September 11th: lest we forget.

 Its been creeping up now for a while but tomorrow is September the 11th, the anniversary of a catastrophic and tragic event which changed the course of history and marked the dawn of a new era which has continued to the present day. On September the 11th 1973, General Augusto Ugarte Pinochet launched his counter-revolutionary coup d'état against the radical left government of President Salvador Allende and in doing so fired the first shots in the global Neo-Liberal counter-revolution which changed the form of capitalism to that we have today. 

Salvador Allende (1908-1973) was the first Marxist elected to the head of a nation's parliament. His Popular Unity government came to power in 1970 on a radical program of limited nationalisations and redistribution of land among the poor peasants. This struck directly at US corporate interests in Chile, by far and away the worlds largest exporter of copper, where 2 large US multi-nationals controlled the biggest mines and reserves of copper. Allende's program of nationalisation without compensation was particularly galling for the US State Department who issued a statement condemning the nationalisations, and for Nixon, who privately told his advisors to 'make the economy scream' and to provide funding for right wing opposition groups. US measures had their desired effect: the economy started to go downhill despite initial successes due largely to a fall in copper prices and suspension of US economic aid, while well-off sections of society 'went on strike' and, receiving funds from the CIA, began to plan a coup to overthrow Allende and his government. Despite Allende's attempts to compromise with the opposition, plans were laid for a coup which took place on 11/9/73 which, while not directly planned by the US, could only have taken part, according to Henry Kissinger, under the conditions created by US policies.

The effects of the Chilean counter-revolution were many and dramatic: a state with little history of military rule, it had its parliamentary democracy overthrown, its democratically elected president surrounded by the Armed Forces supposedly loyal to him and forced into committing suicide, and the mass arrest and smashing of the organised left and trade union movement in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Upwards of 3,000 disappeared and tens of thousands locked up in concentration camps (including the national football stadium in Santiago) where many were tortured. More significantly for the rest of the globe, Chile marked the first example of forcible imposition of neo-liberal policies and the beginning of increased state repression of leftists and trade unionists. Pinochets example of crushing trade unions and muzzling opponents would be followed in many other places subjected to economic 'shock therapy', including his old crony Thatcher (the crushing of the Miner's Strike 1984/85), Russia in the 1990's (Yeltsin's coup in 1993) and Iraq post-invasion.


 Pinochets policies of deregulation, privatisation and removal of trade barriers would be implemented in many more economies which took for their inspiration the 'Chilean Miracle', which followed a decade of shock therapy and was due more to a rise in copper prices than internal factors. This is why September the 11th 1973 should be remembered as it was the beginning of the new form of virulent free market capitalism which is today consuming itself in the disastrous economic crash its policies caused.