nationalization of the copper industry takes its place alongside Mexico's reclamation of its oil resources in the '30s...
...But the reforms launched by his government were too timid to arouse the peasant mass, and yet radical enough to arouse intense opposition among the expropriated former landowners...
...An adventurist attempt by the Right to overthrow the government cannot be excluded, but such proposals are rejected out of hand by the serious—i.e., the Christian Democratic—opposition...
...The campaign committees that conducted the elections in working-class and callampa districts were largely CP-built...
...Outwardly, from the viewpoint of democratic socialism, Allende's year in office has been marked by moderation, effective progress, and strict observance of the Statute of Constitutional Guarantees, 5 hostility toward the U.S...
...First, there will be an initial period of sorting out relations between the government on one side and the unions on the other...
...Since Allende is supported by, at the very most, 50 percent of the population, his natural prudence should incline him against such an adventure...
...It is easy to describe this ideologically unstable party in negative terms—e.g., its generally negative attitude toward parliamentary democracy...
...More important, will the tendency be to set up a system of state farms under a centralized agricultural system, in which farm prices are fixed by the government...
...Chileans, a cool and tough-minded people, are notoriously unsympathetic to propaganda publications...
...Can it turn to the Soviet, or Chinese, or Third World nations for help...
...Translated and published with the help and kind permission of the author...
...Whatever action takes place will be charged with ideological animus from both sides from the start...
...The future of Chilean copper is doubtful...
...Yet it is impossible to cite any clear or consistent doctrine as that of the party...
...b) Problems of the agrarian revolution: the need to develop new forms of ownership, tenancy, and organization for the expropriated lands...
...The plebiscite is envisaged in the Constitution...
...In the middle one can see a great pile of shit surrounded by the military, priests, and grammar school teachers who suck on copper pipes...
...He knows themachinery of the Chilean government—the bureaucracy, the army, the police (Chile has a na tional police force), the sources of power...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK Argentina), the Frei movement turned to the most oppressed class in Chile, the peasantry...
...6 Only if the Christian Democratic opposition, under the leadership of ex-President Eduardo Frei, should fully ally itself with the Right could one expect a serious renaissance of Chilean reaction...
...Finally, the third view, now being acted upon by Minister of Agriculture Chonchol, proposed rapid completion of expropriations so that new forms of production, ownership, and distribution, under government guidance, could evolve...
...Allende's answer, more nationalist or state capitalist than socialist, was clear enough: ALLENDE: —Now, we have said that it was necessary for workers, employees, and technicians to take part in a certain proportion of the management of enterprises...
...He is a highly experienced political leader withan acute sense of the tactics required for survival...
...in the south another stretch of rate of 16 percent is the lowest in Latin America, and its level of general education is 1 Nicanor Parra, "Los Limites de Chile," from his high for the continent...
...16 Gary Mac Loin, Revolution Next Door: Latin America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), pp...
...groups: • gente detente: middle-class people...
...Annoying as it may be to those concerned with production statistics, this is the copper miner's claim on the Revolution...
...If Chile is temporarily passing through a period of a consumer-oriented economy, with the government leading the way for political reasons, the day of reckoning will inevitably come...
...it formed neighborhood associations that were largely an extension of liberal women's clubs, and it sought to establish a hold over the newly formed peasants' unions...
...The new government acted rapidly and with an eye to political effect rather than economic need...
...It is indigenously Chilean and, while not working-class in membership, it has organized significant groups of workers into strong organizations --e.g., copper miners, marine workers, and railroad workers...
...In the following discussion between Debray and Allende (see pp...
...a) Labor Problems: Absenteeism, indiscipline in the mines and textile mills, an unwillingness to work hard—these allegedly are the major labor problems...
...WHAT ARE THE TANGIBLE FORMS of this Chilean Revolution...
...since then it has declined to its present rate of 45¢ per pound...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK If the United States presently holds such trump cards as denial of loans, world pressure to depress the copper market, the threat of economic and political boycott, does Chile have any effective response...
...its great asset is oneseventh of the world's known copper supply, worth an average of $500 million a year over the past several decades...
...That is the question, and Most Chileans are of mestizo (mixed) no one yet knows the answer...
...Foremost among these pressures is that of the Chilean Socialist party which, if any party can, lays claim to be the ruling party...
...During 1971, expropriations proceeded on such a massive scale that the illegal land seizures in the south, launched by the Mapuche Indians, seem scarcely necessary...
...the escudo is artificially supported in terms of its worth on the international market...
...but it is doubtful that a private manufacturer can be enticed to produce more if he earns less on each item he produces...
...Soviet motives are clear enough—such nations may offer peripheral support to the Russian bloc...
...The trade union organization (CUT), dominated largely by the Communists, is recognized in an agreement with the government as a personalidad juridica, or legal entity, which entitles CUT to represent the mass of organized workers, to collect checkoff dues on an annual basis, and to other advantages...
...to which he had agreed in 1970 in order to obtain Christian Democratic support for his election...
...Actually, it is a fragile instrument, its hold on power and influence insubstantial, and its future doubtful...
...it reeks of bureaucratic conservatism...
...Such was the population of the "two Chiles...
...89-90...
...The economy's private area will be limited to small and medium industries...
...the heart of the Chilean Revolution now lies in a changed relationship between these groups...
...The business community's initial response to the new government was near-panic, followed by a massive flight abroad of liquid capital...
...Certainly, Chile is far removed from the classless and egalitarian society of thetraditional socialist vision...
...In reality, this party has no taste for direct confrontation...
...Less the value of properties received in poor or run-down condition which require repairs, etc...
...Chile is generally thought of as one of the continent's "most highly developed countries...
...One is aware of a belief that an actual transfer of political power is underway and now being followed up by a transfer of economic power...
...Radio and television (the latter played an important role in Allende's victory) calmly report the news, organize round-table discussions on issues, answer charges of discrimination in favor of governmental spokesmen and candidates, etc...
...In April 1970, the price of a pound of copper on the London Metal Exchange reached an all-time high of almost 79...
...While talking to a small sampling of copper miners in the copper town of Rancagua, south of Santiago, which serves the major El Teniente copper mine, I questioned their attitude toward nationalization...
...THE CHILEAN REVOLUTION IS rRREVERSIBLE...
...The Christian Democrats accept most of the measures put forward by Allende, if only because there is all but unanimous support in Chile for returning the nation's resources to national control and bringing to the masses such welfare-state benefits as social services, education, and health care...
