After the legislative elections of March 1973 came the final realignments of the forces of the Right before the definitive crisis. In this period the armed forces became the key political factor. The Christian Democrats looked to them to ensure the continuance of the State in bourgeois legality and to push the government into numerous retreats, such as the appointment of the military to key ministerial posts. The Christian Democrat party nationally wanted to drag the military as soon as possible into a coup to overthrow Allende. The same position was held by the bosses’ organisations, especially SOFOFA.

The first fruits of the coup

Within the Popular Unity, positions were less clear cut. Within a few hours of the election there was a split in the MAPU as a result of the deep crisis that had been developing there since their 2nd congress. The CP called a plenum to analyse the election result and decided the new axis of their intervention. At the end of it, the Chilean Communists defined their principal task as the election of a new ‘popular government’ in 1976! From this it followed, for the CP. that the immediate task of the proletariat was to redouble their efforts to improve production so that the government would have a secure base from which to carry out a programme of financial stringency to control inflation, put a stop to the black market and re-balance the state sector. At the same time the CP proposed to lead a campaign against the threat of civil war which the bourgeoisie had been using as a form of blackmail, hoping thereby to isolate the golpistas [coup plotter], bring the ‘democratic sector of the bourgeoisie into an agreement and preserve the rule of law. At the time this was also the position of Allende and the dominant current in the UP.

The centrist currents of the UP, on the other hand. highlighted the need to face up to the bosses’ offensive with a more aggressive policy which would take account of the strength of the masses and encourage sustained mass initiatives. These currents, which were close to the MIR, albeit hesitantly and with many contradictions, did make the struggle for popular power the main axis of their politics in this final period. The calls for workers’ power, together with the development of organs of popular control, had a profound resonance with the masses and came to dominate every demonstration.

The period of class struggle opened by the March 73 elections developed in an economic climate where the contradictions imposed by the global crisis of bourgeois society became constantly more evident. It was a situation of deadlock which could not last very long. There had to be a movement -either forwards towards socialism or backwards towards a fascist barbarism. These were the only possible solutions to the crisis, and it was up to each of the opposing classes to impose its will on the other and defeat it.

In June the political crisis was sharpened. The strike at ‘El Teniente’ provided the opportunity for a new mass offensive by the bourgeoisie; this set off a widespread and vigorous mobilisation by the left which promptly halted the opposition’s advance and threw them into confusion.

At the end of the month, just when everything seemed to have settled down, came the uprising by the armoured units of the Second Regiment, which surrounded the Moneda Palace and attacked the Ministry of Defence. But the uprising failed to draw in other units of the armed forces and was swiftly crushed. Far from improving, the political situation worsened. The counter-revolution moved into the final phase of preparation for a coup. The government, faced with the activity of the armed forces (closing down radio stations and imposing a rigid press censorship in relation to news of the events of 29 June) had to declare a state of emergency and restore power to the prefects and governors in the provinces. At the same time under the law of arms control the army launched large scale searches of factories, estates, and the offices of trade union and political organisations. In all these searches militants were mistreated and goods destroyed in the offices and factories. At Punta Arenas such an action led to the death of a worker. Some radio stations were searched and closed down by the military while broadcasting political programmes. A group of sailors was arrested on the grounds that they had been plotting against the Navy high command. There were a series of clearly political declarations by senior officers in the armed forces. In short, the armed forces began to act on their own authority, without waiting for the word of the civil power, in a perspective clearly leading towards a coup d’etat. The political ground was carefully prepared so that this time there would be no failure.

