2011 PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY

MARCH FOR THE ALTERNATIVE: JOBS, GROWTH, JUSTICE 26TH MARCH 2011 LONDON PHOTOS cryptome.org/​ MUSIC EVIL NINE ‘WE HAVE THE ENERGY’ Milton Friedman often joked that if he had his way, central banks would be based so purely on “economic science” that they would run by giant computers—no humans required. It was the Chicago Boys in Chile, fittingly, who pioneered this process of democracy-proofing capitalism, or building what they called “new democracy.” In Chile, before handing over power to an elected government after seventeen years of junta rule, the Chicago Boys rigged the constitution and the courts so it was legally next to impossible to reverse their revolutionary laws. They had many names for this process: building a “technified democracy,” a “protected democracy,” or, as Pinochet’s young minister José Piñera put it, ensuring “insulation from politics.” Alvaro Bardón, Pinochet’s undersecretary of the economy, explained the classic Chicago School reasoning: “If we acknowledge economics as a science, this immediately implies less power for government or the political structure, since both lose responsibility for making such decisions.”