...Where, then, is its appeal to the young, its power to recruit...
...Before the agrarian reform, Chilean agriculture was dominated by the big estates in the central region, some of which ran as large as 2,000 hectares...
...a black market is developing, and the dam holding back prices may soon give way...
...The Chilean CP is the least colorful or attractive party in the four-party alliance...
...It seems unlikely (though it would be foolish to exclude any possibility) that Chile will fall victim either to a typical LatinAmerican military coup by the Right, or an armed insurrection on the Left aiming at the "dictatorship of the proletariat...
...It is not social issues that divide Chileans—although differences as to tempo and tactics do exist— but the issue of political power: who shall wield it and with what objectives...
...The volume of money in circulation has doubled under Allende...
...The economic rationalization for these daring policies came later...
...Under Frei, the state initiated essential economic development, planned and controlled foreign investment, and regulated credits...
...But one must question the tactical wisdom of tackling the United States—which under the circumstances means Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, and John Connolly—in a head-on fashion that excludes negotiations...
...Even the final nationalization of the copper mines evoked little popular enthusiasm during the time of my visit...
...Gabriel Mistral, the Chilean poet, said, "Our rural barbarism is enormous...
...Defined as the supreme organ of "popular sovereignty," it would have the power to control the judiciary...
...Only the small and middle farmer who has under 80 irrigated hectares will be left untouched, though this group will be brought under state control by credit dependency (the Central State Bank of Chile will handle all agricultural loans) and by new marketing devices...
...copper interests...
...The tasks of such committees are set by a combination of CUT trade-union officialdom and governmental bureaucracy...
...its leadership has failed to renew itself, its appeal to new generations has faded, and its perspective at present is to operate within limits set for it by others...
...The leftist alliance, which now is extending therevolution that was begun by the Christian Democratic government of Frei, has placed Allende atthe center of control...
...2 Although bitter about the government's policy of fundo expropriation, several ex-proprietors with whom I spoke candidly admitted to neglect of agriculture by the landed aristocracy...
...Henry Kissinger immediately pronounced judgment on it, as another variety of Castroism...
...Hence Frei's great stress on agrarian reform...
...The potential for abuse here is obvious and constitutes one of the Christian Democrat's major targets of criticism of the Communistdominated CUT...
...The greater likelihood is a gradual sharpening of tensions between the Christian Democratic opposition and the Allende government...
...Victory has but temporarily delayed the CP's inner crisis...
...So far, he neither "runs" nor "controls" industry...
...A forward surge of buying power, thanks to a major boost in real wages, has emptied stocks and inventories and moved them into the hands of anxious consumers...
...In 1960, less than 15 percent of the entire labor force belonged to trade unions (perhaps this figure is 20 percent today...
...railways...
...debt...
...October 1, 1971 Postscript: Since completion of this article, a number of events have occurred in Chile that are bound to cause growing uneasiness among those who, like the author, consider themselves sympathetic to the Revolution and its stated objectives...
...Finally, although this has scarcely begun to happen, seized land may become outright state property, a state-run farm...
...This is not a flamboyant revolution...
...Were Fidel to come, Allende would be less than overjoyed...
...Otherwise, the kind of development we need would not be possible...
...The U.S...
...In its final years in office, the Christian Democratic government moved decidedly rightward...
...if this scheme were to be advanced by the government, the issue of power would become crystallized...
...The CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...The CP dominates the labor movement in Chile, but by European or American standards, the trade unions are weak both in membership and resources...
...The overall housing is book Obra Gruesa (Santiago: Editorial Universi poor, combining primitive rural houses with taria, 2nd ed., 1971...
...This action could have precipitated a national crisis, had it not been for the energetic response of Allende who, in effect, destroyed the VOP overnight...
...Committees are in charge of production in both nationalized and private sectors of the economy...
...We support the concept of a centralized economy and intend to continue to do so...
...We suggested to manufac turers, whose prices were frozen, that they could increase their profits to the former level by producing more...
...The Chilean Right is discredited and demoralized...
...It is a weapon to which I can legitimately resort...
...This process will further displace the party's center of gravity toward the Right...
...Even though the Christian Democrats criticized Allende's final act of nationalization as ill-conceived, no one was really opposed to the act itself...
...So spoke President Allende in his May Day 1971 speech to the workers of Santiago...
...On such burning issues as plebiscite, agrarian reform legislation, industry nationalization, unicameral parliament, the President can count on a discussion within its ranks that will elicit all possible views...
...The April 4 municipal elections seemed to indicate that his 36 percent support had risen to about 50 percent...
...A A MONG THE MAJOR LOSERS in the 1970 election was the ultra-Left, which favored armed insurrection...
...Chile is bound on the north by the Volunteer Firemen's brigade, on the south by the Ministry of Education, on the east by the Range of Nahuelbuta and on the west by the emptiness which produces the waves of the oceans we have named above, on the south by Gonzalez Videla...
...Mostly dormant now, these committees could be rapidly reconstituted...
...Infractions of discipline and chronic absence are not automatically ground for dismissal, and the unions are pledged to assert their own forms of discipline...
...it outlawed by decree the miners' right to strike...
...Peasant councils are established on national, provincial, and communal bases...
...b) Problems of the agrarian revolution: As for the agrarian revolution, we can only touch upon highlights of this complex mat CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...Its basis, which is narrow, is composed of unions that act in line with corporate business interests...
...As it raises the question of the place of the Chilean working class in the revolution, this statement deserves closer examination...
...It has to respect existing norms, and within these the new forms...
...They are the two oceans which break the monotony of the southern countryside into thousands of pieces...
...For a working class that is politically conscious but organizationally weak, independence is vital...
...Their technique is to call for violence and the spilling of blood...
...They understood the political notion of nationalization, but did not conclude from it that they, the copper miners, would "run" the mines...
...In Chile, as applied by the Frei government, the program fell short of major accomplishments...
...But this does not mean that these enterprises will produce independently...
...It is agreed on all sides that the copper industry must continue its technological development (for example, surface mining at the great Chuquicamata mine will shortly be exhausted, which means a shift to pit mining, and this will require heavy propriated 438 fundos, totaling 1,346,592 hectares, for an average of 87 expropriations per month...
...This wing practices infiltrationist tactics within the government, including the most intimate circles that surround and supposedly protect the President...
...Because of the mass political parties and the United Workers' Central representing all levels of trade union organization, one part of our State is in the hands of the work STANLEY PLASTRIK ers...