To this end, they had to be able to present the government as ‘illegal’ and again paralyse the country with a new offensive. The first objective was met by an intensive campaign, carefully orchestrated from within the Parliament by means of statements from the presidents of the Assembly and the Senate; this was underlined when the Assembly, representing the legislature, in agreement with the Supreme Court and the Treasury, refused to accept the promulgation of a partial constitutional reform about the sectors of the national economy. Above all, via the media of mass communication which they controlled, the opposition prepared the psychological climate for the coup. All this was accompanied by strong pressure on the chief of the army, General Carlos Prats, to resign. The mass offensive was again launched through the paralysis of road transport; then the other sectors controlled by the opposition were brought in commerce, the professional associations, certain student groups, etc. The National Party started to collect signatures ‘to demand Allende’s resignation’. A showdown was inevitable.

However the government didn’t see things like that, and made desperate efforts to reach an agreement with the Christian Democrats. Allende made a public appeal for a dialogue with the party and showed himself ready to grant concessions. As a guarantee of good faith, the government, through the intervention of the minister of the interior. Carlos Briones, and of Allende himself, began to attack the organs of struggle which the workers had created during the October crisis and which they had ceaselessly strengthened since.

At the same time, most of the factories which had been occupied by the workers during the Tankazo of June were ordered to be returned to the bosses. For the sake of retaining their ‘responsible image, the Christian Democrats accepted the offer of talks, but with no intention of arriving at an agreement. They imposed the following conditions: the armed forces to be brought into the cabinet with a controlling position, the promulgation in full of the project for defining separate sectors of the economy which the Parliament had adopted, restoration of channel 9 on the TV, etc.

But the die had already been cast and the government’s weakness merely strengthened the hand of the golpistas. The resignation of the commander-in-chief and of two other high ranking generals was eloquent testimony as to what was going on within the high command. The same scenario unfolded in the Admiralty.

The workers, on the other hand, were not disposed to leave the stage without a battle; they showed their discontent with the government’s policy and organised demonstrations at the base. In a demonstration organised by the CUT (trade union organisation) the military cabinet was jeered, as also in the march of the shantytown dwellers and the cordones, which was sabotaged by the CP and the CUT. Finally on 11 September the coup took place. The armed forces managed to stifle the resistance within their ranks by groups of conscripts and NCOs, the carabineros did not resist, the left-wing radio-stations were silenced, a curfew imposed. The workers, abandoned by the traditional parties, unable to neutralise the voice of the dictatorship through their own radio station, unable to silence the enemy radio, lacking any central command which might organise the struggle, were in no position to put up any effective resistance to the coup, despite the determination and heroism of the many who fell in armed clashes.

The Armed Forces and the UP Government

The important role which devolved on the bourgeois army in the events leading up to the coup, in the defeat of the Chilean proletariat, and in the tendency today for it to become the principal instrument of the great national and international monopolies in their domination of the political, economic and social affairs of the country makes a more detailed explanation of its conduct in this last period very important.

We cannot understand the role of the armed forces without considering their class nature and the specific purpose for which they were created – otherwise we should fall into the facile trap of explaining everything in terms of the resolution of internal conflicts (and therefore of conjunctural factors), which would only miseducate the working class and disarm it in the face of its new tasks.

The first characteristic of the armed forces in every capitalist country is that they are an integral and important part of the bourgeois state apparatus. The capitalist state is the expression of a society profoundly divided into opposing classes with irreconcilable interests and it is the principal tool by which the ruling class maintains its hegemony over the whole society. Historically, the armed forces have fulfilled various functions: settling accounts with the ruling classes of other countries when there are important differences; the colonial conquest of those sections of the world population which have yet to be incorporated fully into the capitalist system; settling those internal (class) conflicts which threaten bourgeois stability.

A second important point: there is no way in which this class nature of the armed forces can be altered since it is determined by the relationship of the army to the system as a whole (although, of course, the class origin of the officers, the kind of education they receive, the predominant ideology and so on, do affect the degree of homogeneity within the force). In every army there is a strict chain of command, the command structure is supposedly independent of major outside interest groups, the command (and therefore also their subordinates) are tied to the maintenance of the state apparatus -all of which suggests that when a revolutionary tendency appears within the armed forces it must necessarily take the form of a radical break with the bourgeois army. If we fail to clearly assimilate these lessons or deliberately conceal them, we run the risk of confusing those factors which may, in a conjunctural sense, prevent the bourgeois army from fulfilling its mission of stemming the advance of the revolutionary forces, with a transformation of its basic character: this would inhibit the class and its vanguard from performing their proper tasks. How was it that broad sections of the political leadership of the working class came to make such a false judgment on the position of sections of the high command in the last period before the coup?

