Events in Chile constitute one of those rare, decisive moments in history. In this book, direct participants in that moment examine what is to be learned from an experience of change frustrated by a reaction that amounts to a new face of fascism, a form of military dictatorship that is becoming all too familiar in today’s world scene. One lesson of the Chilean experience is accepted as truth by the authors of this volume: the threat of significant change provokes a web of class interests and these interests are capable of destroying all of their democratic and civic culture in order to preserve their most cherished traditions— private property, monopoly of power, social inequality, and class privilege. Still, it does not necessarily follow that real changes could not have been or, in other countries, cannot be brought about by nonviolent, democratic, and gradualist means; at least that is the central thesis of this book.

In retrospective analysis, the intransigent Chilean and international opposition to the construction of a socialist society is taken as given. The problem was to contain the counterrevolution while advancing toward the new society. The lessons to be drawn are primarily political. The major thrust of the book is therefore a critical analysis of the strategic and tactical conduct of the struggle by the Popular Unity coalition and the Allende government. The contributors reflect on the lack of programmatic unity of the governing coalition, the contradictions between economic policies and political goals, the inability of the government to maintain discipline even among its supporters, the administrative disorganization and lack of authoritative government, and other problems of political conduct.

The book is divided into three parts, each with several serious analyses followed by pertinent commentaries. Chilean participants (prominent intellectuals who occupy a limited space on the ideological spectrum) provided the bulk of the material for the book that originated in a 1975 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, seminar. Part one contains a retrospective interpretation of the political strategy, government policies, and problems of the Popular Unity on several fronts (authors include Jorge Tapia, Clodomiro Almeyda, Sergio Bitar, David Baytelman, and Pío García). Part two analyzes Christian Democracy in relation to the Allende government (Rodomiro Tomíc), the strategy and tactics of the counterrevolution (Luis Maira), and the political problems of the frustrated socialist transition (Hugo Zemelman). Part three contains excellent analyses of the new forms of domination under the current regime (by a clandestine group in Chile and Hernán Vera), an interesting and discouraging commentary on the lessons of Chile as perceived in Europe (Philippe Schmitter), and a comparison of Chile and Spain during the 1930s that identifies similarities in the two experiences ending in fascism (Henry Landsberger and Juan Linz).

The book proceeds on the premise that the “destabilization” carried out by the U.S. government and private corporations in close coordination with the parties and class organizations of the Chilean right “helped to produce a result, but was not determinant” (p. 25). This is correct. The editors, however, explicitly treat U.S. intervention as an outside factor. This seriously distorts the historical and international context in which the Chilean process unfolded and, together with the self-critical injunction placed upon the analysts, puts an undue emphasis on the strategic and tactical errors of the Popular Unity.

Chile (like Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other nations suffering under modern forms of military dictatorship) is an underdeveloped and dependent society. The social struggles taking place on the South American periphery are the moving forces of Chilean history, but these struggles take place in a context that is highly structured. Local actors are not puppets manipulated from afar, but neither are they autonomous actors of a local dramatic production. Dependence contributes to not only weak and crisis-ridden economies, but social classes as well. In the Chilean case, the ability of the local bourgeoisie, backed heavily by the United States, to mobilize sizeable segments of the salaried middle class and small businessmen in a classically fascist groundswell, has much to do with the character of these classes under conditions of dependence. A principal strategic error of the Popular Unity was to fail to appreciate the degree to which even classes of petty privilege in dependent social structures will leave aside democratic and civil proclivities in favor of the most base forms of barbarism when these privileges are perceived as threatened. Only Jorge Tapia’s contribution to this volume even begins to address this problem and its implications for the transition to socialism.

Still, this is an extraordinarily serious endeavor, the best of many books available on these questions. It should be studied by all those who would learn from hard experience.