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It is important to understand that de-regulating a cartel-based
economy does not lead automatically to a free enterprise system.
This is because a cartel depends upon the subversion of the principles
of law that define justice, whereas a true free enterprise system
is dependent upon the observance of the principles of law to be
successful. This fine line was blurred by the general subversion
of the law that was made possible by the inauguration of the United
States republic, which had its genesis through a fundamental breach
of the ancient constitution.
Cartel capitalism can only exist when it has the sympathy of
a state willing to bend the law in its favor. Ultimately, it
is the exercise of state power for the enrichment of private interests,
and it embodies a fundamental form of embezzlement of national
wealth disguised by the urgency of protecting national security.
The republic of the Founding Fathers has always been at-home
with heavy-handed police measures, starting with an entire legal
and police infrastructure that enabled slaveowners to exploit
human beings that were subjugated through actions that if done
to non-slaves, would constitute the obvious crimes of blackmail,
extortion, rape, assault, battery and murder in the first degree.
This moral ambivalence was easily translated overseas when the
United States became a colonial world-power, and was faced with
an arms-race with the Soviet bloc. There was no dictator so vile
that the United States Government would not enter into an agreement
with him, if it meant that he would not sign on with the U.S.S.R.
This moral ambivalence can also be found in the articles of
financial columnists, for example, James Flanigan of the Los Angeles
Times. In a recent article entitled "Pinochet Aside, Chile's
Reforms Launched A New Era," (Los Angeles Times, Financial
section, 15 March, 1998), Flanigan attributes all the recent success
of Chile to the former dictator Pinochet, and his flirtation with
"free market" economists from Chicago. What is not
mentioned is the fact that when those economists suggested that
Pinochet relinquish some of his absolute control over Chile, they
were essentially fired; and in the end, they were proved right,
only Pinochet's removal from power really enabled Chile to revive.
What is really well illustrated by the following two letters,
which challenge Flanigan's attribution of Chilean prosperity to
Pinochet, is Flanigan's (and actually, the whole mass media's)
real moral ambivalence about historic truth. Reporters think
that because they are writing a quick article about a current
event, that it excuses their superficial understanding of historic
events. The fact that people who depend upon the media for information
are finding themselves being manipulated for the profit of the
cartels, is beginning to sink home to ordinary Americans, who
always suspected that the discovery of new products that coincided
with sudden revelations of "science" were too close
to be by coincidence.
Additionally, the following two letters address the real repression
visited upon Chile while Pinochet was dictator, and the most unsettling
after-effect is the sense that Flanigan is not really bothered
by the idea that Chile's prosperity may have benefited from the
violation of the civil rights of human beings. The insistence
that human rights should be de-coupled from economic activity
suggests a moral breach that is too profound even to countenance.
Yet it is the real legacy of a republic - and the laws of a republic
- that had its genesis meeting the policing needs of slavemasters…
Letter from Francisco Letelier (Venice, CA)
In 1976, my father, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated on the
streets of Washington, D.C., by a car bomb planted by a Chilean
hit squad acting under orders from Pinochet and Manuel Contreras
(Pinochet's second in command and head of the DINA, the Chilean
intelligence agency). Along with Orlando, an American colleague,
Ronnie Karpen Moffitt, died in the brutal terrorist act.
Barely a month before his death, Orlando's article, "Chile:
Economic 'Freedom' and Political Repression," was published
in the Nation. Now a classic, the article showed how political
repression and economic policies were closely linked. Even so,
economists from the U.S., the "Chicago boys," who were
then guiding Chile's economic policies, disclaimed responsibility
for the Junta's repression. Chileans won a small victory when
Contreras was found guilty of ordering the murders and sentenced
to jail, yet in the minds and hearts of the majority of Chileans
this event fell way short of addressing the needs of justice.
To most it is patently clear that Pinochet was the intellectual
author of this and many other crimes against innocent individuals.
Mr. Flanigan might have done well to speak with a few more Chileans
before reaching conclusions that have little to do with actual
historical events and more profoundly with the legacy we have
inherited from the military regime. It is fair to say that my
country, in spite of Pinochet, was able to set into motion economic
maneuvers that may have contributed to its present apparent prosperity.
It is also clear that the greatest advances in the economy have
occurred since 1990, when Chileans voted out the military and
voted in the coalition government of Christian Democrat Patricio
Aylwin.
While the economy shows great signs of health, in Chile we do
not yet have in place the environmental regulations or social
controls which would delay the destruction of that which we have
built our national industries, cultures and economies upon. How
unfortunate that there are those who argue that these losses are
the price a nation pays for prosperity.
Letter from Professor Maurice Zeitlin, UCLA
What's the reality behind the Chilean "model" imposed
by the repressive regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and extolled
by columnist James Flanigan ("Pinochet Aside, Chile's Reforms
Launched a New Era")? How were "deregulation, privatization
and freeing of prices from government control" achieved?
What were the costs in human lives and suffering? Who benefited?
Pinochet and his comrades-in-arms came to power in the bloodiest
coup - with CIA connivance - in the West since World War II.
They bombed and strafed their own White House, murdered their
nation's constitutional president and over 90 of their fellow
officers loyal to democracy, and killed or "disappeared"
nearly 20,000 citizens, many of them workers who sat down in the
factories in defiance of the military. The military and police
involved in the coup rounded up and imprisoned members of Congress,
party officials, union leaders, students, reporters and countless
others who were suspect. The new regime abolished parties and
unions, forcibly dissolved Congress, tore up the democratic constitution
and, in a word, destroyed one of the most vital and durable constitutional
democracies in the world.
In its stead, Pinochet and his comrades consolidated a brutal,
repressive regime, which carried out unconstrained human rights
abuses throughout its 17 years in power and dismantled one of
the most comprehensive and progressive social welfare structures
on the continent. Only this, the awesome power unleashed against
its own population, not Flanigan's "awesome power of ideas,"
made it possible to impose "reforms" in accord with
the "open market concepts" that Flanigan applauds.
What did these reforms achieve? Even by the usual numbers, the
regime and its "Chicago boys" were a failure. Gross
national income per capita, according to the World Bank, was $1,660
in 1973, the year of the coup, and it dropped steadily for the
next dozen years, barely recovering to the same level, or $1,680
in constant 1987 dollars, as of 1988, the year Pinochet was overwhelmingly
rejected in a national plebiscite. Only after the freely elected
president took office did these figures rise significantly. This
is the reality behind the model of "economic freedom"
Flanigan advocates. God save us and the countries in Latin America
and Asia to which he wants to apply this "prescription"
- which, he assures us, he already "contributed to the sky-high
U.S. bull market."
SOURCE: Letters from the 19 April, 1998, letters section of the Financial section of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition. Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.
(WFI EDITOR: In the same year as the Big Crash, 1929,
the stock market also experienced unprecedented highs, making
the Mighty Rich much richer. During the Depression, the
genuinely rich suffered very little because their assets
were debt free. About 1910, the largest field of employment
was that of domestic servants. Ordinary people - servants,
bakers, mechanics - were all invested in the stock market
in 1929; they lost LOTS of money. The Billionaire class is indifferent to the suffering of others, and is really only interested in humanitarian issues to postpone that inevitable day of reckoning, when the human race disallows private individuals from hijacking natural resources that belong to a traditional nation, in order to hold the human race over a barrel for purposes of extortion and blackmail. Free enterprise is the only workable economic system for a free people, but only if those people live in a law-abiding free community. Any community that allows for a minority of individuals to live according to special laws that enable them to exploit the majority of the society for financial gain, cannot realize the benefits of free enterprise.) |
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