Some weeks before the presidential elections of 1970 the then commander-in-chief of the army, Rene Schneider, made a statement in which he declared that the army would respect the popular decision or, if no candidate obtained an absolute majority, the vote of the Congress. The army would not abandon the role entrusted to it under the Constitution. This constitutionalist position became known as the ‘Schneider doctrine’. This declaration was made in reply to rumours of a possible military intervention in the event of a victory for the Popular Unity candidate. The constitutionalist ‘doctrine’ therefore referred to the fact that at this particularly critical moment the high command showed an inclination to join in a reformist project, thereby rejecting any reactionary positions which wanted to use the military in their own immediate interests.

In this situation, the reiteration of the constitutionalist position reflected nothing more than the presence of ‘reformists’ in the senior ranks of the army hierarchy. To give a few examples, in the last year of the Frei government a series of articles appeared in the review of the army general staff, denouncing the subordination of the army to the interests of the big bourgeoisie. It was also generally known that the teaching staff and administration of the staff colleges were convinced partisans of reform.

A new concept of ‘national security’ was gaining ground, according to which the signs of internal strife were not simply attributed to ‘the reds’ and international communism, but to such factors as the gross exploitation of the working class and the incapacity of the ruling classes to solve the urgent problems of the large mass of the people, all of which necessarily created internal tension.

Given the existence of a large number of generals who favoured a reformist model, it was obvious that before they could overturn Allende and install a brutal fascist military dictatorship in the country, the golpistas had to carry out their own internal coup d’etat.

But the reformist phenomenon affected especially the most senior generals and was not widespread throughout the general staff. The development of the class struggle and the increasing combativity of the workers raised the possibility of a revolutionary situation which was in no way to the liking of the great majority of officers. From the moment that the masses began to outflank the bureaucratic leaderships of the UP parties, getting under way a whole series of measures which went much further than the limited scope of a reform programme, an important section of officers began to regroup around a position which was in agreement with the most reactionary elements in the country – those who, since Allende’s victory, had come to consider that the most favourable solution for the bourgeoisie would be a military coup.

The polarisation of political forces thus produced a situation in which the majority of officers slipped more and more to the right. The reactionary generals did not at that time, though, have a favourable balance of forces on which to act and they understood as much. They began to work out a strategy which took account of their several problems:

• there were generals who sided with Allende
• the working class had shown their immense strength
• significant numbers of conscripts and Non Commissioned Officers (NCOs) had been won to a socialist position
• there was a split between the two main sections of the bourgeoisie

This conflict was clear to see within the armed forces. On the one hand, there was a group of officers who wished to maintain their loyalty to the executive, on the other, there were groups engaged in the planning of a coup.

What was it that definitely ruled out the victory of the constitutionalists? Why was it utopian and criminal to let the fate of the working class hang on the resolution of these contradictions? In the first place, the sharpening of the class struggle put on the agenda the definitive choice between the victory of a socialist revolution or that of reaction. There was no longer any room for such intermediate positions as ‘constitutionalism’, and when the question of the proletarian revolution is finally posed it is clear that it can only be led by the proletariat itself and by its vanguard organised politically and militarily to take on the task of seizing power.

The outcome of this great enterprise is ultimately dependent on what forces the working class manages to group. under its own control, to counter the forces of reaction. It is possible that significant sections of the bourgeois army, having been favourably influenced by revolutionary socialist ideas (by means of agitation for the dissolution of the bourgeois army and its replacement by a popular militia) might take the side of the working class, but that would imply that these sections had left the ranks of the bourgeois army and were no longer part of it. Revolutionaries must work to see that this occurs in a massive way at any decisive moment.

