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potatoes, a few chickens, or even a side of beef,could make a good living on the black market!even if his official wages remained stationarywhile inflation roared ahead. The factory workerwho was entitled to buy a proportion of hisfactory's output at official fixed, prices could(and did) seil that at six or ten times what he hadpaid as soon as he left the factory gate. Butminers could hardly find ready buyers for a stolentruck-load of copper ore. !!Thus the copper-miners were thrust, in effect,into the same position as the lorry-men, the shop-keepers, and virtually all of Chile's salariedprofessional men and women: they were leftmore or less defenceless against the most viciousinflation the country had ever experienced.SOME APOLOGISTS for Allende have maintainedthat the degree of inflation was exaggerated or,at any rate, little worse than was customary inChile and elsewhere in Latin America. The truthis that it was far beyond anything normallyendured in that continent. As little as ninemontes after Allende came to power, when Ifirst visited Chile, the escudo had already fallenfrom 20 to 40 against the U.S. dollar on the free,or black, market. Eighteen months later, on mysecond visit, the Government's own figures putthe rate of inflation at 130% in a year, the moneyissue was going up by 10% a month and theescudo had fallen to about 350 to the black US.dollar. Ily August 1973, the official inflation ratewas 323% and rising fast, and the excudo wasworth only 2,000 to the dollar-an effectivedevaluation in less than three years of 10,000%!Nor is it enough to attribute these catastrophicrates to such adventitious or inalicious factorsas-and egain I refer to published argumentsfalling wworld copper prices, the normal difficultiesof maintaining industrial and farm output in atime of radical political change, or deliberateAmerican intervention.On the last of these three I have already saidenough, I hope, to show that it was far fromdecisive and that it was,, anyway, largely self-invited. As to falling copper prices, the fact isthat after a fall in the first year of Allende'sGovernment, prices recovered until by the timeof his overthrow they were 80% above the levelat the time of his election. Had they not risenso steeply he would almost certainly have falleosoones and probably would not have secured hisselative, short-lived success in the mid-termelections of March 1973. The difficulties of main-taining output in a time of change, however, werereal-unfortunately, far more so than Allendeever seemed to realise.To take just two examples: copper and milk.Expropriation of the copper mines from theirAmerican owners would, no doubt, have led initself to the withdrawal of American techniciansas well as of American management with someconsequent risk of losing production temporarily,.at least. But this might have been overcome bythe promotion of trained Chilean nanagers andtechnicians, of whom there was no shortage.Alas, for Chile's national income, Allende notmerely nationalised but deliberately politicisedthe mines as well. Jobs for the party boys werehanded out in thousands while trained Chileansemigrated so that, after three years of PopularUnity Government, mining manpower and costshad risen by more than a third while mining:catonit was down by about the wane n1 the mira the wound crampis because itwwe specifically mentioned in Popular UnityCation charanked "veryCican child of nik day. Ilzesin, the ovens proped leadreform, intcoded to break the power ofservining landlords and open the way cooperative of state farming, might have beenacted to soult in ume shortfall in Cairy proCiction for a year of two while tebineproblems were dost In fact, however, milkproduction drop as if someone had simpiyporrled a hole in the bottom of every churn infre land At ore large cooperative Cairy in!Temko, one of the main milk-producing areas ofChile, the average daily winter intake of milkwas about 500.000 llops in 1970. By 1973 itwas down to 7,00, is was this surprisingApart from the fact that legal land reform hadVen aoonmpanied by widespread and un.checked illegal land seizures so that to manyfarms were in the hands of people utterly withoutexperience, the prices established for milkmes:for most other farm producte were simplyeconomic non unably in the type ofgetting half-a-quart of milk for every child on thecheap, the government dareed that a gail'on ofmilk would fetch less than half the price of oneerz. Inevitably, robody was interested in pro-dusing milk and crows were slaughtered ملحجارfor red-legally or illegally or driven cover inmountains to Argentina while Alerde wasforced to scour the world for dried milk iraportsthat, thanks to his policy in the copper mines,be no longer had foreign currency to pay for.SUCH POLLES were repeated everywhere as theTrumantic petures of seifstyled revolotica werepreferred to facing the facts of life. Vitile overallproduction in both agriculture and industry felldisastrously, Allende simultaneously attempted toredistribute the national wealth by giving Chile'spoorer classes snore money to spend. They werekis constituency and they were properly careful,for many of them certainly had never had muchbefore. But you can't redistribute what you havealready thrown away; and as output varikbed,so domestic queues ze longer, foreign debtspiled up, and the budget deficit expanded like ahydrozen balloon. A year before the final crafñapseI asked one of Aliende's chief economic adviserswhat they were going to do to control a situation:that was already locking critical. He replied,with commendable contour, that he really dica'tknow, "I know," he said, "what we ought to مwe should impose an austerity regime tomAnToW,freeze wages, and ration essential supplies. Buthow can we? We would destroy our own politicalbas....."Precisely. In the end, rather than do that theyplunged on down the primrose path of promisesand illusions and practically destroyed thecountry. The "ruling class conspiracy wasChe gloss that they and their supporters put uponthe reality of their own miscalculations.### 3. The Myth of the### Constitutional RevolutionaryHERE WE COuz to the crum of Allende'spolicies and character about which, finally,