"Armies and Politics" (1977 CPGB work, PDF)

https://archive.org/details/ArmiesAndPolitics

Scanned by me.

Quote:

1. Coups - Right, Left and Centre
2. The Army and Political Power
3. Can the Army Act Independently of Classes?
4. External and Internal Factors
5. Coups and Conspiracies
6. Why Progressive Military Coups Take Place
7. Officers and Social Class
8. Sudan - Coup and Counter-coup
9. Why Reactionary Coups Succeed
10. The Indonesian Catastrophe
11. Chile - Why the Coup Succeeded
12. Portugal - An Army Won and Lost
13. Western Europe - Aligning the Army with the People
14. Lessons for Britain - and Warnings from Northern Ireland

Ismail wrote:

https://archive.org/details/ArmiesAndPolitics

Scanned by me.
1. Coups - Right, Left and Centre
2. The Army and Political Power
3. Can the Army Act Independently of Classes?
4. External and Internal Factors
5. Coups and Conspiracies
6. Why Progressive Military Coups Take Place
7. Officers and Social Class
8. Sudan - Coup and Counter-coup
9. Why Reactionary Coups Succeed
10. The Indonesian Catastrophe
11. Chile - Why the Coup Succeeded
12. Portugal - An Army Won and Lost
13. Western Europe - Aligning the Army with the People
14. Lessons for Britain - and Warnings from Northern Ireland

If the author *knows* why reactionary coups succeed, why haven't they foiled them?

The British revisionists, following their Soviet counterparts, promoted the idea that bourgeois-nationalist regimes could carry out a "non-capitalist path of development" via military coups and the like. Since in practice their schemes tied the hands of the working-class and subordinated them to the bourgeoisie, reactionary coups are always going to succeed. Woddis (the author of this book) was one of those to the right even of the revisionists, and claimed for example that Allende's "sectarianism" was a reason for the coup against him succeeding rather than because Allende followed the disastrous road of the "peaceful transition to socialism" preached by the Soviet and other revisionists.

That means that the right-wingers are far smarter than leftists, for how can one explain that they managed to foil Allende's government and the leftists couldn't foil a right-wing governement almost anywhere in the world?

Who are the "leftists" you're referring to, in that case?

As I said, in Allende's case, as well-intentioned as he was, was still beholden to the Chilean revisionists who followed their Soviet counterparts in urging reformism and "peace" rather than class struggle. I actually scanned a good account of this some time ago: https://archive.org/details/ChileJorgePalacios