Apart from overlapping membership, the ideology of leading gremialistas can neither be simply juxtaposed to neoliberal worldviews nor be understood in a categorical manner. The leading figure of the movement, Jaime Guzmán, defended the capitalist economy in his writings, which was rather atypical for adherents to corporatism. His explicit defense of capitalism was coupled with a strong antistatism rooted in a traditional Catholicism: in the social doctrine formulated by Pope John XXIII, Guzmán perceived private property rights and private enterprise as timeless and permanent values. He strongly invoked the principle of subsidiarity that is held to protect society against the state. Guzmán’s corporativist capitalism perspective thus shared the antistatism and references to self-organization with neoliberal perspectives. Furthermore, Guzmán’s intellectual development from the 1960s to the 1980s reveals a diminished reference to encyclical and corporatist principles (Vergara 1985; Cristi 2000). This shift may be due to Guzmán’s intensified cooperation with the economic change team. He first encountered neoliberal thinking during the Alessandri election campaign in 1970 when he mediated between the neoliberal economists and Alessandri’s corporatist-minded supporters. In 1971 he joined the Monday Club and the CESEC think tank (Fontaine 1991, 252).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1567