Pinochet did introduce free-market capitalism, but this meant real liberty only for the rich. For the working class, "economic liberty" did not exist, as they did not manage their own work nor control their workplaces and lived under a fascist state.
The liberty to take economic (never mind political) action in the forms of forming unions, going on strike, organising go-slows and so on was severely curtailed by the very likely threat of repression. Of course, the supporters of the Chilean "Miracle" and its "economic liberty" did not bother to question how the suppression of political liberty effected the economy or how people acted within it. They maintained that the repression of labour, the death squads, the fear installed in rebel workers could be ignored when looking at the economy. But in the real world, people will put up with a lot more if they face the barrel of a gun than if they do not.
The claim that "economic liberty" existed in Chile makes sense only if we take into account that there was only real liberty for one class. The bosses may have been "left alone" but the workers were not, unless they submitted to authority (capitalist or state). Hardly what most people would term as "liberty."
As far as political liberty goes, it was only re-introduced once it was certain that it could not be used by ordinary people. As Cathy Scheider notes, "economic liberty" has resulted in most Chileans having "little contact with other workers or with their neighbours, and only limited time with their family. Their exposure to political or labour organisations is minimal. . . they lack either the political resources or the disposition to confront the state. The fragmentation of opposition communities has accomplished what brute military repression could not. It has transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals. The cumulative impact of this change is such that we are unlikely to see any concerted challenge to the current ideology in the near future." [Report on the Americas, (NACLA) XXVI, 4/4/93]
In such circumstances, political liberty can be re-introduced, as no one is in a position to effectively use it. In addition, Chileans live with the memory that challenging the state in the near past resulted in a fascist dictatorship murdering thousands of people as well as repeated and persistent violations of human rights by the junta, not to mention the existence of "anti-Marxist" death squads — for example in 1986 "Amnesty International accused the Chilean government of employing death squads." [P. Gunson, A. Thompson, G. Chamberlain, Op. Cit., p. 86] According to one Human Rights group, the Pinochet regime was responsible for 11,536 human rights violations between 1984 and 1988 alone. [Calculation of "Comite Nacional de Defensa do los Derechos del Pueblo," reported in Fortin, September 23, 1988]
These facts that would have a strongly deterrent effect on people contemplating the use of political liberty to actually change the status quo in ways that the military and economic elites did not approve of. In addition, it would make free speech, striking and other forms of social action almost impossible, thus protecting and increasing the power, wealth and authority of the employer over their wage slaves. The claim that such a regime was based on "economic liberty" suggests that those who make such claims have no idea what liberty actually is.
As Kropotkin pointed out years ago, "freedom of press. . . and all the rest, are only respected if the people do not make use of them against the privileged classes. But the day the people begin to take advantage of them to undermine those privileges, then the so-called liberties will be cast overboard." [Words of a Rebel, p. 42] Chile is a classic example of this.
Moreover, post-Pinochet Chile is not your typical "democracy." Pinochet is a senator for life, for example, and he has appointed one third of the senate (who have veto power - and the will to use it - to halt efforts to achieve changes that the military do not like). In addition, the threat of military intervention is always at the forefront of political discussions. This was seen in 1998, when Pinochet was arrested in Britain in regard of a warrant issued by a Spanish Judge for the murders of Spanish citizens during his regime. Commentators, particularly those on the right, stressed that Pinochet's arrest could undermine Chile's "fragile democracy" by provoking the military. In other words, Chile was only a democracy in-so-far as the military let it be. Of course, few commentators acknowledged the fact that this meant that Chile was not, in fact, a democracy after all. Needless to say, Milton Friedman considers Chile to have "political freedom" now.
It is interesting to note that the leading expert of the Chilean "economic miracle" (to use Milton Friedman's words) did not consider that political liberty could lead to "economic liberty" (i.e. free market capitalism). According to Sergio de Castro, the architect of the economic programme Pinochet imposed, fascism was required to introduce "economic liberty" because:
"it provided a lasting regime; it gave the authorities a degree of efficiency that it was not possible to obtain in a democratic regime; and it made possible the application of a model developed by experts and that did not depend upon the social reactions produced by its implementation." [quoted by Silvia Bortzutzky, "The Chicago Boys, social security and welfare in Chile", The Radical Right and the Welfare State, Howard Glennerster and James Midgley (eds.), p. 90]
In other words, fascism was an ideal political environment to introduce "economic liberty" because it had destroyed political liberty. Perhaps we should conclude that the denial of political liberty is both necessary and sufficient in order to create (and preserve) "free market" capitalism? And perhaps to create a police state in order to control industrial disputes, social protest, unions, political associations, and so on, is no more than to introduce the minimum force necessary to ensure that the ground rules the capitalist market requires for its operation are observed?
As Brian Barry argues in relation to the Thatcher regime in Britain which was also heavily influenced by the ideas of "free market" capitalists like Milton Friedman and Frederick von Hayek, perhaps it is:
"Some observers claim to have found something paradoxical in the fact that the Thatcher regime combines liberal individualist rhetoric with authoritarian action. But there is no paradox at all. Even under the most repressive conditions . . . people seek to act collectively in order to improve things for themselves, and it requires an enormous exercise of brutal power to fragment these efforts at organisation and to force people to pursue their interests individually. . . left to themselves, people will inevitably tend to pursue their interests through collective action - in trade unions, tenants' associations, community organisations and local government. Only the pretty ruthless exercise of central power can defeat these tendencies: hence the common association between individualism and authoritarianism, well exemplified in the fact that the countries held up as models by the free-marketers are, without exception, authoritarian regimes" ["The Continuing Relevance of Socialism", in Thatcherism, Robert Skidelsky (ed.), p. 146]
Little wonder, then, that Pinochet's regime was marked by authoritarianism, terror and rule by savants. Indeed, "[t]he Chicago-trained economists emphasised the scientific nature of their programme and the need to replace politics by economics and the politicians by economists. Thus, the decisions made were not the result of the will of the authority, but they were determined by their scientific knowledge. The use of the scientific knowledge, in turn, would reduce the power of government since decisions will be made by technocrats and by the individuals in the private sector." [Silvia Borzutzky, Op. Cit., p. 90]
Of course, turning authority over to technocrats and private power does not change its nature - only who has it. Pinochet's regime saw a marked shift of governmental power away from protection of individual rights to a protection of capital and property rather than an abolition of that power altogether. As would be expected, only the wealthy benefited. The working class were subjected to attempts to create a "perfect labour market" - and only terror can turn people into the atomised commodities such a market requires.
Perhaps when looking over the nightmare of Pinochet's regime we should ponder these words of Bakunin in which he indicates the negative effects of running society by means of science books and "experts":
"human science is always and necessarily imperfect. . . were we to force the practical life of men - collective as well as individual - into rigorous and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we would thus condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a Procrustean bed, which would soon dislocate and stifle them, since life is always an infinitely greater thing than science." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 79]
The Chilean experience of rule by free market ideologues prove Bakunin's points beyond doubt. Chilean society was forced onto the Procrustean bed by the use of terror and life was forced to conform to the assumptions found in economics textbooks. And as we proved in the last section, only those with power or wealth did well out of the experiment.