...but the nationalization of industry and banking also demands planning, and the copper industry especially will require a high degree of technical and industrial organization and planning if it is not to collapse within a few years...
...The Communist party, with its solid organization and discipline, seems to be the only political machine capable of maneuvering and exploiting to the full the various possibilities offered by the present combination of circumstances...
...which is not to deny the existence of large pockets of rural poverty or urban misery...
...As initiator and final deci sion-maker, Allende also provides the balance between the parties in the Popular Unity government...
...It beats the drums constantly for "law and order," discipline, and augmentation of production in the mines and factories...
...They achieved this not only by making full use of the period when the winners harried the highly placed Christian Democrat officials, but also by securing for themselves a distinct lead over the coalition members in acquiring public posts (provincial administration, heads of public services, posts as under-secretaries...
...Under six years of the Frei regime, 1,408 fundos, totaling 3,564,343 hectares on which lived 20,970 families, were taken over...
...This CP spokesman, one sensed, is a "statesman" of long experience, satisfied with his new influence and looking forward to a long period of stability in government...
...ALLENDE: That which comes to power by the democratic route is naturally at a disadvantage...
...We shall not depart from them...
...When the Allende government assumed office, Dr...
...But apart from ideological rhetoric, there can be no major shift in Chilean patterns of world trade, nor can these largely impoverished and struggling nations provide Chile with its capital needs...
...A sensitive barometer of the attitudes of Chilean Left Catholic intellectuals, MAPU is a kind of intellectual yeast in circles from which are drawn some of the finest administrators and intellectuals...
...Luis Mercier Vega, writing earlier this year, finds The Communists' success in infiltrating public positions and functions [is] . . . almost complete...
...Of all peasant holdings, 50 percent were under 10 hectares in size, and the countryside presented a depressing picture of shantytowns and malnutrition...
...Because of production problems and increased costs of extraction as the reserves begin to run out, the Chilean percentage will drop still lower...
...Second, and more difficult for an outsider to estimate, there is a sense that the country no longer is run by an oligarchic minority, but that this task now is in the hands of people representing the mass...
...Its outlook is often narrow and provincial...
...To replace them will take time...
...And if today's high production costs (44¢ per pound, selling at 45¢1) are to be brought down, the miner must raise his productivity...
...4 3 See K. H. Silvert, Chile: Yesterday and Today (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965...
...it expropriated at one stroke, for example, La Ganaderia Tierra del Fuego (a huge sheep-grazing (undo in the extreme south, covering 728,000 hectares), which alone was almost as large as all the lands taken over by the Frei government in six years...
...an energetic Chilean public opinion exists...
...Finally, with the end of the Alliance for Progress, which means a drying up of American development grants, the shift is toward loans repayable in dollars with interest...
...124-25 of Debray's book cited in footnote 7), the former raised this question, citing the Yugoslav experience as illustration...
...Figures on redistribution to families are not yet available...
...but at the same time it is perhaps the most subservient to the Russians of all Communist parties...
...These are healthy attitudes...
...Any dream of resistance by the old oligarchy has long since crumbled, and it seems that Chonchol will hold to his promise to liquidate all Chilean latifundios within three years...
...Or if the Socialist party should show signs of splitting up, with one section drawn toward the Frei Christian Democrats and another to the radical Left Miristas, the Communists might indeed attract the middle-Allendist Socialists, thus refreshing their party...
...It is the Andean Range which is bound by Chile, the Pacific Ocean which reaches to the peak of Aconcagua...
...No payment for ore beds that have always been Chilean...
...This aristocracy ruled Chile until 1938, the year of the Popular Front's electoral victory from which dates the political rule of the modern middle class...
...And that it should be destroyed, by force if necessary...
...In the political arena, polarization of forces is continuing with a split in the Radical party to the Right (forming the Independent Radical movement), and a further split in the Christian Democrats to the Left (forming the Left Christian movement, pledged to support the Allende government) . I wish to express my thanks to young Marc Ruskin for his invaluable help during my stay in Chile...
...N ONE OF HIS NUMEROUS DIDACTIC SPEECHES, Allende summed up his program: The replacement of the present economic structure by a socialist one, which will be divided into three areas: a dominant state area, a private area, and a mixed area...
...In fact, a fusion between the Allendist Socialists and the Communists cannot be ruled out...
...The old road to a monopoly of power ("dictatorship of the proletariat") seems permanently shut off—which has placed the Chilean CP in the middle of a dilemma...
...Hundreds of engineers and technicians (a large majority, Chileans) have left the mines...
...Whatever hap-with mountains, glaciers, fjords, and islands, pens now the "two Chiles" of the past and equally uninhabited...
...We remember the ease with which the Russian unions were deprived of their independence after the Russian Revolution...
...QUESTION: But the plebiscite is a form of Manichaeism...
...It collaborates closely with the left wing of the Socialist party and does not directly attack the Allende government (it ignores it), but pursues the not at all unintelligent or unsuccessful tactic of pressing forward with its own revolutionary program...
...If it should toy with the notion of a violent seizure of power at some future time—when, say, Allende has faltered and trouble follows, or the Chilean ultra-Left has brought about a crisis by its actions—such an adventure would be confronted by the military acting in the name of defense of the Constitution...
...It has little hope of commanding more than one-quarter of the elec torate and still less of the Chilean workingclass vote...
...iz The Communist daily, El Siglo, quoted with approval in July 1971, resolutions adopted by "numerous worker organizations" in protest against "pornographic magazines" sold on newsstands inthe capital and calling for their suppression as con tion can claim to speak for a majority of the working class...
...Such fundos comprised 60 percent of the country's total agricultural area, and many of them were owned by absentee landlords...
...while strict price controls were set up...
...Absenteeism in Valparaiso, a major port, reached 50 percent in the early months of 1971, and in the copper and coal mines, 2540 percent, as compared to a previous 1015 percent...
...It will include the production and distribution of electric power...
...It neither accounts for changes within this party (is the CP of Chile an immutable object...
...With the exception of an extremist Left, the strategy of fidelismo is honored more in the breach than in observance...
...but we also know that a party outflanked on the Left by a movement that holds power can easily loose its balance...
...Which is what they did...
...Luis Corvalan, its leader, is reported to have told Allende before the elections that he did not know what would happen to the party if the Popular Unity alliance was not victorious...
