# Pinochet passes -- what is his legacy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 11, 2006, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690 "2006-12-11T15:31:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/41 "2006-12-12T03:11:28Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] I didn’t say there wasn’t a difference…I said that Allende’s party was a communist, not a “democratic socialist” one. They weren’t like the Social Democrats of Germany, or the Socialists of France, or the Labour party of England…they were a Trotskyite party that believed in Marxist-Leninism. [/QUOTE] Democratic socialists are not social democrats. If I’m not mistaken, democratic socialists’ goal is to build a socialist society through democratic means. (Social democrats, of course, work in the context of a market economy.) **BrainGlutton** claims that Allende was a democratic socialist, which would make sense to me. But democratic socialists are also not communists. Your quote of Allende’s party’s founding principles says the following: > [@](#): > > The evolutionary transformation by means of the democratic system is not possible […] which would seem to imply that Allende, if he suscribed to these principles, wasn’t in fact really a democratic socialist. Can you tell me where you found this quote, so I can check if it was a tenet of Allende’s party at the time? ---
**Author:** ![Aquila\_Be](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a698b9/32.png) [@Aquila\_Be](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquila_Be)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/42 "2006-12-12T09:53:49Z")
Probably the only improvement was to prevent someone like Allende becoming President with only 38% of the popular vote (your link) in a three way contest. Under the current constitution a run off election will now have to be carried out between the top two contenders if neither gets 50+%. Big deal. When the new constitution was drafted it fell into the error adopted by almost every Latin American country. They just can’t let go of the delusion that one “El Presidente” is capable of running a whole country. There’s simply too much power held by every “El Presidente” in almost every South and Central American country. Chile’s constitution is no exception. For that reason alone, it’s likely that the first mental incompetent who manages to gain the presidency in Chile will transform the country to a political and economic basket case. _Targo_ ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/43 "2006-12-12T10:55:36Z")
(I posted this on the MSIMS thread, I value your opinion.) I have been thinking about this. Pinochet and Castro are like evil twins. We can project on them what we like. Right-wing nut cases praise Pinochet for saving the Chilean economy, while ignoring the Caravan of Death. Left-wing head cases praise Castro for advances in education and whatnot, but turn a blind eye to his mercenaries in Africa, his prisons, his quarantine of AIDS people. Perhaps we need to go back to our basic values. The people of Cuba and Chile ought to have been allowed to find their own destinies by themselves, without the guidance of strong men. Imperfect as it is, democracy would have been better for both nations. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/44 "2006-12-12T12:12:53Z")
Democracy is a strange thing, it takes a long time to grow. Democratic processes can lead to election of very non-democratic governments. Expecting that one can transplant Western styles of government into states with no ‘racial memory’ of bloodless change of government (which is what our ‘democracy’ is about) is being rather optimistic. Given a choice of stability and no vote or a vote and chaos, most people would go for stability. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/45 "2006-12-12T17:41:06Z")
[QUOTE=JRDelirious] …A bad President who’s (IYO) ruining your country is one thing; a dictator who is going around “disappearing” dissenters and opponents is a whole other order of magnitude. [/QUOTE] I agree with your whole post. Well said. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/46 "2006-12-12T17:45:09Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] The Socialist Party of Chile was a Marxist-Leninist party that split off from the Communists after the latter became Stalinist. [/QUOTE] Exactly. FYI, Stalinist and Stalinist-derived parties (like Mao’s) have pretty much had a recognized trademark in the label “Communist” ever since Trotsky fled Russia. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/47 "2006-12-12T18:02:51Z")
[QUOTE=severus] Democratic socialists are not social democrats. If I’m not mistaken, democratic socialists’ goal is to build a socialist society through democratic means. (Social democrats, of course, work in the context of a market economy.) [/QUOTE] Weelllll . . . yes, pretty much, most of the time, but those labels tend to get a bit blurry. The Russian Bolsheviks (Lenin’s group) and Mensheviks were factions of the [The contemporary [url=[Democratic Socialists of America - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialists_of_America)]Democratic Socialists of America](]Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.[/url) actually has goals and policies (as distinct from rhetoric) which would be social-democratic by European standards. The [Socialist Party USA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_USA) is only slightly to the DSA’s left in practice. Neither is doctrinally Marxist although there are plenty of Marxists in the ransk. The [Social Democrats, USA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrats%2C_USA) look more than anything else like the left wing of the [neocons.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism) (They backed the invasion of Iraq, but hoped to establish stronger labor unions there – while the mainstream neocons were determined to wipe out organized labor in Iraq entirely.) Etc. And all of the above would have to be completely reinterpreted in the context of Latin American politics – which, as was noted [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7930468&postcount=10) by **Mapache** , who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, tend to look extremely surreal and baroque from the POV of any outsider. (Actually **Mapache** was referring to Mexican politics, but I’d be surprised if it’s any different elsewhere in LA.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/48 "2006-12-12T18:04:31Z")
