Socialists defined freedom as economic security, contrary to Pinochet’s totalitarian label.

Evidence

For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian. For me, not so. I believe man is free when he has an economic position that guarantees him work, food, housing, health, rest and recreation. I am the founder of the Socialist Party and I must tell you that I am not totalitarian, and I think Socialism frees man. … Don’t confuse totalitarianism with authoritarianism. I don’t know of any totalitarian governments in Latin America. The only one was Chile under Allende. Chile is now a great success. The world shall come to regard the recovery of Chile as one of the great economic miracles of our time. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 302

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts a socialist conception of freedom-as-economic-guarantee against the right’s equation of socialism with totalitarianism, a definitional hinge in the Cold War debate.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalist economic choice was coercive, not genuinely free. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 100; Hayek directly legitimized Pinochet’s dictatorship as more liberal than unrestricted democracy. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1592

Broader Connections

• Capitalist economic choice was coercive, not genuinely free. #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 100
• Hayek directly legitimized Pinochet’s dictatorship as more liberal than unrestricted democracy. #contradicts (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1592