Table Of ContentNationalism and
Communism in Chile
Ernst Halperin
The MIT Press
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NATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM
IN CHILE
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM
1. Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift, William E. Griffith (1963)
2. Communism in Vietnam, P. J. Honey (1964)
3. The Sino-Soviet Rift, William E. Griffith (1964)
4. Communism in Europe, Vol. 1, William E. Griffith, ed.
(1964)
‘‘European Communism and the Sino-Soviet Rift,*'
William E. Griffith
“Yugoslav Communism,” Viktor Meier
“Polish Communism,” Hansjakob Stehle
“Hungarian Communism,” Francois Fejto
“Italian Communism,” Giorgio Galli
5. Nationalism and Communism in Chile, Ernst Halperin
(1965)
Nationalism
and Communism
in Chile
ERNST HALPERIN
THE M.I.T. PRESS
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
MIT Press
0262080206
HALPERIN
NATIONALISM
Copyright © 1965
hy The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be
reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
(except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-21569
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
Although some monographs on the history of in¬
dividual communist parties have been pubhshed, the
study of the current policies of these parties, particu¬
larly of those not in power, is a neglected field. Yet
such studies are of value to statesmen and scholars
alike. The communist parties are members of a move¬
ment that until very recently was under rigid disciphne
and centralized leadership. Events at the Moscow
center — power struggles, conflicts of opinion, drastic
policy changes — were faithfully and rapidly reflected
in the policies of even the smallest and least important
communist parties, sometimes months or even years
before the event itself became known to the noncom¬
munist world. A pronouncement by the Communist
Party of Norway, Switzerland, or Martinique might be
utterly irrelevant to the Norwegian, Swiss, or Martini-
quaise political situation, but it might well contain
some hidden phrase highly relevant to the situation
V
vi PREFACE
prevailing in Moscow. Today, when the international
communist movement is reeling under the impact of
the Sino-Soviet conflict, and central authority and dis¬
cipline are fast disintegrating, careful observation of
the policies and analysis of the statements of its mem¬
ber parties are as important as ever.
One major obstacle that has hitherto impeded the
utilization of this important source of information is
the obscurity of communist terminology. To those not
in possession of highly specialized knowledge, the typi¬
cal communist document appears to be a hodgepodge
of wild vituperation against the imperialists, totally
umealistic descriptions of the state of the country and
of the world, fervent praise of the people’s masses, who
are alleged to be rallying to the party’s banner in ever
greater numbers, and of self-criticism of the party for
not having made full use of its opportunities and for
having been either too sanguine or too pessimistic in
its assessment of the situation. The one message that
appears to come through clearly in all these documents
is that of the party’s devotion to the cause of revolution.
But hidden under this revolutionary verbiage, commu¬
nist party pronouncements usually contain far more.
In order to understand communist party documents
one must first of all realize that they are not meant for
the man in the street, whom the party prefers to woo
with brief and unsophisticated slogans. The long, im¬
mensely involved, and tediously repetitive policy state¬
ments are intended to explain tlie party’s cun'ent policy
to the cadres while at the same time strengthening the
cadres’ faith — a secular creed that may be summed up
in the words ‘‘Salvation through Revolution.” That is
why the explanation of the party’s policy, and the an-
PREFACE vii
nouncement of any changes therein, are always ob¬
scured by voluble assurances that the revolution is
inevitable, and not too far away, and that the party’s
current policy, be it leftist or rightist, extremist or
moderate, violent or peaceful, isolationist or collabora¬
tionist, is the only effectively revolutionary one. The
untrained reader almost invariably mistakes this revo¬
lutionary verbiage for the message of the document.
“Nothing has changed” was the noncommunist
world’s comment on the Seventh Congress of the
Comintern in 1935. The momentous decision to switch
from a policy of hostility toward the democratic parties
of the left and center to one of collaboration with them
— a decision that was soon profoundly to aflFect the
destinies of Spain and, to a lesser degree, of France —
was overlooked, while the accompanying declarations
of loyalty to the principle of world revolution were re¬
garded as the essential result of the congress.
In the same way, the noncommunist world has often
missed the significance of changes in the leadership of
individual communist parties, regarding them as the
result of petty squabbles between men who were
agreed on tlie basic points of doctrine, whereas these
changes were actually often a reflection of important
policy decisions by the rulers of the Soviet Union.
One instance of this was the downfall of the American
Communist Party chief Earl Browder in 1945. Browder’s
entire policy had been based on the assumption that
Soviet-American wartime cooperation, and consequently
also the extremely moderate wartime policies of the
Western communist parties, would continue in the
postwar period. The first attack on Browder — by the
French Communist Jacques Duclos — was launched as
viii PREFACE
early as April 1945, before the war in Europe had come
to a close. This attack, and Browder’s subsequent re¬
moval from oflSce, caused a sensation throughout the
international commimist movement, being correctly in¬
terpreted as the first result of a basic decision in Mos¬
cow that Soviet postwar policy toward the United
States would be one of antagonism and not of coopera¬
tion. If the special knowledge needed in order to arrive
at such a correct interpretation of what seemingly ap¬
peared to be a minor crisis in an unimportant political
group had been available to, and given credence by,
Western statesmen, they would have been able to ad¬
just to the harsh reality of Soviet postwar policy much
earlier. The world would have been spared years of
fumbling and also the recriminations of those who
maintain that a benevolent Soviet government was
reluctantly pushed into a position of hostility by the
postwar blunders of the West.
Later, unfamiharity with communist terminology
caused Western statesmen to misinterpret the Sino-
Soviet conflict and to underestimate its importance.
For years they insisted that this was a mere quarrel
about tactics, and that Peking and Moscow were united
in their basic aim: the destruction of capitalism. The
further course of events has, however, made it abun¬
dantly clear that the basic unity of principle suggested
by a superficial reading of communist documents is a
mytli. Meanwhile, the number of those who have
learned how to translate the complicated terminology
of these documents into tlie crude language of power
politics is increasing, and tlie interest of political scien¬
tists in the international communist movement and its
member parties has been stimulated by the fact that
