The 1973 Chilean coup was neoliberalism’s founding anti-democratic moment
Evidence
Besides, as Bert Russell argues, the meaning of Oxi is not already guaranteed — it has to be established politically. The current struggle in Europe — currently focused on Greece, but sure to spread much wider in the near future — is an opportunity for us to reclaim democracy after its capture by neoliberalism in the 1970s and 1980s. The founding moment of neoliberalism was the decidedly anti-democratic overthrow of the democratic socialist Allende government in Chile. This was a double defeat: not only was a democratically elected, non-authoritarian, technologicallyorientated administration overthrown, an extreme neoliberal government was installed in its place. In Chile, the forced forgetting of the possibility of democratic socialism required mass torture, imprisonment and repression. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1955
Categorization
- SEED: The framing of Chile 1973 as the inauguration of neoliberalism rather than a Cold War episode could anchor an essay on how the post-2008 ‘democratic deficit’ traces back to the coup and its normalizing of anti-democratic economic force.
- XREF: Connects to the broader literature on neoliberal ‘shock doctrine’ origins (Klein) and the idea of Chile as laboratory. — connects to: Neoliberalism was founded by the antidemocratic overthrow of Chilean democratic socialism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1955; Neoliberalism in Chile outlasted dictatorship by adapting to democracy — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1614; Neoliberals invoked Carl Schmitt’s sovereignty doctrine to justify backing the Chilean coup — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2149 (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism was founded by the antidemocratic overthrow of Chilean democratic socialism
#corroborates(0.97) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1955 - Neoliberalism existed to crush Sixties democratic socialism and is now failing
#corroborates(0.92) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2022 - Pinochet’s coup was not originally a neoliberal project
#complicates(0.88) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1568 - Neoliberals invoked Carl Schmitt’s sovereignty doctrine to justify backing the Chilean coup
#expands(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2149 - Neoliberalism combined support for liberal democracy with fear of mass democracy
#expands(0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 107 - Military coercion, not free markets, secured the submission Chilean shock therapy required
#expands(0.83) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 342 - Neoliberal reform in Chile depended on propaganda and a coercive military regime
#expands(0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1585 - Chilean constitutionalism weaponized individual rights to protect markets against democratic masses.
#expands(0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 358 - Neoliberalism gutted mass parties to free capital from democratic constraint
#expands(0.79) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 230 - Neoliberalism in Chile outlasted dictatorship by adapting to democracy
#qualifies(0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1614 - Neoliberals redefine freedom as something to be limited and detached from democracy
#expands(0.76) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 119 - Corporatist gremialismo served as the intellectual-recruitment base for Chile’s coup
#expands(0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1555 - The 1973 crisis began a new capitalism immune to state steering and proletarian challenge
#corroborates(0.74) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 18 - Neoliberalism’s weakening of democratic values enables neoconservative moralism and authoritarianism
#expands(0.73) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 169 - Chilean neoliberalism developed in distinguishable stages each with distinct theory.
#qualifies(0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1613