The Discourse of Class Struggle

Abstract

This chapter corresponds to the second part of the first phase of the deep hermeneutic matrix (see Chapter 4). It traces the shift (marked by the 1973 coup) from a stage when the notion of class struggle was overtly present in the political discourse of Chilean political elites — from the late 1950s to September 11, 1973 — to the progressively extreme absence of such a discourse — from September 11, 1973 to March 1990. It includes an interpretative historical review of the discourse of the leadership of the main political forces of the Left, the Center and the Right, using the notion of the discourse of class struggle as defined in Chapter 4, that is, one that explicitly acknowledges and encourages (by calling — politically-i deologically — for radical or revolutionary social and political transformations) primordial social antagonisms, irrespective of whether or not those antagonisms correspond to a classic confrontation between working and capitalist classes.