Word: chileans
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Whether Popular Unity could have hung on without resorting to the Activist solution is going to be a matter of great debate--second-guessing about aborted revolutions is a time-honored Left pastime. Allende was a skilled political veteran whose knowledge of the Chilean political situation was based on over 40 years of experience, and it at least initially seems doubtful that anyone else would have been better equipped to handle the wave of crises. But perhaps he missed a few key chances for compromise, or bungled with one policy or another...
...errors will be hard to find. The scale of historical events is too vast for their outcome to hinge on one man, or one decision, or one policy. Chilean Legalism seems inevitably to have led to the polarization, the increasing Right attacks, the growing extra-legal threat. There seems little way a crisis could have been forestalled...
...Chilean example clearly strengthens the position of the Activists in the continuing debate and once again poses the awful dilemma of revolutionary violence. Should Popular Unity have crushed the truck-owners strike when it began, locked up or if necessary killed those fearful businessmen of principled rectitude, and then outlawed and rounded up the rest of the opposition? In retrospect, the answer seems to be yes, but who can forecast the future...
...dilemma cannot finally be resolved by the Chilean events. A stronger sense of internationalism by the world Left, particularly in the United States, would certainly have lessened Popular Unity's difficulties. Had U.S. aid, other than military assistance, continued to flow southward, for example, perhaps the Chilean crisis would not have become so intense...
...SOCIALIST, I sometimes question myself about this dilemma. Could I support the suspension of free speech and freedom of the press to aid a revolution waged for the extension of those and other rights? Could I imprison a Chilean truck-owner for endangering socialism--a socialism where there will be no prisons? Could I shoot a Portuguese soldier for a cause that seeks to outlaw war forever...