Conclusions

Abstract

One should always be suspicious of people who draw cut and dried ‘lessons’, according to their own political formula, from the experiences of other countries and other times. ‘Men make history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living …’¹ Even the working class suffers from the weight of the traditions of its dead generations. Successful revolutions are made partly in spite of those dead generations, and partly by drawing on their accumulated strength. The task is never cut and dried: certainly it was not so in Chile.