Military coercion, not free markets, secured the submission Chilean shock therapy required

Evidence

What Friedman termed a ‘temporary transitional period’ and Gunder Frank called ‘economic genocide as a calculated policy’ was a deliberate attempt to strip Chileans of non-market social reproduction and force them to submit to the judgment of the market. This was what Friedman meant when he said that ‘underdeveloped’ countries needed ‘an atmosphere of freedom, of maximum opportunities for individuals to experiment and of incentives for them to do so in an environment in which there are objective tests of success and failure – in short, a vigorous, free, capitalistic market’. In Chile, the political miracle was that a (transcendent) military regime operating under a state of emergency had secured the central condition for the (immanent) operation of the price mechanism: submission. Once this condition was met, the ‘normal’ order could be restored. ‘The really important thing about the Chile business’, Friedman said decades later, ‘is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society.’ That miracle, however, cannot be attributed to the work of the free market. It was Pinochet’s jurists who devised an institutional structure to lock in the junta’s economic reforms and prepare for a return to a (limited) democracy. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 342

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the market’s ‘immanent’ operation required a ‘transcendent’ military to force submission — that freedom requires prior unfreedom — dissolves the standard free-market/free-society rhetoric and deserves sustained reflection.
• XREF: Parallels Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine account and the broader thesis that market reforms historically require coercive state power. — connects to: US regional hegemony drove Washington to sabotage Allende’s Chilean government — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 321; Pinochet adopted shock therapy partly because it preserved his monopoly on power — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1575; Neoliberal reform in Chile depended on propaganda and a coercive military regime — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1585 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal reform in Chile depended on propaganda and a coercive military regime #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1585
• Chicago-school doctrine directly guided Chilean deregulation while reinforcing rather than weakening authoritarian rule. #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1588
• Pinochet adopted shock therapy partly because it preserved his monopoly on power #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1575