Martin Pengelly — Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled “After the Coup in Cairo”. Its final paragraph contained these words

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal – the editorial was unsigned – think Egypt should think itself lucky if its ruling generals now preside over a 17-year reign of terror. I also take it the WSJ means us to associate two governments removed by generals – the one led by Salvador Allende in Chile and the one led by Mohamed Morsi in Egypt.

Islamist, socialist … elected, legitimate … who cares?
Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or – if they’re really lucky – just shot. That’s what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured.

The Raw Story

Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet

Martin Pengelly, The Guardian

The editorial is unsigned, but it's no secret where Rupert Murdoch stands concerning neoliberalism and democracy. Anyone with half a brain knows that they are antithetical.

Corey Robin — The Hayek-Pinochet Connection: A Second Reply to My Critics

In my last post, I responded to three objections to my article “Nietzsche’s Marginal Children.” In this post I respond to a fourth regarding the connection between Friedrich von Hayek and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The Hayek-Pinochet Connection: A Second Reply to My Critics
Corey Robin

The road to socialism troubled Hayek as political philosopher. The road to fascism, not so much as long as economic liberalism was maintained institutional. BTW, essential to economic liberalism for Hayek was zero collective bargaining power for labor, that is, no trade unions. If it took a dictator to do away with them, that was a feature of progress, in which all innovation is the result of intervention by great men.

If you don't already know the details, here they are.

BTW, Hayek's ideas were not very different from those of Mises:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism

Quoted in Mises and the “Merit” of Fascism by Jeet Heer at sans everything (December 15, 2007), which is also worth a read.

 Mises styled himself a classical liberal, a position which after the First World War lost its political salience in Central Europe. Amid the strife of the era, Mises hated above all else any form of working class militancy, not just in the manifestation of Bolshevism but also moderate social democracy. This led him to look with favour on some authoritarian regimes. In his 1927 book Liberalism, Mises expressed great ambivalence about Mussolini’s new political doctrine of fascism. He recognized that, of course, that fascism was illiberal and was even farsighted in seeing that it would lead to another European war. Still, Mises thought that as a reaction to communism, fascism was understandable and even admirable. 

The approval that Mises gave to Dollfuss was a precursor to the squirmy support Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman gave to the Pinochet regime in Chile. All three men were in some ways acting in consistency with the doctrines of classical liberalism, which prizes private property while being fearful of democracy. What they failed to realize is that under modern dictatorships, neither property nor any other right is secure. I like classical liberals and libertarians well enough but I don’t think they can be depended upon to defend liberty.

Matias Vernengo — Hayek, Freedom, Democracy and the Pinochet Regime

It is always good to remember what neoliberals mean when they talk about freedom and democracy.

It's not what what most people think, and neither are "Making the world safe for democracy," and "Defending freedom around the world," which equate neoliberal capitalism with freedom and democracy. A Pinochet? No problem. The market is "free." The people? Not so much.

Naked Keynesianism
Hayek, Freedom, Democracy and the Pinochet Regime
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah