Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian émigré and University of Chicago professor whose 1944 Road to Serfdom dared to suggest that state planning would produce not "freedom and prosperity" but "bondage and misery, " visited Pinochet’s Chile a number of times. He was so impressed that he held a meeting of his famed Société Mont Pélérin there. He even recommended Chile to Thatcher as a model to complete her free-market revolution. The Prime Minister, at the nadir of Chile’s 1982 financial collapse, agreed that Chile represented a "remarkable success" but believed that Britain’s "democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent" make "some of the measures" taken by Pinochet "quite unacceptable." Like Friedman, Hayek glimpsed in Pinochet the avatar of true freedom, who would rule as a dictator only for a "transitional period, " only as long as needed to reverse decades of state regulation. "My personal preference, " he told a Chilean interviewer, "leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." In a letter to the London Times he defended the junta, reporting that he had "not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende." Of course, the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet’s regime weren’t talking. Hayek’s University of Chicago colleague Milton Friedman got the grief, but it was Hayek who served as the true inspiration for Chile’s capitalist crusaders. It was Hayek who depicted Allende’s regime as a way station between Chile’s postwar welfare state and a hypothetical totalitarian future. Accordingly, the Junta justified its terror as needed not only to prevent Chile from turning into a Stalinist gulag but to sweep away fifty years of tariffs, subsidies, capital controls, labor legislation, and social welfare provisions -- a "half century of errors, " according to finance minister Sergio De Castro, that was leading Chile down its own road to serfdom. "To us, it was a revolution, " said government economist Miguel Kast, an Opus Dei member and follower of both Hayek and American Enterprise Institute theologian Michael Novak. The Chicago economists had set out to affect, radically and immediately, a "foundational" conversion of Chilean society, to obliterate its "pseudo-democracy" (prior to 1973, Chile enjoyed one of the most durable constitutional democracies in the Americas). Where Friedman made allusions to the superiority of economic freedom over political freedom in his defense of Pinochet, the Chicago group institutionalized such a hierarchy in a 1980 constitution named after Hayek’s 1960 treatise The Constitution of Liberty. The new charter enshrined economic liberty and political authoritarianism as complementary qualities. They justified the need of a strong executive such as Pinochet not only to bring about a profound transformation of society but to maintain it until there was a "change in Chilean mentality." Chileans had long been "educated in weakness, " said the president of the Central Bank, and a strong hand was needed in order to "educate them in strength." The market itself would provide tutoring: When asked about the social consequences of the high bankruptcy rate that resulted from the shock therapy, Admiral José Toribio Merino replied that "such is the jungle of . . . economic life. A jungle of savage beasts, where he who can kill the one next to him, kills him. That is reality." An exceprt from Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire:The Road from Serfdom by GREG GRANDIN Grandin’s book, "Empire’s Workshop, " goes into more detail about U.S. intervention in Latin America as well as covering the Reagan (counter)Revolution in which free marketeers, religious fundamentalists, and U.S. nationalists coalesce into a right-wing alliance to strong arm political, military, and trade policies in Latin America.
A somewhat-related book on the subject of U.S. intervention in Latin America is Inevitable Revolutions by Walter LaFeber, superb in both breadth and incision.
Democracy does little else but depose one tyrant and install a nation's worth in his place.
The Carson qoute springs to mind:
The ideal 'free market' society of such people, it seems, is simply actually existing capitalism, minus the regulatory and welfare state: a hyper-thyroidal version of nineteenth century robber baron capitalism, perhaps; or better yet, a society 'reformed' by the likes of Pinochet, the Dionysius to whom Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys played Plato.
Irish Liberty Forum
MatthewWilliam: The Carson qoute springs to mind: The ideal 'free market' society of such people, it seems, is simply actually existing capitalism, minus the regulatory and welfare state: a hyper-thyroidal version of nineteenth century robber baron capitalism, perhaps; or better yet, a society 'reformed' by the likes of Pinochet, the Dionysius to whom Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys played Plato.
True, although I'm pretty sure that Hayek's quote is being taken out of context. Woudn't suprise me, as I assume the author is a social democrat. They hate Hayek
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
I'm unclear as to the purpose of posting this here.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Jon Irenicus:I'm unclear as to the purpose of posting this here.
True. There's no question attatched to it.
At least he's not trying to sell me shoes.
I post daily, often several times daily, on a couple of Myspace "political economy" forums. The sheer amount of "free market=George Bush", "free market=NAFTA", "free market=Robber barons", "free market=a constant lowering of workers' wages+ ever-increasing profits for the kinda folks who inspired the Monopoly boardgame model with the hat..." is both bewildering and highly amusing; often cartoonish, amateurish. I post there (consider me a Roderick Long/Rothbard kinda guy) cuz the volume is high and ignorant. Plus it satisfies my Zappa-esque, Dada-ist, Monty Python-ish aesthetic sensibilities. Now and then there actually are folks who have a brain and have done, uh, some homework.
In response to some poster's attempt to tar the Miseans/free market crowd (ala Hayek) with Pinochet-like right-wing terror I decided that instead of dealing with a gargantuan step-by-step response that I'd post the thing here and thus solicit responses/"answers" from you fine folks who probably know a whole lot more than I do and particular about the above Post Number One.
Yes, I know how humans aren't Borg's: the hey-we're-almost-ideological-pals dance macabre of R.Nader and P.Buchanan, some socialists have come out in favor of a non-socialist like Obama, that some market anarchist types sided with R.Paul.....all of these being examples of hopes to get an ideological ball rolling in a ceratin direction, hard-and-fast principles sorta be damned...
