Chile: the balanced view : a recopilation of articles about the Allende years and after

elections) and declared illegal by the courts and the Controller; and 4.° complicity in the stockpiling of arms by leftist groups, the discovery of which finally moved the Chilean armed forces to act. None of these factors would have been substantially altered by increased U.S. or international assistance. To sum up, the economic and political policies of the Allende government were a failure, in and of themselves. Our justified horror at the excesses of the September military coup has prevented us from appreciating the enormity oHhat failure. For in many ways the Allende experiment was not an adequate test of whether it is possible to achieve democra– tic socialism -in the sense of government control and direction of basic economic activity for the benefit of low-income groups- in a less-developed country. No effort was made lo persuade the competing Chilean inleresl groups of the necessity for self-restraint and austerity in .order to achieve economic independence. Allende's coalition politics were plagued by his fear of alienating the left wing of his own Socialist Party, and so, except for the adoption of the copper nationalization amendment, he never attempted to broaden his support by an appeal to nationalism ("1 am not president of all Chileans"). As the experien– ces of Peru and the United Arab Republic (to name but two cases) have demonstrated, defiance of international corporations and foreign goverf'\ments nee9 not lead to economic OJ polítical collapse. The Allende policy, however, which combined inflation with delibe– rate class pOlarization, was a formula for disaster. The lesson, if there is one, in the relations between the United States and the Allende government is that a government which is determined to nalionalize U.S. companies without compensation and lo carry out an internal program which effectively destroys its ability to earn foreign exchange cannot expect to receive a suosidy to do so from either the U.S. government or from U.S. private banks. It may, however, receive someassistance from other countries either for political (aid to a fellow "socialist" country) or'economic (encou– ragement of exports) reasons-at least for a time. What it cannot do is blame all its problems on foreign imperialists and their domestic allies, and ignore elementary principies of economic rationality and efféctive politicallegitimacy in its internal policies. No amount of foreign assistance can be a substitute for these, and no amoun't of foreign subversion or economic pressure can destroy them if they exist. 121