Excellent.

Quite so.

Although an orthodox Marxist would reply that there is nothing in the writings of Karl Marx that suggests following a policy of vast increases in the fiat money supply.

Modern "Marxists" (who tend to read more of the writings of English lit academics than they do the writings of Karl Marx) just blame the hyper inflation on "the C.I.A.".

Actually it cuts very well. The thing with modern socialists (it's Christmas, so I'll refrain from adding 'scum' after that word as I usually do) is that as a plane plummets to earth you can guarantee that the only people on board with parachutes are the socialists. The rest of us poor passengers find, rather like Yossarian in Catch 22, an empty bag with a note telling us that we have contributed to a New Britain by our selfless sacrifice.

Vladimir Dorta has a nice takedown of the Allende myth over at Chicago Boyz.

It does not serve history well to evaluate it with partisan blinders. Yes, Allende's economics were quite bad. Yes, he liked all the silliest points of socialism.

But we would do well to remember that Pinochet was not some master macro economist. We should also remember that he got his fame from torturing and killing thousands, not for his lectures on the Chicago school of economics. We can talk about Allende until we are blue in the face, but we are going to look silly if we avoid discussing the other side of the pendulum, tin pot South American dictatorships. Castrating people and throwing them out of helicopters are sins of a different order than nationalising a multinational's mineral holdings.

I can see why Pinochet is being cremated. It denies people the well-justified revenge of pissing on his grave.

I agree with Michiganny about killing (and torture) under Pinochet - although castration is something that I think Pinochet would have considered "Argentine" (he had problem with sexual abuse of all kinds - hence his wild reaction to a case of rape, when he either did not care, or did not want to know, about summary execution).

However, stealing mines is not really what Allende was about - the nationalization of copper was put well uner way by the Christian Democrats (who the Americans had supported against the National party in 1964).

Allende was about taking over everything. And the people he brought in from all over Latin America (and from beyond) had no problem with torture or murder - as long as they were the ones who were going to be doing the torturing and murdering. They were taken by surprise in 1973, but their intentions were quite plain - anyone who did not support collectivism (and did not leave the country) was to be eliminated, and those who died quickly would be the lucky ones.

Of course this does not justify the actions of Pinochet or his supporters, but their enemies had no more reservations about torture or murder than they did.