CHILE AND THE QUESTION OF PEACEFUL TRANSITION 27 means of production into the hands of the people. The right-wing bourgeois parties and their governments are, suffering bankruptcy with increasing frequency. In these circumstances the working class, by rallying around itself the toiling peasantry, the intelligentsia, all patriotic forces, and resolutely repulsing the opportunist elements who are incapable of giving up the policy of compromise with the capitalists and landlords, is in a position to defeat the reactionary forces opposed to the popular interest, to capture a stable majority in parliament, and transform the latter from an organ of bourgeois democracy into a genuine instrument of people's will. In such an event this institution, traditional in many highly developed capitalist countries, may become an organ of genuine democracy, democracy for the working people. The winning of a stable parliamentary majority backed by a mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat and of all working people could create for the working class of a number of capitalist and former colonial countries the conditions needed to secure fundamental social changes. In the countries where capitalism is still strong and has a huge military and political apparatus at its disposal, the reactionary forces will of course inevitably offer serious resistance. There the transition to socialism will be attended by a sharp class, revolutionary struggle. Whatever the form of transition to socialism, the decisive and indispensable factor is the political leadership of the working class headed by its vanguard. Without this there can be no transition to socialism. If the above declaration is studied without any preconceived idea and prejudice it is evident that this formulation cannot by any means be equated with the social democratic concept or with parliamentarism in the generally understood sense of the term. The concept of the possibility to utilize parliament for the transition to socialism formulated by the 20th Congress of the GPSU was described as the possibility of the peaceful transition to socialism. Roth the right revisionist and the left-sectarian trends in the international Communist movement seized upon these words "peaceful transition to socialism" out of the context in order to distort the very essence of the above concept. But it is evident that (a) peaceful transition read in the above context does not mean abandonment of the class struggle, nor does it imply the possibility of utilizing the parliamentary means without the backing of a mass revolutionary movement of all the working people under the leadership of the proletariat; (b) the formulation of the 20th Congress does not absolutize the possibility of a peaceful transition for all capitalist countries nor does it absolutize this possibility under all circumstances. The formulation of the 20th Congress was further elaborated and strengthened by the international conferences of the Commuiiist Parties held in 1957 and 1961. There were certain weaknesses in the formulations of the 20th Congress. These were removed in the formulations of the 1957