Pretty Pictures of Singing Tomorrows

Throughout the world the pro-Moscow revisionist parties, all committed to the parson's theory of peaceful transition to socialism, hailed the Popular Unity government as proof that a socialist government could come to power by parliamentary struggle. Luis Corvalan, General Secretary of the grossly reformist "Communist" Party of Chile, asserted: "The Chilean example... bears out the proposition of the CPSU's 20th Congress... that in the struggle of the working class and other forces for socialism, resort to arms is not inevitable for the conquest of power and for making revolutionary changes." ('Pravda', December 1, 1970.)

Pretty pictures of singing tomorrows in a socialist Chile following the peaceful, constitutional expropriation of the bourgeoisie were painted by revisionists everywhere. "Chile moves in unity" effused the Socialist Unity Party's paper 'Tribune' in October 1971, once again closing its eyes to the obvious, namely that the class struggle was beginning to intensify. Chile was the final refutation of Mao Tsetung — or so they thought!

But Marxism teaches us never to judge a period of transition by its own consciousness. In fact there had never been a socialist revolution in Chile; state power, the fundamental question of revolution, remained firmly in the hands of the Chilean bourgeoisie. Although Popular Unity had control of the executive branch in Chile, the bourgeoisie had retained its control of the Congress, the armed forces, the police, the judiciary and the administrative apparatus of the government.