Book Reviews: Chile: Struggle for Socialism
Torgoff, Stephen
Stephen Torgoff, staff writer for the Guardian, "an independent radical newsweekly," recently returned from a five-month visit to Chile where he observed the achievements and problems of...
...N, 32 West 22nd Street, New York, N.Y...
...Long in the hands of U.S...
...Stephen Torgoff, staff writer for the Guardian, "an independent radical newsweekly," recently returned from a five-month visit to Chile where he observed the achievements and problems of that country's struggle to lay the foundations for the construction of socialism...
...The Guardian has published his account of the historical background and first year and a half of the Popular Unity government's experience...
...Within the limits of existing laws, agrarian reform was vastly accelerated...
...Finally, the capitalist class and their political representatives have been wounded, but they can "live" with the reforms carried out so far...
...It seeks further accommoda30 CHILE: S Torgoff...
...This latter organization argues that a united, class-conscious peasantry and working class is necessary to push the revolution forward and that such a mass base cannot be insured except through further expropriations of land and factories, the creation of State Farms, and the building of Peasant Councils to act as a dual power against the bourgeois state apparatus in order to defeat the reactionaries...
...To further defend its reformism, the PC is refusing to continue dialogue with the MIR...
...R. Victor...
...10-24, 15C each...
...Thus, even though te believes that the UP government cannot carry Chile all the way to socialism, Torgoff maintains that the United States left "must support and protect that struggle...from attacks directed from within the United States...
...Legislation to protect women's rights was introduced in Congress, where reactionary parties blocked it...
...Foreign ex*For extensive background see New Chile, $2.25 from NACLA...
...Future increases in industrial production (up 13% last year) can no longer rest on better utilization of previously dormant plant capacity...
...New York, Mah diod W k. MARjii31 tion with the petty bourgeoisie, hopefully to prevent it from allying with the right...
...These are: 1) its revolutionary perspective...
...The majority of the workers and peasants, particularly the poorest peasants, the nonunionized workers and the unemployed, have not been integrated into daily revolutionary struggle...
...10010...
...100 or more, 10C each...
...2) its concise and well-written presentation of significant events and debates within Chile...
...Torgoff continues, saying that land expropriations must now include farms which, although not individually vast, are still large enough to employ the majority of peasants...
...Rates for the Guardian Chile supplement are: 1-9 copies, 25C each...
...Worker participation in production and in internal factory relations were initiated...
...Within the government itself, the Communist Party (PC) is calling for "consolidation" of reforms made to date...
...Order from Guardian, Dept...
...corporations and overwhelmingly Chile's most important resource, the copper mines were nationalized, along with the banks and key industries...
...Meanwhile, they are quickly rallying forces to try to prevent any further advances and to turn back reforms already made...
...LNS change reserves have dropped precipitously, and capitalist financiers abroad cannot be expected to replenish them without receiving crippling conces- sions in return...
...and 3) its consistent and successful attempt to show that information's relationship to major theoretical issues of concern to all socialists...
...Sympathetic to the MIR position, Torgoff argues that the chances for bringing about the Chilean revolution depend fully on organizing and mobilizing broad masses of the Chilean working people-a task which, all agree, remains to be accomplished...
...After the failure of the Chilean right to unite and block Salvador Allende's electoral victory in the Presidential campaign of 1970 by parliamentary or terrorist means, the Popular Unity (UP) government set out to end Chile's neo-colonial dependence and began to institute reforms which would "open the door" to the transition to socialism...
...Real wages increased markedly and unemployment fell...
...Movement groups, professors, and students of Latin America will find this supplement most useful...
...Torgoff argues, however, that these early and impressive advances of the UP cannot continue without a new revolutionary thrust...
...This supplement to the newsweekly is the most up-to-date report on contemporary Chile to have appeared in English.* Three aspects of this report stand out and recommend it to the United States left and to others sympathetic to leftward change...
...Important factories still remain in private hands...
...Democratic rights were extended and have included political freedom for the rapidly growing Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR) despite its criticisms of the Communist Party and of the government...
...The Communist-Socialist dominated labor confederation (the CUT) was granted its longstanding demand for legal recognition and participation in the government's determination of wages...
...Until the necessary revolutionary leadership and strategy become dominant in Chile, no opportunity to defend the UP's achievements or to clarify the road ahead can be allowed to pass...
...25-99, 12C each...
...Inflation, markedly reduced in 1971, has returned in force and will soon present a serious threat to the government...
...Yet he criticizes ultra-"left" views which "deny the tremendous gains that can be won for the working class during the [current] period of popular democracy...
Vol. 6 • May 1972 • No. 5