...what has been done is an act of nationalism, reclaiming the country's heritage through a reawakening of national pride, every bit as important symbolically as economically...
...In the north 1,000 miles of the land (estates) immediately after Dr...
...Fifth, it is possible to discern in the confusion of Chilean economic life a beginning of economic and social planning on a national scale...
...One suspects a similar viewpoint among workers in other nationalized industries...
...At the moment, Chilean political leaders are looking forward to the next congressional election, scheduled for early 1973...
...The trade union center is manipulated from above by groups associated with various political parties...
...Its current rejection by contemptuous radical youth and the Miristas seems a token of the future...
...Now a good portion of this program has either been completed (e.g., nationalization of copper), launched, or is projected for the near future...
...This group, originally led by Radomiro Tomic, the party's 1970 presidential candidate, has collaborated with the Allende government on specific actions, such as the final nationalization of the copper industry, while the Christian Democratic youth movement has favored measures to link the Tomic and Allende programs...
...The intensity of this clash will vary according to the degree that Allende resists or yields to his own Left, with the crucial factor remaining the proposed plebiscite to establish a unicameral People's House...
...Here, too, one sees a potential for bitter internal dispute in the government coalition, particularly since its Leftist faction would prefer no indemnification at all...
...DEBRAY: —You envisage, then, democratic planning in the sense of centralized planning, but with the workers participating in the decisions...
...The political life of the Chilean CP is stultified and ritualistic...
...A 1 0 AVOID LOSING a few pesos today, T they're going to lose their heads tomorrow...
...There will be immediate nationalization of copper, iron, saltpeter, mineral coal, and, in general, of all basic products...
...The Allende government, between November 4, 1970, and April 15, 1971, ex STANLEY PLASTRIK (c) The problem of copper: As far back as 1958, every 1¢ drop in the price of a pound of Chilean copper on the world market cost the country about $7 million in foreign exchange and another $7 million in taxes on copper.1 ' This simple fact illustrates the centrality of copper to the fate of Chile...
...As an immediate tactic for the Communist movement, the case of Chile would indicate, this may work out well...
...In an interview with a journalist of the Mexican daily Excelsior, reprinted in the conservative Chilean paper El Mercurio on November 3, 1970, the following exchange took place with Allende: QUESTION: Which has the advantage, the socialist regime that comes to power by the democratic route or the one that comes to power by the revolutionary route...
...Both express radical views on the subject...
...Industry must carry out production plans fixed by the government...
...THIS BRIEF SURVEY of the Chilean Left ought not to omit mention of a tiny yet significant organization—the MAPU—born of a split in the Christian Democratic movement toward the end of Eduardo Frei's presidential term...
...air °A good portion of its leadership has gone abroadinto self-imposed exile...
...The issue of self-management or workers' control over production also is part of this problem...
...It is MIR which conducted the recent armed activities, such as land occupation, factory seizures, and bank robberies...
...This segment of the Chilean Left has no significant numerical weight...
...All 150 T Regis Debray, Entretiens avec Allende sur la Situation au Chili (Paris: Editions Francois Masperio, 1971), p. 89 et seq...
...with those on public works projects not counted as unemployed...
...Then, there is the ticklish relation with supervisory personnel and the new managers...
...The death of Stalin, the Khrushchev denunciations of Stalinism, the uprisings and suppressions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the break with China—nothing so far has touched the inner life of the Chilean CP in the sense that the Italian CP or even the French CP has been shaken...
...In that respect, Allende's responsibility toward the Christian Democracy is at least as great as Frei's toward the Allende government and its actions...
...Professor K. H. other cities—a charactersstic result of the Silvert divides the population into three unplanned displacement of rural population to urban centers...
...the callampas (mushrooms), the shantytown STANLEY PLASTRIK slums around Santiago, Concepcion, and tering the world of business...
...Yet matters are more complicated, and it would be unwise to assume the survival of Chilean democracy without calling attention to dangers ahead...
...petrochemicals and heavy chemicals industry...
...The urban working class—already independent, favored by a good deal of social legislation, and with its own parties—was not drawn to the Christian Democrats...
...And I shall appeal to it...
...13 While the Christian Democrats were in office, there emerged three main outlooks on agrarian reform...
...You must work more, produce more, make greater efforts...
...Typically, the MIR defended the armed terrorist group known as the VOP, which was responsible for the assassination of Edmundo Perez Zujovick, former Christian Democratic minister in the Frei government...
...The number of labor-management disputes in the public and private sectors rose sharply during the first months of the Allende regime, but has dropped considerably in recent months...
...The majority of the party is solidly "antiMarxist," and this is where Frei is most influential...
...stock, with few pure Indians—although the The country extends, on the average, 50,000 Mapuche Indians in the southern 2,800 miles in length from north to south area put life into the government's agrarian and in width, from east to west, only 110 reform with their dramatic seizure of fundos miles...
...Its quiet revolution is not up for export...
...This last tendency now dominates the Chilean agrarian revolution...
...force it into confrontationist situations so that the "real" revolution may occur, that is, so that mass organizations of workers and peasants will overthrow the state and its institutions, including the armed forces, and then proclaim the "proletarian dictatorship...
...there is order...
...In my view, based on discussions with more skilled and mature workers, this is a passing phase that, though adversely affecting production, is not fatal— provided it does not lead to violent clashes between workers and governmental or managerial institutions...
...After meeting some of its members (need one say, college-educated sons and daughters of rich and distinguished Chilean families), one must confess a certain respect for their devotion and single-mindedness...
...for Chile, with its long democratic tradition, does not easily lend itself to caudillismo or other forms of demagogic rule...
...And Chileans recognize these simple economic facts...
...But there are other forces, other men, other views...
...A guide who conducted me to what had been a miserable callampa was amazed to find it replaced by lighted and paved streets...
...an insistence that the new relations take on material forms to indicate well-being...
...Successful completion of the agrarian revolution is impossible without an enormous expansion of credits, just as the copper and other industries will demand new investments that can only come out of a significant boost in savings...
...It will be a task of raising consciousness around fundamental issues...
...At some near moment, the workers' councils will act for labor discipline...
...Will the experience through percent of the population (now approaching which the country is passing lead to a better 10 million), of whom at least 30 percent live world, a socialist society conceived and real-in the crowded capital of Santiago...
...government for negotiation or confrontation, or both...
...Its view of the loyal Christian Democratic opposition is that the PDC constitutes "an essentially bourgeois and reactionary party defending the interests of the wealthy and those who hold power...
