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Original article: Cuenta Pública de Kast: Desde la Dictadura se juega en la cancha de Guzmán

By Leopoldo Lavín Mujica

José Antonio Kast’s first Public Account did not signal a new era in Chilean politics. Instead, it affirmed a reality that much of the public discourse has preferred to overlook: neoliberalism was not surpassed in Chile; it was managed, adjusted, and ultimately reaffirmed by the governments following the dictatorship.

The difference in this moment is not a break from the past but rather a lack of pretense. Where there once were social compensation narratives, there is now a direct affirmation of the market and enterprise as the organizing principle.

The Chilean political scene carries an ironic undertone that is hard to ignore. The economic model inherited from the Chicago Boys, characterized by market architecture, commercial openness, and the primacy of private capital, not only survived the democratic transition but was also stabilized by the Concertación coalition.

Later, even the governments that promised to overcome this model—including Gabriel Boric’s—ended up operating within its structural limits. Kast does not dismantle this framework; he plays within it with complete ease.

In this context, the Public Account should not be viewed as a historic shift but rather as an ideological clarification. The reduction of corporate taxes, regulatory easing, expedited investment permits, and fiscal discipline are not innovations but a revival of a classic repertoire of Chilean neoliberalism.

The change lies in the tone: what was previously justified as technical pragmatism is now championed as a political project. They do not shy away from being labeled neoliberal and conservative; they embrace it.

It is no coincidence that the heart of the speech centered on private investment. The idea of «national reconstruction» serves as a legitimization framework for economic growth above all other considerations. Thus, the neoliberal package known as the National Reconstruction Law is justified.

The familiar refrain is that if investment expands, employment increases, and other problems will align. It is a linear sequence that directly reflects the tradition of the Chicago School and the logic of adjustment as a mechanism for economic reactivation. And it will flow, someday it will flow…

This kind of reasoning has a precise genealogy. In the more extreme version of neoliberal thought—from Friedrich Hayek to its Latin American applications—the economy is seen as a system that must be freed from political interference to reach its natural equilibrium. In Chile, this idea took the form of a true shock therapy in the 1970s, where deregulation was abrupt rather than gradual. Half a century later, the language is more moderated, but the conceptual structure remains notably intact.

Kast’s Public Account carefully avoided discussing the social and environmental costs of this orientation. The emphasis on streamlining projects and reducing regulatory «hurdles» downplays ecological conflicts, the water crisis, and territorial tensions accompanying Chile’s extractive model. Nature once again appears as a variable subordinate to growth rather than a material limit to the economy.

At this point, Nancy Fraser’s analysis is particularly relevant. According to the American philosopher, contemporary neoliberalism has not disappeared; it has instead mutated into reactionary forms that combine economic liberalization with policies of order, authority, and social control. The market expands while the state hardens its coercive dimension. The economy becomes flexible; society is disciplined. This is the approach taken by Kast, Quiroz, Alvarado.

Kast’s Public Account fits neatly into that framework. While clear signals are sent to the business world—with explicit support from figures like CPC president Susana Jiménez—regarding taxes and regulation, the political discourse shifts towards security, incivilities, and public order control.

The economy is organized around investment; politics centers on the social containment of the effects of that very economy.

The result is not a rupture with the Chilean model, but its consolidation without intermediaries. The novelty lies not in what is proposed but in what is no longer hidden. Neoliberalism ceases to present itself as an unavoidable set of technical restrictions and reemerges as an explicit political project, sustained by a narrative of national reconstruction.

There was a progressive neoliberalism in practice (now in opposition); now there is a reactionary neoliberalism, as Nancy Fraser would say.

In this sense, the Public Account does not open a new historical cycle. Instead, it marks the moment when the old cycle stops pretending it has ended. The landscape remains the same; what changes is that the game is now played without metaphors. And in that frankness lies both its political strength and its democratic vulnerability.

Leopoldo Lavín Mujica

La entrada Kast’s Public Account: Since the Dictatorship, the Game is Played on Guzmán’s Turf se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.