In light of all that I am thusly humbly seeking ideas that are kinda "quickie". Those forums I fool around in aren't really condusive to long-winded exposes and back-ground info. Besides, one mind is not as useful as are many minds. Y'all are the "many minds". Let the games begin.
If you do need shoes lemme know what size. The silk-stocking part of Dallas has some rather nifty garage sales on the weekends. I can hook you up for a nominal service charge, of course. But I'd much rather get hooked-up with some nifty responses to the Post Number One. Consider it real-world practising. I rarely hang-out/debate all the time with a circle-jerk of "my own kind" (here for example). As far as engagements/intellectual banter/learning etc goes I seem to prefer being a guerilla amongst the enemy.
Again, I pose the question: if y'all were confronted with Post Number One what avenues of response are available? I seek the answers cuz I'm only one mind. That one mind is not enough. Tag, you're it!
Plus practically everything Vargas Llosa has ever written concerning political economy south of the Rio Grande.
GB1Kenobi:Again, I pose the question: if y'all were confronted with Post Number One what avenues of response are available? I seek the answers cuz I'm only one mind. That one mind is not enough. Tag, you're it!
That Hayek was wrong, but personal failings and contradictions of one man don't mean anything for the goodness or badness of free market economics.
Hayek was wrong. He was a genius in some areas (his work on capital and on information problems comes to mind), but completely wrong in others (epistemology and his unfortunate concessions to statism). No one's perfect. I doubt that you will find very many honest libertarians (ie; not Catoites or Beltway fibbertarians) defending Pinochet. I still think that the quote is out of context, though (wasn't there something on the Mises blog about that a couple of weeks ago?).
wombatron: GB1Kenobi:Again, I pose the question: if y'all were confronted with Post Number One what avenues of response are available? I seek the answers cuz I'm only one mind. That one mind is not enough. Tag, you're it! Hayek was wrong. He was a genius in some areas (his work on capital and on information problems comes to mind), but completely wrong in others (epistemology and his unfortunate concessions to statism). No one's perfect. I doubt that you will find very many honest libertarians (ie; not Catoites or Beltway fibbertarians) defending Pinochet. I still think that the quote is out of context, though (wasn't there something on the Mises blog about that a couple of weeks ago?).
Basically I think he was a good economist, but a bad or weak "libertarian". Good on economics, not so hot on politics.
True enough to a certain extent. Lenin and Stalin were smarter: they didn't allow foreigners with pens and cameras to roam around and they both were more watchful, I presume, when it came to overseas correspondence...
Byzantine: GB1Kenobi:Pinochet-like right-wing terror Wildly overstated. Pinochet's entire reign would compare to a day's work under Lenin or Stalin.
GB1Kenobi:Pinochet-like right-wing terror
Wildly overstated.
Pinochet's entire reign would compare to a day's work under Lenin or Stalin.
Pinochet's terror compares favorably to Stalin, and thus enrages leftists, because it was only about preserving his power and he otherwise returned freedom and normalcy to his country, while leftist terror had in mind the purpose of making a new humanity, and is thus excusable because it was for a good cause.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Keep in mind he was never a libertarian, but a classical liberal. Though all libertarians are classical liberals, the reverse is not necessarily true - some classical liberals were far less radical.
Jon Irenicus: Keep in mind he was never a libertarian, but a classical liberal. Though all libertarians are classical liberals, the reverse is not necessarily true - some classical liberals were far less radical. -Jon
I believe when Hayek was asked if he was a libertarian he said no. He wanted to be called an "old whig".
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
At least he was not a conservative. lol
Roderick Long said once, that the late Sudha Shenoy told him, that when Hayek got older, he told her, that if he was younger he would be a free-market anarchist.
Pinochet saved his country, and many of the men he executed were probably real-live bandits/guerillas/militants. Mentioning him in the same sentence as a Soviet tyrant is ludicrous.
Even assuming Pinochet's estimated 4000 victims were pure-as-the-driven-snow, I'm A. Skeptical as to what this says about Austrian economics (even the Marxists like Chomsky can't deny his chief influence was the Chicago school, and Austrian economics has little to say about democratic versus autocratic means of government), and B. Highly leery of those who hold him to be in the same league as Hitler-Hirohito (both around 28 million victims, if you add up WWII civilian casualties for Europe and Asia respectively). The same people who go on the warpath about him defend and even idolize people like Castro (30,000), Che Guevera (the Himmler to the aforementioned), Pol Pot (who killed a quarter of his own countrymen in less than a decade) and let's not even get started on Stalin and Mao.
It seems only genocide and thuggery committed by real or imagined fascists (a term which nowadays seems to denote anybody who dissents from PC party lines, especially on immigration) is worth noting or caring about. When the Pope restored one of several Catholic bishops excommunicated for refusal to accept the rulings of Vatican II, the Euro-left did what Paul Gottfried beautifully described as "writhing on the ground in theatrical indignation" over this largely powerless old man's denial of Hitler's atrocities, while a decade earlier, the Prime Minister of France openly and completely denied the crimes of Stalin, to the praise of the establishment press. Pinochet also stepped down from his position as Chilean dictator, something I have a hard time imagining Mussolini or Tito doing, let alone Hitler or Stalin.
Also, many Austrian figures are fervently opposed to US foreign interventionism, be it in Latin America or anywhere else, so it's rather like arguing against Stalin to a Trotskyite, in economic terms.
Pinochet also stepped down from his position as Chilean dictator, something I have a hard time imagining Mussolini or Tito doing, let alone Hitler or Stalin.
He's the rare case of a "dictator" ideologically driven rather than the usual megalomaniac that cares for nothing other than his own pomp and circus.
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