BTW, here’s something no one has directly addressed, yet, in this thread: Were Pinochet’s **economic** policies good or bad for Chile? (See post #14.) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/49 "2006-12-12T18:43:12Z")
[QUOTE=severus] Can you tell me where you found this quote, so I can check if it was a tenet of Allende’s party at the time? [/QUOTE] Here’s an article, from a Spanish Marxist magazine from 1979, reflecting on Allende, Chile, and Pinoche’s coup, which includes portions of the statement: [http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/chile73.html](http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/chile73.html) > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Exactly. FYI, Stalinist and Stalinist-derived parties (like Mao’s) have pretty much had a recognized trademark in the label “Communist” ever since Trotsky fled Russia. Almost all parties that call themselves “The Communist Party of X” are Stalinist parties, due to the strong influence of the Soviet Union on those parties, but more generally, all Marxist-Leninist parties, whether they’re Stalinist, Trotskyist, or Maoist in orientation can be considered “communist parties”, and members of such parties can be considered communists, rather than democratic socialists. There is, for instance, a distinction between the Socialist Party USA/DSA/Social Democrats (all socialist parties), and the Socialist Workers (Trotskyist). ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/50 "2006-12-12T21:04:22Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] BTW, here’s something no one has directly addressed, yet, in this thread: Were Pinochet’s **economic** policies good or bad for Chile? (See post #14.) [/QUOTE] [WaPo: Good.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101166.html) > [@](#): > > It’s hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile’s economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It’s leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years. > > Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle – and that not even Allende’s socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum. [Greg Palast: Bad.](http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2#more-1551) > [@](#): > > In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule. > > In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year “President” Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle. > > Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus. > > Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. > > \ > > Pinochet sold off the state banks - at a 40% discount from book value - and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers - then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways. > > The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded that Governments should not hinder the logic of the market. > > By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. > In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Reagan/Thatcher. > New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the children’s ears - a large dose of socialism. > > To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper. > > For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “It’s absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” > Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation. Maybe there’s a good rebuttal to Palast, but until it emerges, he’s definitely got the better of the Post. This is off topic, but if you want something that will make you upchuck, read the WaPo editorial in its entirety. They basically say Pinochet’s reign of terror is justified because (a) he brought a free-market-based boom to Chile, (b) it was all Allende’s fault anyway, and (c) he was better than Fidel. And for the cherry on top, the success of Chile after Pinochet means that Jeane Kirkpatrick was right about everything. I personally think that this takes the editorial writers of the Washington Post into moral-leper territory. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/51 "2006-12-12T22:13:31Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] [WaPo: Good.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101166.html) > [@](#): > > In the past 15 years, Chile’s economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. [/QUOTE] Interesting choice of time-frame. 1990 is the year Pinochet stepped down. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2006, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/52 "2006-12-14T01:46:54Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Interesting choice of time-frame. 1990 is the year Pinochet stepped down. [/QUOTE] What’s also interesting is that the WaPo [did a piece on Chile’s economic miracle back in 2004](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33881-2004Jan21), and their writer then saw it completely differently than their editorial writer did the other day. Under Pinochet: > [@](#): > > With a recession in 1975, Chile’s economy contracted by 13 percent – its greatest decline since the Great Depression. The recovery that followed was fueled largely by foreign cash, which poured into the country as investors gobbled up utilities and stashed money in Chile’s currency markets. The prices of imports fell sharply; between 1975 and 1982, the number of foreign cars sold in Chile tripled. Domestic manufacturing shriveled by 30 percent. Domestic savings plummeted. Wages fell, and the income gap between rich and poor widened by a factor of 50. > > By 1982, Chile had accumulated $16 billion in foreign debt – the highest in Latin America – and foreign investment represented a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product. The money flowing into the country flowed out just as easily, to pay debts and bills for imported goods and through capital flight as investors soured on Chile’s currency market. The economy had overheated and was now in a meltdown. > > \ > > With a third of the workforce unemployed and unrest growing, by 1984 Pinochet began to “reform the reforms,” said Ricardo French-Davis, an economics professor at the University of Chile. > > He allowed the peso to float and reinstated restrictions on the movement of capital in and out of the country. He introduced banking legislation, and ratcheted up spending on research and development efforts through the Chile Foundation and other collaborations between the public and private sectors. After Pinochet: > [@](#): > > In the 1990s, after Pinochet allowed a plebiscite that returned democracy to Chile, the new government accelerated the reforms, said French-Davis and others. Between 1990 and 1992, Chile doubled government spending on health and education, and introduced tax incentives to businesses that provide job training, helping to increase the percentage of Chileans with higher education from 9 percent in 1992 to 16.4 percent last year. The number of professionals in the country expanded 124 percent over that period. > > Successive governments led first by Chile’s conservatives then by its socialist party worked to restore worker rights eroded by Pinochet’s regime. Government strengthened trade unions’ ability to negotiate collective bargaining agreements, introduced the broadest unemployment insurance plan on the continent and reduced from six months to one month the period of time employees can work without a contract. Between 1990 and 1998, Chilean lawmakers increased the minimum wage by 87 percent, making it the highest in Latin America, said Yerko Ljubetic, Chile’s undersecretary of labor. > [@](#): > > While many Latin American countries have whittled government’s role in business affairs, Chile has gone largely in the other direction. Not only has it wielded influence in getting to market its key exports, from table grapes to goat cheese to sofas, but it also has used more legislation, regulation and taxes to tame a feral free-market system that failed to deliver in the 1970s and '80s. > > Argentina and Brazil loosened restrictions on foreign cash flowing in and out of their countries, but Chile slapped restrictions on it. While countries such as Bolivia and Uruguay put the brakes on public spending in the 1990s, the Chileans have more than doubled public expenditures on health and education since 1990. > > Other countries cut taxes; Chile nearly doubled the taxes on corporations over the past decade. While Argentina in the 1990s was watering down its labor laws to lower costs and make it easier for employers to hire and fire workers, Chile was strengthening its labor legislation, doubling its minimum wage and requiring that employers extend jobless benefits to unemployed workers. > > Brazil and Argentina fixed the value of their currencies – guaranteeing that the central bank would exchange local tender for dollars at a fixed rate – to combat inflation. By contrast, Chile devalued its currency and kept it on a tight leash to protect local industries from foreign goods that gained a price advantage against an overvalued local currency. > > The difference between Chile and the rest of the continent can be stark. When Bolivian demonstrators in October forced their president to flee the country in violent protests against globalization’s unevenness, the first Starbucks was opening in Chile. Nearly half of all Brazilian workers do not have a job contract; for Chile the figure is 1 in 5. The number of Argentines living in poverty has quadrupled since 1989; over that same period, Chile has reduced the ranks of its poor by half. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/53 "2006-12-15T19:23:27Z")
Pinochet, BTW, was denied a state funeral by the government, but [was buried with full military honors at Santiago’s Military Academy](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6171387.stm) on Tuesday. President Bachelet did not attend. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/54 "2006-12-15T19:50:38Z")
A question: how much of Chile’s recent prosperity is due to rising commodity prices? Copper is now about 3 times the price it was 10 years ago-and Chile is a major copper producer. Like wise for tin and potash. Chile also has a pretty small population, so direct comparison with Brazil is not easy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2006, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690/55 "2006-12-15T20:17:41Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] A question: how much of Chile’s recent prosperity is due to rising commodity prices? [/QUOTE] Dunno, but [here’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chile) some figures on its exports: > [@](#): > > Chile’s economy is highly dependent on international trade. In 1999, exports increased to $18.3 billion from $15.6 billion in 1999, and imports increased to $16.9 billion from $14 billion the previous year. Exports accounted for about 25% of GDP. Chile has traditionally been dependent upon copper exports; the state-owned firm CODELCO is the world’s second-largest copper-producing company. Foreign private investment has developed many new mines, and the private sector now produces more copper than CODELCO. Copper output continued to increase in 2000. Non-traditional exports have grown faster than those of copper and other minerals. In 1975, non-mineral exports made up just over 30% of total exports, whereas now they account for about 60%. The most important non-mineral exports are forestry and wood products, fresh fruit and processed food, fishmeal and seafood, and other manufactured products [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pinochet-passes-what-is-his-legacy/383690.md?page=2)