...Is this to suggest that Allende rules his nation inthe style of Latin-American caudillos, Left or Right...
...STANLEY PLASTAIK Unlike the other two major parties (Communist and Christian Democrat), it has no daily paper of its own...
...companies claim properties worth about $1 billion...
...no doctrine has ever been held by a clear party majority...
...First and most important, there is the left wing of his own Socialist party, which once had a guerrilla wing eager for armed confrontation, which now keeps muttering to itself...
...It is clear that Chile is entering a new phase of its revolutionary history, marked by increased tension and a growing attitude on the Left favoring the politics of confrontation...
...It is without any real revolutionary tradition in the Latin-American sense and is the most pro-Russian of the continent's Communist parties...
...One thing should be clear: this is decidedly not a social democratic party in the European sense...
...5 These are amendments and additions to the Constitution, which might be compared to our own Billof Rights, including guarantee of the right of political parties to exist, freedom of the press, the right to meet, free education, the right to moveabout freely, etc...
...8 An evening daily, La Nacion, edited by the exTrotskyist theoretician Oscar Weiss, does represent a governmental socialist viewpoint but commands little respect and less circulation because ithas the reputation of being government-subsidized...
...Such dangers lie less in the possibility of an army-rightist coup than in the potentially explosive relationships among the political elements that make up the Allende alliance...
...Segments of the Left propose the creation of a unicameral "People's Assembly," to replace the present legislature...
...Luis Mercier Vega, DISSENT, February 1971: "the Chilean working class has no voice...
...Survey, Spring 1971 While granting the success of CP infiltration tactics and disavowing any intention of proposing a similar analysis for other countries, such as France and Italy, where the relations between mass Communist movements and the socialist movement are problematic, I would hesitate to accept in full Vega's analysis...
...But by limiting the party's perspective, particularly on the Left, and once more opening it to the charge of acting as Moscow's agent, it STANLEY PLASTRIK decidedly lowers the party's appeal...
...Its leadership carefully refrains from expressing the hope of some day coming to power...
...It promoted, without success, dual unionism in the mining industries...
...Stock market values dropped drastically, as did asking prices for property and businesses...
...The fundamental need remains: to convert the economy into one emphasizing the creation of capital, the production of capital goods, the completion of its infra STANLEY PLASTRIK structure, while satisfying at least part of the demand for popular consumption...
...A UN survey of the first half of the present century indicated a 14 percent annual fluctuation in income, derived from an unchanging volume of exports for all Latin-American countries...
...This holds particularly true for agriculture and agrarian reform (see below...
...One is often told in Chile about the foreign delegations from the "socialist" countries or the oversize Cuban Embassy...
...that right must be earned...
...If the state will shortly control "the commanding heights of the economy," who will control the state...
...T T O ANYONE WITH SOME KNOWLEDGE Of conventional Communist (Stalinist) movements, the Communist party of Chile is a strange phenomenon...
...ALLENDE: What you say is true, but it is the only way...
...The sum total of the indemnity to be determined by the controller-general of the Republic with the rlght of appeal to a special tribunal set up by the same Act...
...ized in democracy...
...Without exception, these "privileged" Chilean workers responded by supporting the idea, yet questioned whether it would make any serious difference in their own lives...
...Neitheris he a theoretician, an intellectual, or an originalthinker...
...The Chinese have already committed themselves to purchasing Chilean copper...
...If the production goals of 800,000tons in 1971 and 1.2 million tons by 1973 are to be realized, his cooperation is a basic necessity...
...The effect...
...or it may become part of a peasant cooperative, organized and financed by the government, the so-called asantami ento...
...that, while the new modes of wielding power are yet to be worked out, power has been removed decisively from the hands of the "oligarchs...
...Its campaign slogan— "Revolution with Liberty"—described its progressive outlook at the time it swept the 1964 elections (Frei received 56 percent of the total vote to 39 percent cast for Allende...
...The fact that of the five coalition parties the Socialists received the largest vote (22 percent in contrast to the Communists' 16 percent), and that the Christian Democrats, with 25.62 percent of the total vote, remained the largest single party in Chile, gives some reassurance as to the solidity of Chile's democratic structure...
...Behind the scenes a struggle takes place, with each party trying to influence the President...
...Peasant unions, workers' unions, professional associations— all are expanding and developing new and more complex relations among each other and with the state...
...Were it mad enough to undertake such a course, the Chilean CP would not only lose all its present power but would probably suffer the dismal fate suffered by the Indonesian Communists a few years ago or by the Sudanese Communists today...
...but it is still largely unorganized...
...MAPU supporters think of themselves as Christian socialists, a step beyond the Catholic liberalism of their former Christian Democratic asso ciates...
...And, like aging trade union leaders whose militant days are over, the leadership of the Chilean CP complains about the failure of the young to appreciate them...
...production, refineries, and distribution of oil and its derivatives...
...It is neither a truly revolutionary nor truly democratic party, it is essentially parasitic...
...its importance lies in an ability to endanger through fanatical action the stability of the government alliance and arouse anxiety in the Right, the Center, and the Army...
...clearly, Chile will never saddle itself with such a burden of CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...Once this tactic is put into practice, much of the party's energies must be devoted to holding the membership in line, combating defeatist moods...
...Finally the Chilean democratic tradition is alive and at least fairly well...
...companies, but there are to be deductions and discounts from this cost: • Downward reevaluations of properties since December 1964...
...Pointing out that previous demand for goods had been concentrated in automobiles, electronic equipment, and similar sophisticated items, Minister of Economy Pedro Vuskovic, an independent radical, stated: Our policy has been to stimulate the demand for basic goods, such as food and textiles, which use more manpower, by raising the lowest salaries...
...14 14 According to statistics supplied by the official agency charged with handling expropriations, CORA, the record of the two governments is as follows...
...This impression is enforced by sporadic wildcat strikes in the mines, usually settled by the government's yielding to the workers' demands which deal with wages, work conditions, or complaints regarding supervisors...
...The most powerful trade union federation (Confederacion Unica de Trabajodores—or, usually, simply CUT) is largely under CP control, but there are significant exceptions, such as major branches of the copper miners' union...
...The dangers here are evident...
...To say this may, in part, be misleading since it suggests some inevitable course for the future...
...WHAT, THEN, DOES ALL THIS add up to...
