LESSONS OF THE CHILEAN EXPERIENCE 17 lessons of the Chilean tragedy is that it is necessary to cast aside all illusions of formal 'legality' and constitutional 'prejudices' if they tie the hands of the people while giving free rein to imperialism and reaction. This is self-evident.'54 The domination of the US imperialists over the Chilean economy and their all-out efforts to help native reaction are basic data in the situation. To cite them, as Rajeswara Rao does, as reasons for the failure of the Chilean progressive forces is tantamount to implying that the struggle for Chile's liberation is eternally doomed to failure. Rajeswara Rao's plea of a lack of majority in parliament is really a typical specimen of the illusions of legality and constitutional prejudice which the Chilean Communist leader now, belatedly, deplores. The latter goes on to say, "Those in Chile who day in and day out demanded adherence to 'legality' and with casuistry accused the Allende government of violating the Constitution later scrapped the Constitution completely and abrogated the laws with the aid of rockets and shells."5 While internal reaction, as we have elsewhere observed, buttressed and guided by US imperialism, the leader of international counter-revolution, threw overboard all constitutional pretences and resorted to all the weapons in its arsenal—ranging from economic and technical sabotage to attempts at armed coups interspersed with murders and attempted murders —the Marxist leaders of the Chilean people continued to swear by 'legality', 'constitutionality', 'legislative procedure' and all the rest of the bourgeois semantic inventory discarded by the Chilean bourgeoisie itself.6 Indeed, the Marxist leaders of the Popular Unity alliance in Chile nurtured deep-rooted constitutional illusions. President Allende told a seminar held in Santiago in March 1972, "We want to use the bourgeois institutional framework to achieve the changes in economic, political and social fields which the country is demanding and needs and to achieve socialism."7 While it is certainly incumbent on revolutionary socialists to utilize all available opportunities within the bourgeois constitutional framework to advance the struggle for socialism, it is wrong and Utopian to expect any major success in this direction through the constitutional process alone. That Allende's party suffered from this wrong orientation will be clear from the perspective held out by Carlos Altamirano, general secretary of the Socialist Party, soon after the installation of the new President. Altamirano said: We also consider it imperative to introduce real changes in the Republic's institutional structures and in the anachronistic administrative mechanisms. If these changes should not be understood or approved by the reactionary forces, the government would have to submit the final decision to the verdict of the people through a mechanism foreseen in the political constitution of the state, namely, the national plebiscite.8 Another constituent of the ruling coalition, MAPU, also a Marxist