For me, it is hard to dissociate Allende’s tactics, strategy, and faith in liberal democracy from the political context around him. I agree with Jake that violent struggle to bring about change in Chile would have been unwise. With a considerably stable history of democracy throughout the twentieth century and with demands that did not outright require the overthrow of government, violent struggle would have destabilized the state, antagonized a military class already predisposed to be against Allende’s goals, and–most importantly–would have left Allende with the task of rebuilding a state alongside implementing reforms that, based off of electoral results, were not ubiquitously desired.

With a military campaign that appears, at least on its face, doomed, how might have Allende better implemented his policy? As had been stated countless times throughout class and the readings, Allende had little effective control over his military even before the coup. Despotism thus would seem out of the question since the best apparatus for authoritatively controlling state was not under his direct control. Gradualism provides an alternative; though just as Jake noted as well, such a strategy might have “stripped Allende of his revolutionary status.” This prompts me to ask, why do we care about such status? Throughout case studies this semester, we as a class have come across countless individuals and actors whose revolutionary desires superseded the development of an effectual avenues for redress. The lack of ideological coherence amongst the various leaders of Haiti’s revolution has in part left Haitians with an ineffective state. Mao, Lenin, and Stalin all saw the needs to build the state and its economic, political, and social capacities before they could realistically implement socialist reform. To me, this question boils down to a cost benefit analysis of liberal democracy against some form of more authoritarian socialism. Rooted in gradualism and public participation, liberal democracy may be a tenuous and slow route; however, smashing states and rebuilding them to the liking of a cohort of revolutionary individuals elicits way more fear from me.