Capitalist Explains Chile’s Lost History

In my external writing #3, I mentioned Marc Cooper’s book, Pinochet and Me, as a primary evident for my argument. Pinochet and Me is one of the few history books that I read but actually enjoy and think a lot about. In his book, Cooper uses his experience to explain how Chile transformed when Pinochet takes power. As a summary of the book (so that people know what I’m talking about), the first part is when Chile under Allende, a socialist president, people (or mostly people in the working class) consider “freedom” as ‘workers take over the factories and have enough food every meals’. The second part, Chile is under Pinochet’s reign, people ‘take a car full of groceries and leave it there before paying, talk on fake/wooden cellphone while driving’ and consider the ability to buy things as “freedom” (it’s all down to money). Then the last part, the connection between Chile’s lost history and the younger generation, is about how a lot of ignorant and younger people call Pinochet a national hero, who brings Chile to this “freedom” (the second freedom).

I couldn’t make sense of the second part up until now. How can these same people who support Allende and the “first freedom”, or freedom as a whole, are now so obsessed with this “second freedom”, or individual/materialize freedom. Now, Weber explains everything. For this part, where people act like they are rich, I find this quote is best fit: “[T]he earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of life” (Weber 18). Now I can explain that the second part is where the transform of Chile takes place. The already poor Chileans who fight for “freedom” (the first freedom) now, under the dictatorship, are even poorer. At this point, they really have the desire for materials, and stuffs. Weber says, “The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job” (Weber 20), which simply means those under capitalism have to keep/try to keep earning money or they will starve. This explain how the Chileans at this point all change their view of freedom (from the first one to the second one), they simply follow the capitalism rules that dictates their lives.