Marxist left, the two sides since 1914.
retormism.
SOCIAL democratic parties have formed governments in Britain, Australia, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Holland cover the past six decades. In none of these (countries have they contemplated socialist measures to bring about a fundamental change in society.
Chile was the only exception. The lessons we should learn from that experience are not that Allende and government went too fast, but rather that they ad a utopian view of the Chilean state and its apparatuses: the army, police force.
The election of Allende in 1970 was seen as a tremendous victory ov the Chilean working class. Through a series of structural, social and economic reforms, the programme pledged to take Chile towards socialism.
In an interview with the French writer and journalist Regis Debray, rejected the Popular Front Thirties: :.. (in the 1930s) we entered into a coalition in order to form the left wing or tre system - me cuomant system, tar iS. By contrast, today, shows, are struggling Our objective Marxist socialism.
In the Thirties the Popular Front had been designed to fight off fascism by preserving bourgeois democracy.
Vichy France were the fruits of that particular enterprise. The changed relationship of class forces on global scale necessitated a new project.
Popular Popular which excluded the major bourgeois parties. It could be characterised as a reformist united front, which brought together the two major working-class parties in Chile: the Party and the Communist Party. Of the two, the Socialist Party had a more radical stance and its left-wing prevented most attempts to shift the locus of Popular Unity by offering a place to the Christian Democrats.
The importance experience is that its electoral victory provided us with the closest equivalent of a government since the Second World War.
In its first year in office the Popular Unity government carried out a number of important measures, which increased its popularity with the most oppressed stratas in Chilean society. Beginning with the free distribution of half a litre of milk a day to every child, a series of laws was promulgated to develop the social services.
A ceiling was placed on all government salaries; political prisoners were released; the riot police were disbanded. There was a 60 per cent increase in wages and most prices wére fixed. A large proportion of the textile, iron, examine the differences that have separated West Never seriously Popular Unity and HaYy Popular Unity Allende explicitly model of the consciously as our programme to change the is total, scientific Franco's Spain and once had bringing left has integrated.
Forties he on often an overwhelming mandate for ¡about social change. occasion Labour has acted as the collective lieutenant of British capital. Each time the either been marginalised or In the Thirties, Sir Stafford Cripps was calling for the abolition of capitalism. In the was a Labour, Chancellor, preaching the virtues of austerity.
In the Forties, Aneurin Bevan's rhetoric expressed the class hatred which dominated the Welsh valleys. In the Fifties, On every Bevan had made his peace and surrendered In conscience. In the Seventies he had become 'darling of the a loyal supporter of James Callaghan. Will the eighties be any different?
TARIQ ALl looks back on the tragic fate o Salvador Allende and the 'Chilean road to utopian and Leninism which is practical.
1973 indication that prepared to fight.
and six months died fighting Popular Unity But it was too late. Inevitable mobilisations.
There was CAUCHIC. reformist workers' dual power, democratic regime factories, the Sixties, Michael Foot was the radical On the first page of this supplement of dual power came into existence. In the March Popular Unity obtained 44 per cent of the vote, a clear the working The military were disgusted with the results later they attacked. Allende Within fortnight 30,000 workers had been butchered in cold blood. Only a week before nearly a million supporters past the Moneda Palace chanting: 'Allende, the people are defending you. Hit the reactionaries hard.' Was Allende's defeat inevitiable? No. What was inevitable was a settling of accounts with the armed might of the Chilean state. It was not inevitable that the generals should have had the fact the reactionary could have been contained much earlier by a combination of economic measures and mass another novel feature in the We saw how the existence of a government within bourgeois state unleashes a more far-reaching extra-parliamentary mobilisation of all social classes than does a strategy of direct moves to short-circuiting bourgeois Thus the occupation of over a thousand of popular • supply committees, and the participation of the masses were far more adyanced than anything seen in The situation was far more precarious than in France in May 1968; the extra-parliamentary bourgeoisie was much facts which make the strategic errors of the workers' parties all the We oppose the bourgeois state in all its forms because it maintains the class division of society. That is its main function. Within its framework the majority of the people can never Any political party which implements structural reforms which damage capitalism finds itself confronting the armed forces of the state.
The revelation that in 1974 there was open talk among senior British army officers of a coup should give the utopian reformists some food for thought. There is no such thing as British exceptionalism any more than there is History, despite all its detours, is on the side of Lenin and Trotsky rather than Dubcek or Marxism more practical than even the most radical reformism.
Socialist Challenge 13 March 1980 Page 5
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DEBATES between the Labour left and the such as that on 17 March at Çentral Hall, Westminster, are rare events. As such they provide a usetul opportunity to
This eight-page supplement to Socialist Challenge is devoted to a critique of left Labour has formed a government seven occasions since 1924. Three of these governments had an overall majority, and
socialism'. He argues that the events 1970-73 reveal that it is reformism which is