...Now you'll be working for yourself, because we're going to improve your living standard, give you housing suited for human beings, give you sports fields, milk for your children, facilities for you to study in, and you are going to work for your country .. . work for Chile and not solely in response to personal or corporate needs...
...Citing the words of Maritain, "Democracy may be uncouth, slow, and defective, but democracy is the only road over which must pass the progressive energies of human history," Frei appealed particularly to the professional classes, the engineers, architects, technicians, intellectuals...
...The final nationalization of copper won almost unanimous approval in both houses of the Congress...
...In either case, the companies will then turn to the U.S...
...All this is scarcely in keeping with Allende's strategy, Since his government's survival depends on holding these people in check, he will act with determination if forced to...
...the balance of payments is highly unfavorable and has brought foreign exchange reserves to a low point...
...All the ambiguities and paradoxes of the Chilean Revolution are to be found within this strong, lively, and nationalistic party...
...In 1950 Chile produced 20 percent of the world's copper output...
...The CP is strongly represented in the government (in finance, public works, and labor ministries), but not in the centers of power that run the army, the national police force, or the ministry of the interior...
...Another trend within the party, however, lies farther to the Left...
...Salvador Alconsist of desert and barren hills, almost un-lende was elected president...
...Like all organizations that attract the highly sophisticated Chilean intellectuals, MAPU is in a state of internal flux, splitting, and regrouping...
...seats in the Lower House (the Chamber of Deputies) will then be open to contest and 20 of the 50 seats in the Upper House (the Senate) where members serve eight years...
...T T HE CHILEAN REVOLUTION is a quiet rev olution...
...Foremost is the Allende government's apparent decision to confront the United States on the copper issue with a policy tantamount to outright confiscation of the formerly American-owned mines...
...cellulose and paper...
...All this is short-run at best...
...This essentially ideological maneuver would appear to have the sympathetic support of ex-President Frei, who is highly pessimistic about his country's future...
...The Allende electoral victory proved a momentary godsend for the party, since it hopes to expand within the sheltering framework of the alliance...
...While such an agreement is largely symbolic, it indicates the frame of reference of at least certain leading Chilean trade unionists who are prepared to incorporate their unions into the state apparatus as organs of discipline, productivity, and party ideology, rather than to maintain their independence...
...By April 4, 1971, the date of municipal elections throughout Chile, the Allende mandate to continue the Revolution on its moderate path was confirmed by the approximately 3 million voters who gave the Popular Unity coalition 49.75 percent of the vote, a jump of 13 percent from its support in the presidential election...
...We are against such a policy...
...the population is alert and slightly bemused by promises on the Left...
...regardless of whether they are poorly or successfully managed, are to be expropriated by early 1972...
...Or, again, during his lengthy discussions with Regis Debray,7 when the latter raised the question of the Popular Unity government's failure to control a majority of the legislature, its difficulties with the independent judiciary including the Supreme Court, and its questionable authority over the armed forces, Allende replied that, if necessary, the Constitution could be changed by recourse to a plebiscite...
...Carried out piecemeal, the expropriations formed tiny islands of redistributed lands in the midst of much larger holdings where the existing property structure remained intact...
...press publishes speeches made in the Senate in which courteous senators debate proposed legislation...
...However, Chilean historians are quick to point out that the old aristocracy did not resist middle-class acquisition of political power but, on the contrary, did its best to assist in the changeover by joining with the new middle class and en 2 For a detailed description of the Chilean rural and urban poor before the beginning of the Chilean Revolution (this writer would date that from 1964, the year of the election of Frei and the Christian Democrats), see Frederick B. Pike, Chile and the United States, 1880-1962 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), pp...
...Having in mind Latin-American experiences that claimed the loyalty of the masses to political movements with solid accomplishments (e.g., the Revolutionary Institutional party, heir to the Mexican Revolution...
...Salaries were boosted by an average of 35-50 percent (the lowest paid agricultural laborers had their wages doubled...
...Is it valid...
...d) The problem of Chile's international relations...
...It is an aging party...
...it is difficult to obtain a taxi...
...Second, the copper miner, skilled and well-paid, is an elitist worker with a pride unfamiliar to other Chilean workers...
...Chile's illiteracy inhabited...
...One notes with apprehension, for example, the recent signing of an accord of ideologic understanding between the Communist leadership of CUT and the Soviet "trade unions...
...That it has operated loyally within the coalition government is attested by President Allende himself...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK and sea transport...
...At the moment, it seems content to play the game of Latin-American politics within a context set by others...
...Their attitude toward the Allende-led alliance is to CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...Its rank and file is mostly composed of work ers whereas its leadership is made up of old apparatchiks and obedient intellectuals...
...Chile reputedly has done better in handling this problem than most Latin-American countries, thanks largely to the efforts of the previous Christian Democratic government...
...Or would you want me to resign...
...Those of the democratic socialist movement who see in the Chilean Revolution up to this point an experiment in orderly revolutionary change within a democratic framework will watch events in Chile with growing concern and a lingering hope for the future...
...In order for these plans to be accomplished, we propose to hold discussions with the workers...
...All organizations set up in the past and dealing with agricultural matters will be centralized and unified under the Ministry of Agriculture...
...Title to lands seized and redistributed may take the form of deeds indicating private pro prietorship, a solution desired by a majority of the peasants...
...Other events and changes are bound to cause uneasiness...
...This basic issue is still to be decided...
...First and most important is an obvious awakening of social and political consciousness among large segments of the people: an unwillingness to accept class relations of the past...
...What remains of the Right in Chile would like to absorb at least a large section of the Christian Democrats into a federation to defend "freedom and democracy...
...to dependency on theSoviet Union...
...can fill its pockets...
...Since the Christian Democratic party's defeat in the elections (but one must remember that with out its support, the Chilean Revolution would not have been able to continue under Allende), the party has become the main voice of the opposition...
...One thing seems certain: Chile's Communists as they are today cannot control Chile in'their own name...
...From this were set up 293 settlements totaling 3,433,755 hectares and benefiting 32,437 families...
...nor accurately describes its true place in Chilean politics...
...The Chileans therefore have a strong self-interest in amicable negotiations with the U.S...
...Copper mining is a highly technical and sophisticated activity, and long years of training are required to develop qualified men...
...Hence the government's ambiguous attitude toward the MIR —on the one hand, condemning the MIR's insurrectionary tactics as unnecessary, on the other hand, sometimes following along behind it...
