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Original article: La ultraderecha gobernando en Chile no es refundacional

A Materialist Perspective on Power in Chile

The current political landscape in Chile is mired in confusing and ambiguous semantics. While much of the public debate labels the far-right as a ‘foundational’ sector, a thorough analysis of our material structure suggests the opposite. We are not witnessing a political project that aims to establish new ideological foundations or renew paradigms; rather, we are facing the consolidation of a long-established class force that seeks to safeguard the institutional legacy inherited from the dictatorship, which, at its core, has never ceased to operate up to this day.

It is a strategic miscalculation and a symptom of political myopia to believe that the 1980 Constitution was dismantled or surpassed due to the various interventions it has faced. Ultimately, the reforms implemented over the past three decades have, for the most part, been mere cosmetic and adaptive adjustments. This situation has allowed the state to increase its capacity for spending, but on an undeniable condition: not altering the property logic of capital and its transaction methods.

The evidence lies in the design of social expenditure financing policies. Despite the redistributive rhetoric of successive progressive governments, the structure of fiscal income has not changed at all. Tax reforms have consistently failed to capture revenue from capital, large businesses, or the wealth of the affluent. Instead, the state has financed welfare through internal public finance reorganization and, more disturbingly, through international fiscal debt.

Here lies the crux of the problem: we are administrating the most extreme thesis of neoliberalism as an economic and ideological model. When social spending is financed through external debt, it is repaid with budgetary income where VAT—the most regressive tax—plays a central role. The outcome is a particularly cruel paradox: wealth is meant to be redistributed by burdening the poorest with VAT affecting their daily consumption. This creates a redistribution of liquidity at the base, while accumulation at the summit remains intact.

Thus, labeling the current far-right government as ‘foundational’ is a rhetorical gift they do not deserve; it misleads us. They are not here to establish anything new; they aim to sustain and perpetuate our socio-economic inequalities. The proposed tax invariability in their mega reform for the next 25 years is the chain that will allow them to keep the system untouchable until 2050, regardless of the objectives of the eight governments Chileans may elect by then, whatever their political orientation may be. Consequently, their mission today is singular and straightforward: to ensure that power is not redistributed while consolidating their privileged position following their recent and circumstantial electoral victory and its reflection in social subjectivity.

If the vanguards and the people, in the broadest sense, aspire to a real reconfiguration of contending social forces, the challenge is not merely to win governments but to break the barriers and locks of public financing. While Latin American progressivism—evident in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil among others—continues to operate under the logic of financial capital and reliance on consumption taxes, any attempt at change will be little more than a fresh coat of paint over a structure that remains, at its core, deeply conservative and exclusionary.

By Pablo Monje-Reyes

Political Scientist

La entrada Understanding the Role of Chile’s Far-Right Government: Not a Foundational Change se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.