ABSTRACT
The Chilean Communist party was formed in 1922, when the ten year old Socialist Workers’ Party under Luis Emilio Recabarren changed its name and requested admission to the Communist International. The Chilean party’s program had since 1936 called for a peaceful way to socialism effected by gradual socialist changes, in which the existing system of plural parties and parliamentary democracy would be supplemented by thorough-going economic and social reform. The Communists blamed the defeat of Unidad Popular in the first instance on resistance by foreign capital and the Chilean oligarchy to the government’s policies. The Communists reject on principle any negotiations with Pinochet for peaceful transition. Furthermore, they demand an equal share in resistance front decisions. The points the Communists stressed were “the demand to respect human rights, to reestablish democracy, to permit the return of all political emigres to Chile, to assure the rights of all parties without exception to participate in political life.”