It is, however, quite another matter to leave all responsibility for the confrontation in the hands of men who, although affected by the conflict within the officer corps, in no way represent the interests of the proletariat and have on the contrary opposed the dissolution of the bourgeois army. This amounts to the rejection of any possibility for the proletariat winning an influence on sections of the professional army by breaking across its hierarchical structure.

In a situation where the NCOs and the conscripts were isolated from the working class struggle, unable at the critical moment to join with the workers’ militias since these did not exist, uncertain of their fate in the event of a clash with sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and officers trained for the assumption of counter-revolutionary tasks, prey to a strict code of discipline, no other result could be expected than a bloody repression of the working class.

Under these conditions the most reactionary sections of the armed forces began to:

a) launch a violent purge of those sections of the military (especially NCOs) who had been won to the proletariat. Already months before the coup many soldiers and sailors had been tortured, imprisoned and expelled from the armed forces. The case of the sailors, made known to the workers several weeks before the coup, was only mild indication of what had been going on.

b) hold meetings of generals and officers from which issued petitions demanding that the executive take steps to counter the combativity of the working class.

c) make wide use of the arms control law which Congress had passed with the approval of the UP government. This law, which gave them complete freedom to search and seize weapons anywhere in the country, was used by the golpistas to take possession of all the arms which might later be used to block their plans.

d) expel those elements in the high command which were friendly to the government. To achieve this, various kinds of pressure were applied. The most obvious case was the demonstration by the wives of all those officers who favoured a coup outside the house of the then commander-in-chief of the army, General Carlos Prats, which, given the government’s inaction, proved successful in forcing his resignation.

These preparations were in no way secret. The UP government was perfectly well aware of what was being prepared. But the positions adopted by the leading working class parties in relation to the armed forces could only result in defeat.

Leading elements among the reformists, basing themselves on the lack of any immediate intervention by the armed forces, consistently denied there was any class nature to the army. For them, the armed forces were not a bourgeois institution but an essentially ‘unconscious’ body, loyal to the executive arm, ‘professional and patriotic’. Obviously if one wished to prove to the working class that they should not establish their own organs of political and military power, it was necessary to deny the class nature of the armed forces. Blindness and cowardice prevailed to such an extent that a group of sailors who had denounced the planned coup in the hope of defending the government’s constitutionalist’ position and depriving the plotters of any appearance of legitimacy, were themselves brought to trial by the government under the ‘internal security’ law. The criminally misleading politics of reformism are clearly illustrated by this attitude to the armed forces.

Equally it is true that the MIR and other centrist currents never managed to characterise the armed forces correctly, nor to formulate a position that truly represented the interests of the proletariat on this question. The MIR and other organisations of the revolutionary left committed a typically ultra-left error at the time of the elections and in the first months of the Allende government (an error which led them to a theoretical position which was paradoxically very close to that of the reformists): they correctly characterised the armed forces as a bourgeois institution, as an organ of repression for the possessing classes, but in the context of such a major political upset as the election of Allende, they expected an automatic, mechanical response.

(the notion of an ‘automatic coup’). They could not grasp the fact that although such an organ does respond to the strategic needs of the ruling class, this does not mean that at every moment and in every situation it is totally free to act in accordance with the class interest for which it was created -that in a particular conjuncture a secondary factor (like a petty-bourgeois ideology of reform), which in no way alters the class nature of the institution, can play а decisive role.

This error led to a big increase of support for the reformist position: since the coup did not immediately result, it was ‘proved’ that the revolutionary left had been wrong and that the ‘peaceful road’ was correct. After a long time without any clarification of these positions, the Tankazo of 29 June again called in question the nature of the armed forces. The MIR and other centrist currents (parts of the SP and the MAPU) put forward an eclectic interpretation according to which the fate of the armed forces would ultimately depend on the outcome of the internal struggle then taking place between the golpistas and the reformists, between the reactionaries and the leftwing NCOs.

