Allende’s Failure a Lesson for Ireland

HER LIFE, POLITICS AND THE In 1970, Salvador Allende was Marxist to come to power by world press across the globe.

to socialism” i.e. reformism.

message Allende declared that the fascist military would never rid ‘But in the weeks that followed his overthrow there was very little fascist junta as thousands of trade unionists and socialists of all Now the very same people who celebrated Allende’s victory (the irony for it was precisely the governed under Allende for three fascist generals who executed it. | Their ‘peaceful road” had shown, “mythical illusions’. Illusion that elected President of Chile ““The first democratic means’”’ announced the Socialist parties seized all over the world seized on Chile as living proof of the viability of the “peaceful road for power.

Three years later, Allende and his government of Popular Unity were overthrown in one of the bloodiest military coups in history. In his last themselves of the infamy this ad had brought upon themselves and their imperialist allies both U.S. and British.

evidence of a sense of shame by the persuasions were brutally massacred.

Communist Parties and “Socialist” Parties, are demanding the “‘restoration of democracy”’. This is a very bitter ‘democrats’ in Chile, those who had years, who prepared the ground for the fascist coup, just as surely as the yet again, the horrific consequences for the working class of parliamentary their capitalist masters peddle but do The men who are “working for peace not and never will share. In practice. the “Chilean road to Socialism” meant compromise and surrender to the fascist right wing. It was, in effect deliberate sabotage of working class Chilean initiative, as well as the refusal by a so-called socialist to prepare to carry through a struggle Chile — the classic example for us Chile is a classic example of the fate that awaits the working class anti-imperialist workers under reformism. These people (reformists) are in effect working for capitalism under the banner of socialism. They aided the fascists in Chile they same way they are doing it in Ireland now (look at the Official Republicans) by fawning over Orange fascism with compromise on top of compromise. It was Rosa Luxemburg the great German socialist who said “There is only one remedy for the reformist illusions and that remedy requires, unfortunately, the shedding of a very great deal of blood” The fascists both here and in Chile did not and will not stint their use of that remedy. The thousands of reformist speeches the world over will not be able to hide the blood and suffering, the price the people of Chile had to pay for the attempt to build socialism without social cost. We must learn the lesson of Chile. No truck with fascists. Smash them before they massacre us either in Chile or in Ireland.