Nationalism and communism in Chile PDF
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Nationalism and Communism in Chile Ernst Halperin The MIT Press This file has been authorized and provided by the publisher, The MIT Press, as part of its ongoing efforts to make available in digital form older titles that are no longer readily available. This file is provided through the Internet Archive for library lending, and no further reproduction or distribution is allowed except as permitted by applicable law or in writing by the MIT Press. The MIT Press One Rogers Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 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
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