At such a decisive moment in the class struggle, the basis for a position on the armed forces should have been the evident need for the proletariat to create a favourable balance of forces for the coming armed clash. By making the resolution of the struggle within the armed forces the prerequisite for achieving such a favourable balance of forces, the centrists missed the nub of the problem: that the outcome of the struggle within the army would largely depend on what forces the proletarian organisations could themselves mobilise against the forces of reaction and the core sections of the bourgeoisie, which were now definitively set on the path to insurrection.

Agitation within the armed forces, programmatic appeals designed to draw the soldiers towards the ranks of the people and to divide the army so that it does not act as a homogeneous bloc at the decisive moment – these are undoubtedly important matters; and the development of contradictions within the organs of repression is a necessary condition for a victorious revolution. But agitation within the army is only significant in so far as it is supplementary to and linked with the preparation and organisation of the proletarian forces in their own militia. For this is the forcе that will play the decisive role in the final analysis. When the time for the showdown comes, any forces within the military which have been won to the side of the socialist revolution will be lost if the proletariat is unable to field its own combat organisations around which these can be drawn.

The present period and the tasks of the proletariat

The military coup marked the end of a long period of almost six years’ uninterrupted rise in the mass struggle; its termination in a sharp revolutionary crisis ushered in a new counter-revolutionary period, dominated by the defeat of the workers’ movement and by sudden re-alignments among the ruling classes. It is within this framework that we must make a careful analysis of the forces which compose the proletariat if we are to work out a correct tactic for struggle.

The pre-revolutionary crisis which shook the country led to a sharp polarisation of the opposing forces; this in turn, through a whole series of internal shifts and realignments, altered the composition of the two sides. For example, within the workers’ movement the growing crisis of reformism was revealed by a great revolutionary upsurge of the masses; this was channelled into the various centrist currents which took positions that were firmly opposed to the basic orientation of the UP and the government.

Other, equally important, changes came about within the ruling classes, which we must understand if we are to define correctly the nature of the dictatorship and its objectives. The principal change, which has plainly crystallised since the coup but which had begun well before, is the decisive role which the bosses’ associations began to play on the political front. Traditionally these bodies had taken part in national politics only indirectly through the medium of the press and media or by exercising continuous pressure on the various past bourgeois governments. In the final analysis, however, they had left it to the bourgeois political parties to ensure the continued functioning of the capitalist system and to defend their vital interests. Under the government of the UP, aware of an urgent need to find a resolution of the crisis of leadership consistent with their class interest, they increasingly showed themselves politically independent, transforming their organisations into veritable control centres of the counter-revolution, and organising large sections of the petty-bourgeoisie under the name of the Corporatist Movement. These bosses’ syndicates, particularly in the sector of manufacturing industry organised in SOFOFA, looked for inspiration to the ‘Brazilian Miracle to sketch the main lines of a bourgeois solution to the crisis. This solution would essentially consist of:

• total control of the country by the armed forces
• a strong stimulation of the concentration and centralisation of private capital
• stimulation of foreign investment under state control
• an increased rate of exploitation of the work force. It is this project which now serves as a programme for the dictatorship, and its principal promoters have now been summoned by the Junta to take over the tasks of government in the ministries and other agencies as advisers or in other important positions.

It is the presence of the bosses associations in the setting of national goals and in the running of the country which determines both the nature of the dictatorship and the nature of the contradictions which are shaking the bourgeois political camp. The military dictatorship is, in effect, nothing more than a tool in the direct service of the monopolies for whose benefit it has imposed, with fire and blood, the most brutal repression on every aspect of national life. Its central political aim has been, and remains. that of physically breaking any resistance to their project of restructuring the capitalist system. The method -a civil war- which they have employed against the working class and the masses has led some comrades to characterise the dictatorship as “fascist’.

