This is most obviously true of Article 24, which proclaims the ‘right of ownership in its diverse aspects over all classes of corporeal and incorporeal property’, including ‘rights of private citizens over waters’; or Article 22, which outlaws discrimination in favour of state companies. On closer inspection, even what first appear to be social and economic rights (to health, education and social security) are actually rights of private enterprise to compete in offering relevant services on the same terms as the state. The right to education, for instance, gives parents the ‘preferential right and duty to educate their children’, and private companies free rein in establishing education providers. The result of these education rights, as their architect Piñera celebrates on his website today, has been the ‘prevalence of private education’ in Chile. Such rights were based on a blend of neoliberal market ideology with the Catholic principle of ‘subsidiarity, which entailed that the state would fulfil only those functions that could not be fulfilled by intermediate institutions or the private sector. Consequently, the constitution stipulated that educational and other intermediate institutions should be free of politics, and introduced penalties for those who violated this stricture. Going further, it declared it unconstitutional to use or incite political violence or ‘advocate the establishment of a totalitarian system’.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 369