Chile's Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look

The enormous gap between free market rhetoric and socioeconomic realities has become a most remarkable phenomenon in recent years. One case has been hailed as a real success story amid the general ruin: Chile since Pinochet. Authors Collins and Lear present a close and judicious examination of the "Chilean miracle," demonstrating how well the "exception" fits the rule: success for the few, disaster for the many. This valuable contribution has broad implications, extending even to our own society as it too undergoes the highly selective application of liberal doctrine in the interest of privilege and power.

Chile's Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look
Joseph Collins and John Lear
Foreword by Walden Bello
Epilog by Stephanie Rosenfeld
ISBN: 0-935028-63-3
1994
336 pages, indexed
$16.95, paperback

"Collins' and Lear's second look at Chile is a well-documented, well written, and extraordinarily detailed analysis of one of the most important social economic experiences of recent times. For developing world I know of no more quoted model than Chile. I can think of no more thorough and insightful analysis than this."
--Jorge Castañeda, National Autonomous University of Mexico

"Anyone tempted to believe that wholesale adoption of "neo-liberal" policies in other parts of the world will automatically lead to solutions of a country's social and economic ills should read this cautionary tale."
--Solon Barraclough, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

"Chile's Free Market Miracle will serve as a reference on Chile and free market economics for many years. Generalists and policy analysts will welcome this contribution."
--Joseph Scarpaci, Virginia Polytechnic InstituteTable of Contents
Table Of Contents

Foreword by Walden Bello
Part One: Chile and Neo-Liberalism

Chapter One: Why This Book
Chapter Two: Chile Before Chicago
Chapter Three: Dictatorship and the Free Market, 1973-1990: An Overview
Chapter Four: The Worldview of the Chicago Boys

Part Two: Neo-Liberalism and the Economy

Chapter Five: Privatizing the Common Wealth
Chapter Six: In Debt to the Free Market
Chapter Seven: Working on the Free Market

Part Three: Social Policy

Chapter Eight: Marketing Health
Chapter Nine: Schooled in the Marketplace
Chapter Ten: Low-Income Housing and the Mortgage Crisis
Chapter Eleven: The Privatization of Social Security

Part Four: Land And The Environment

Chapter Twelve: Fruit Boom: By and For Whom?
Chapter Thirteen: Forestry: Mother Nature on the Block
Chapter Fourteen: Mining the Seas
Chapter Fifteen: Buses, the Free Market, and Pollution

Part Five: Conclusion

Chapter Sixteen: A Second Look

Epilogue by Stephanie Rosenfeld
Selected Bibliography