Such a characterisation, however, is not entirely appropriate and serves merely as an index of the vicious counterrevolutionary nature of the regime and its methods. The classical form of fascism, as it manifested itself in Italy and Germany between the two imperialist wars which shook Europe in the first half of the century, was substantially different from the military dictatorship which rules Chile. In Chile, for example, the Junta does not represent the defence of their interests by a well-developed national bourgeoisie engaged in a determined policy of expansion at the expense of other imperialist countries. On the contrary, it represents a weak and dependent bourgeoisie which has abandoned all hope of autonomous development and now aspires only to be a junior partner of the imperialist monopolies in the most favourable possible conditions. The ‘nationalism’ of a bourgeoisie such as that in Chile at the present epoch of historical development is nothing but an illusion or a conscious fraud.

What is more, fascism was primarily a civilian political movement, capable of mobilising mass forces and possessing a vast propaganda machine, which took control of the state apparatus, including the armed forces, and put it to their own use only after coming to power. In this respect it is significant that under the (true) fascist regimes repression was in the hands of the secret police rather than the army. While it is true that, in many respects, the situation in Chile resembles a fascist dictatorship or any other extra legal form of state, we must note that this one is a military dictatorship – that is to say a regime in which the armed forces take over every political and administrative function of the nation.

To call it a military dictatorship, however, does not resolve the problem, since there are different types of military dictatorship. (For example, the government of Juan Jose Torres in Bolivia, in spite of its military character had very great differences with the regime of the Brazilian ‘gorillas’.) In the absence of any more adequate definition, therefore, taking into account both the aims and the methods of the Junta, it seems to us appropriate to characterise it as a military-fascist dictatorship.

The installation of this dictatorship displaced certain sectors of the bourgeoisie which had, until then, occupied a privileged position within the ruling class, seriously damaging their interests and threatening their very existence. It is obvious that the contradictions between the two main wings of the bourgeois bloc will soon come into the open and will be further sharpened until there is a definitive showdown in which one side imposes its hegemony. In other words, for the military-fascist dictatorship to achieve stability, it is essential not only to crush the proletariat, but to repress every manifestation of political opposition, whether it originates from the petty-bourgeoisie or from sections of the bourgeoisie itself. These contradictions remain unresolved within the ruling classes and are reflected also inside the armed forces, rendering objectively possible not only the unity of the immense majority of Chileans against the repressive policies of the Junta, but also the organisation of broad and militant mass mobilisations in opposition to each and every initiative of the reactionaries.

Revolutionaries must be flexible enough in their tactics to turn the contradictions that exist within the enemy camp to their own advantage. Ultimately, however, everything depends on the capacity for struggle of the mass of workers and peasants, on their level of organisation and the quality of their leadership. If this is inadequate it will not be a case of the proletariat turning inter-bourgeois contradictions to its advantage, but, on the contrary, of the democratic wing of the bourgeoisie profiting from the combativity of the workers. For this reason the key question from the point of view of the revolutionary left has been, and will continue to be, the political and organisational state of the mass movement, and especially of the proletariat. If we do not pay enough attention to the nature of the dominant political currents in the working-class and peasant milieux, to the level of combativity of the masses and to the real level of their organisation, then we shall be quite incapable of correctly deciding the central tactical aims of the revolution in each period.

The military-fascist dictatorship has succeeded partially disrupting the workers’ trade union organisation, in eliminating a significant portion of the vanguard that had led the proletariat in the period preceding the coup, and in totally suppressing all the rights won in the past. Up till now the workers have had to take these blows one after another, unable to mount any large-scale response.