...genie humilde: poor people of town and country.$ According to Silvert, there was also a "favored fifth," consisting of public officials, military officers, intellectuals and professionals, clerks, storekeepers, industrialists, and large farmers...
...Frei is known to consider this issue central to his struggle against totalitarianization of the country...
...The "comrade President" of Chile is no fool...
...they are the closest thing to working bodies capable of mass action...
...You are right about the "yes" or "no," and for this reason we shall do all we can to see that the people understand in depth the problem placed before them...
...CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...The oppositional tone of the Christian Democrats in their newspaper, La Prensa, has hardened and its essentially negative approach to Allende's program has become more manifest...
...Would you be satisfied to proceed in this way...
...Workers' councils, electing co-directors alongside management directors, would humanize industry, enforcing profit-sharing plans so that the worker...
...c) The problem of copper: how to use most effectively the nation's biggest export commodity...
...A A LLENDE FACES THE SOBERING FACT that almost two-thirds of the Chilean electorate voted against him in the 1970 election, and his Socialist party—and even the Popular Unity alliance itself—lacks a majority in both houses of Congress...
...If future events lead them into fusing with a mass movement of at least equal size, the CP will no longer exist as a separate Stalinist organization...
...trary to the "spiritual and moral health of our sons.' , CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...An even stronger case can be made on technical grounds, proving the companies ran their mines inefficiently and wastefully, again in the name of easy profits...
...For this reason, we said to the workers, for instance, when I went to visit the coal miners, "You are now producing 3,000 tons of coal daily...
...Chile's Communist party is the major organizational support of the united front...
...Having started out at the bottom, he now possesses40 years of political experience...
...Much of the propagandistic activity in favor of the regime falls upon the shoulders of the CP...
...capital investment...
...Consequently, many peasants, whose hopes had been raised, remained unsatisfied and disappointed...
...16 We cite these facts not simply to stress the obvious limitations of Chilean power vis-avis the United States...
...Even with nationalization, Chilean copper remains heavily mortgaged to the United States which, while unimportant as a buyer (only 4 percent of our copper consumption comes from Chile), is the principal access to banking credit, capital goods (machinery, etc), and technology...
...The program is being carried out with the support of virtually all political parties and movements...
...Though opposed to Trotsky's view that the unions should be assimilated into the state, Lenin did little to prevent that from happening...
...744,423 women voted for Frei as againstonly 375,766 for Allende...
...It was in reply to the repeated question, was he expecting a visit by Fidel Castro...
...Outwardly, the Chilean CP appears strong, united, well-oriented, and growing...
...If Chile should move into a confrontationist situation, with a threat of civil war and political violence, the Chilean Communists would certainly try to readjust their policy by a swing to the "Left" and an appeal to militancy...
...One of its leaders, present Minister of Agriculture Jacques Chonchol, is responsible for the entire agrarian reform program...
...Excess profits (undefined) obtained by the companies since the beginning of 1955...
...In an interview granted by Senator Volodia Teitelboim, chief CP theoretician, the emphasis was on the party's devotion to the government, its hostility to "adventurous leftism" and violence, and acceptance of the strategy of "pragmatic socialism...
...The Allendists hold theRight in such contempt that its publications, viciousin their attacks upon the government and including open calls to violence, are permitted to appearundisturbed...
...But if the hope of the Chilean Revolution is to rest on this action, it may end in a political confrontation with the United States, something Allende is anxious to avoid...
...A section of the Christian Democratic movement (especially youth and intellectuals) has already moved into the Allende camp...
...I have never seen, in a developing country, a population that seemed in a better physical state...
...To launch a struggle for a unicameral system via a national plebiscite would be to challenge the opposition in a final confrontation...
...by 1970 this had dropped to 13 percent...
...The second view urged agrarian reform primarily as a means of redistributing land and income among the peasants, but without radically disturbing power relationships in the Chilean countryside...
...C C NILE'S CURRENT ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES are well-known...
...It attempted, again without much success, to establish a base among the slum dwellers...
...Unemployment had gone up to 8-10 percent...
...Yet even then a large proportion of the peasants will remain landless, and it may again become necessary to still further reduce the size of farms...
...This program, characteristic of schemes in other developing countries (e.g., India), is often closely associated with the "green revolution" in agricultural techniques (use of hybrid seeds, fertilizers, irrigation...
...Even the revolutionary measures adopted by the Peruvian military junta seem more colorful...
...The actions of the government are generally greeted with quiet approbation on the Left, and criticism on the Right...
...Only the tempo and direction can be influenced...
...Halfway the Christian Democrats faltered...
...And the Chilean Revolution then becomes a new political game...
...If this analysis is correct, the CP, like any political movement permanently denied political power, can only deteriorate...
...Many of those with money left the country after bidding up the dollar from the official escudo rate...
...As if to reinforce the Chilean ultra-Left in its pressure on President Allende to expropriate without compensation, the American ultra-Right, through a new spokesman, Secretary of the Treasury John B. Connally, proposes a "get-tough" Latin-America policy on the theory that, as he puts it, "We don't have any friends there anyway...
...The differences between the Frei agrarian reform program and the Allende agrarian revolutionary program are clear: • All fundos having 80 hectares or more...
...The radicalization of the Chilean working class in the major industrial centers thus far has been a lop-sided politicalization, unaccompanied by autonomous organization...
...but in the recent by-election at Valparaiso, his candidate was narrowly defeated by a Christian Democrat-Rightist...
...This irritating book, based on discussions between the two after Debray's release from his Bolivian cell, begins with a long-winded 60-page introduction by Debray in which he gives Allende lessons in Marxism...
...WHAT ROLE THE ALLENDE GOVERNMENT ALLOTS to the workers is an equally important question...
...Once in office, the Allende government was in a position to proceed more speedily than Frei...
...The ultra-leftists speak of it with contempt, the socialists with a smile, and commentators place it at the Right of the alliance...
...has been to accentuate the dollar shortage of the recipient countries and to force them to devote a steadily greater proportion of their traditional exports of raw materials to debt service...
...The Allende coalition, promising a much more rapid agrarian reform that would include expropriation of lands en bloc, could thus draw to itself greater peasant support than the Christian Democrats...
...others, too, will drift over...
...its internal developmental problems demand that it have the most harmonious possible relations with all foreign countries...
...s The party was deeply committed to action against the "outrageous social injustice" in the country...
...That is not at all what I have in mind...
...ALLENDE: —Naturally...
...He isa professional...
