A Tribute to Communism

Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 with 36% of the popular vote. He was a Marxist-Leninist who explicitly wanted to bring about Marx’s “revolutionary socialist state” in anticipation of the inevitable communism Marx’s theory predicted. Allende took power at the end of 1970, with plans to begin The Chilean Path to Socialism aided by his economic advisor Pedro Vuskovic. This entailed the following policies:

• nationalization of all major industry and commerce
• nationalization of all natural resources
• state land seizure of all significant property holdings
• forced collectivization of agriculture
• extensive, absolute price controls
• total income tax and redistribution
• drastic increases in government spending
• monetary expansion via state central bank to fund spending

This socialist program began to be implemented in 1971 and 1972. The end goal was to put the entire economy of Chile 100% under direct state control (oh and then stateless communist wonderland obviously!!). By 1973, the state directly controlled 80% of the economy. As the laws of economics dictate, these policies meant extreme price inflation (over 140% in 1972, over 500% in 1973), waves of severe food shortages, rationing, the beginnings of mass starvation, a drastic decline in production and investment, the closing of businesses… as well as an unprecedented anti-Allende women’s movement culminating in the March of the Empty Pots to protest food shortages, frequent violent demonstrations across the country, rural unrest, revolt, and emigration.

Things had turned to shit and were getting worse fast. When Allende was asked about the worsening situation, he responded “things are good or bad according to whether they bring us nearer to or further from power, according to whether they assure or not the irreversibility of the revolutionary process.” His government followed this and - violently at times - suppressed resistance, including imprisoning and beating of anti-communist journalists and machine-gunning student demonstrators. Chile under Allende was beginning to look just like China under Mao. 

Chile’s Supreme Court issued endless warnings against Allende’s government, calling for his resignation, calling his actions unconstitutional, calling his rule illegitimate. Allende openly defied the courts. This was a clear violation of his central campaign promise - to follow the rule of law. Later, the parliament called for Allende’s resignation and eventually the Supreme Court openly and explicitly requested that the army depose Allende. Salvador Allende remained.

During this rule, Allende maintained regular, personal contact with the Soviet KGB and received great direct support from the Russian communist state. (as well as some significant support from the American state, coincidentally). Under the supervision of Allende, revolutionary communist militias and paramilitary groups had covertly imported enmormous stocks of weaponry and numerous communist revolutionaries from all Latin American countries. In mid-1973, the Soviet Union and Allende planned to ship large supplies of heavy weapons, heavy artillery, and tanks from Russia to Chile (but they were just a few months too late for Allende). 

In his private correspondence, Allende confirms that he was preparing to initiate violent communist revolution on a mass scale. Lengthy documents have since been discovered detailing Allende’s party’s plans for sabotage of resisting industry, urban warfare, infiltration of the armed forces, the violent seizure of TV and radio stations, and so on. According to their own documents, the point of all this was to “take total power and impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

They had in mind the nightmare of full-blown, totalitarian, revolutionary communism.

Allende had infiltrated the armed forces to some degree and so the army did not quickly depose him. Soldiers were openly mocked by common people for their failure to act. Fortunately for Chile, the young general Augusto Pinochet took the initiative and spearheaded a coup against Allende, following the request of the Supreme Court. Upon capture, Allende killed himself with a machine gun given to him by Castro (and Castro had told Allende to do this so he would become a martyr for the Marxist cause).

The remaining revolutionary communist militia and paramilitary armed during Allende’s rule waged war on Pinochet for seven months, eventually losing primarily because they had virtually no public support whatsoever. The people of Chile were unambiguously on the side of Pinochet. The majority of all violent deaths (1,261 out of 2,279) under Pinochet’s entire rule (through 1990) took place during these months and were members of the armed forces and communist paramilitary and militia. The majority of the remainder were communist paramilitary and insurgents during later years.

Pinochet quickly ended some of Allende’s worst socialist policies and the Chilean economy immediately, though slowly, began to recover. With more free market reforms over the years, Chile eventually became the most prosperous and developed country in South America.

It could well have been different. It could well have been another revolutionary Marxist state like Cambodia, a society leaping backward: economic decline, mass poverty, malnutrition, starvation, democide, millions of civilians dead. Instead Pinochet had a death toll in the hundreds. Still terrible, but nothing like the scale or severity or suffering of revolutionary communism.

That is what I mean when I say that Allende’s communist regime would have likely resulted in mass human tragedy if it had not been for Pinochet. That is why I say Pinochet was a significantly lesser evil than Allende.