Abstract

Most analysts of Chilean politics and society would affirm that neoliberal reforms effected a deep cultural change in Chile, breeding a mindset and lifestyle across the population that legitimizes the economic model. This work mobilizes qualitative and quantitative evidence to posit the following thesis: there is no such “neoliberal consensus,” and in fact, the legitimation of ultraliberal capitalism in Chile works precisely through the ideological belief in such “fantasy consensus.” The ultraliberal structures and institutions in Chile enforce practices on the population that are not the result of their preferences and beliefs but rather rational adaptions to an already defined material situation. Analysts and laypersons, however, interpret such practices as the result of population preferences, inverting the relation (from a Marxist point of view) between ideal and material life. In this process, which I describe as a mechanism of “ideological inversion,” the ultraliberal model Chileans inherited from Pinochet’s dictatorship acquires the appearance of social validity, and in so doing discourages social mobilization and change.