...Leading a second-rate political existence as a subordinate element in the alliance, the CP may get along for a time through a disciplined hold on its membership and by accepting the Moscow line of supporting in developing countries "noncapitalist governments" with "progressive programs...
...mass rallies are rare and ceremonial...
...smelting...
...This plebiscitary power constitutes a stick of political dynamite...
...We need 4,700 tons, that is, productivity must be raised...
...The river Valdivia is the largest lake in Chile...
...Only in the Socialist party—if we leave out the ultraLeft sects—does one hear the complaint that the Chilean Revolution is still too moderate, that "bourgeois blood must flow," to quote one member, and that the army and the courts must now be conquered...
...by his salary and as owner of capital" would become in effect a partner...
...The SP is a free-floating, loose institution that exerts no serious discipline over its members...
...genie honesto: lower-middle-class people...
...Yet their determination and energy only underscore their basic isolation from the Chilean people, to say nothing of the irresponsibility which distinguishes their actions...
...The Chilean law states that the book value of the mines as of December 31, 1970, shall be the cost of indemnification to the U.S...
...Even if it joins an alliance, as it has, it cannot dominate that alliance...
...15 See Federico G. Gil, The Political System of Chile (Boston: Houghton Muffin Co., 1966) p. 98...
...d) The problem of Chile's international relations: Much comes down finally to the problem of Chile's international relations...
...THE CHILEAN REVOLUTION, meanwhile, has a great many problems demanding solution: (a) Labor problems: worker absenteeism, discipline, productivity, attitudes toward now state-owned industries...
...1° While in power, the Christian Democrats launched the Chilean Revolution...
...they insist that Chile will have a mixed and diversified agriculture with a plurality of forms...
...there is little or no marching in the streets...
...Hardly so...
...Santiago, Chile, July 1971 THE CHILEAN REVOLUTION IS IRREVERS-1,000 miles, lying in fog and mist, is pitted IBLE and irrepressible...
...There have been reports that the Allende government will initiate a national referendum on such a unicameral "People's Assembly...
...It's not surprising, for this is the worker's way of celebrating at least his partial release from past exploitation...
...Quoted in Monde Weekly, June 24-30, 1971 The last claim is still uncertain, for this year's indices of productivity are still incomplete...
...If Allende is committed to a socialist vision, what precisely is its nature...
...Regarding the $600 million indebtedness contracted by the copper industry for its expansion program, Max Nolf[, the executive vice-president of the Corporacion del Cobre, pointed out to me that the North American companies had invested "not a single new dollar" in these programs, but had limited themselves to international borrowing, for which the Chilean government must now bear most of the responsibility...
...273-83...
...Frei averaged 19 fundos per month...
...Under a constitutional amendment that became effective in 1970, and which the Christian Democrats had supported as a way of coping with congressional delaying tactics, the president of Chile can appeal to the country once during his term of office on an issue of major importance...
...The UP government also points to a major advance in organization of peasants into leagues, cooperatives, councils, and peasant unions...
...MIR is easily the most impressive of the ultra-Left movements...
...Flexibility and nondogmatism are key words in the Allende vocabulary, and even the Communists talk about a "pragmatic socialism...
...They include not only a sharper tone in government circles directed against the Christian Democratic opposition, sometimes bordering on threats, but also stepped-up attacks on the opposition press, including El Mercurio...
...His approach to the presidency has therefore been that of consensus politics, and it seems indeed that he prefers to continue in this vein...
...Chile, more of an industrial and mining country than an agrarian one, has a working class with enormous social and numerical weight...
...But you're not going to make this effort so that private industry...
...There is a strong pro-Castro wing on the Left, which includes the party's youth, and there is an even more leftist contingent sympathetic to the Miristas (followers of the Left Revolutionary Movement who are advocates of violence...
...The country's strongest single party is the opposition party...
...The state area will be formed by the concerns now under state ownership and by those that will be expropriated...
...12 No Chilean labor organiza 11 Cf...
...Not only is Allende himself committed to legal procedures, he seems convinced that only in that way can he suc ceed...
...Allendeis without charismatic appeal, a leader completelyfamiliar to the Chilean people and, I gather, somewhat disliked by all—in the sense that one dislikes a familiar uncle...
...Determined to defend his interests, he cannot be pushed around or exhorted endlessly...
...Tied doctrinally to the remains of Stalinism, it has turned in practice toward parliamentary maneuvers and bureaucratic penetration of institutions...
...There is good reason to believe in the existence of the rumored letter from Castro to Allende at the time of the latter's election in September 1970, advising him to steer clear of the Cuban course which led from CHILE: A WAY TO SOCIALISM...
...But we're not going to turn over an enterprise to the workers—so that they may produce whatever they want to and get a larger income than others, on a personal level—for the sole reason that they are in possession of an enterprise vital to the country...
...What may now be done with Chile's copper mines belongs to the sphere of socialist economy...
...there is a feeble black market because of the frozen exchange rate on foreign currencies...
...people (because of the 35 percent pay rise accompanied by a rather successful freezing of prices) have a well-dressed and adequately fed air about them...
...0 See Leonard Cross, The Last, Best Hope: ,Eduardo Frei and Chilean Democracy (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 92...
...Chilean experts claim familiarity with the disastrous experience of Russia and other nations with forced collectivization...
...The Chileans are a cool and skeptical people...
...The Corporacion del Cobre (CODELCO) is optimistic about the benefits it expects Chile to derive from nationalization...
...Debray is endlessly patronizing: "Have you read Lenin's State and Revolution...
...The MIR was critical of the assassination's timing, not of the act itself...
...El Mercurio in a July 4, 1971, editorial, described the "unitarista" program as an effort to establish in Chile the equivalent of the "popular democratic" systems of Eastern Europe, in which the "vanguard party" dominates all organs of government and thereby wields the real power...
...Chile, like all Latin-American nations, depends heavily on its ability to sell raw materials (copper, nitrates) in the world market...
...The objective of the first was to modernize and "liberalize" Chilean agriculture by expropriating poorly operated latifundios and redistributing these lands to the peasantry, eliminating all remaining precapitalist forms of tenancy and work arrangements and providing credits to farmers interested in increasing production...
...If he is able to, the Chilean Revolution will be marked by gradualism, with the President favoring order and productivity in a framework at least as nationalist as it is socialist...
...This thorny, unresolved issue may assume major importance for the working class if it manages to retain its autonomy of action...
Vol. 18 • December 1971 • No. 6
