In a recent Los Angeles Times article, the Chilean leftist author Ariel Dorfman commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the election of Salvador Allende to the presidency of Chile.
A brief historical recap: after years of effort, the Chilean left in 1970 won the presidency in a three-man race between an old-line oligarch, a centrist social democrat and socialist Allende. In such a winner-take-all contest, the margin of victory can be as slim as 34/33/33. Allende did not do much better. With his opponents evenly split, he garnered 36% of the vote. As he was not the centrist candidate, two-thirds of the voters were to a single side, i.e. to his right. With only a slim plurality, Allende was nevertheless the duly elected president of the country. What he did not have was a clear mandate to turn Chile into a socialist country.
Needless to say, his supporters were jubilant. Says Dorfman:
It was a thrilling moment to be alive. Anything seemed possible. I remember the people — workers who had built that country and been denied its riches, women from shantytowns with children in tow — pouring into the city center, their rebellious presence portending a new social order.
But the new social order would be short-lived. Without the overwhelming support of the voters or, more importantly, without the support of entrenched government institutions, Allende gave it a shot. He made enough progress that his coalition garnered 44% of the vote in the subsequent 1972 elections. This was a bit too much for the far right and led to the bloody coup in 1973 in which Allende committed suicide as the military, under General Augusto Pinochet, took control of the country.
The stories of the Pinochet coup are brutal. There is no denying the horror imposed by the generals. This was all the worse because Chile was heretofore one of the world’s most stable democracies. Unlike other Latin American counties – particularly Argentina and Brazil, Chile had not seen anything like this for a century and a half.
Again, keeping a longer story on the short side, Pinochet imposed a neo-liberal economic model with a vengeance. His Chicago Boys – disciples of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman — opened the country to free markets with some spectacular results. Dorfman sees it differently:
The death of Chilean democracy … turned the country into a ruthless laboratory for neoliberal economics, the same savage capitalism that is being vigorously contested in the United States today
Dorfman equates the savage introduction of robust capitalism in Chile with capitalism itself. Brutality aside – and I appreciate that that is not an easy thing to cavalierly put aside – the country prospered. This is the same capitalism that brought a billion Chinese out of poverty in just a few decades. In that case, the authoritarianism came from the left.
The problem is not economic but political. There are scores of countries around the world which prosper with market economies not under the unduly heavy hand of government. Dorfman would likely disagree but capitalism is not inherently savage or ruthless. It is inherently the democratic and efficient way to get the people what they want. The mongrelization of capitalism — by the left or the right –undermines markets but this is unnecessary and usually ill-advised. .
An incredibly endowed country, Chile in the 1960s was nevertheless barely in the top tier of undeveloped countries. It was more lethargic than destitute. It ran like a jogger on the beach. It took too much unproductive energy to push the sand around to make any meaningful forward progress. After decades of patriarchal rule, the social democrats tried to institute economic change but the overinvolvement of government stymied the private sector while failing to provide a viable alternative. A friend who lived in Chile in the 1960s used to say: Chile will be the first country to transplant an appendix.
Chile is so physically blessed, it should be a prosperous country. Picture North America from Baja to the Alaskan panhandle and flip it upside down. In addition to a major chuck of the world’s copper, Chile has a bountiful 3,000-mile coastline and agricultural land to rival any on the planet. Between the arid desert in the north and fjordic islands in the south, there is fertile land many times the size of California’s central valley. All this and only half the population of California to support. Historically, Chile’s only geographic negative was its remote location. However, with jet planes and excess bandwidth, this now matters less. Worldwide communication is instantaneous and summer cantaloupe from Chile is available in the northern hemisphere in winter.
Chile seems to be doing better than most of the counties on the planet. It remains a relatively prosperous market economy with all the pros and cons appurtenant thereto. How might the Chilean experience have played out differently had the Allende presidency played out? Dorfman hypothesizes:
I have often fantasized about how different the world would be if Allende had not been overthrown … in a bloody coup. I wonder where humanity would be if his peaceful revolution had been allowed to run its course and become a template for other countries.
Really? Maybe like… hmmm…Venezuela? I do not conflate Allende with Hugo Chavez. The latter was a buffoon with charisma and not much else. The former was a sincere reformer with too little support for his agenda. Even given the opportunity, however, I do not see Allende having any more success than Chavez or Castro.
The issue isn’t personality or political acumen, but rather economic philosophy. So long as socialism demands loyalty to the state above loyalty to one’s self and one’s family, it is doomed to failure. The state is too big, too slow, too amorphous, too ignorant and too corrupt to meet individual needs. Critical life choices conscripted by bureaucrats – well meaning at best; self-serving at worst – is not a viable blueprint for prosperity.
The question for Mr. Dorfman is this: Acknowledging the manifest shortcoming of Hugo Chavez and Augusto Pinochet alike, where would you rather live today, Santiago or Caracas?