In this context of very widespread reversals, the vanguard has been asking a number of questions as to what are the tasks for the immediate future. Even if the present period of counter-revolution is by its very nature transitory. the question of how long it will last depends basically on the ability of the revolutionary movement to get the working masses back into fighting order, avoiding at the same time the danger of nourishing opportunist illusions or of falling into ultra-left deviations. It is especially important, at present, to elaborate a correct political line, since several factors seem to place on the agenda a relatively favourable outcome to the present period of ebb in the mass movement:

a) the international situation resulting from the present critical conjuncture of the world capitalist system

b) the extraordinary rise of working-class struggle in the imperialist countries

c) the very nature of the Chilean workers’ movement; its high level of class consciousness and rich tradition of struggle and self-organisation.

But this is no more than a possibility. The central tactical task of the present period is through struggle to transform it into objective reality. To achieve this we must reorganise all the organs of workers’ struggle on a clandestine basis; in every factory, workshop or site we must organise all or at least a large majority of workers in defence of their basic demands.

The mass line of the revolutionary movement must be firmly based on an agreed set of agitational demands of a democratic and transitional nature which will enable us to isolate the dictatorship and to draw into the struggle for its overthrow all those sectors which are discontented with the regime’s economic policy, with the repression and its arbitrary actions. By exploiting every area of discontent, however limited, we can and must unite the immense majority of the population around the working class and build a broad and solid United Anti-Fascist Front. Revolutionary militants who fully understand the implications and limitations of such an orientation have a duty to increase their influence on the vanguard elements of the proletariat, warning them of the unstable character of their temporary conjunctural allies and explaining the need to press forward and develop the objectives of the struggle whenever the dynamic of the confrontation permits.

The tactic of the United Front in no way implies abandoning the ideological struggle against reformist or other counter-revolutionary currents; on the contrary, this is a prerequisite for the success of the tactic. What is required is the regroupment of a heterogeneous vanguard in order to create a more favourable relation of class forces for the achievement of our objectives; there can be no question of covering over the differences that exist amongst these forces. It is not sufficient for us to advance the tactic of the United Front only at the level of the struggle against the military-fascist dictatorship, we must extend it into more substantial permanent agreements among all the revolutionary class-struggle tendencies, by developing a coherent policy of alliances directed toward the strengthening of the revolutionary position and to raising the consciousness and combativity of the proletariat. To this end it is essential that we build a United Front of Revolutionaries. Any concrete struggle launched by such a front would of course arise out of the central tactical objective of the period. This would be true also for military actions.

Time and again the question is raised: what role can such armed actions play within the framework of the orientation we have described, as a factor in the demoralising of enemy forces and as a support for the central task of reorganising the workers’ movement? Like any other tactic, such actions should be evaluated in terms of the existing balance of forces and particularly in terms of the main tendencies in the class struggle at a particular point in time. Thus in a period of progressive deterioration of the enemy position and a rise in the mass struggle, armed actions can objectively help to develop these tendencies and can at the same time serve to open up a period of transition to revolutionary civil war, whatever form this may subsequently take. At a moment, however, when the enemy occupies a particularly advantageous position of strength as is the case today (i.e. June 1974), this kind of action would be equivalent to leading the revolutionary movement to the edge of a precipice.

The experience of the revolutionary left in Brazil is eloquent on this subject – for their failure cannot be put down purely to technical errors but stemmed from a mistaken conception of political struggle. As Lenin noted in recalling the Bolshevik experience: ‘there can be no doubt that without this feature -without revolutionary violence – the proletariat would never have won; but let there be no doubt either that revolutionary violence constitutes a legitimate and necessary tool only at certain moments in the development of the revolution, only in certain special conditions, while the organisation of the proletarian masses, of the workers, has been and remains a much more profound and permanent property of the revolution and a precondition for its victory. It is precisely in the organisation of millions of working people that we find the best hopes for the revolution, the deepest source of its success.

The revolutionary forces must clearly understand this question and devote themselves wholeheartedly to the task of political propaganda and agitation among the masses, organising them and militantly leading them to action. This is presently the only way in which we can advance in a serious and decisive way along the road of proletarian revolution, to a revolution in which the sole and irreplaceable leading role will be played by the toiling masses under the leadership of their revolutionary party.