The Many Faces of Chilean Socialism: Julio César Jobet.

Abstract

The Chilean socialist movement, the Socialist Party, was very different from the parties of the same name both in Europe and in Latin Ameri-ca, being a party of revolutionary Marxism, standing on the positions of anti-imperialism, Latin Americanism, anti-reformism. This party was distinguished by internal ideological pluralism, when right-wing, social-democratic tendencies and extreme left, guided by the experience of the Cuban revolution, as well as Trotskyists and Maoists, coexisted within one party. This party consisted of an outstanding intellectual, historian, publicist Julio Cesar Jobet, who was a kind of theoretician of the party. This article is devoted to the analysis of his views and politi-cal positions. He was a popularizer and disseminator of Marxist thought in Chile. His Marxism was distinguished by a special reading. At the center of his thought were the problems associated with socialist humanism. His activity contributed to the adoption of many of the provisions of his theory by such leading politicians of the Socialist Party as Salvador Allende or Eugenio González. The purpose of the article is to show the influence of Jobet's position on such issues as humanism, democracy, freedom, criticism of Soviet totalitarianism, revolutionism as opposed to the reformism of the Communist Party of Chile on the formation of the policy of the "Chilean path to socialism" during the period of the Government of Popular Unity (1970-1973).