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# 14-00000all the other arguments revolve. Was he a genuine constitutionalist? Was he a true revolutionary? Was he—could he ever have been—both?Allende himself, of course, admitted no doubts. Repeatedly, he insisted that he was a revolutionary and a Marxist, and that he intended to establish at least the preconditions for what he told Régis Debray would be “total, scientific Marxist socialism.” Equally repeatedly, he proclaimed his faith that he could achieve this end by constitutional means, through the ballot box and all it implied. That was, after all, to be the distinctive “Chilean road to socialism” of which so many people outside Chile cherished such high hopes.But no hindsight is required to see that both theory and practice were riddled with contradictions. Revolutions are born of, or generate, sectional conflict—a fact of political life that Allende acknowledged every time he spoke of “overthrowing” what he called the “bourgeois” state. But a democratic constitution rests upon consensus—a basic acceptance of the fact that the State represents more than a merely sectional interest. The second permits reform, but the first denies it; and there is no way of reconciling the two.All Allende’s practical difficulties followed from this simple distinction. Taken seriously, his constitutionalism meant that his programme could only succeed if a majority would actually vote for it. But, elected as he was with only just over a third of the popular vote and with a large majority of Congress against him, Allende had neither a democratic nor an administratively effective mandate for his revolution. Indeed, in a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy, he would probably never have been able to begin.If he was to succeed within his six-year term of office even in opening the door to revolution, let alone establishing it as accomplished fact, he had to transform his minority into a majority. But how to do it? For, if words meant anything, Allende’s had to mean that he intended to replace the existing, reformable constitution of Chile with another that would be, of its Marxist nature, irreversible. In other words, a system that was admittedly democratic was to be used to build another that would be effectively dictatorial. This was asking the majority to hang itself from its own gallows; and, not surprisingly, it declinedALLENDE’S ATTEMPTS to overcome this basic illogicality in his position were precisely what ensured his ultimate downfall. Refusing to abandon either his revolutionary rhetoric or his professed constitutionalism he was forced to rely more and more upon political illusionism. His sleight-of-hand was often remarkable, as he sought to outwit the opposition majority in Congress by exploiting the letter of the constitution, using every legal loophole to force upon them measures they did not want. But in the process, inevitably, he destroyed the constitution’s spirit, so that his opponents became as ruthless as he.> Indeed, as I discovered for myself on a visit to southern Chile nine months after Allende’s efictions, local police forces there were under speculi instructions not to attempt to restore the farms to their legal owners. See also Robert Moss’s report in ESQVUNTEA, “Allende’s Chile”, August 1971, and Altair Horne’s “Commandante Pepe”, July 1971.33was. At the start he won considerable opposition support in Congress for needed change like the nationalization of the copper mines, land reform, and the state’s takeover of banks and major Industrie-evidence that the democratic consensus could and would work within the existing constitution. But, at the end, not a single member of the opposition majority would cast a vote in his support. They voted unanimously to condemn his “habitual illegalities” and were even joined by the Supreme Court in accusing him of disregarding the rule of law. He had cut away the middle ground of Chilean politics, wrecked the democratic consensus, and begotten the reality of counter-revolution through his own addiction to revolutionary slogans.Equally inevitable was the economic breakdown, which came from Allende’s attempts to enlarge his popular base outside the political institutions. Here his plan was two-fold: to buy political support among “the People” through massive wage increases and other benifits and at the same time to squeeze the caudillo class into submission, or even flight from the country, through wholesale nationalisation of their interests and the appointment of his own men to all significant civil-service jobs. The two simply cancelled each other out; for while the first part of the plan raised vast new expectations and demands, the second diminished the country’s capacity to meet them. The whirling spiral of inflation followed as a necessary result of Allende’s political confusions.THESE BASIC CONTRADICTIONS were compounded by the fragmented nature of Allende’s support. His Popular Unity coalition was far from united. Its majority element was Allende’s own Socialist Party—a body that bore little resemblance beyond its name to most of the democratic socialist parties of Europe which so enthusiastically espoused its cause. It was, in fact, a revolutionary Marxist party that began as a splinter of the more bureaucratic and Stalinist Chilean Communist party in the 1930s, and in recent years had acquired a fiery “New Left” wing as weil. Several of its leaders, like Senator Altamirano, and many of its rank and file, constantly urged Allende to “speed up the revolution” without much regard for constitutional niceties. The smallest element of the coalition was the Christian radicals of various persuasions, some of whom hoped to offer a bridge to the centre of Chilean politics by cooperating with the left wing of the Christian Democrats, but none of whom ever attained positions of real influence. The coalition’s sheet anchor was the Communist Party which, as business and administration slipped into chaos, became increasingly important as a source of discipline and strategic thinking.IT WOULD HAVE BEEN hard enough to drive this troika anyway without either overstepping the constitutional limits of government or antagonising one or other of its elements and thereby jeopardising the only “democratic” base the revolution had. But Allende had also to contend with the still more militant left outside the coalition, led by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), which insisted on revolution now, and by vioience if necessary—as, in MIR’s view, it was.Here Allende’s professed constitutionalism was