National renewal in the discourse of neoliberal transition in Britain and Chile (original) (raw)

Neoliberalism as a capitalist revolution in Chile: Antecedents and irreversibility

Paolo Sylos Labini. Quarterly Review, 2019

This essay offers a historical perspective on the economic reforms carried out by the Chilean civic-military dictatorship that governed the country between 1973 and 1990. The regime applied some of the earliest and most extensive neoliberal reforms in Latin America, which included labor flexibilization, the end to agrarian reform, capitalization of the countryside, and privatization of public enterprises in almost all sectors, including pension funds, healthcare and education. Unlike the rest of Latin America, after the mid-1980s these reforms produced high growth, although they generated economic inequality and the concentration of wealth.

Neoliberalism in Argentina and Chile: common antecedents, divergent paths

This paper contrasts the experiences of neoliberalism in Argentina and Chile, exploring why two countries that implemented apparently similar market reforms came to different stances on marketization: a post-neoliberal politics in Argentina, and a tempered neoliberalism in Chile that has only recently come under scrutiny. The paper traces the common antecedents that inspired these reforms and the different outcomes and reactions that they produced. In contrast to recent literature, which emphasizes one or another explanatory factor, this article offers a synthetic comparison of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors in play, helping to understand how capitalists achieved a hegemonic class position in Chile and not in Argentina.

Co-Constitution and Renewal: The Material and the Symbolic Dimensions of Neoliberal Domination in Chile, 1973-2016

Relying on a critical cultural political economy approach (CCPE), this paper shows how the past four decades of Chilean history can best be understood by examining the interaction between the material and semiotic dimensions. Analyzing the shifting and mutually-constitutive interaction between material (structural) and semiotic (meaning-making) practices is crucial for assessing (1) continuities and ruptures enacted by center-left Concertación (1990-2009) and the Nueva Mayoría administrations (2014-2018); (2) debates about how Chile's "progressive" public policies shift the boundaries between the commodified and non-commodified realms of social life; and (3) possible outcomes to the crises of legitimacy and representation currently afflicting Chile's political and economic institutions. Using a critical cultural political economy approach (CCPE), I examine the major transformations experienced by Chilean society over the past four decades and draw implications for contemporary struggles to reform economic, social and political structures. The analysis presented here suggests the urgency of developing a more comprehensive definition of "neoliberalism," one more attentive to the articulations among the accumulation of capital, hegemonic practices and the production of subjectivity.

Towards a theory of neoliberal constitutionalism: Addressing Chile’s first constitution-making laboratory

2021

Before neoliberalism became global, it was an intellectual project that had a particular view of the power of constitutions to limit sovereign states, anchor economic freedoms and protect markets from democratic pressures for greater equality. In Latin America and the developing world, neoliberalism has long been identified with the political economy of the Washington Consensus. However, the comprehensive study of its legal foundations and institutional arrangements is still an area of limited scholarly attention. This article attempts to advance in that direction. By examining the work of FriedrichA.Hayek,Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, it explores a theory of neoliberal constitutionalism within Chile, the so-called first neoliberal laboratory. These authors visited the country during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90), and were connected with top Chilean authorities as part of their global ambitions to implement their theoretical agendas in real-world scenarios. The articl...

Candide's Path. Subjective Reactions to Neoliberalism in Chile (2000-2018

2019

The relationship of Chilean population with the neoliberal economic model has been part of academic and public discussion. In these debates, there have been several false equivalencies (resignation with acceptation) and superficial readings (what exactly means that people are discontent with the model?) The idea of a neoliberal subjectivity that it does not depend on legitimacy has grown in importance in recent years, but at the same time we should take on account that simply living under neoliberalism, to know how to act in it, do not constitute in itself a neoliberal subjectivity. To understand subjectivity under neoliberalism we need a more complex view. We propose in this paper that empirically the relationship with the neoliberal model has at least four layers in Chie: The first on the evaluation of the economic situation, the second about the 'naturalization' of the model (the world works that way), the third about self-image and the fourth about moral evaluation. We argue that neoliberalism has been embraced more on cognitive than in moral levels: Neoliberalism was more effective in deleting the credibility of alternatives that in to generate an embrace of the model itself. The neoliberal model was able to create its reproduction through discontent: The refuge in personal life (to tend the garden as in Voltaire's Candide) did create consumer and work behaviours that the model wanted. The current crisis shows the limits of that adaptation; but this subjective relationship with neoliberalism in contexts when it was not accepted neither generated a pure neoliberal subjectivity shows that to underestimate its ability to reproduce itself could be a mistake.

Neoliberalism in Historical Perspective: The Chilean Case

Chile was an early adopter of neoliberal economic policies following the ruthless military coup that deposed the Allende government in September 1973 marking the end of Chilean democracy for 17 years. Neoliberal reforms were applied in a context in which parliament was closed, political parties declared in recess or banned, labor union activity was severely restricted and no free and independent press was permitted. The neoliberal package in the 1970s included price deregulation, anti-inflationary policies based first on shock treatment (fiscal and monetary restraint) and then complemented by exchange rate-based stabilization, a cut in import tariffs, the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the curbing of labor unions, and the elimination of restrictions to the mobility of international capital. In the early 1980s privatization was extended to education, health, pension administration and housing provision. After the restoration of democracy in the early 1990s neoliberal policies were, overall, maintained although social spending was increased as well as public investment.

The Book of Revolt and the House of Rejection: On Neoliberalism and the Constitutional Process in Chile, 2019–2022

South Atlantic Quarterly, 2023

As an introductory framework to the dossier, this article analyzes the Chilean political process based on the images that (re)emerged with the 2019 revolt and that were deployed in the constitutional process channeled into a Constitutional Convention (2020–22). It shows how the old ghosts of class, gender, and the nation appear in these “mental images,” the same ghosts that have historically operated in the defeat of transformative projects and contributed to the reproduction of an authoritarian and elitist society, whose neoconservative/neoliberal oligarchy has managed to restore the conditions of its domination. The article proposes these observations to stimulate the reading of the contributions to this dossier, which problematize different aspects of the political process under discussion: the aporetic relationship among revolt, violence, and law; the citizenry's turn from a desire of community and transformation expressed in the revolt to a feeling of fear and attachment to private property; writing as a practice, support, and challenge of the people's critical expression; the tension between the performance of the revolt as a failure and as a reset of neoliberal performativity; and the territorial and deterritorializing wagers in relation to affective infrastructures that became revolt and that continue through other means.